Evolution

[Immanuel Can]

You are still not recognizing that ANY 'fossil' evidence itself is not the reason evolution is true including mankind. The KIND of PROOF of fossils is only used to show WHICH living things relate in comparison to other living things by which order and their connections.

Well, I don't see any merit in debating you on the theory as it would be applied to lower animals...that's a problem for biologists, if their theory is flawed; it's not a problem with theological weight. As I said, God could use any method He wished, as pertains to the lower animals, including gradualism, if He had wished.

It's only the "Ascent of Man" theory that has any theological import. And that theory, I think, dies not just on its own history of mendacity, but also on the dearth of current evidence for such a process having taken place, such as the universal grouping of mankind into one species, not the multitude of species one would expect if the "ascent" theory had any scientific value.

Piltdown man is also a DEAD issue

He certainly is, in one sense. In other, he's properly instructive that we are not always being told the truth...so he speaks from his grave.

...and needs no apology by the theory nor the theorists who discovered the logic of evolution.

Well, in the case of Piltdown Man, their credulity manifestly had nothing to do with either science or logic. Here's the truth: they wanted there to be clear proof of the "ascent of man." They had their conclusions already decided before any data came in. Then they set about trying to patch up the "missing links" in their theory by filling them in with things like Java Man, Peking Man, Neanderthal Man and Piltdown Man.

In this process, they made not one fraud (Piltdown Man), but several. The entirety of "Nebraska Man" was based on a single tooth -- which was later revealed to belong to an exinct member of the pig family. "Java Man" was the product of mixing skeletons. "Neanderthal Man" turned out to be a modern human. And the famous "Lucy," the most famous "missing link," turned out to be an extinct quadruped, a pygmy chimpanzee.

So standing back and looking at that mess, one can see what happened. Scientists wanted the theory to be true: they assumed the conclusion, and then went looking to fill it in with data. So desperate were they to make their scientific reputations by closing up the many gaps in the theory that they failed to exercise skepticism or to use proper scientific methods to test. They rushed to judgment, and embarassed themselves, repeatedly.

But then they did something worse. They didn't retract. They didn't correct the scientific record. They just quietly shuffled aside each failing "specimen" and went right ahead as if the theory was true anyway. They allowed generations of children to be misled, and generations of biologists to bark up the wrong tree (so to speak) in the purely faith-based expectation that sooner or later all the "missing links" would fall out of that tree. And in so doing, they stalled science. It's made no progress on the "Ascent of Man" theory, because it's simply the wrong theory, but for ideological and reputational reasons, they now don't want to let it go.

So even if we excuse them for Piltdown Man -- which you know was a fraud -- how do we excuse them for their subsequent mendacity? And what does such dishonesty have to do with real science?

religious frauds

Sorry...I missed that bit. But it would be irrelevant anyway. Even if we were to suppose that there were religious frauds around, that wouldn't be a parallel to scientific frauds. For there are manifestly many erroneous religions, even if (as I believe) there is one that is not fraudulent. But science is supposed to be the pursuit if pure, objective truth by means of data and evidence, not of assuming conclusions and then trying to back-fill the theory for ideological reasons.

And it is because science claims to be neutrally true (and in the ideal, would be) and has such high pretentions to purity of method that it owes us to explain why its proponents so often have failed to live up to its professed high standards...particularly in the case of things like the "Ascent of Man" theory.

The answer's obvious: the fault is not with science but with the ideologues who put on a quasi-scientific show in order to bolster their reputations. The failure is not in science, but in those scientists who choose, instead of promoting truth, to promote themselves; for like all of us, they are corruptible human beings, sensitive to reputation and prestige and reluctant to own their (now obvious) errors.

Prove counterscientifically that man is NOT included in evolution.

Easy.

We have above a list of some of the frauds and errors in the chain. But let us suppose that we excuse all that on the grounds that, say, "there could be a different 'ascent' paradigm," -- one without Piltdown, Java or Nebraska in it, say.

If that were true, we should expect the collecton of humanoids on the planet to be very diverse indeed. We should expect there to exist not just one or two or ten "links" in an evolutionary chain, but (given the millions or even billions of years posited by different theories) we should expect a vast range of humanoid forms, most of them not even interfertile with each other, and some transitioning into very different species.

Evolutionism is, after all, and unguided process of random mutation -- therefore, as time advances, animal groups should not narrow into species, but rather expand into a panoply of half-this-half-that mutant forms. We should be neck deep in Neanderthals, Pekings, Javas, or whatever other mutant forms are logically possible within such a random universe. For every successful such mutant, there ought to be a vast range of failed "transitional" forms, all of them abundantly available in the fossil record.

