Vatican comes out in support of Darwin?

[The Jade Knight]

I don't believe that mutations are never "beneficial" - they can be adaptive and help one group eek out ahead of another (an example, perhaps, would be Darwin's case study of birds).

However, I consider that sort of mutation to fall under microevolution.  I believe mutations on a microevolution level are self-evident, and looking at my parents verifies this.

[Skar]

Um...I will thank you to not put words into my mouth.

Sorry, I assumed a level of good will that could withstand goodnatured joshing.  I withdraw all such.

I have already plainly said that I believe God created the universe. Did you read this thread? But I do not claim any belief in "Intelligent Design Theory," so don't tell me I believe something I haven't said I believe.  Plus why would the idea of mine that you quoted, about God making use of simulated evolution to do speciation, when Intelligent Designists specifically do not believe speciation can arise from evolution, lend any support for your claim that I believe as Intelligent Design advocates do? Quite the opposite!

IDists believe that speciation could not arise from random evoution.  The distinction is an important one.  My point was that the idea that God (ergo a higher intelligence of some sort) designed the universe at some point, whether by simulation to establish the correct starting parameters to induce speciation, or some more intrusive method IS intelligent design theory in its pure form.  Simply the idea that life and it's many variations did not/could not arise randomly.

I think I take an entirely different tack on the issue than Intelligent Designists. They specifically avoid mentioning God, but attempt to reason out the need for an Intelligent Designer. On the contrary, I accept God from the start and have no interest in trying to prove a need for his existence due to gaps, real or imagined, in any current human theories.

This paragraph is internally contradictory.  On the one hand you claim that IDists specifically avoid mentioning God, then on the other you say they try to prove his existence by pointing out gaps.  ?

...also, I don't want to put words into your mouth, but it seems like you just said that plants are a form of intelligent life...

I can see how it might look like that.  Not my intention.  My idea was simply that they are more organized/intelligent than the "food" they are organizing.  The idea being that they defy entropy.  If that means they have some sort of limited intelligence, so be it.  I'm not arguing that or attempting to define a sliding scale of intelligence.  I was just pointing out that they defy entropy.  And that when WE similarly defy entropy it's through an act of will/intelligence.

Before this instant I had no idea that there were people out there attempting to prove that no mutations are ever beneficial and that they are always harmful. But a google search reveals plenty such people.

It's impossible to prove a negative so they're out on a limb there.  But look back at the radio parts in a cement mixer analogy for an example of why people think random mutations turning useful is so totally farfetched.

I don't pretend that the radio parts analogy is scientifically rigorous by any means but I think it's telling that I've never, not once, found even a hypothetical pathway describing how random cosmic rays or anything else deemed to "cause evolution" could produce something useful. You talked like you knew of such an example, which is why I asked to see it.

[Skar]

I don't believe that mutations are never "beneficial" - they can be adaptive and help one group eek out ahead of another (an example, perhaps, would be Darwin's case study of birds).

Of course, the difference in beak size that Darwin found in those birds was neither mutation nor observed adaptation.  It wasn't mutation because the genes for the beak already existed and the differences in environment would have merely caused the prevalence of pre-existing traits.

It's not an observed adaptation simply because Darwin didn't observe the change in beak size.    Because he did not observe the change occurring in bird-family lines the differences could very simply have been selection rather than mutative evolution.  As an assumption it's simply not conclusive.  

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Sorry, I assumed a level of good will that could withstand goodnatured joshing.

I couldn't tell it was a joke. Perhaps if you'd added a   it would have helped, but then again, perhaps not. It'd difficult to distinguish jokes online.

IDists believe that speciation could not arise from random evoution.

I haven't heard that. Interesting.

This paragraph is internally contradictory.  On the one hand you claim that IDists specifically avoid mentioning God, then on the other you say they try to prove his existence by pointing out gaps.  ?

