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Len Rosen
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 16, 2009 - 08:24 AM
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This debate is about an explanation of what we know based on a premise that it is either "God-designed" or the result of natural evolution.
Since those who argue the God or gods premise as being necessary to what we perceive to be the state of the universe today, let me reiterate what poor observers we would all be if we didn't understand the limits of our perceptions.
The human species has not been around very long. We are a social creature that requires hierarchical arrangements to order our lives.
But hierarchical social constructs are not the only observable arrangements in animal life on this planet. Lots of species are not social. And even socialization, like fish schooling, does not inherently require hierarchy to understand the behaviour.
The great intelligent design debate tends to focus on our perception. We look at our sight capability and marvel how the human eye could have originated through evolution rather than through a creator. Yet we can go through the evolutionary record of fossils, and look at other animal life on the planet and see the step-by-step development of vision from light-sensitive organs in flatworms to a wide range of eye types from compound in insects to lens-free eyes in raptors to the eyes of the octopus, the organ that most closely resembles ours. Take into consideration the range of visible light that some creatures see that we can only simulate with technology. Owls have incredible night vision. So do many nocturnal reptiles. This random variation should suggest to us that vision organs can be derived through experimentation with the reordering of chromosomal matter over time.
The evidence strongly suggests no intelligent design is required.
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James An
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 16, 2009 - 02:06 PM
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prieten47 wrote:
What academic dishonesty? In which academic circles has it been overturned? As far as I can tell, the roots of the war between science and religion can be traced to two seminal publications by John Draper and Andrew White in the late 19th century: "History of the Conflict between Religion and Science" (1874) and "History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom" (1896).
As early as 1908, there was academic opposition to the thesis that it was a "conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other" as Draper put it [1]:
James Joseph Walsh wrote:
the story of the supposed opposition of the Church and the Popes and the ecclesiastical authorities to science in any of its branches, is founded entirely on mistaken notions. Most of it is quite imaginary. Much of it is due to the exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo incident. Only those who know nothing about the history of medicine and of science continue to harbor it. That Dr. White’s book, contradicted as it is so directly by all serious histories of medicine and of science, should have been read by so many thousands in this country, and should have been taken seriously by educated men, physicians, teachers, and even professors of science who want to know the history of their own sciences, only shows how easily even supposedly educated men may be led to follow their prejudices rather than their mental faculties, and emphasizes the fact that the tradition that there is no good that can possibly come out of the Nazareth of the times before the reformation, still dominates the intellects of many educated people who think that they are far from prejudice and have minds perfectly open to conviction. [2]Most of the texts I've been able to get my hands on state that the conflict thesis perpetuated by Draper and White was finally overturned in the 1970s by historians who reevaluated their thesis and found that a lot of it was baseless:
David B. Wilson, a professor of history, mechanical engineering, and philosophy at Iowa State University who focuses on the relationship of science, philosophy, and theology during the Scottish Enlightenment, noted:
Despite the growing number of scholarly modifications and rejections of the conflict model from the 1950's...in the 1970's leading historians of the nineteenth century still felt required to attack it...Whatever the reason for the continued survival of the conflict thesis, two other books on the nineteenth century that were published in the 1970s hastened its final demise among historians of science...1974...Frank Turner...Between Science and Religion...Even more decisive was the penetrating critique "Historians and Historiography"...[by] James Moore...at the beginning of his Post-Darwinian Controversies (1979) [3].Stephen Jay Gould, the renowned paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science, wrote:
White’s and Draper’s accounts of the actual interaction between science and religion in Western history do not differ greatly. Both tell a tale of bright progress continually sparked by science. And both develop and utilize the same myths to support their narrative [4].Colin A. Russell, a former President of the British Society for the History of Science, wrote:
Draper takes such liberty with history, perpetuating legends as fact that he is rightly avoided today in serious historical study. The same is nearly as true of White, though his prominent apparatus of prolific footnotes may create a misleading impression of meticulous scholarship [5].... continued on next post.
