POTM [was Re: Evolution's problems]

On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 14:00:53 -0500, Raymond Griffith
<tiffirgrReverse@xxxxxxx> wrote:

I was going to snip most of the content, but cannot bring myself to
erase your words, even quoted. Marvelous exposition.

POTM-worthy, in my opinion.

Thank you,
Frank

>
>
>
>On 12/29/05 10:13 PM, in article
>qfqdneA567hYOCnenZ2dnUVZ_smdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx, "Logos" <asdfd@xxxxxxx>
>wrote:
>
>> Among the many problems with evolution are the questions it is unable to
>> answer.
>
>I would be careful with this line of reasoning. It is essentially a "you
>don't know everything so you don't know anything" position. For example, one
>could assert
>
>"Among the many problems with the theory of Gravity are the questions it is
>unable to answer."
>
>If you were to assert that, because the current theory of Gravity is
>incomplete or inaccurate in some places that Gravity does not exist, then
>you would be a fool.
>
></Tongue-in-cheek humor here> And since there *are* questions that the
>Theory of Gravity cannot answer, I invite you to show your equal disdain for
>it by walking off the top of a tall building. After all, by your reasoning,
>gravity must not exist, right? </End TIC>
>
>But seriously, you have a much worse problem than with the Theory of
>Evolution. For by your own reasoning which I reproduce exactly for your
>benefit, your own faith is in jeopardy. For "Among the many problems with
>Christianity are the questions it is unable to answer."
>
>And a whole list of questions could -- and certainly would -- emerge! The
>list would be endless, including the exact nature of the kenosis, the
>conflicts between free will and predestination, etc. There have been wars
>build on conflicts of theology concerning questions the Bible has no
>complete answers for.
>
>In fact, the problem of unanswered questions is much more of a difficulty
>with Christianity than it is with Science. After all, Christianity is a
>"Revealed Religion". Since the source of that Revelation is supposedly God
>Himself, then leaving us with essential and important questions unanswered
>is a potential argument against the reality of your Faith and mine.
>Certainly, by your reasoning, Christianity should possess *all* of the
>answers, right?
>
>Yet we do not. And one of the largest questions challenging the reality of
>your Faith is how you can remain so decidedly smug in your ignorance and
>call it knowledge. That is a direct violation of the principles of faith
>found in the Holy Scriptures, yet you ignore those principles daily in your
>crusade against Evolution.
>
>Unanswered questions are not a problem with Science. We explain things the
>best we can with the evidence at hand. When more knowledge or better
>explanations come into view, they tend to supplement and change our
>explanations.
>
>Why, a cursory reading of any *popular* science journal has new discoveries
>in almost every issue, with a note on how the discovery addresses a
>particular question or explanation in science. And very often, the assertion
>is made that if the evidence is confirmed, it will require a change in a
>certain part of the current theory.
>
>And Science is happy, even eager, to accommodate! After all, the goal of
>science is to progress from less knowledge to more knowledge, from less
>understanding to more understanding. We already know that we don't know
>everything -- unlike certain people who (on religious grounds) think they
>have all knowledge and wisdom and power and might.
>
>>
>> Here they are, in order of importance:
>>
>> 1. How can life come from non-life?
>
>You have for the umptieth time confused abiogenesis with evolution. Let me
>try to put it as plainly as I possibly can.
>
>"Life from non-life" is not a part of the Theory of Evolution. Abiogenesis
>is a separate field, still in its infancy, and will have unanswered
>questions for many, many years. It is principally a chemical exploration of
>conditions in the distant past -- and given developments in planetary
>cosmology recently, I suspect there will have to be some changes in some of
>their models of the early earth.
>
>"Life from life, with modifications" describes the Theory of Evolution.
>After all, you are different from your parents, and your parents were
>different from their parents, ad-infinitum. The changes from one generation
>to the next were subtle. Yet they were there. The ToE describes the changes
>in the characteristics of populations from one generation to the next.
>
>You are on notice. You have been told the difference between evolution and
>abiogenesis many times. Now pay attention. We will expect you to know the
>difference from now on and to use the terminology correctly.
>
>Still, to answer your question a bit more completely, life as we know it
