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Re: Science and Creation [Re: Marco_Grubert] #68991
04/27/06 04:08
04/27/06 04:08
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,320
Alberta, Canada
William Offline
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William  Offline
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@JCL - Your views on Catholics accepting evolution is very overstated. I found this from www.catholic.com -

Quote:



The Catholic Position


What is the Catholic position concerning belief or unbelief in evolution? The question may never be finally settled, but there are definite parameters to what is acceptable Catholic belief.

Concerning cosmological evolution, the Church has infallibly defined that the universe was specially created out of nothing. Vatican I solemnly defined that everyone must "confess the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing" (Canons on God the Creator of All Things, canon 5).

The Church does not have an official position on whether the stars, nebulae, and planets we see today were created at that time or whether they developed over time (for example, in the aftermath of the Big Bang that modern cosmologists discuss). However, the Church would maintain that, if the stars and planets did develop over time, this still ultimately must be attributed to God and his plan, for Scripture records: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host [stars, nebulae, planets] by the breath of his mouth" (Ps. 33:6).

Concerning biological evolution, the Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time. However, it says that, if they did develop, then they did so under the impetus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him.

Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.

While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution.





Guided evolution by God is much different than evolution due to adaptation. Even then, it isn't "solid" in the church that evolution is a proven fact. And I highly doubt in 50 years the idea of God creating humans in their present form will be in history books, lol. Even from a Catholic.com viewpoint.

P.S - For the record, i'm not a Catholic, but like to look into things anyways from time to time.

Re: Science and Creation [Re: William] #68992
04/27/06 06:33
04/27/06 06:33
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,977
Frankfurt
jcl Offline OP

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jcl  Offline OP

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Posts: 27,977
Frankfurt
Guided evolution means evolution was influenced by God to lead towards the evolution of humans (Option 2 in the initial poll). This is unscientific, as it can not be falsified, but is consistent with science. Science makes no distinction between guided and unguided evolution.

Re: Science and Creation [Re: jcl] #68993
04/27/06 07:39
04/27/06 07:39
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 4,131
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Matt_Aufderheide Offline
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Actually JCL i disagree with you here: the mechanism of natural selection precludes any kind of guiding by a conscious force.

The essence of natural selection as proposed by Darwin is necessarily guided only by fitness to survive. The process by which selectable changes occur is genetic mutation. Genetic mutation is understood as innacurate DNA replication.

The only possible area for the "hand of God" would be in the DNA errors, and this is akin to saying anything random on the chaos level is God. Perhaps unfalsifiable, but explanitorily impotent. And it may even be falsifiable: I'm not a molecular biologist, but i suppose there are theories for how DNA errors occur in replication.


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Re: Science and Creation [Re: Matt_Aufderheide] #68994
04/27/06 08:53
04/27/06 08:53
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 718
Wisconsin
Irish_Farmer Offline
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Irish_Farmer  Offline
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Wisconsin
I'll have to allow you the argument on the dating methods for now. I don't know enough. I just have one correction to make.

Quote:

When I put a 20 lbs weight on it it will indicate "0.0".




A more accurate metaphor would be:

If I put a 20 pound weight on a scale that says it only measures 2 million plus, and I get a measurement of 3.5 million, did I prove that my weight scale is broken?

Something seems fishy about this to me, but I'm too ignorant to make an argument at this time. Unless I'm mistaken about the measurements of the age of these rocks having been between something like 300,000 to 3.5 million? A scale is broke, even if its only meant to measure millions, if 20 years can cause it to measure millions. I'll have to get back to you on Ar-Ar, if at all, but a method that doesn't know the starting ratio, and then contends to be able to find that starting ratio by getting the measure of the current ratios sounds rather fishy. But I need to read more in depth of how they even determine that the argon they're measuring came from potassium or not. Anyway, that'll be a fun little distraction for the time being.

Either way, the earth being billions of years old really doesn't matter to me. Its secondary to my belief that evolution never happened. Whether it didn't happen in thousands of years, or it didn't happen in millions of years doesn't matter to me.


"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."
Re: Science and Creation [Re: Irish_Farmer] #68995
04/27/06 19:20
04/27/06 19:20
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 3,236
San Diego, CA
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Marco_Grubert Offline
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Quote:

If I put a 20 pound weight on a scale that says it only measures 2 million plus, and I get a measurement of 3.5 million, did I prove that my weight scale is broken?