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James An
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 16, 2009 - 02:07 PM
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... continued from last post.
Gary Ferngren, a professor of history at Oregon State University with a focus on social history of ancient medicine, religion and ancient medicine, and the historical relationship of science to religion, wrote in "Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction":
While some historians had always regarded the Draper-White thesis as oversimplifying and distorting a complex relationship, in the late twentieth century it underwent a more systematic reevaluation. The result is the growing recognition among historians of science that the relationship of religion and science has been much more positive than is sometimes thought. Although popular images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavour, while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or attempts at harmonization. If Galileo and the Scopes trial come to mind as examples of conflict, they were the exceptions rather than the rule [6].Crosbie Smith argues that the reformulation of physics in terms of energy in the 19th century was largely influenced by Scottish Presbyterianism, if not driven partly by it [7]. His work, "The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain", seems well-accepted with an affirming review [8] in "The British Journal for the History of Science" published on behalf of The British Society for the History of Science.
Unfortunately, just like how the public struggles with understanding evolution in its vast scope and magnitude in time, the public struggles too with accepting what is already academically accepted: that science and religion are reconciliatory than we were led to believe.
The claim that people of the Middle Ages widely believed that the Earth was flat is an example of another perpetuated myth of the Draper-White thesis, as are other lies that: "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages", "the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", and "the medieval Christian church suppressed the growth of the natural sciences", as Ronald Numbers summarizes [9].
[1] John William Draper, History of the Conflict Religion, D. Appleton and Co. (1881)
[2] James Joseph Walsh, The Popes and Science; the History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time, Fordam University Press, New York 1908, p.19
[3] Wilson, David B. The Historiography of Science and Religion in Ferngren, Gary B. (2002). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0. p. 21, 23
[4] Gould, S.J. (1996). "The late birth of a flat earth". Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History. New York: Crown: 38–52.
[5] Colin A. Russell: The Conflict of Science and Religion in Encyclopedia of the History of Science and Religion, New York 2000
[6] Gary Ferngren (editor). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0. (Introduction, p. ix)
[7] Smith, Crosbie. The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain. London: The Athlone PRess, 1998.
[8] Robinson M. Yost. The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 118-120
[9] Ronald Numbers (Lecturer). Myths and Truths in Science and Religion: A historical perspective. [Video Lecture]. University of Cambridge (Howard Building, Downing College): The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.
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James An
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 16, 2009 - 02:09 PM
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prieten47 wrote:
But TRUE science is not swayed by cultural factors, rather by FACTS. A hypothesis is made. It is tested. The results are published. It is peer-reviewed and if the hypothesis holds up, it is accepted as true (until proven otherwise). I think it's a pipe dream to believe that science is not influenced by the rest of humanity. The notion that science discovers, innovates, and creates things that trickle down into "lower" parts of society like culture and the public mind is ridiculously conceited. Science is positively embedded in the social and cultural context of its time and geography.
I've begun reading "Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction" and it sounds like a primary error in our interpretation of science in a historical context is to ignore that very historical context that the science is embedded in, even by historians themselves! I think it's well-documented that the concept of science as we know today has only been around since the Victorian era or perhaps a little earlier into the late Renaissance. Even in the Renaissance, it's quite obvious the huge effect upheavals in arts and humanities had on the flurry of activity that we now dub the scientific revolution. At the same time, it's well accepted that theological ideas were profoundly changed as well.
Of course, the scientific method and the scientific focus on quantitative measure are cornerstones of modern science, but I think to expect science to be foundational and exclusively composed of facts is overly idealistic and representative of the "tunnel vision" that specialized science is often criticized of. Science is a synthesis of ideas as supported by observation, and it is the ideas that theory is based on that is greatly influenced by culture, religion, belief, and society.
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Len Rosen
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 16, 2009 - 03:57 PM
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Hi James An,
I am in total agreement with you that the science we practice is a reflection of our society as is religion. But I am not sure what that has to do with "creationsim, evolution and intelligent design."
