Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

[CMAxX400]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

I'm not afraid to deny that I'm a Christian and I am leaning so far in the direction of Creationism that I'm going to fall over. lol. But, srsly. Evolutionism is not for me.

[devonin]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

I'm not afraid to deny that I'm a Christian and I am leaning so far in the direction of Creationism that I'm going to fall over. lol. But, srsly. Evolutionism is not for me.

Why though? It's all well and good in most fora to just state your opinion, but in CT, you need to explain it, back it up, and otherwise demonstrate -why- you have the opinion you have.

[Myst1278]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

*Off Topic*
I can imagine a sci-fi based on this.
The one who we refer to as God would be a programmer making a mini-universe for a project. The seventh day would've been for debugging purposes. Eventually, the program would go running w/o any known intervention. All those unexplained constants in physics and chemistry were there for the purposes of keeping the program too random. It'd be pretty interesting in my opinion.

This is almost a little creepy. I actually started writing a story based of this. About how the Master Program (God) was attempting to assimilate humans into a single, simple, worship-based mindset, sort of like the Borg. Satan got angry, left the system, and started to revert people back to thier natural, human state. Too bad I lost that story. Maybe I'll try to rewrite it.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

Then I'm curious what your prime mover is.

Science doesn't need a prime mover.

[devonin]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

Science doesn't need a prime mover.

Sure it does. If effects have causes, you recur back to infinity. If you claim that the big bang had no cause, then the big bang is your prime mover.

[GuidoHunter]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

Then didn't you just answer your above question?

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[devonin]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

Er..considering my above question was directed at a specific person, asking -them- for their opinion, simply giving mine or a possible one doesn't answer my question at all.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

Sure it does. If effects have causes, you recur back to infinity. If you claim that the big bang had no cause, then the big bang is your prime mover.

I don't care if you think the idea of infinity is repugnant, your petty feelings make no statement on the nature of reality and neither did Aristotles. High-order skepticism, one of the foundational principles of scientific philosophy, is capable of doubting that effects always have causes. It is capable of doubting that effects ever have causes. It is capable of doubting the existence of effects or causes. It is capable of doubting there is such a thing as impossibility itself.

Science doesn't need a prime mover. Science is the embodiement of skeptical empiricism. Philosophical logic is irrelevent to Science, since skepticism is capable of doubting logic. Logic seems to work most of the time so there generally appears to be synergy between Science and Philosophy, but this is mostly accidental.

[devonin]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

So...you can believe it, because your beliefs say you can believe anything...I see.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

Hardly. My beliefs say that there are no things which might not be false or true. This can even be turned inwards against this belief itself.

[devonin]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

If the core of your beliefs are that absolutely everything is always and eternally open to question, it must be a little tough to actually state that you -believe- anything with much authority at all...It's interesting really.

The commone presentation of scientists and scientific method is that they are primarily concerned with eliminating as many possibilities as they can, with the hope of arriving at an incontrovertable conclusion, not getting bogged down in a morass of "might be" logic...

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon

[MEGABILL]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

Finally, the universe and life did not evolve through 'chance'. Actually, evolution has nothing to do with chance. Not only that, noone has any means of actually calculating the probability of life arising. All of this nonsense about probability was completely pulled out of a hat.

I was going to congrats you on this post until I saw this.

Evolution is all about chance. ALL ABOUT CHANCE. Evolution is the result of random mutations that end up succeeding and benefiting the species. Of course, there is no real way to say what originally motivates the change, at least I don't know what does, or what gave genes the ability to change in the first place, who designed it, why it works so well, etc, and that's where religion comes into play.

Science itself rules out the chance of it happening through chance and time because the probability it too low.

... what? Stop acting like you know what you're talking about and go take a class about the earth and life through time, what you just said there you just pulled out of nowhere...

[Reach]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

I was going to congrats you on this post until I saw this.

Evolution is all about chance. ALL ABOUT CHANCE. Evolution is the result of random mutations that end up succeeding and benefiting the species. Of course, there is no real way to say what originally motivates the change, at least I don't know what does, or what gave genes the ability to change in the first place, who designed it, why it works so well, etc, and that's where religion comes into play.

Much of the driving force of evolution is non random. For example, natural selection or gene flow, ect. This has absolutely nothing to do with chance and drives those genes to mutate in the first place. So no, evolution is not all about chance.

[marxandlennon]

Re: Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

I was going to congrats you on this post until I saw this.

Evolution is all about chance. ALL ABOUT CHANCE. Evolution is the result of random mutations that end up succeeding and benefiting the species. Of course, there is no real way to say what originally motivates the change, at least I don't know what does, or what gave genes the ability to change in the first place, who designed it, why it works so well, etc, and that's where religion comes into play.

....

Congratulations, you know not of what you speak.

Evolution simply WOULD NOT WORK if it was completely chance. It is driven, rather, by natural selection, the ability of some genetic characteristics to survive in their given environment. It is not the random selectioin of a gene that will survive, but rather the "choice" (for lack of a better word) of the best suited gene for survival in the given environment. For example, an animal with a fur coat would do much better in a cold region that a furless animal, and the first would survive longer, and reproduce more often, than the second animal. This would put more "fur coat" genes into the gene pool, increasing the likelihood that the next generation would have fur coats. They would then be able to reproduce more, and so on down the line, until the furred animals would dominate the region, due to their genetic advantage. And yes, I did say "likelihood" in there. There is some element of chance, because it is not an "intelligently designed" process, but rather an element of nature, chaotic and occasionally unpredictable.