Exactly. It seems to me that IDists are inherently internally contradictory. (Are there any atheist IDists? I have not heard of any, but if they existed, it would help their cause--their desire to appear to the scientific community to be nonreligious.) It seems to me that IDists are people who believe God created the universe and would like to offer proof for such, but because they feel the scientific community turns their ears off as soon as the word "God" is said, the IDists came up with a way to talk about it without mentioning God at all, even though it seems pretty plain to me that God is exactly what they're talking about. I've heard IDists on the radio say things like "we're just showing that the evidence points toward the need for an intelligent designer...religion doesn't enter into it at all" when it seems pretty clear that in their minds that intelligent designer was God. I find the whole thing a bit disingenuous.

It's kind of like how (it seems to me) Bush with the Harriet Miers nomination appeared to be trying to sneak one past the Democrats by nominating someone he knew the abortion etc. opinions of but whose opinions he meant to keep in the dark in order to avoid a conflict. In one way the Right with their objections to her were shooting themselves in the foot, but in another way they were saying "Let's be open and honest about what our agenda is and there's no need to be sneaking around behind people's backs."

I believe God created us; I believe in stopping abortion, etc, but when someone starts using sneaky means to accomplish good goals, the whole process becomes morally suspect.

[Skar]

I can follow that.  I guess I just don't see what you're describing (on the part of the IDists) as sneaky.  As far as I can tell the core issue is that random evolution has never been observed, cannot be shown to work either in any kind of fossil record or even hypothetically, and flies in the face of known science like the 2nd law of thermodynamics.  For me the debate ends right there.  Once you start talking about what then could have caused life and its variations, what is/was the designer I think you've crossed into an entirely different debate.  

It is essentially a binary argument, either evolution happened randomly or it didn't.  If it didn't happen randomly, it was, by definition, not random ergo designed.  To what degree and by whom/what is a new subject entirely.

I think the false debate you're talking about is real but it's because the evolutionists always imply that the IDists are inherently taking that next step when they're not.

I believe in God too.  I don't know by what means he designed life but I know he designed it.  The fact that evolution doesn't fly doesn't bolster my faith in God it just means evolution doesn't fly.  At this point in the argument we can't say anything else.  The scientists will never advance our secular knowledge of how life came to be and what changes it has seen and why until they start dealing with reality.  A blind faith in "EVOLUTION" blinds you to observable truth.

[The Jade Knight]

The fact that evolution doesn't fly doesn't bolster my faith in God it just means evolution doesn't fly.

I agree with this and your last statement.

I see evolution as a pseudoscience that stems out of Atheist assumptions, not Atheism as the result of evolution, etc.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

The problem is that the IDists are talking about an Intelligent Designer. If they were ONLY saying "evolution doesn't work because of" the problems you mentioned, then that would just be good science. It's when they propose an alternative with just as much lack of evidence that they get into problems. You say that they're not taking the next step, but if they're saying "it must have been designed," then they are taking the next step.

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Indian kid with 12 fingers and 13 toes claims advantage over normal kids! http://www.nbc4.tv/irresistible/5040254/detail.html

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

How, exactly, do extra toes help you work faster? I can *kinda* see how extra fingers *might* help, if they were opposable, but if they weren't opposable I'd think the benefit would be negligible at best.

ok, yeah, that's a totally different subject, but it's what I'm scratching my head about.

[Skar]

The problem is that the IDists are talking about an Intelligent Designer. If they were ONLY saying "evolution doesn't work because of" the problems you mentioned, then that would just be good science. It's when they propose an alternative with just as much lack of evidence that they get into problems. You say that they're not taking the next step, but if they're saying "it must have been designed," then they are taking the next step.

I see what you're saying and I agree that taking that next step to God and claiming that it's science is wrong.  While some IDers undoubtedly do take the next step (and the press always takes it for whoever they're interviewing, whether the interviewee does or not, in the name of sensationalism) the concept itself doesn't necessitate it.  But that aside, the choice really is a binary one.  If it's not random then it has to have been designed.  There has to have been some organizing force that we don't know about yet, or at least can't prove exists.  Whether that force is God or some sort of Universe spanning lichen of which we are a part or a corrollary to the 2nd law of thermodynamics that provides for its own reversal in some cases is immaterial.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Comets, I tell you! Comets! No wonder the ancients cowered in fear when comets blazed in the night!

That kid's 13th toe definitely looks annoying, but his hands looks pretty normal, especially the shot with the keyboard.