Evidenced-based reasoning, scientific method, hypotheses, experimentation and statistical validation are the tools we use when scientifically analyzing the world around us.
I grant you that religion is a part of our DNA, programmed into us as a social animal requiring an alpha figure to lead. We see similar alpha dominant social constructs in other animals, leaders of the wolf pack, or baboon trip, even the queen bee (although the latter is built around quite a separate evolutionary track). But having made these observations I cannot credit an intelligent designer with having it made it so.
Creationism believes the world is a scant few thousand years old, that dinosaurs were lost because Noah never carried them on the Ark, and that they coexisted with the human species before the Great Flood. There may be evidence of a "biblical flood" in the Black Sea basin approximating the time of Noah but I think it can be safely said that the demise of the dinosaurs had nothing to do with whether they had a boarding pass to the Ark or not.
And once again I bring up the question of is it one god or is it many gods? In Western Society we have this debate based on a monotheistic godhead responsible for creation and intelligent design versus evolution. But in other parts of the religious world we find multiple gods responsible for creation. I think it would be a very interesting debate to look at the single god (although understanding multiple manifestations of the godhead in the trinity always has bemused me)versus a pantheon of gods in the context of this debate. I'd love to hear theist views that reconcile these different views of the intelligent designer(s).
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prieten47
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 17, 2009 - 03:37 AM
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JamesAn wrote:
prieten47 wrote:
But TRUE science is not swayed by cultural factors, rather by FACTS. A hypothesis is made. It is tested. The results are published. It is peer-reviewed and if the hypothesis holds up, it is accepted as true (until proven otherwise). I think it's a pipe dream to believe that science is not influenced by the rest of humanity. The notion that science discovers, innovates, and creates things that trickle down into "lower" parts of society like culture and the public mind is ridiculously conceited. Science is positively embedded in the social and cultural context of its time and geography.
Of course, the scientific method and the scientific focus on quantitative measure are cornerstones of modern science, but I think to expect science to be foundational and exclusively composed of facts is overly idealistic and representative of the "tunnel vision" that specialized science is often criticized of. Science is a synthesis of ideas as supported by observation, and it is the ideas that theory is based on that is greatly influenced by culture, religion, belief, and society.
James An,
That was an impressive list of historical citations you amassed there. But quantity doesn't always equal quality. I think these sources are best characterized by your own words from a previous post:
"What seemed like credible sources later turned out to be religious folks trying to revise history in their favour."
There is a much more modern debate going on about the compatibility of science and religion. Modern scientists like Dawkins, Dennet and Grayling (in the NO Compatibility corner) are battling various other scientist groups which believe theologists and scientists can sit at the same table. I strongly recommend you check out the Richarddawkins.net homepage.
I don't understand your definition of science. Obviously science has been influenced by prevailing ideologies throughout history. During the Stalin era, the Soviet Union scientific establishment wasted a lot of time on Lysenkoism, the theory that the environment could cause an immediate genetic change in a living organism, because that theory fit nicely with communist ideology. Similarly, the Nazis mobilized their scientific community to prove the superiority of the Aryan race. But both these "theories" were simply not supported by the facts and didn't outlast Stalin or Hitler.
Is your argument that the church has funded science in the past? Obviously for much of the last 2000 years, the monasteries were sometimes the only places where education and intellectual thought was possible. My hat's off to the abbot Gregor Mendel for his stunning discovery of genetic inheritance in pea plants (a discovery that was rejected by the scientists of his day). But I think you are saying more than that. You think the scientific theories are part observation and partly to be found in the Bible!
This line of argument seems to smack of the "all our morals come from religion" argument. The morals argument is debatable, but (here I go again) what accepted scientific theory could remotely be said to be based on the Bible?
Len Rosen, I am simply amazed at your eloquence and enjoy reading your posts. I am sorry this debate is not going in the direction the author intended. Maybe everyone here is already in agreement that creationsim and IDism are quack theories?
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James An
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 17, 2009 - 01:11 PM
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Science embedded in the cultural context that includes religion is a point I was trying to make to prieten47 to demonstrate that science and religion are not as confrontational as we have been led to believe and that the relationship between science and religion is one of both conflict and support.