In your Mt. Helens example all but one sample were estimated BELOW the 2 million year limit. Only one was estimated at 2.8 million and that with a huge error bracket of +/- 0.6 million. If someone really cared about it they could have checked for contamination in either the machine or the rock samples. Given that the ICR people failed to follow simple directions it's not much of stretch to assume that they also failed to remove contaminations (i.e. older minerals) from their samples. More details are here:
http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/mt_st_helens_dacite_kh.htm

Quote:

A scale is broke, even if its only meant to measure millions, if 20 years can cause it to measure millions.


In Computer Science we call this "undefined behavior". If you ignore the documentation and pass bogus values into a function it might work, it might return a wrong value, or it might format your hard disk. Similar thing with the K-Ar dating: if you put junk in, you'll get junk out.

Quote:

Either way, the earth being billions of years old really doesn't matter to me. Its secondary to my belief that evolution never happened. Whether it didn't happen in thousands of years, or it didn't happen in millions of years doesn't matter to me.


The earth's age may be secondary, but the veracity of dating is not. Because once you accept the later you'd have to deal with the timeline of fossils and why there are simpler ones in old strata and more complex organisms in recent ones.

Re: Science and Creation [Re: Marco_Grubert] #68996
04/27/06 20:09
04/27/06 20:09
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 718
Wisconsin
Irish_Farmer Offline
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Wisconsin
Quote:

The earth's age may be secondary, but the veracity of dating is not. Because once you accept the later you'd have to deal with the timeline of fossils and why there are simpler ones in old strata and more complex organisms in recent ones.




I could just chalk it up to coincidence. If evolution can't happen, but we find fossils proceeding upwards in complexity, millions of years old rock still doesn't change what we can observe today. I know, we can observe 'micro' evolution, so technically we do observe evolution, but these changes are irrelevant. I need to take a nap, and then I have a lot of work to do. Until later...


"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."
Re: Science and Creation [Re: Marco_Grubert] #68997
04/27/06 23:02
04/27/06 23:02
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 3,010
analysis paralysis
NITRO777 Offline
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NITRO777  Offline
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Quote:

The earth's age may be secondary, but the veracity of dating is not. Because once you accept the later you'd have to deal with the timeline of fossils and why there are simpler ones in old strata and more complex organisms in recent ones.


Most the honest creationists know what we have to "deal" with Unfortunately both dogmatic, unrealistic types from both the evolutionist camp and the creationist camp cant seem to "deal" with obvious facts. It makes discussions like these largely unproductive for those of us willing to remain objective. For example, while I can readily see the fact of species placed in different strata, I dont attempt to explain it away or fit with my personal opinions. Conversely, if you display the obvious lack of intermediate fossilized evidence needed to show evolutionary transition to the average evolutionist he(she) becomes totally unraveled at the seams. At least that is my observation.

I think the most intelligent people are truly able to adapt their opinions with new knowledge, but conversely I think the "stupidest" people are those that refuse to be objective.

Re: Science and Creation [Re: NITRO777] #68998
04/28/06 02:24
04/28/06 02:24
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
PHeMoX Offline
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Quote:

I could just chalk it up to coincidence. If evolution can't happen, but we find fossils proceeding upwards in complexity, millions of years old rock still doesn't change what we can observe today. I know, we can observe 'micro' evolution, so technically we do observe evolution, but these changes are irrelevant.




You admit there is evolution on the micro level, as you put it, but you say the changes are irrelevant. How can that be? This sounds like when I would see the hand of God, come out of the sky, that I would simply wave that fact away by saying it might not be God's hand. You are ignoring evidence because it's irrelevant? Hmmmm, for your view maybe irrelevant.

Quote:

I think the most intelligent people are truly able to adapt their opinions with new knowledge, but conversely I think the "stupidest" people are those that refuse to be objective.




I do doubt this has anything to do with intelligence itself, clever people can be just as stubborn and ignorant as stupid ones. I think regarding this topic it's hardly possible to remain objective, or at least we would claim to be more objective than Christians, Christians would claim to be more objective than we are, don't you think? All because we claim that evolution is based upon scientific facts (evidence supporting the main theory, call it whatever you like), and Christians might claim that we are biased and not open for a more spiritual or religious answer to the same question.