Eric: Maybe he can swim faster?!?!? Some website somewhere says he can type faster. No word on whether he plays the piano.

[Archon]

For Atheists and Agnostics, there is no other acceptable alternative.  None at all.  They have to believe in Evolution (a priori), because the alternative requires taking a pro-diety assumption.  They can't accept that.

That is quite a leap in reasoning Jadeknight. First of all, you haven't defined your terms. What do you mean by acceptable? Second of all, this is entirely contradictory to the basic principle of agnosticism.

From Merriam-Webster: agnostic - a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable.
From Dictionary.com: agnosticism - The doctrine that certainty about first principles or absolute truth is unattainable and that only perceptual phenomena are objects of exact knowledge.

    Agnosticism is firmly based in the concept of uncertainty. Agnostics do not believe in a supreme god, but they also do not rule out the idea that a god may exist. Therefore, I do not think that it is right to say that agnostics are required to accept evolution as a theory.

    In the case of atheists, you would be right, if, in fact, no other possibilities existed. However, this is not the case. Perhaps there are no scientifically feasible theories as of now. This is no reason to believe that there never will be.

    Even assuming that there were no possiblity of further scientific discovery, who is to say that that makes intelligent creation correct? Just because the spiritual world has traditionally centered around gods, that does not mean that those who don't believe in scientific theories have to believe in a god or gods. Just because the majority of the world is made up of people who believe in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or other theisms, it does not mean that intelligent design is the only plausible explanation for life.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Even assuming that there were no possiblity of further scientific discovery, who is to say that that makes intelligent creation correct? Just because the spiritual world has traditionally centered around gods, that does not mean that those who don't believe in scientific theories have to believe in a god or gods. Just because the majority of the world is made up of people who believe in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or other theisms, it does not mean that intelligent design is the only plausible explanation for life.

But that's exactly what Skar is saying, that belief in intelligent design does not mean belief in God, that it could be some intelligent universal fungus or some intelligent anti-2nd law of thermodynamics, or whatever--but that if it's not random, it must be designed.

[Archon]

Sorry Skar, I have to admit that I didn't read the last page, because I didn't think that the point you were addressing was the same as mine. It seemed that nobody reacted to JK's post in particular, so I thought I should address it.

[The Jade Knight]

Archon:

To define my terms (and be more specific):

By Agnostic, I meant "Strong Agnostic", ie, someone who is not only unsure, but someone who believes that it is impossible to determine whether or not any sort of "supernaturalism" exists.

Now, I did not mean to imply, at all that Agnostics must imply Evolution.  However, I think it is critically important to the Strong Agnostic position that Evolution be an acceptable theory; without it, there is no remotely feasible alternative to supernaturalism (what Lewis would have called "Pantheism", though one could be "agnostic" about accepting which "supernaturalism" - however, that doesn't work as well for Strong Agnosticism).

I was also speaking of the current state.  I thought that would be obvious that I was not referring to some obscure possibility, but things as they are.

You seem to have responded to my comments without needing a definition for "acceptable"; you seem to have no difficulty understanding what I meant, from your responses, even if you take issue with the fact that I included Agnostics.


But, again, be it "god' in any other form by any other name (a universal fungus isn't so far from concepts of Brahman, is it?   ), discounting Evolution means accepting some sort of ID.  And for most Strong Agnostics, that's unacceptable.

[Archon]

However, I think it is critically important to the Strong Agnostic position that Evolution be an acceptable theory; without it, there is no remotely feasible alternative to supernaturalism (what Lewis would have called "Pantheism", though one could be "agnostic" about accepting which "supernaturalism" - however, that doesn't work as well for Strong Agnosticism).

However, you do not address the fact that to be an agnostic does not require any theory whatsoever. Even if you were to assume that a theory was necessary however, who is to say that a theory is feasible or not. An interesting (non-scientific) alternative could be that time is not linear, but cyclical, and that life has always been a part of the circle. This would mean that there was no cause for life, it has always been. The theory is simple, it solves the problem, and it can not be proven nor disproven. It does not imply any supernatural occurrences, just an altered perception of time. Again, this is just an example, to show that alternate, feasible theories are not impossibilities.