This is not what we observe. It is not what the data shows. If we are scientific, that fact should concern us.

...

And we should all remember the lesson, which is simply this: not all that gets stamped "science" or "fact" really is. And we can't trust even our scientific "elites" to practice special honesty, when their reptuations are at stake. They're just not that honest all the time. So we should keep watching them carefully.

I already recognize how science could be influenced by politics.

It's not just politics, of course. Take Galileo. Sure, the Catholic Church picked on him. But if you go back and look at the history, you'll realize they did it on the information given them by the Aristotelian "scientific" community of the day. It was the Aristotelean paradigm that dominated those years, and it was the Aristotelians, jealous for their "scientific" reputations, who were Galileo's most ardent opponents.

So there we have a case of an internal war within what was thought to be "science" of the day. We have one kind of "scientist" refusing to accept the prononcements of another, and mobilizing the clergy to silence him.

We have the same thing in the days of the invention of the marine chronometer, at the turn of the 18th Century, by James Harrison. Harrison, you see, was merely a carpenter and mechanic: and the existing scientific community could not stand the thought that such a man could have solved the problem of navigational longitude without even consulting them, and entirely outside of their approved, star-gazing alternative method. So they suppressed his invention and denied him the scientific prize he had earned, until 1773, when they finally admitted he had won it fair-and-square. IN other words, it took them half a century even to admit he was right...which he manifestly had been, all along, and which any honest test had already proved abundantly.

That's how the scientific community has sometimes operated: not like perfect, objective automatons yielding unimpeachable results every time, but as flawed human beings, sometimes caring more for reputation or established thought than for truth, and only sometimes being willing to look at the evidence at all.

Scientists are not angels. We shouldn't expect that they are. We should watch what they say, and measure it by truth. Science is very good when it is practiced genuinely scientifically: but it's not a good thing when the name of "science" is stolen by those who are being merely reputationally-concerned, clannish, traditional or ideologically possessed -- all of which certainly is sometimes the case.

[Scott Mayers]

You are still not recognizing that ANY 'fossil' evidence itself is not the reason evolution is true including mankind. The KIND of PROOF of fossils is only used to show WHICH living things relate in comparison to other living things by which order and their connections.

Well, I don't see any merit in debating you on the theory as it would be applied to lower animals...that's a problem for biologists, if their theory is flawed; it's not a problem with theological weight. As I said, God could use any method He wished, as pertains to the lower animals, including gradualism, if He had wished.

It's only the "Ascent of Man" theory that has any theological import. And that theory, I think, dies not just on its own history of mendacity, but also on the dearth of current evidence for such a process having taken place, such as the universal grouping of mankind into one species, not the multitude of species one would expect if the "ascent" theory had any scientific value.

If Darwin was wrong, it doesn't leave any religious opinion to fill in the gaps. In fact, what you do not know is that it would only leave open a different versions of 'evolution' that was proposed before it. Spontaneous generation was one; Another most common one was that we evolve by things we do in life rather than by mutation. It was thought that if one is short but had a contempory need to be taller, their offspring would somehow "learn" of this and become taller. Or, for another example, it was assumed that if someone opted to lift lots of weights in their life, that their children would inherit this quality. [Note this is the similar to the belief that 'culture' is inheritable, by the way. If one happens to like Beethoven, a cultural factor, it does not pass on some gene that makes their children like Beethoven too. This was an example of a competing theory of evolution to Natural Selection by Darwin's theory.]


The fault of Piltdown Man is based upon the same KIND fraud as a counterfeiter. If someone goes out of their way to successfully make money that is convincingly real, are those who receive it unwittingly at fault for the crime? Does the exposure of the crime 'prove' that the mint who makes legal money are equivalent to the criminal? We could possibly blame the government (or banks) if they were being sloppy at making the money too easy to counterfeit and so have a right to complain to them if they had left this fraud go on knowingly for too long. Banks and government might even be resistent to change if such behavior is more trrouble to repair and should be held accountable to any delay in fixing the issue. But would you presume that banks and governments are the reason for the fraud and so should not be trusted?

No. (Or do you disagree?) Rather, the correct 'fix' is to find new ways to PREVENT future counterfeiter's success by making it harder to copy the bills. Similarly, 'science' as an institute of humanity for everyone (regardless of beliefs) is not at fault for the fruads initiating the problem but ARE responsible to find new means to prevent it AFTER they've discovered the fraud.