It reminds me though, in my opinion truth is the shared knowledge the most people agree upon, and still such a truth would only be valid, not necessarily true. We all have our opinion about truth, but opinions are off course somewhat tricky, when does it end being just an idea? With enough evidence supporting a theory, that's when it becomes more than just an opinion. Yes, you can have another opinion about that, but that would be just an idea. See what I mean?
For a common idea to become a valid truth, we will always need evidence. That's why creationism and also religion for most part is more questionable than the concept of evolution or most scientific theories for that matter. I'm not lying when I say I would like to believe in a God, but without any evidence I just can't and won't either, but that's secondary. That's the kind of objectivity I have, it's not being biased, but there's simply just more weight shifting towards one side of the balance scale and that's definately towards the side of evolution/no God. Simple lifeforms to very complex does not sound very coincidental to me, not very logical either when those simple forms where created by a God and evolved into more complex ones. (the latter is what the evidence gives away, in my opinion no matter how you twist and turn it.) A God, of which I haven't witnessed anything at all creating all different kinds of creatures with flaws and even construction errors does not sound very logical to me. When looking at life around us I do see it's sheer beauty and interesting character and complexity, yet I don't see why this should require a God to be possible to exist. When looking at ancient texts, mostly religious in nature there are so much patterns to be found which all lead to the same kind of obvious religious/mythical events. Does this mean they all go back to the same event? A possibility, but I doubt it, to much differences in the details of the creation stories. Does any linkable story indicate an event that really happened or does every culture at one point in time simply asked itself the same question 'where do we come from?'. A very very simple experiment can explain why some stories are quite similar (not just because of possible interaction of different cultures, which happened a lot also). Ask a random 100 people one exact same question and the majority would answer different, yet chances are quite high that eventhough in general those answers are different (literal), parts of the answers can have things in common. It's tempting to go further offtopic.

Cheers


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Re: Science and Creation [Re: PHeMoX] #68999
04/28/06 04:51
04/28/06 04:51
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 3,010
analysis paralysis
NITRO777 Offline
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Quote:

Simple lifeforms to very complex does not sound very coincidental to me, not very logical either when those simple forms where created by a God and evolved into more complex ones. (the latter is what the evidence gives away, in my opinion no matter how you twist and turn it.)


Well for the record I dont believe that God would have created the species as small microorganisms then guided their evolution either. I would believe that He created them whole at each time period and allowed them to proliferate for a unspecified period of time. Perhaps there were various creation events, different ages, and different dispensations. I follow the GAP THEORY of creation which holds the possibility of a prev ious creation, or mutiple previous creations. The site I gave for a link is actually against the gap theory, but I couldnt find any which looked favorably at the theory which means maybe I should write something Here is the wikipedia entry: GAP THEORY

Quote:

I do doubt this has anything to do with intelligence itself, clever people can be just as stubborn and ignorant as stupid ones.


I can agree with this.


Quote:

All because we claim that evolution is based upon scientific facts (evidence supporting the main theory, call it whatever you like), and Christians might claim that we are biased and not open for a more spiritual or religious answer to the same question.


Well I cant speak for all Christians but I know my own level of bias will allow me to do some serious soulsearching if one of 2 things happen:

1)science is able to create life in the labratory.
2)science is able to figure out where everything came from before the big bang.

These two questions are instinctual, and crucial to my belief system. As long as they are unanswered, and continue to be unanswered I will always see the best explanation for the origins of all things to be God.

Darwin talked about the origin of the species, yet he didnt really give any of answers about our origins. If you or any body else are able to ignore these fundamental questions then I am jealous of you, because I could never ignore these questions. Ignorance is bliss.

Quote:

A God, of which I haven't witnessed anything at all creating all different kinds of creatures with flaws and even construction errors does not sound very logical to me.


I also see flaws, but I dont see them as flaws Doesnt make sense does it? Let me rephrase it with an example. A newborn baby human has flaws yet in spite of its flaws, perhaps because of its flaws it is an absolutely perfect specimen. I dont expect that I explained this clearly, yet it is the best explanation I can give.

Quote:

When looking at life around us I do see it's sheer beauty and interesting character and complexity, yet I don't see why this should require a God to be possible to exist.


The main thing is that it is just too complex to have been assembled by chance. Also the symmetry, pattern, law and order begs an explanation which is beyond my comprehension.

Re: Science and Creation [Re: NITRO777] #69000
04/28/06 06:44
04/28/06 06:44

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Anonymous
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You admit there is evolution on the micro level, as you put it, but you say the changes are irrelevant.

Talk.Origins seems to agree that micro evolution could be defined as "the shifting of gene frequencies in a local population." (Pardon me if I shouldn't assume that you guys would agree). That means that if we have a light colored moth, and a dark colored moth, and something happens like, oh I don't know...pollution?, and it causes the dark colored moths to decome dominant, then that falls under this definition.

However, since this doesn't address where the dark or light phenotypes came from, its irrelevant to evolution as a whole. If gene frequencies can shift based on environmental pressures, this doesn't mean animals can grow gills when they never had them before. In other words, if we observe micro evolution, we still haven't observed anything that explains the creation of brand new, more complex creatures.

In fact, micro evolution just kind of sounds like a rewording of the idea of natural selection.

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