Re: Ray Martinez: there is no evidence of a material process.

On Jun 2, 12:18 pm, "Steven J." <steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 2, 12:05 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Jun 1, 7:24 pm, "Steven J." <steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 1, 6:05 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

-- [snip]

Alleged material processes cannot produce common ancestry; mollusks to
mankind. The continuum alleged in the latter phrase, by evolutionists,
is impossible since mindlessness (= material evolutionary processes)
cannot produce its antonym: minds of the continuum. Your position is a
senseless and illogical assertion supported entirely by argument from
authority ("because we said so"). These alleged material processes,
when scrutinized, are simply comprised of a few individual truisms,
packaged together, asserted to be a mechanism. You cannot show or
prove ***any*** mechanisms of this nature to exist and act as a
mechanism except by assertion. These assertions, again, are pure
argument from authority - "because we said so - it is a mechanism."
But skeptics have the right to point out that the alleged "mechanism"
is actually a short list of largely uncontested truisms, and that this
list only becomes "a mechanism" when credentialed persons say so. In
and by themselves, or in tandem, these truisms do not rise to the
understood meaning of "mechanism" - and more importantly, credentials
are not needed to comprehend this matter - just ordinary intelligence.
When the continuum is contemplated, and when the "mechanisms" proposed
by evolutionists is contemplated, that is, its admitted mindlessness,
the admission falsifies the claim that these "mechanisms" produced the
continuum. Logic demands such a conclusion. Since evolutionists
crossed the Rubicon long ago; they must maintain their illogical and
senseless assertion concerning the existence of these mechanisms and
live by the metaphoric truth seen in the "Emperor's New Clothes."

-- [snip]

But the entire
paragraph above comes down to a simple argument from personal
incredulity:

Initiating a charge of "argument from personal incredulity" means, if
we consider it and apply it objectively, that your acceptance of
alleged material processes that allegedly produce living things, could
result from the same phenomenon. The charge is simply question
begging. Why don't you address each point that I have made, that is,
why not answer the reasons I gave for rejecting the existence of these
material processes?

You reject the very *existence* of these material processes?  

It took you this long to understand?

Creationism rejects Materialism, that is, our enemy. Causation is
direct Divine, not material. This is the most basic claim of
Creationism. Apparently you have been hanging around with too many
YECs-Fundamentalists-microevolutionists and have forgotten the basic
claims of Creationism.

Materialism says God is not involved with causation. Creationism says
physical reality operates by processes that reflect Divine power.
Evolution accepts Materialism - exclusively.

In the
quoted paragraph above, you called them "truisms," a word which means
a self-evident (usually trivial) fact.  Something cannot both be self-
evidently and trivially factual, and nonexistent.  

No, YOU have defined 'truism' to mean trivial. I accept (for the sake
of argument) the existence of each component, which I call a truism. I
reject (for the umpteenth time) that the short list of truisms that
make-up your alleged material process acts as a mechanism. The list in
itself is the evidence against the existence of this mechanism. The
list only becomes a mechanism when persons with credentials say so.
Again, evolution is a just-so story. Common sense and logic dictates
that said list is not a mechanism accomplishing what we see in nature.
Common sense and logic dictates that said list is a list of truisms
and nothing else: the Emperor is naked. There is no evidence of any
mechanism causing evolution: the interpretation of evidence in favor
of evolution is a false interpretation. What we see in nature reflects
the Mind and Power of the Genesis Creator - hands-on.

Again, you seem to
be making up your own meanings for words.  Note, by the way, that
natural selection is neither self-evident nor nonexistent.  Although
offspring of organisms might in principle be identical, they do in
fact vary.  

Organisms are not identical. Even so called "identical twins" are not
identical. Variation is a fact or truism.

Although these variations might conceivably be impossible
to inherit, many of them are in fact inheritable.  Although it is
easily imaginable that variations that exist might have no effect on
an organism's chances of reproductive success, demonstrably, some
variants do affect those chances.  

We see a wide variety of animals inhabiting the same particular
biosphere. This tells an objective observer that this biosphere is,
for the most part, a balanced life support system. Superfecundity,
while a truism, does not affect the balance adversely or constantly.
Adaptation in this biosphere, to the complex degree seen, is no
accident. These biospheres endure for long periods of time. Your point
in behalf of the truism is trivial. But the truism is not trivial.


As a matter of observed fact,
mutations exist, and produce novel alleles with novel properties,
which can be combined over time with still other novel alleles,
leading to major changes in a population over time.  The mechanisms of
evolution exist.


Gene-centricism. We were talking about visible reality - nature.


Your main argument is verbose and redundant insistence that "self-
evidently" unguided natural processes cannot produce functional
complexity, or alter one species into another, or produce
intelligence.  The advantage of claiming  that this is "self-evident"
is that it spares you from actually adducing any evidence for these
propositions; the disadvantage, of course, is that what seems to you
self-evident seems to most of us as merely naive illusions from which
you suffer.  It is *not* self-evident that there are rigid limits to
how far from the ancestral state a lineage can evolve under the
influence of mutation, selection, and drift.  It is *not* self-evident
that processes that serve as the models for genetic algorithms used to
design both circuit boards and computer programs could never give rise
to intelligence.