Yes, some may have opted NOT to look to determine whether a fraud was committed. But then their 'flaw' is not the fruad but how they deem when something is or is not acceptable. The Piltdown man was NOT even available for anyone to simply be allowed to determine its authenticity. Anyone trusting it was only doing so out of a specific kind of flaw that is intrinsically related to religion: faith in those who asserted finding it and to the political biases of England (in this case) who enjoyed the credit and so resisted those who dared to be skeptical. Note how the flaws here related to the very problems of religion and not to the sincerity of the intention of science.

This answers the other issues you raised in the same post.

I offered you that link to a site that happens to be developed by Christians who agree to evolution, including humans. If you don't like what I have to say because I am atheist, at least check what they have to say about this in a more 'friendly' light. Your doubts about modern Evolution (based upon Darwin's Theory on Natural Selction) is strictly religious. The alternative is for you to accept a belief in inheriting one's behaviors based upon one's parents that leads to forms of racist beliefs. [Like that if some race has come common behavior, all their offspring MUST inherit the same behavior. For instance, if someone is Black, they 'own' some inherent likeness to rap music in thier genes. This is one connecting reason why many logically have a concern regarding your type of religious arguments against evolution.]

[P.S. I had more to say from your response but have a severe migraine and will respond to those issues later. This should be find for now given it covers much of your accusatations against science. Later.]

[Immanuel Can]

If Darwin was wrong, it doesn't leave any religious opinion to fill in the gaps.

I'm not sure I understand what that sentence is supposed to communicate, Scott. If Darwin was wrong, what doesn't "leave," and what "gap"?

Spontaneous generation was one; Another most common one was that we evolve by things we do in life rather than by mutation. It was thought that if one is short but had a contempory need to be taller, their offspring would somehow "learn" of this and become taller. Or, for another example, it was assumed that if someone opted to lift lots of weights in their life, that their children would inherit this quality. [Note this is the similar to the belief that 'culture' is inheritable,

I'm also not sure how these now-disproven theories would help the case. It seems to me that they fail, too.

The fault of Piltdown Man is based upon the same KIND fraud as a counterfeiter. If someone goes out of their way to successfully make money that is convincingly real, are those who receive it unwittingly at fault for the crime?

Not if they couldn't and shouldn't have known better. But if they had reason to be more careful, and couldn't be bothered to use the very procedures they claim to use, then yes, they are at least partly responsible for their own mistake.

In this case, they were already behaving unscientifically. They'd assumed a theory, and were busy trying to back-fill the data in. They got handed a fraud, and were only too delighted to plug it right in, because it seemed to serve their assumed theory. But they should never have been assuming and backfilling: as scientists, they had the responsibility to do what they claimed to be doing, namely, following the data and not having a pre-assumed agenda. So they're to blame for that, too.

But since Piltdown Man was only one of the several frauds in the chain, how do we excuse them for the others? How do they excuse their conduct for Lucy, or for Nebraaka man? They surely can't plead ignorance to every single case in the "Ascent of Man" chain, can they?

...but ARE responsible to find new means to prevent it AFTER they've discovered the fraud.

And for that, they are responsible too. They owed the public to confess the truth about what they had done -- not just with Piltdown Man, but with Java Man, Neanderthal Man, Nebraska Man, and the rest. And you're right: they owed us to tell us as soon as they realized they'd been fooled, and to correct the record going forward, rather than burying the issue. But they failed to do that.

From beginning to end, the "Ascent of Man" thing was an exercise in unscientific manipulation. And it should be a cautionary example to us all of how the semblance of "science" can be used to hide something profoundly anti-scientific. Not all that get called "science" really is.

Your doubts about modern Evolution (based upon Darwin's Theory on Natural Selction) is strictly religious.

No, it's not. I haven't actually given you religious arguments at all -- not one. And the frauds I've pointed out to you cannot be blamed on religion, which was never consulted when the "Ascent of Man" fraud was created or perpetrated. It is science, not religion, that those Evolutionists were abusing.

The alternative is for you to accept a belief in inheriting one's behaviors based upon one's parents that leads to forms of racist beliefs.

Actually, this isn't true at all. According to the Bible, all men and women are made "in the image of God." You can't get less racist than that.