So yes, we've digressed from the initial conversation. And yes, I think we're in agreement that creationism and IDism is poorly supported (arguably unsupported) and pale in comparison to the wealth of evidence that confirms the theory of evolution.
The more I dig up stuff, the more it seems like creationism isn't even well-supported among religion institutions. Among Christianity, it appears that Catholicism, Anglicanism, and a number of other smaller denominations like the United Methodist Church support evolution.
Roman Catholic support seems to have first emerged in 1950 when Pope Pius XII stated: "the Church does not forbid that... research and discussions... take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution" followed by firmer support by two successive popes:
On July 2004, the Vatican published that “Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution... while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution” by the authority of Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). [1]Some prominent Roman Catholics have even denounced intelligent design [2-4].
At a glance, it appears Muslims tend to find evolution compatible with their beliefs more often than Christians. It may be due to the fact that the Qur'an lacks absolute time references in its creation story and that Muslims tend to believe that the Bible can contain errors. They seem to have their own version of theistic evolution, deferring to evolution for its scientific foundation. Unfortunately, it seems that there is a growing rise in support for creationism characteristic of Bible literalists [5].
Most Jewish denominations seem to accept evolution - even more so and conservative Rabbis tend to accept the term theistic evolution and reject intelligent design, Wiki says. Where they use the phrase, intelligent design, they tend to enunciate that their use is not the same as the use by Bible literalists and that even conservative Judaism strongly supports the use of science and defer to it to describe the physical world [6].
Buddhism seems to embrace science more openly. I was unable to find any explicit Buddhist objections to evolution. If anything, some Buddhist principles seem to complement evolution, supporting the notion that things are constantly in flux and the idea that humans are not any more special than other organisms, a consequence of evolution with which other religions tend to struggle. In fact, Buddhism explicitly doesn't comment on whether the Universe is eternal in time or infinite in space as 2 of the 14 "unanswerable questions" that Buddha refuses to answer.
The main divergence between evolution and its religious support is that the religious institutions tend to accept evolution with the caveat that it is somehow purposeful and not fundamentally random.
Creationism is continually presented in the popular media as a sort of "religious alternative" to evolution, but it appears that evolution enjoys the support of a number of religious institutions, even if they may disagree on the fundamental random nature that the theory presents.
[1] “Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God”, International Theological Commission.
[2] "Intelligent design" criticized in Vatican newspaper, NCSE article, January 20, 2006
[3] In "Design" vs. Darwinism, Darwin Wins Point in Rome, Ian Fisher and Cornelia Dean, New York Times, January 19, 2006.
[4] Intelligent Design belittles God, Vatican director says, Mark Lombard, 1/30/2006, Catholic Online
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_creationism
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_evolution
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prieten47
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 17, 2009 - 08:17 PM
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JamesAn wrote:
Science embedded in the cultural context that includes religion is a point I was trying to make to prieten47 to demonstrate that science and religion are not as confrontational as we have been led to believe and that the relationship between science and religion is one of both conflict and support.
The main divergence between evolution and its religious support is that the religious institutions tend to accept evolution with the caveat that it is somehow purposeful and not fundamentally random.
James, I fully agree with you that many mainstream churches have endorsed the theory of evolution. But we mustn't forget the hostility that Darwin encountered from these same institutions when he first propounded the theory.
I think you are also backing off your claim that science is a mixture of observation and cultural context. If religious institutions now endorse some scientific theories, it suggests that science came up with the "truth" on its own and the religious folks (some of them) have finally "come around" to accepting this truth. I think the theory of evolution was so diametrically opposed to the creation story of the bible that one can't find any religious "context" for it and that's why it was (and is still being) fought against.
Last, Pope Benedict recently made the same mistake as the second part of the quote above: Evolution is not "random," there is some random mutation going on, but the main driving force of Evolution is natural selection or adaptation to an organism's environment. Generally, evolution favors those organisms best suited to the environment. So really the only "directing" that can be going on is "indirect" by the environment and an organism's genes which are seeking to survive (make the organism procreate). I am not an evolutionary biologist or even a scientist, so someone hop in here and correct me if I'm mischaracterizing evolution.
