Non-Sense of Macro Evolutionary Faith

Discussion in 'Religion' started by SetiAlpha6, Sep 26, 2020.

  1. Hipparchia Registered Senior Member

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    Some bacteria and archaea should have no difficulty. What makes you think they would perish? Or are you just trying to maintain your record of being wrong?
     
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  3. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    You may think you are perfect. Human beings are not.

    Our eyes are backwards. Our reproductive systems result in an amazingly large number of permanent injuries and deaths during delivery. Our spines are designed to handle suspending our body when we walk on all fours; our upright stance means a guarantee of back problems later in life. Too many teeth; we have so many teeth they don't fit in our mouths, which is why dentists make so much money extracting wisdom teeth.

    The recurrent laryngeal nerve lets us speak, swallow and breathe. It's absolutely critical, and should be connected directly to our brain stem. But it exits our brain, goes down to our heart, then returns up our neck to those structures - leaving it vulnerable to damage from trauma or surgery.

    Exposed testicles. Enough said.

    We breathe through our nose and eat with our mouths, so at the top of our necks food is in front and air is in back. But our trachea is in front and our esophagus is in the back of our lower neck. So everything has to swap sides halfway down our neck. This kluge leads to choking, snoring, and difficulty breathing. 150,000 people die a year in the US because of this terrible design.

    If you think the human body is perfect, you don't know much about it. Our body is one big kluge - structures added on top of other structures even when they are no longer needed. (Heck, we have an yolk sack when we begin gestation, because our ancestors laid eggs, and evolution never quite got rid of it.) That's because evolution does not create perfection - it only creates something that works just well enough.
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Plenty of life forms on Earth don't need plants in any form to survive.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    He was not.
    He was let off lightly for committing serious breaches of professional ethics, and lying about them.
    Plants evolved fairly recently - we can look at the record of life as it existed for eons before plants evolved, for ideas about how life would continue after plants disappeared for some reason.
     
  8. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    Certainly intelligent design has been observed to exist in our universe. The products of craftsmen and engineers provide countless examples every day.

    But the ID arguments aren't about whether intelligent design is possible or whether it has ever occurred. I assume that we all agree that it has. The ID arguments are about whether the observed structure and order of reality itself call for the existence of some super-powered cosmic designer, modeled by analogy on human craftsmen.

    'Intelligence', 'desired' and 'design' seem to me to introduce some anthropomorphism into the concept. They are words that apply to minds, to intelligent conscious agencies such as ourselves. I'm not comfortable with making myself and beings like myself the key to cosmic metaphysics in that manner. I think that it might be better to restate matters in a less personalistic manner.

    We might begin by observing that there is order in the physical universe that we inhabit. There are the "laws of physics". There is the fact that these laws and all of the physical events that instantiate them appear to unfold logically. There's mathematics and the fact that physics is almost inconceivable without mathematics. Reality appears to be rational in the sense that it conforms to and is graspable by reason.

    One might argue this way:

    Introduce the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a premise:

    1. For every X, if X exists, then a sufficient reason for for the existence of X also exists.

    Then observe that:

    2. The order and structure of reality exists. (By observation. Mathematics, logic, laws of physics etc.)

    So...

    3. A sufficient reason/explanation for the order and structure of reality exists. (From 1. and 2.)

    Then (this sort of Leibnizian version of) natural theology would go on to define 'God':

    4. God is the sufficient reason for the existence and the order of our observable reality, the reason that observed reality is rational. (By definition.)

    Hence

    5. God exists (from 3. and 4.)

    I'm not comfortable with that, in part because defining the sufficient reason for the order of reality as 'God' clandestinely introduces psychologized properties modeled on ourselves such that the sufficient reason becomes a person. Which might conceivably be the case, but we don't really know that. So the strength of the argument collapses if we make that move and the argument becomes circular.

    We might be on stronger ground if we left 'God' out of it and simply note that if we accept the principle of sufficient reason, then the fact that reality appears to be rational requires an explanation. (If we reject the principle of sufficient reason, we would seem to be committed to the idea that some things/events exist/occur for no reason whatsoever.)

    So this kind of argument seeming delivers us to whatever the unknown answer is to one of the fundamental metaphysical questions.

    One might want to add an additional idea that whatever the explanation is for the order and rationality of the universe, that unknown explanation must be at least as rational and well-ordered. (I'm not entirely convinced of that.)

    But even if we make that move, this kind of argument doesn't (contra some versions of natural theology) prove the existence of God. But it is consistent with the existence of God. The last step from unknown-explanation to God is a step for faith to take, I guess.

    It's not a step that I'm willing to take.

    As I said up above, intelligent design has obviously been observed to exist in our universe. The products of craftsmen and engineers provide countless illustrations. But the ID arguments aren't about that. The ID arguments are trying to create a cosmic-scale transcendental analogy with the work of human craftsmen.

    And as I argued above, while the existence of the kind of cosmic order that even physicists and mathematicians acknowledge (and rely on) cries out for explanation (at least if we hold to the principle of sufficient reason), moving from the unknown answer to a metaphysical question to the existence of anything like a theistic God requires an additional giant leap.

    I prefer to remain an agnostic in these kind of matters.

    I don't know what the source (if any) of cosmic order is. But I'm exceedingly doubtful that it will turn out to be a person in a human psychological sense. And I'm even more doubtful that it will have any relationship with the Bible, the Quran, the Gita or with any human theistic religious traditions.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2020
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  9. dumbest man on earth Real Eyes Realize Real Lies Valued Senior Member

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    3,523
    Grok'd!
    You got great grasp, Yazata.