But in point of fact, Darwinism served the cause of racism extremely well; for he provided to the racists an explanation of people like the negro and the Jew as being "underevolved," and the handicapped as being "bad for the gene pool," and for the pseudo-science known as "eugenics," upon which Hitler's whole program relied.

[P.S. I had more to say from your response but have a severe migraine and will respond to those issues later.

Sorry, Scott. My wife gets those. They're nasty. She had one today, as a matter of fact. Hope you're feeling better soon.

your accusatations against science.

I don't have any accusations against science, Scott. I just don't like pseudo-science like eugenics or "the Ascent of Man" theory masquerading as real science; and that's a distaste you and I should agree about, I think. Anybody who loves science should have an equal antipathy to seeing science abused that way.

[Jori]

I am not interested if evolution is true or not. My interest is whether it is reconcilable with the Bible or not. I think it is as long as the interpretation of the Bible is not literal in which man was formed from clay in more or less 24 hours. Nowhere in the Bible can you find that man wasn't formed through evolution.

I also think that evolution does not disprove the existence of God. The existence of a process does not disprove the existence of a processor. In fact evolution requires a designer and director. Otherwise, it will not proceed as it does. Thus evolution is more of an evidence for, instead of against, the existence of God.

In conclusion, evolution, Bible, religion, and God do not conflict with each other.

[Immanuel Can]

I am not interested if evolution is true or not. My interest is whether it is reconcilable with the Bible or not.

The answer is that the "Ascent of Man" theory is not reconcilable with either the Bible or the facts.

Nowhere in the Bible can you find that man wasn't formed through evolution.

Yes, you can. Check Genesis 2: "Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person. The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed." Equally importantly, if gradualism is true, there is no Fall of Man. That has a chain of consequences, among which are: no sin, no separation from God, no accounting for evil, no salvation, no redemption, no judgment...in other words, one simply ends up having to deny the whole Bible if one does that. So the whole Bible maintains that man is a unique creation, not continuous with animals, and uniquely endowed by God with consciousness, conscience, personal identity, responsibilities, duties and moral capacities.

And actually, that's what we all know man is. He's not an animal. And you can tell, because we treat mankind in ways none of us treats animals, and we have expectations for mankind that no animal has or can have placed upon it. Right now, you're talking to me because you're not just an animal, and because you know the same of me. If you believed yourself to be an animal, or me to be an animal, and both of us mere products of time and chance, as the theory requires, then there'd be nothing to talk about at all.

[Scott Mayers]

If Darwin was wrong, it doesn't leave any religious opinion to fill in the gaps.

I'm not sure I understand what that sentence is supposed to communicate, Scott. If Darwin was wrong, what doesn't "leave," and what "gap"?

You are playing dumb...since you declare

Your doubts about modern Evolution (based upon Darwin's Theory on Natural Selction) is strictly religious.

No, it's not. I haven't actually given you religious arguments at all -- not one.

....yet...

The alternative is for you to accept a belief in inheriting one's behaviors based upon one's parents that leads to forms of racist beliefs.

Actually, this isn't true at all. According to the Bible, all men and women are made "in the image of God." You can't get less racist than that.

Thus, you are lying. The material you also use is strictly from the Evangelical Creationists propaganda meant to undermine the non-religious institute of science.

My actual point in mentioning that quote was that if you remove Darwinian evolution, what remains as the 'alternative' is that we evolve by our present behavior and that it gets passed on genetically. That is, you support the belief that we improve our biological offspring's evolution by how we behave, not by nature itself. This would imply that if people have given apparent physiology, like skin color, this aligns them to their parent's selective behavior (versus nature's doing the selecting). And this means you would have to favor interpreting people's virtue based upon one's external genetic appearances, which defines one form of racism.

Spontaneous generation was one; Another most common one was that we evolve by things we do in life rather than by mutation. It was thought that if one is short but had a contempory need to be taller, their offspring would somehow "learn" of this and become taller. Or, for another example, it was assumed that if someone opted to lift lots of weights in their life, that their children would inherit this quality. [Note this is the similar to the belief that 'culture' is inheritable,...

I'm also not sure how these now-disproven theories would help the case. It seems to me that they fail, too.

"They" failed only because of Darwin's theory and what had followed because of it. That is, Darwin was the alternative to the prior theories on 'evolution', not religion (even though it happens to offend certain religious beliefs about the physics of reality)

Your choice to also dismiss this when it was science (not religion) that proved these irrelevant through Natural Selection is severely ignorant or intentional, as usual with what and how you argue.

