Re: Darwin and God: can they co-exist?

hrvoje-d <hrvoje.dagelic@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Evolution had always been a rather uncomfortable subject for me and I
suspect for many fellow believers. What role is there for God if
evolution is true, I would say to myself? So, by disclosing in a
seemingly authoritative manner that Darwinism was a bogus theory pushed
by atheists, the Harun Yahya book played perfectly to my prejudices and
fears.


They can, here are some "whys". Even if microevolution (random changes
in the genome producing new diversity which is then subject to
selection) can be explained leading to all that transitions between
species, which is from what I know not the case, then sitill remain
theese questions, for example:

1. Why are the laws of physics set in such a way for life-forming to be
possible?

There are two answers to this. One is the obvious one - they were made
to permit life. But this is both teleological reasoning (that the way
things are is the way they were *meant* to be) and a fallacy of
reasoning known as the post hoc fallacy. The fact that we are able to
observe life in the universe doesn't imply anything other than that if
it weren't, we'd not be asking that question. Suppose there are an
infinite number of possible universes, or even an infinite number of
actual universes. Then, the one in which we are happens to be the one in
which life evolved (by observation and definition), while many others
are incapable of supporting life.

To say that there is an explanation (God, for example) that is
*consistent* with the universe supporting life is not to show that is
the correct explanation, nor does it rule out all other possible
explanations (including those we haven't yet thought of).

2. Why did it all lead to humans (not counting other possible alien
life forms)? For them you can say that they are "aware"?

A more restricted question, and thus one that avails itself of a more
restricted set of explanations. But again, the same point applies.
Suppose there are possible worlds in which grunglenorgs evolved (it
doesn't matter what they are, except that they can ask why grungenorgs
evolved). They will ask why the universe has them on their version of
earth, and not other possible intelligent organisms or systems (allowing
that intelligence might not be organic).

Why is awareness the thing that needs explanation here? Obviously
because we are aware. But suppose grunglenorgs are *not* aware, but
rather are problem solving abstracting systems like computers. They
would ask instead why problem solving systems evolved, right?

"It all" didn't lead to humans. Mostly it led to empty space, dark
matter, dark energy and a few stars. On one planet on one star in one of
billions of galaxies, one of millions of species evolved awareness. Some
also evolved feathers, ultraviolet vision, gills, and six legs. What
demands explanation, particularly?

3. If God doesn't exsist - all is meaningles:

I disagree. Meaning is what we make of it.

Everyone will die, and it will be the same as he never exsisted. If you
say that he "exsists" in what is passed to next generations - it's the
same: each of them will die and it will be the same as they never
exsisted.

No, it will be *that* they existed. Whether that has intrinsic meaning
to you is a personal matter. It matters to *me* that I and my kids
exist.

Then, you can say, that the man is some "transitional form" to
something that will have meaning. But this final (ethernal) beings can not
be ethernal: all energy in the universe must come into equilibrium
(balance) and everything will die then. If the pulsating universe
hypotesis is true, again, everything that happened in "this pulse" is
dead, not ethernal - meaningless.

That's a long bow to draw. First off there's no reason to think that
ethereal beings *will* evolve. In fact I think it's entirely unlikely.
Energy just radiates unless constrained by matter. Then there's the
point that things don't have to have meaning in virtue of the long run.
And third, we are not necessarily going to evolve into anything in
particular, or even anything at all. If you need meaning that transcends
the material world, fine, but it is nothing to do with evolution either
way. If there is eternal meaning, then there is eternal meaning, and
that has nothing to do with whether evolution occurs or not.


So I think Creationists don't need to atack the evolution unless they
have good evidence.

Well on that I agree.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

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