>follows the laws of chemistry even as non-life follows the laws of
>chemistry. These laws are rather complex, and while the interactions of
>elements and molecules are somewhat random, the chemical results are not at
>all random.
>
>That random interactions can produce terribly complex results can be found
>in some toxic waste dumps. In certain dumps, chemicals have combined into
>significantly more complex forms than the chemicals that were originally
>dumped there. What formed was a product of chemistry. It depended upon the
>chemicals present (both kind and quantity) and the heat energy available.
>But the laws of chemistry guaranteed the result.
>
>Now think. You believe that God created man from a clay mold that He
>breathed life into. How did that breath create our physical systems from
>undifferentiated clay? That is an unanswered question of Christianity, by
>the way. But there is life from non-life.
>
>For that matter, from where did God come? Your answer, of course, is that He
>always existed. And yet, if life must come from somewhere, then so must have
>He come from somewhere! Your own reasoning, sir -- your own reasoning.
>
>And might not God, from Whom are all things, have been able to write the
>laws of chemistry in such a way as to guarantee that "life" would emerge? Is
>not God omnipotent? If He is, then He would have that ability to create such
>laws.
>
>There is no difficulty between faith in God and the Theory of Evolution, or
>between faith in God and abiogenesis for that matter.
>
>> 2. How could the Cambrian Explosion happen?
>
>This is a question? The fact is that what we call the "Cambrian Explosion"
>did happen!
>
>There is a certain geologic strata we call "Precambrian" in which no life
>remnants are found (or only the least complex). In the Cambrian strata --
>which covers about a 50 million period.
>
>And in fact, this is not a single strata or time period itself with
>undifferentiated mixed-up forms. There are seven different subdivisions of
>the period! I commend to you this site for study, should you decide to do
>some:
>
>http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cambrian/camb.html
>
>But the fact is that some of the characteristics of life are reproduction,
>adaptation, and a struggle to survive. And in the early earth, not every
>environmental niche had been inhabited. There was plenty to be exploited.
>And life gravitated to those niches where it could survive, and succeeding
>generations became better adapted to those niches. After all, the better the
>organism fits with its environment, the more likely it is to survive and
>reproduce!
>
>So there were environmental pressures toward fairly rapid evolutionary
>changes.
>
>And yes, we don't know all the answers. But that doesn't matter. We know
>many things, and as time and investigation progresses we shall know more.
>
>Does this frighten you? Man, learning on his own without the aid of a holy
>book? Finding answers to questions in the world around him? Why should it?
>If God created man with a brain, then is it a sin to use it? I should think
>not!
>
>> 3. How does evolution disprove ID?
>
>Evolution does not disprove ID. ID is a weasel-word theology for those who
>contend that we have reached the limits of our knowledge and must confine
>all the rest of our unanswered questions to the Unknown "God did it"
>explanation.
>
>In point of fact, Michael Behe has admitted to belief in evolution,
>including the common ancestry of man and ape! His beef is that God is left
>out of science (since science cannot investigate the supernatural), and so
>he wants to redefine science.
>
>His problem, I suspect, is largely like your own. He perceives troubles in
>the world with "evolutionary philosophy", not realizing that there are many
>other troubles in the world that have nothing to do with this imaginary
>construct. His objections to the ToE are not scientific, but theological.
>
>The Dover case amply proved that ID is nothing but a theological attempt to
>put religion back into the public schools. The goals of the Discovery
>Institute and others like them are to reform society and government into a
>more theocratic arrangement, intolerant of non-Christians or Christians who
>do not agree with them, and imposing their concept of "morality" upon the
>population.
>
>However, shouldn't the question be, "How does ID disprove Evolution"? It
>doesn't, of course. And despite objections, evolution still happens.
>
>If God's hand is behind evolution (and I have no problem thinking that it
>might be so), there is no evidence of it. After all, if God can cause the
>course of events to happen so that man exercising his "free will" can still
>do exactly the thing God wants to be done, then God can similarly hide here.
>