The fault of Piltdown Man is based upon the same KIND fraud as a counterfeiter. If someone goes out of their way to successfully make money that is convincingly real, are those who receive it unwittingly at fault for the crime?

Not if they couldn't and shouldn't have known better. But if they had reason to be more careful, and couldn't be bothered to use the very procedures they claim to use, then yes, they are at least partly responsible for their own mistake.

You are unbelievable! Science doesn't require replacing your God AS some equivalent power of omipotence that you expect. Without ANY superior being there is no equivalent level of power other than the nature of physical reality itself. How do you expect humans to be any more powerful as the nature of the physical elements themselves permit? And scientists, being human, are certainly able to err or science would BE a religion.

Thus, again, you are presuming in your head that if you can disqualify some behavior regarding frauds AGAINST the intended idea of science, that you would upset the whole thing. Otherwise, if the blame to discover the fraud is up to the scientist (as though they are superhuman), then YOU could justify your attempts to be intentionally fraudulent here, right?

And then you believe that the default rationale is to simply distrust ANYTHING about science leaving what you want to be authoritative over the 'truth': the fraudulent criminals that make up the body of religious authorities who initiated the fraud in the first place.

From beginning to end, the "Ascent of Man" thing was an exercise in unscientific manipulation.

Stated but not proven. Genetics as direct decendent of Darwinian evolution has closed the issue. Man is just another animal.

And it should be a cautionary example to us all of how the semblance of "science" can be used to hide something profoundly anti-scientific. Not all that get called "science" really is.

Yes, Creationism pretending to be 'science' is not science, but just one of those frauds perpetrated by religious manipulators who knows that evolution leaves them less able to control others.

[Belinda]

Scott Mayers, I hope your migraine has gone, and that you can trace and avoid the cause of it.

You wrote:

Or, for another example, it was assumed that if someone opted to lift lots of weights in their life, that their children would inherit this quality. [Note this is the similar to the belief that 'culture' is inheritable, by the way. If one happens to like Beethoven, a cultural factor, it does not pass on some gene that makes their children like Beethoven too. This was an example of a competing theory of evolution to Natural Selection by Darwin's theory.]

But love of Beethoven is heritable not via the genetic channel but via the cultural channel. Lamarck inheritance is theory about the genetic channel and learning.
Humans lifting lots of weights, besides other technologies, has been inherited via cultural advances.

I prefer to compare and contrast natural selection with artificial selection which uses genetic technology to evolve the species---normally a domesticated animal or plant.

In the case of humans the deliberate cultural use of genetic technology to evolve the species is illegal. It happens willy nilly however. The driving force of cultural evolution is relative power. No matter how much political lefties try to turn aside the excesses of power it is everywhere and always. One example of power as the driving force for gradual change is how poor people who live with more disease germs than rich people tend more to die before they have children and the survivors genetically tend to inherit a more effective general immune response. Lack of biodiversity (a cultural phenomenon) among the ruling royal families of Europe has caused a few undesirable inherited defects.

[Scott Mayers]

I am not interested if evolution is true or not. My interest is whether it is reconcilable with the Bible or not. I think it is as long as the interpretation of the Bible is not literal in which man was formed from clay in more or less 24 hours. Nowhere in the Bible can you find that man wasn't formed through evolution.

I also think that evolution does not disprove the existence of God. The existence of a process does not disprove the existence of a processor. In fact evolution requires a designer and director. Otherwise, it will not proceed as it does. Thus evolution is more of an evidence for, instead of against, the existence of God.

In conclusion, evolution, Bible, religion, and God do not conflict with each other.

Athough I disagree with your inference about evolution requiring a "designer", I agree that you have to at least take this approach if you insist on being religious. Your 'designer' itself can be the "laws of physics"....yet these too have to have some justification by Nature, as in "why should Nature not be chaotic?"

In this latter point, I agree why you can interpret what you do as long as it is 'tentative'. I also questioned how Nature can have 'laws' as though it requires obeying. In my own theory I separate Totality from our particular Universe. In this way, Totality can have no rule but includes all Universes that do. Then whether our particular Universe is ruled by phyisical laws is about those 'sets' of worlds that have patterns among all.

The religious question then CAN be one such possible reality. But this requires details that religion does not nor can specify without formulating a physics of heaven or God. One possible approach to at least show this possible would be if humans can prove that we could be 'gods'. It would mean that some god at least is possible. But it wouldn't be able to say anything about its 'virtue' in light of values given a potential human programmer 'god' does not require having value.

