Board index ‹ Science and the Bible

[Jethro Tull]

> For evolution, it's implausible.

Well, agree to disagree. It seems not only plausible, but likely.

> That's your hope, anyway. You have faith that it's true, because you have no proof of it.

Are you arguing that we have no evidence that traits detrimental to survivability decrease survivability. Or that we have no evidence that animals need to survive in order to mate?

> we have no confident path that takes us from the primordial pond to rational thought.

First, nothing is known 100%. Second, this reminds me of the eyeball argument. Third, not knowing everything is not the same as not knowing anything.

> respond to me with so much confidence that abiogenesis is somehow true

Abiogenesis is a promising hypothesis. It has the benefit of being the idea with the most practical backing. I'm sure you're aware of the experiments the produced organic compounds using conditions similar to those thought to exist on the earth early in it's history. And while I admit this is far from conclusive, it's far stronger evidence then anecdotes and unsupported claims.

> reasoning evolved to the point of reliable knowledge, and that the lack of truth perception would have been weeded out by evolution.

We can go back to the evolution of the eye. Reasoning could have started just as simply. At first it could have done something as simple as decide to move closer to the light or further from it. The ones that made the wrong choice starved or were killed by ultraviolet radiation. From this point it's just a matter of increasing complexity and testing through natural selection. Not only is this not a preposterous claim. It's reasonable and substantiated by observations of natural selection.

> that everything we know about genetic mutation is that it is 99.99999% deleterious

I think you misunderstand natural selection. Even with the percentage you provided, with billions of microbes that would still produce hundreds of positive mutations. And since all it would take is one positive mutation to drive evolution forward, you've actually shown that how likely evolution is.

> Natural selection is the mechanism of evolution whereby "life" achieves descent with modification.

yeah, you can quote it, but I still think you don't understand how the odds work.

> Since the manuals are sequential, errors are accumulated over time, and the resulting bikes change accordingly.

Except that the branches of bikes that accumulate enough over time die off and so do their manuals.

> No doubt you realize we are looking at a deteriorating picture.

Only if we consider natural section a random process.

> But now we introduce a hero: natural selection.

Exactly.

> ...duplicates code, whether good or bad... ...gives the "good" bikes back to the scribe to copy the next code...

You seem to be assuming that bad code could produce good bikes. When the judgment on if the code is good or bad is all dependent on the success of the bike. So if the bike is good, then so is the code.

> Can misspellings and selective copying really do this?

yes. I mean, you're using mechanical examples and making big jumps to make it sound unlikely. But again, this brings us back to the eye and the attempt to say that it had irreducible complexity. Which was always an argument from ignorance, but then we figured out how the eye could have evolved.

> Natural selection cannot overcome this obstacle

I don't think we are going to agree on this point. And it seems to be at the crux of the issues. We have passively observed natural selection and then documented the genetic differences after the fact. Natural selection doesn't need to read the code. The goal is creating a successful creature, so if the creature is successful, then the code is "good".

[Phage]

> but to say that brain exists as a physiological organ makes no comment on its capability to pursue or discern truth.

That isn't my argument.

> My blood stream exists, but it doesn't pursue or discern truth.

Because it isn't the part of the organism that reacts to external stimuli. The brain however does and evolution does imply that it would tend to discern truth.

Think about eyes, are eyes that produce accurate information about the world more useful than those which do not? Of course they are. The state of the universe is the truth those organs are oriented toward distinguishing.

> Since, in the view of a naturalist, my brain has come about by exactly the same processes, I could by the same logic claim that it doesn't pursue or discern truth and cannot be relied upon, any more than my bloodstream, to be able to reason reliably.

That two different organs came about by the same general process of evolution doesn't imply they are oriented toward the same behaviors. Both the blood stream and bones were shaped by evolution but it would be silly to say that the blood stream can be expected to support the body structurally like bones.

[Sister Toy]

We can scientifically prove that consciousness ceases when brain function ceases. There are no "reliable" NDE accounts because of lower oxygen to the hypothalamus where memories are "made". People basically dream a certain type of dream as the anesthetics set in until they are essentially in a coma and they wake up later blissfully unaware of events that occurred in between - even with Pam Reynolds and others like her who have a loss of center hallucination when suffering from anesthesia awareness.

People throughout history have used supernatural explanations but that in no way implies that these explanations have any merit. One of our cognitive errors is hyperactive agency detection. This gets you to the already impossible deism, but to jump to theism, especially specific theism like Christianity is a huge leap of faith without any merit. And the word is evidence - a body of facts that are mutually exclusive or concordant with one theory over any other. This means their truth needs to be demonstrated and only one model can account for them.
Obviously conviction doesn't equal truth so I'm not sure what you are arguing for here.

Testability is the only path to "know" if you are right. Stumbling upon a lucky guess that just happens to be true is meaningless until you can back it up. Especially in a debate.

The last paragraph you presented doesn't deserve much reply as I already implicitly responded to it. The universe has no built in purpose, morality, or evolutionary end goal in mind. The more we understand physics we learn that deep down the universe has fields of fluctuating energies that we sometimes call virtual particles or quantum foam. Whatever is going on at that level directly leads to the macroscopic. And when we don't know enough about the quantum we have to test various quantum interpretations and rely on any that predict the right outcome on the level of detectability. Quantum realism, Copenhagen interpretation, many worlds, Penrose interpretation, quantum relationalism, and many more concepts have been put forth and none of them need a god, and most of them can't work with a god. What can be known falls into quantum field theory and general relativity and these don't need a god to explain. They need a model of how the quantum world leads to macroscopic gravity. What makes more sense is what can be demonstrated not some impossible disembodied consciousness controlling or creating reality via magic while remaining completely undetectable. Even if I grant " a god" which I don't, you'd have a long way to prove it was your god. At least I'm consistent - we are both atheists in almost every regard, except where you make a special exception for Christianity and and the son of that God who was supposed to die for our sins - though an omni god would ultimately have to be responsible for all of our actions. So either this god is not all powerful or this god is quite a bit less intelligent than even us. Especially if this god wastes all of this time testing us when it already knows the outcome. And this is if I grant you that your entire religion was true, which it most certainly isn't, which is why I am no longer a Christian.