The notion that some deity is sitting around for 4 billion years "directing" or even just watching evolution is absurd.
Oh, I want to praise you for your comments in the environmental forum. I was not having much success with the young ones. They seem to have responded better to your line of argument.
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siddiqua
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 18, 2009 - 10:39 AM
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lenrosen4 wrote:
And once again I bring up the question of is it one god or is it many gods? In Western Society we have this debate based on a monotheistic godhead responsible for creation and intelligent design versus evolution. But in other parts of the religious world we find multiple gods responsible for creation. I think it would be a very interesting debate to look at the single god (although understanding multiple manifestations of the godhead in the trinity always has bemused me)versus a pantheon of gods in the context of this debate. I'd love to hear theist views that reconcile these different views of the intelligent designer(s).
I don't quite agree that specific climes influenced how people developed monotheism or polytheism. Even in now polytheistic religions like Hinduism, there is one single supreme omnipotent, infinite, ubiqitous being, who is above all gods, who is the originator. And if you look at history, polytheism was rampant in desert climes. So geographic conditions have nothing to do with origin of religion, though several practices like burial of the dead versus burning of the dead could be
attributed to the geography of the area.
'The Quran claims to be the word of God'. So the Quran says that Allah is the originator of the heavens and the earth and that 'all life began in water', and that god 'created the heavens and the earth and all that is in between in six periods (not days) and goes on to mention that each period maybe thousands of years by human reckoning.' Also, humans are asked to 'travel in the earth' to 'observe how allah originated creation', and the process is 'gradual and preceded by stages' As to the origin of the universe, the quran mentions that 'the heavens and the earth were a closed up mass, and we split them asunder and we made from water every living thing.'
Also, it mentions that the sun is 'moving towards an appointed goal'.
As to the creation of man , god, 'began the creation of man from clay'.
To me the concept of evolution is not at all inconsistent with religion, or at least with what is mentioned in the
quran. Neither is the Big bang refuted here. As far as I see it, the origin
of life in a primordial soup cannot have been guided without divine help, but divine intervention it was for the earth to have come into existence and for life to have evolved from the first living cells to life now. The thing is that if I can't prove god's existence,
neither are you able to disprove the existence of a divine being. I don't
understand how it is impossible to reconcile the ideas of evolution and
creationism. Besides, as we've seen so far, the debate between creationism,
ID and Evolution originates largely from western and biblical concepts and
beliefs, which do not take into account any other ideas from around the world.
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prieten47
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 18, 2009 - 09:52 PM
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sidsayed wrote:
To me the concept of evolution is not at all inconsistent with religion, or at least with what is mentioned in the
quran. Neither is the Big bang refuted here. As far as I see it, the origin
of life in a primordial soup cannot have been guided without divine help, but divine intervention it was for the earth to have come into existence and for life to have evolved from the first living cells to life now. The thing is that if I can't prove god's existence,
neither are you able to disprove the existence of a divine being. I don't
understand how it is impossible to reconcile the ideas of evolution and
creationism. Besides, as we've seen so far, the debate between creationism,
ID and Evolution originates largely from western and biblical concepts and
beliefs, which do not take into account any other ideas from around the world.
It seems to be a favorite activity of the religious to "cherry pick" quotes from their religious documents that may have some resemblance to scientific phenomena and say, "See, this was mentioned in our Holy book." Quite a bit of acrobatics is often required to force the resemblance. For example, you mention God created the earth over six periods (instead of six days) which could each be several thousand years in length. Science tells us the earth is 4 billion years old! Countless species have arisen and died out in that time, continents have moved... the earth is still being created as we speak. Islands are sinking, oceans are rising, volcanoes are popping up everywhere. The Japanese island of Hokkaido is slowly moving towards Vancouver Island in Canada (okay, only a few centimeters per year). My point is that a creation story in some religious document cannot hope to explain the incredibly awesome universe we live in. Science is the only way to try to really understand what has happened and is happening.