The value of religion should be to enhance our lives in the way art affects our emotions. But in the same way I believe in separating church (or 'culture' in general, that includes one's religion) from state. In this way I think we also have to separate religion from the actual role of science in its role of discovering truth. Then we can use science through technology to 'entertain' whatever we like, including factors that include one's personal religious expressions.....as long as it doesn't get used to manipulate political power over the institute of science.

I do not respect religious institutes or political constitutions that ensure religious controls that espouse a right to educate 'science' because it is more often used to deceptively manipulate those they "educate" with priority. They also happen to have a specific subset of beliefs regarding values which are irreconcilable to appropriately appeal fair to all people, including other people's rights to free expression.

[Scott Mayers]

Scott Mayers, I hope your migraine has gone, and that you can trace and avoid the cause of it.

You wrote:

Or, for another example, it was assumed that if someone opted to lift lots of weights in their life, that their children would inherit this quality. [Note this is the similar to the belief that 'culture' is inheritable, by the way. If one happens to like Beethoven, a cultural factor, it does not pass on some gene that makes their children like Beethoven too. This was an example of a competing theory of evolution to Natural Selection by Darwin's theory.]

But love of Beethoven is heritable not via the genetic channel but via the cultural channel. Lamarck inheritance is theory about the genetic channel and learning.
Humans lifting lots of weights, besides other technologies, has been inherited via cultural advances.

I prefer to compare and contrast natural selection with artificial selection which uses genetic technology to evolve the species---normally a domesticated animal or plant.

In the case of humans the deliberate cultural use of genetic technology to evolve the species is illegal. It happens willy nilly however. The driving force of cultural evolution is relative power. No matter how much political lefties try to turn aside the excesses of power it is everywhere and always. One example of power as the driving force for gradual change is how poor people who live with more disease germs than rich people tend more to die before they have children and the survivors genetically tend to inherit a more effective general immune response. Lack of biodiversity (a cultural phenomenon) among the ruling royal families of Europe has caused a few undesirable inherited defects.

Okay, you are on the track of my last post above to Jori. This is something we can debate apart from evolutionary theory regarding Darwin's theory on Selection. This moves us into something like "ethical" evolution and relates to the 'soft sciences' that I mentioned above.

On this, I believe the reason for any extreme arguments against science relates to conflicts that relate to culture and politics. What is 'illegal' is a human decision that does not have to mean the science itself is flawed. That is, eugenics, for instance, can be scientifically valid but offensive to us emotionally. This is what I believe is at the root of Immanuel Can's issue if he is sincere at heart and not merely being deceptive for ulterior motives.

Do you believe in the separation of Church and State?

[I think the migraine is likely due to undercooked meat. The means to assure food safe is lagging due to Covid issues and so we should all have to cook our food longer than normal. I just haven't figured out to what degree I need to do this. My migraine is temporarily alright, though. So thank you.]

[Age]

I am not interested if evolution is true or not. My interest is whether it is reconcilable with the Bible or not.

Yes it is.

Evolution AND Creation BOTH play a part in Life and Existence.

There can NOT be creation WITHOUT evolution AND there can NOT be evolution WITHOUT creation. BOTH are NECESSARY for Life, and EXISTENCE, to exist.

I think it is as long as the interpretation of the Bible is not literal in which man was formed from clay in more or less 24 hours. Nowhere in the Bible can you find that man wasn't formed through evolution.

Yes you can.

eve FROM adam, and adam FROM earth.

I also think that evolution does not disprove the existence of God.

Evolution SUPPORTS the existence of God to the point of PROOF.

The existence of a process does not disprove the existence of a processor. In fact evolution requires a designer and director.

Using words like, "designer", "director", and "processor" for God, conjures up completely False, Wrong, AND Incorrect conceptions/interpretations, and this is WHY the ACTUAL definition of and for the word 'God' was STILL NOT YET KNOWN, by the peoples in the days when this was being written.

Otherwise, it will not proceed as it does. Thus evolution is more of an evidence for, instead of against, the existence of God.

Agreed. But can you explain HOW and WHY?

In conclusion, evolution, Bible, religion, and God do not conflict with each other.

OF COURSE they do NOT.

The ONLY 'conflict' with Life, Truth, and Reality is within human beings, and their OWN individual interpretations.

[Immanuel Can]

You are playing dumb...since you declare

Your doubts about modern Evolution (based upon Darwin's Theory on Natural Selction) is strictly religious.

No, it's not. I haven't actually given you religious arguments at all -- not one.