The evidence that mindless (= material processes) cannot produce
mind(s) is the admission of mindlessness (= main characteristic of
material processes).


Your argument consists, in short, of one self-contradictory assertion
and one palpably false one.


Show me the contradictory assertion?

You are the one saying mindless can produce mind(s).


....you cannot believe that unguided material processes can
both imitate intelligence and, step by step from unintelligent
responses to the environment to a capacity for abstract reasoning, can
build it.  

True.

And I point out that you are *unable to see* the degree of illogical
insanity that your comment above proposes.

I am unable to see it, and you seem unable to demonstrate it.


At least you admit that you are unable to see it.






Mindlessness cannot produce its antonym. The central assertion of
evolution is DOA. Mindlessness, that is, matter and life occuyping the
same time and space (= alleged mindless material processes) cannot
create the minds that occupy or have occupied reality. They do so
(listen carefully), that is, the short list of uncontested truisms
which comprise this so called "material mechanism" only when human
beings say they do. But the objective truth of the matter is that this
list of truisms working in tandem is self-evidently not what is being
claimed in its behalf; and the wonder of Nature falsifies the claim on
the other side of the coin (antonyms). We do not need a person with a
Ph.D. to tell us they do. Evolution is an insult of intelligence: you
have no mechanism of causation to explain the connectedness of nature
that you claim to see. Evolution IS an argument from authority - a
just-so story based on hatred of the God portrayed in the Bible.

Ray, we have already demonstrated -- for that matter, if you'd just
remember your own past posting history, you yourself have already
demonstrated -- that evolution was thought up by people who believed
in the God of the Bible; some of them continued to do so even after
accepting common descent and modification of species by natural
selection.  It rests -- though I concede that you have not admitted
this part of the argument -- on evidence, not on the authority of
evolutionary biologists.


I only said Darwin was a Christian who after deducing evolution became
an Atheist.

The rest of your argument above consists of repeating your earlier
subjective arguments from unsubstantiated assertion, flavored with the
occasional misuse of words and a populist appeal to resentment of
actual scientists.

You offer no reason for this incredulity: it is, to you,
its own justification.  

False.

I have.

The saddest thing of all is that apparently you believe that.

You offer "mindlessness cannot produce minds"
as though it were a demonstrated fact of science,

True. It is false on its face and you are *unable to see it.*

Ray, the point of things that are false on their face is that anyone
can see it; if I cannot, you are _ipso facto_ mistaken to believe that
it is false on its face.

Oh, and you mean "true on its face," since we were talking about your
proposition, "mindlessness CANNOT produce minds," rather  than the
counter-proposition "mind IS an emergent property of mindless
processes."

Before 1859 British Natural Theology controlled science and these
scientists determined that Mind was empirically observed in nature
causing its existence.

You are, of course, wrong; natural theology "controlled" nothing,
however widely it may have been accepted among British scientists, and
scientists did not "determine" that Mind existed in nature; rather,
they accepted on theological grounds that Mind was a proper thing to
stuff into the gaps in their theories.


Total ignorance of history.


It is also a self-evident fact of logic: Mind produces minds, not
mindlessness. Evolution demands a suspension of logic, and says
illogic is logical. The evidence does not say this, your illogical
minds say this. There is no evidence of a material process. This is
admitted when the short list of truisms that comprise natural
selection is provided.

Logic does not have facts; logic has tools for manipulating
propositions (which, if one is lucky, will turn out to be facts) and
drawing out their implications.  Logic is exactly as good as the
premises which one employs, and "mind produces minds" is not, in fact,
a self-evident premise.


It is.

You refuse to admit because the same would refute evolution.

Evolution is built on perverted logic.


....and it is not.
There is no tiniest reason to suppose that anything but natural,
material, mindless processes produce each individual human being,

Self-evident Atheist non-sense.

Again I ask (and I think that sooner or later it would behoove you to
answer), are you some sort of occasionalist?  Do you deny the efficacy
of natural causes to produce any of the things we see about us in
nature?  Are you asserting that human embryology is, in fact, a
miraculous process (and if it is, why cannot evolution be equally a
miraculous process, discoverable by science)?  Or are you simply
stringing words and phrases together, and hoping that by some sort of
rhetorical spontaneous generation, an argument will somehow emerge?





as
they produce each individual fish, each individual monkey, and each
individual worm or bacterium.  Known sorts of mutations (single-
nucleotide substitutions, insertions or deletions of one to thousands
of nucleotides, duplication of genes or the entire genome) can, step
by step, alter any genome to any other genome.  Natural selection can
affect populations in much the same manner as artificial selection,
and with a steady stream of mutation producing new variation, there is
no known inherent limit to how far a population can be modified.
Given all this, as well as the evidence that evolution (caused by
something) has clearly occurred, and your arguments from

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Ray

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