Last, it is a favorite argument of the religious to say "you can't prove God doesn't exist." As I said when this argument was brought up earlier in the thread, "That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence too."
While it is true that the debate between creationists and evolutionists originated in the Christian West, I know there are Muslim groups too that are strong advocates of creationism.
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Md. Farhad Hussain
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 19, 2009 - 01:11 AM
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prieten47 wrote
"It seems to be a favorite activity of the religious to "cherry pick" quotes from their religious documents that may have some resemblance to scientific phenomena and say, "See, this was mentioned in our Holy book." Quite a bit of acrobatics is often required to force the resemblance. For example, you mention God created the earth over six periods (instead of six days) which could each be several thousand years in length. Science tells us the earth is 4 billion years old! Countless species have arisen and died out in that time, continents have moved... the earth is still being created as we speak. Islands are sinking, oceans are rising, volcanoes are popping up everywhere. The Japanese island of Hokkaido is slowly moving towards Vancouver Island in Canada (okay, only a few centimeters per year). My point is that a creation story in some religious document cannot hope to explain the incredibly awesome universe we live in. Science is the only way to try to really understand what has happened and is happening."
I completely agree with you. People who find science in religious books/texts are neither religionists nor scientists.
This post was edited on: 2009-07-19 at 01:27 AM by: mfhussain
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James An
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 24, 2009 - 09:04 PM
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Oy vey. I haven't had time to write back here with much of anything.
I've been reading though, a number of essays by various professors of history of science that discuss the relationship between science and religion, mostly from around the early Christian period to the Enlightenment in the 18th century.
It's been very interesting and I'm glad that there seems to be greater inclusion beyond European history and Christianity.
I'm not backing off from my claim that science and culture affect one another (and hence that science has a cultural context). What's becoming increasingly apparent to me is the decreasing role religion has in our everyday life now, at least where I live. I think it's becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile the infallibility of Scripture (and other such Holy writing beliefs) with the revelations gleaned from science.
Historically, it seems to me that religion and science had a very complex relationship. Not only did theologians and scientists sit at the same table in the past, - quite often - the scientists were the theologians. I think it's difficult to imagine a society where science is not professionalized as it is now, but the professionalization of science only began to happen in the 18th century, and religions seems to have had an impact on the development of scientific ideas as late as the 19th century. I'm well aware that science and religion now seem to be quite distinct, but the point is that they weren't always so.
My most recent reading has been discussing the mix of rationalists, naturalists, and philosophers of Christian-theist, deist, and atheist background at the end of the Enlightenment and in the early 19th century, with the rise of geology as a legitimate field of study, the discovery of extensive fossil records, and the reaction to the theory of evolution.
It's amusing because there were many historical instances of religious proponents for evolution and rationalist/atheist opponents of it. There was a rise in the belief of an eternal Earth and eternal Universe during the Enlightenment, well-embraced by rationalists and atheists then. Both the emergence of geology and the theory of evolution undercut the belief of an eternal world, and it seems that religious proponents took those ideas as proof that there was a beginning. Ironically, they soon realized these very ideas also undermined their theological ideas of the age of the Earth and all sorts of Scriptural interpretations that they accepted as true.
Increasingly, it looks like beliefs propelled arguments and discussion then and that observational evidence and logical arguments were both coopted to argue a variety of beliefs.
The impact of personal belief in the pursuit of science and in discourse remains undeniable as we form opinions and seek evidentiary or logical support. I think the strength of science now is a greater reliance of verifiable observation coupled with sound logic, and that beliefs now play a smaller role in discourse.