....yet...

The alternative is for you to accept a belief in inheriting one's behaviors based upon one's parents that leads to forms of racist beliefs.

Actually, this isn't true at all. According to the Bible, all men and women are made "in the image of God." You can't get less racist than that.

Thus, you are lying.

No, actually. For you allleged that being a Christian meant one had to accept your summary (you didn't ask, you told me that's what was my only "alternative"), and then you alleged it was racist in implication.

I was responding to that claim, showing that far from advocating racism, Christianity (and Judaism) are excellent defenses against it. You clearly had misunderstood the implications of our beliefs, and were misrepresenting them.

In that case, the salient material to disprove your allegation is Scripture, which i duly provided. So that was a "can of worms" you opened.

But nothing I said in refutation of Evolutionism depended on Scripture: and that was the point I was emphasizing. The Ascent of Man needs no further refutation than the history of how it was created -- the dishonesty, the errors, the phony pretensions to being "science," and the subsequent refusal of the Evolutionists to retract and admit their errors over not merely PIltdown, but the many others as well.

The right refutaiton for bad science is good science. That's what I pointed to.

the non-religious institute of science.

Which "institute" would that be?

Do you mean science itself, the basic method of which was invented by Francis Bacon, the theological writer?

My actual point in mentioning that quote was that if you remove Darwinian evolution, what remains as the 'alternative' is that we evolve by our present behavior and that it gets passed on genetically.

No, that doesn't follow at all.

Why is somebody who denies Darwinian progressivism in human beings thereafter committed to believe something so clearly absurd? I see no logical connection there at all, and know of no Theists or Creationists who think that's what their position means.

So you'd have to prove that, not merely assert you thought it was true.

However, I also noticed you didn't even want to touch my point about Darwinism leading to eugenics and thus to racism...and to Hitler's kind, actually. But it's true. Here you go:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -eugenics/

Now, you surely can't say that Scientific American magazine is some right-wing Creationist forum, can you? Yet they tell you I'm absolutely right about that. Darwinism draws a straight line to selective breeding, eugentics and eventually, to genocide.

Without ANY superior being there is no equivalent level of power other than the nature of physical reality itself. How do you expect humans to be any more powerful as the nature of the physical elements themselves permit?

I don't expect humans to be powerful. But if there's a Creator, then by definition, He must be more powerful than physical reality itself. Otherwise, He would not be its creator -- it would have to be His creator. And as you probably know, no Monotheist believes that.

And scientists, being human, are certainly able to err or science would BE a religion.

Quite right. And in the case of the Ascent of Man theory, dishonest ideologues treated science in just that way. They made it a kind of "religion of Darwin," in which anybody who disagreed with the silly ape-to-man theory, the theory they all have now abandoned, was pilloried as "unscientific" or "irrational."

What the Catholic did to Galileo was done by the Ascent of Man advocates to everybody who dared to doubt their orthodoxy. They were simply insulted, denigrated, and denied a voice.

There again, pseudo-scientists were behaving like mere propagandists, mere ideologues and bullies. Good thing the world is done with that now.

...AGAINST the intended idea of science...

What the Ascent of Man people did was "against the intended idea of science." They used it to advance a petty, anti-scientific agenda. But they got caught.

And then you believe that the default rationale is to simply distrust ANYTHING about science

Now, now, Scott...that's not honest. I've said no such thing, and you know it.

Genuine science is very good. And anybody who loves science should despise the Ascent of Man hoax, not because of what it may have done to "religion," but because it's an offense against genuine science. It's that simple.

From beginning to end, the "Ascent of Man" thing was an exercise in unscientific manipulation.

Stated but not proven.

Proven, I would say.

You don't like Piltdown Man? Go explain Nebraska Man, or Java Man, or Lucy, or any of the other frauds in that long, fraudulent chain. The record of the Ascent of Man scandal is an absolute shambles.

But don't take my word for it: go and look.

[Belinda]

Scott Mayers, I hope your migraine has gone, and that you can trace and avoid the cause of it.

You wrote:

Or, for another example, it was assumed that if someone opted to lift lots of weights in their life, that their children would inherit this quality. [Note this is the similar to the belief that 'culture' is inheritable, by the way. If one happens to like Beethoven, a cultural factor, it does not pass on some gene that makes their children like Beethoven too. This was an example of a competing theory of evolution to Natural Selection by Darwin's theory.]