    ...you might enjoy the skewed view of the microverse/ID, in one aspect at least, proffered by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland in Season 2, episode 6 of their animated science fiction sitcom "Rick and Morty".
    The episode is titled : "The Ricks Must Be Crazy".
    -more info about it can be found @ https://rickandmorty.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ricks_Must_Be_Crazy
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2020
  10. SetiAlpha6 Come Let Us Reason Together Valued Senior Member

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    2,283
    There is overwhelming evidence for the Flood.

    The Flood explains the very existence of the fossils and layer stratifications we see all around the Earth perfectly.



    Why are Scientists denying that the Flood occurred, when it is so plain and obvious that it did?
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2020
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    18,935
    Because "I watched a Youtube video" is not science.
     
  12. SetiAlpha6 Come Let Us Reason Together Valued Senior Member

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    ID does indeed exist, just as you agreed. Even Scientists rely on their ability to detect it, all the time.

    But on what basis is ID reliably detected and acknowledged in one observed object, and reliably denied in another?

    Probability?
    Complexity?
    Specified Complexity?
    Beauty?
    Purpose?

    How do we know if something is designed by intelligence or not?
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2020
  13. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    18,935
    That's pretty easy.
    There's only one known intelligent creature in the universe that can design anything.
    If it wasn't made by a human, it wasn't designed.
     
  14. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Except for:

    The volume of water required (does not exist)
    The radically different dates of various fossils
    The fact that there are often hundreds of feet of sediment and metamorphic rocks between layers of differently dated fossils
    The fact that there are different sets of fossils, with different levels of complexity, in different layers
    The fact that we do not see the genetic evidence for a two-animal bottleneck for any existing species going back ten thousand years or so.
    The fact that Noah could not have fit all those animals on a boat, nor could he have kept them alive or kept them from eating each other.

    No scientist anywhere denies that floods occurred. No intelligent scientist claims that there was only one Flood that covered the entire Earth.
     
  15. SetiAlpha6 Come Let Us Reason Together Valued Senior Member

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    I would say that God made quite a few intelligent creatures who are completely capable of designing things.

    A Butterfly Cocoon for example.

    An Ant Hill.

    A Bird’s Nest.

    And hundreds more.

    I’m sure you already know that.

    But even so, the question is...

    What attributes does a designed object have which tells you it has been designed by some intelligence, any intelligence, regardless of who the intelligence was?
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2020
  16. SetiAlpha6 Come Let Us Reason Together Valued Senior Member

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    The Flood makes current Geologic Dating Assumptions, Techniques, and Interpretations wrong. Making them untrustworthy.

    And Volcanic activity was completely possible, if not likely during the Flood.

    The Flood also makes current Evolutionary Dating, Assumptions, Techniques, and Interpretations wrong as well. Making them untrustworthy.

    That takes care of a lot of your exceptions.

    And there certainly is plenty of water on the Earth for the job, so I see no problem with that one.

    And also, Noah certainly could have pulled it off.

    I see no problems with it at all.
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2020
  17. (Q) Encephaloid Martini Valued Senior Member

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    20,855
    This lecture on that topic attempts to answer your question...

     
  18. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    None of these are designed.
    Neither ants nor caterpillars plan what they make; they can't choose how they make what they do.
    It is wholly instinct - passed down the generations by evolution.
     
  19. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
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  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Not at all. They work as well as they ever did. A flood changes nothing.
    ?? Of course. Volcanic activity is STILL going on. Again, that doesn't change anything.
    Nope, sorry. There is not enough water on the planet to cover it to a depth of 30,000 feet above the existing sea level. Do the math.
    Right. Because it's so easy to gather every species of fly. And how'd he handle marsupials? I wonder if he flew to Australia, bought some kangaroos, and had them shipped back via air freight? Maybe DHL.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    We don't.
    We make our best judgment, taking into account such matters as whether there is a designer around who might have done the work.
    We also check out the construction - is a design consulted during construction?
    And of course we try to discover a purpose or role for the thing other than its usefulness to the non-designers who built it - normally a designed object is designed for a reason, for a use or employment by the designer.
    A moth cocoon (butterflies generally don't make cocoons) is woven by a moth caterpillar - there's no designer visible, the caterpillar consults nothing and nobody, the caterpillar is not intelligent and cannot design anything as complex as a cocoon (that would challenge a human designer) and the cocoon has no role or utility outside of its builder's needs.
    It exists only in the vicinity of a designer, and neither it or anything like it exists where its designer could not have been. It has a purpose other than its use or benefit to whatever built it. It was built according to a plan specifying the outcome, rather than according to a recipe specifying a procedure. (Pancakes are not designed, ice crystals are not designed, an ice sculpture of a stack of pancakes is designed).
    And so forth.
     
  22. SetiAlpha6 Come Let Us Reason Together Valued Senior Member

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    Ha Ha! Love it!
     
  23. SetiAlpha6 Come Let Us Reason Together Valued Senior Member

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    The fact of the Worldwide Flood completely changes our understanding of the past. And denying it, explains why Western Science is so untrustworthy.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    The Worldwide Flood of Noah is a recorded historical fact.

    It was recorded all around the World.

    Even the Chinese represent it in their most ancient characters.

    The Chinese Character for “Boat” represents the eight people who survived the Flood in a vessel.

    Only one example of many!
     

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