>In any case, Science by definition cannot investigate the supernatural.
>There may be things science can never explain, and it accepts that
>limitation. But the Kansas school board notwithstanding, Science
>investigates natural phenomena, natural causes, natural effects. The
>supernatural is not in view.
>
>> 4. How can a cynodont evolve into a therapsid? A synapsid?
>
>Actually, if you were to do your research, you would find that cynodonts
>*are* therapsids. A derived branch of them, to be sure, but still from that
>line. The therapsids are part of the synapsid group.
>
>So you have it backwards. Not that we are surprised. After all, this
>question was probably culled from some creationist web site, and maybe you
>thought maybe the terms would be as confusing to others as they are to you?
>
>The following are a list of websites where you can get more information on
>this technical question.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapsid
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapsid
>http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Synapsida
>http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Therapsida&contgroup=Synapsida
>http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/faq/fossils/pdq252.html
>http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/therapsd.htm
>
>But your *real* question here is "How can macroevolution happen, where
>species with certain traits are ancestral to species with different traits?"
>
>The answer, simply, is "descent with modification." The genetic code is
>flexible. It can change. It has changed! And given time (there has been
>plenty of it), the changes have accumulated.
>
>> 5. How can evolution disprove the existence of G_d? Of Jesus Christ?
>
>It can't. It doesn't It doesn't even try. Evolution simply answers questions
>about how things work. It says nothing about God, neither affirming nor
>denying Him.
>
>And that is as it should be. For petty man to think he can "prove" the
>existence of God or "disprove" His existence is ridiculous. He is beyond all
>such proofs. The only thing that can be disproved is our own limited
>"God-in-the-box" theology in which we assume our descriptions of God are
>necessary and sufficient.
>
>> 6. How can Social Darwinism be justified on moral grounds in light of Nazism
>> and racism?
>
>As you should know (and doubtless do know, but what do you care?), "Social
>Darwinism" is not an accepted sociological theory any more. It was popular
>up until the Second World War, but it really had nothing to do with racism
>or Nazism.
>
>Racism has been around a long time. I have read sermons by prominent
>pre-Darwin theologians who justified racism and slavery on the basis of the
>Bible. I have read sermons on social order by pre-Darwin theologians who
>justified social inequality on the basis of the Bible.
>
>It seems that Social Darwinism and certain Christian doctrines had a lot in
>common at certain times!
>
>But see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism for more information.
>
>The fact is that man will reach for what is handy to justify what they are
>doing. You do the same thing. I am quite convinced that you are aware of the
>truth in certain areas, but you ignore it because it doesn't fit your
>theology. And you wind up blaming God for your bad behavior.
>
>"Evolutionists", by the way, do not endorse "Social Darwinism". And just
>because "Nature" behaves a certain way does not mean that we want it that
>way. So Scientists work with natural phenomena to frustrate nature! We do
>that with vaccines, medical treatments, improvements in technology and
>infrastructure. Life for us does not need to be cruel and brutish. We can
>rise above our circumstances -- and we attempt to do so.
>
>However, I find it interesting that Fundamentalism is in many ways a
>repackaging of "Social Darwinism". After all, Fundamentalism is not
>concerned with addressing inequalities, but with preserving inequalities! It
>is not concerned with the rights of the masses, but with preserving power
>with the wealthy or the "right". It believes that the Strong should rule
>over the Weak.
>
>I beg you to open your eyes. Read. Study. Understand. All of your questions
>above have been answered many times over. You still ask the same ones! You
>seem to think that nothing can ever answer your questions, so you refuse to
>recognize where they have been!
>
>In that way, you are as thoroughly blind to the truth as you imagine your
>adversaries to be.
>
>Yet there need be no conflict between Faith and Science. And the more I
>learn about both, the less real conflict I find. I am glad to be a
>Christian. I am grateful I am no longer a Fundamentalist.
>
>Regards,
>
>Raymond E. Griffith

--
Frank F. Smith
frankf at zoom hyphen dsl dot com

.

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