But love of Beethoven is heritable not via the genetic channel but via the cultural channel. Lamarck inheritance is theory about the genetic channel and learning.
Humans lifting lots of weights, besides other technologies, has been inherited via cultural advances.

I prefer to compare and contrast natural selection with artificial selection which uses genetic technology to evolve the species---normally a domesticated animal or plant.

In the case of humans the deliberate cultural use of genetic technology to evolve the species is illegal. It happens willy nilly however. The driving force of cultural evolution is relative power. No matter how much political lefties try to turn aside the excesses of power it is everywhere and always. One example of power as the driving force for gradual change is how poor people who live with more disease germs than rich people tend more to die before they have children and the survivors genetically tend to inherit a more effective general immune response. Lack of biodiversity (a cultural phenomenon) among the ruling royal families of Europe has caused a few undesirable inherited defects.

Okay, you are on the track of my last post above to Jori. This is something we can debate apart from evolutionary theory regarding Darwin's theory on Selection. This moves us into something like "ethical" evolution and relates to the 'soft sciences' that I mentioned above.

On this, I believe the reason for any extreme arguments against science relates to conflicts that relate to culture and politics. What is 'illegal' is a human decision that does not have to mean the science itself is flawed. That is, eugenics, for instance, can be scientifically valid but offensive to us emotionally. This is what I believe is at the root of Immanuel Can's issue if he is sincere at heart and not merely being deceptive for ulterior motives.

Do you believe in the separation of Church and State?

[I think the migraine is likely due to undercooked meat. The means to assure food safe is lagging due to Covid issues and so we should all have to cook our food longer than normal. I just haven't figured out to what degree I need to do this. My migraine is temporarily alright, though. So thank you.]

But eugenics, unlike artificial breeding of animals and plants, actually is a flawed science. It's flawed because nobody knows or can know what human nature is, or what human nature should be.

Genetic engineering to produce animal chimeras for commercial gain is disgusting in its extreme cruelty to animals that already suffer abominable pain from being treated as commodities. Human chimeras will suffer similarly. Genetic engineering is ethically flawed , and if religionists are the vanguard against genetic engineering I will support religionists.

I don't endorse established religions at this time, but if an established religion and its devotees were to be at the forefront of a rebellion against evil such as genetic engineering then I would support established religion.

[Dontaskme]

From beginning to end, the "Ascent of Man" thing was an exercise in unscientific manipulation.Stated but not proven.

Proven, I would say.

How amazing that this human species has managed to survived this far. We've made mass destruction so simple and easy to use. If we are as smart as we think we are, we would all see reality for what it is, was.

The ''Ascent of Man'' delusion is a manipulation tool, a clever distraction. It's man's vain attempt to cover over the actual real ugly truth of natures, not mans reality.

God is an Earthquake. And the Bible is a Roman psyop. Wake-up, Rome is burning Nero.

From fire to fire, dust to dust, there's no creation without destruction. It's all perfectly normal to die before you die, and to live out the rest of eternity shining.

What goes up, must come down, that's the wisdom of gravity, which is real Love, but Love is not always pretty, but whatever gets you through the dark night of the soul IC.

Intelligent people stopped sugar coating reality a long time ago.


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[stevie]

I think evolution is irreconcilable with the literal interpretation of the Bible. In case of non-literal or figurative interpretation, evolution is reconcilable with creation (not creationism). in the first place, there should be no conflict between creation and evolution because creation is an act, while evolution is a process.

Creationists believe that God created humans, but not through evolution. Some evolutionists think that humans came to being through evolution, but no one started and directed the process.

Religions like that laid down in the bible are just artefacts of evolution appearing for a period of time.

[Belinda]

I think evolution is irreconcilable with the literal interpretation of the Bible. In case of non-literal or figurative interpretation, evolution is reconcilable with creation (not creationism). in the first place, there should be no conflict between creation and evolution because creation is an act, while evolution is a process.

Creationists believe that God created humans, but not through evolution. Some evolutionists think that humans came to being through evolution, but no one started and directed the process.

Religions like that laid down in the bible are just artefacts of evolution appearing for a period of time.

Literal interpretation of The Bible misses out on the poetry of The Bible. Genesis is full of feeling for the beauty of the world and the things in it. This feeling is true and for one thing Genesis shows that people long ago had similar feelings for the wonder and beauty of creation.It does not matter a lot whether or not God exists. What matters is whether or not your God ,whatever you think God is, is good. I think you should simply enjoy Genesis ch1 without being troubled about whether it is 'true' or not.