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Len Rosen
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 26, 2009 - 11:05 AM
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In a recent issue of Discover magazine there was a postulated argument that the universe exists for life, because without life to perceive the universe, there would be nothing there. In this month's issue there is an article on Steven Hawking, the renowned physicist and cosmologist. In wrestling with the idea of what came before the Big Bang, it is proposed that this beginning of time as we know it event was a singularity, not too dissimilar to the creation of a black hole. One wonders if black holes as singularities are, on the other side, new Big Bangs creating new universes in which life arises to perceive their universe in the same way or differently from the way we perceive ours. These arguments, some testable (the new collider in Europe will be used I am sure to try to address some of this science)raises the most interesting speculations. What and where a god or gods fit in with what we are learning about the cosmos defies explanation. Behind what green curtain are they hiding? Or maybe they are on the other side of a black hole? Finally, if the universe is made for life and exists because we perceive it, as is being postulated in some of these arguments, whose perception is defining the universe? The perception of an ant, a bee, a porpoise, a gorilla, and a hawk, are all different from our perception. Ours is limited to our senses and the extension of our senses through the application of our science and technology. Does that mean we live in a multiverse right here with every viewer's perception defining each universe in its own way? I hope this livens up the discussion.
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siddiqua
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 26, 2009 - 01:01 PM
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prieten47 Science tells us the earth is 4 billion years old!
Several thousands of years go into making a billion. The number 'billion' is a modern coinage. Because in olden times, people found it hard to count to
very high numbers.
Religious texts are not treatises on astronomy or geology or physics, but
they do contain several astonishing revelations. You may find the words
obscure, but I think it would have been mighty hard to explain anything as
phenomenal as the big bang or even the origin of all life forms in water to an audience who had not yet reached our level of understanding of such
phenomena. This is like people who dismissed Gregor Mendel's findings of
genetic inheritance because it was beyond their capacity to understand,but
much later his words made sense. As I mentioned before, religious texts aren't reports on science, but they stress on the fact that God created
everything. You cannot deny that the words ,"'the heavens and the earth were
a closed up mass, and we split them asunder and we made from water every
living thing" are unfortunately a clear reference to what is now scientific proof. These were words revealed at a time when we didn't have advanced
methods of study. Unfortunately no acrobatics was needed to force the
resemblance.
Humans are the most intelligent life form on earth, governed by emotions and
intellect, by phenomena completely inexplicable by science, we're sentient
beings and I just find it unacceptable that our evolution was purely a hazard
of nature. While we humans are also supremely intelligent we still can't create any life form de novo.
I find this whole debate between creationsim, intelligent design and
evolution fallacious because -
(i)it originated as an opposition of ideas between christian beliefs to the
teaching of evolution as the origin of all life.So the debate does not take into consideration any other stream of thought.(ii) there is no room in this debate for the reconciliation of ideas. you are bound to be either a creationist, or an evolutionist. So there is no place for someone who believes firmly in evolution yet that all of creation originated and was guided in its formation and will be guided to its end by a divine hand.
(iii) Moreover this debate serves no purpose because as I feel, the belief
that the origin of the earth was divine does not in anyway impede the search
for answers to the origin of life or impede scietific progress in anyway. Nor has this question contributed anything significant to science.
I feel this debate is best left to students of philosophy.
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siddiqua
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
July 26, 2009 - 01:03 PM
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prieten47 Last, it is a favorite argument of the religious to say "you can't prove God doesn't exist." As I said when this argument was brought up earlier in the thread, "That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence too."
Oh, of course you cannot disprove the existence of god, because as far as I read if everything is supposed to be evidence based, then if you can't prove
it, you can't disprove it either unless you have a certain amount of proof. So its in a state of ambiguity. Until you can conclusively disprove it, you can't deny the existence of god. This kind of ambiguity applies not just to the question of the existence of god, but to very many scientific theories. just an example, there is a unique form of inheritance through the powerhouses of our cells called mitochondria. now they r thought to actually be bacteria that were sort of engulfed by a eucaryotic cell during the course of evolution. though there is a strong arguement in its favour, it still is not conclusively proved that during the course of evolution that was actually the case. my point is that often solid evidence has not been the backing of theories. its based on a surmise that we work upon. so i reitirate that you cannot conclusively say that god does not exist.
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