Did Life Originate By Chance or Intelligent Design? Or is There a Third Option?

by JimmyPage 85 Replies latest jw friends

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  NewChapter

  When I said pinnacle, sorry, my wrong choice of words. from a pinnacle the only way forward is down, and hopefully we will still advance. for our fundamentalist friends i suggested that it would be a better feat of creation more glory to God to make a self-developing, flexible life system, than the rigid "one model for eternity" arrangemen, although species have been stable for a long time. . every life form has its niche, but we are unique in contemplating the BIG ISSUES of time and creation, life. The bible has shaped our thinking on that, Many men and woman of great insight : newton,keppler,einstein to mention a few, were also creationists, bible researchers (well not einstein). but evelution, creation might not be an open end, that's why we have other species, stuck in what pure evolutionists must consider the past development stage.

  Prologos--Sure you can cite scripture here. I am having a hard time following your posts, so I may misunderstand some of your points. But I just wanted to pick out here, the idea that species are stable. That's not true either. In fact, species continue to make changes and adapt to the changing environment, or as Size pointed out, they go extinct.

  In The Greatest Show On Earth, which Cofty is summarizing (I don't know if he summarized this part---I still have to read all he wrote) Dawkins discusses elephants. Hunters want elephants with large tusks. It was hypothesized that in reponse to this selective pressure, elephants would develop smaller tusks. It was expected that this would take a very long time, but actually, they are already seeing it happen in a relatively short time. That is not stable. It is evolution.

  Now it is not a dramatic speciation. But speciation is not dramatic. It is gradual. But the point I'm making is simply that species are not stable--ever---if they WERE that would pretty much negate evolution. Evolution is just life's constant adaptation to environmental pressures. Our environment is always changing and is never stable. If a species ever stablilizes, it will go extinct. If a species can't adapt quickly enough, it will go extinct.

  Life is ever in motion and ever changing. Life Is Change is a little mantra or platitude that some people use to help them accept change. But I think it states a truth that goes even deeper than that. Without change, there is no life, so Life Truly is Change.
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  Etude

  We need to be careful and not fool ourselves here. Look at these two sentences from Satanus' citation:

  1. "Every cell is able to communicate through having evolvedthe ability to produce, recognize, interpret and respond to signalsin its environment."

  2. "When you come right down to it , this ability to communicate [produce, recognize, interpret and respond to signals] has allowed cells to evolve."

  http://www.scq.ubc.ca/conversing-at-the-cellular-level-an-introduction-to-signal-transduction/

  So, the writer is saying that the cell developed (evolved) the ability to communicate AND it's saying that the ability to communicate allowed the cell to evolve. That's what Terry calls "language manipulation".

  It's that kind of wording that makes me incredulous to some scientists claims. For example, Roger Penrose says, speaking about the Goldilocks zone:

  "The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time."

  And Richard Dawkins follows suit, along with many other evolutionists by saying:

  "Just as we did with the Goldilocks orbits, we can make the point that, however improbable the origin of life might be, we know it happened on Earth because we are here."

  Those types of statements beg us to stretch our imaginations but do nothing for our intellect in determining by what process the change actually happened. It's like saying: "The streets are wet, therefore it must have rained because when it rains the streets become wet."

  Dawkins' book is quite interesting. I credit it for pointing me to a better understanding of irreducible complexity and how that's not a good argument for creationism and for stating that it was not "chance" but the accumulation of tiny statistically improbable events (mutations, genetic changes) to an unstated but apparently sufficient degree (millions?) over millions and millions of years that eliminated the "chance" factor to a snowballing inevitable effect for change to a higher degree of complexity. That is a subtle difference than "chance".

  But in essence, Dawkins' book is in part an attempt to use the "badness" of religion to explain the illogic of religion. It fails to make a distinction between religion and the idea of God or the persistent human spiritual instinct as possibly separate entities and instead lumps them all into one common delusion.

  The book also seeks to explain religion in terms of Natural Selection, which he feels is a must for science. He does this by proposing several possible explanations, the most significant of which and by far the most controversial being "Memes". He does this without explaining the mechanics of memes or even the "unit" of meme. He does offer other explanations, but the point of science is to offer THE explanation.

  prologos: Einstein was not a creationist and I don't believe there's any obfuscation about that. Bottom line, JimmyPage, is that your question will remain unanswered for quite a long time.
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  cofty

  Would you consider doing that and copying Greatest Show comments on the other board also?

  Will do. I think they would love it at exjw4christ hehehehe just kidding.
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  sizemik

  "Just as we did with the Goldilocks orbits, we can make the point that, however improbable the origin of life might be, we know it happened on Earth because we are here." . . . Dawkins

  It's like saying: "The streets are wet, therefore it must have rained because when it rains the streets become wet." . . . Etude

  No it's not . . . Dawkins makes no comment whatsoever on the origin of the water (life) as in "it must have rained"

  But what you've posted is a prime example of languge manipulation . . . on this occasion using a false analogy.

  What Dawkins is in effect saying is "The streets are wet . . . therefore we know water exists and must have on origin."
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  NewChapter

  Will do. I think they would love it at exjw4christ hehehehe just kidding.

  Thank you!
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  Etude

  sizemik: Not at all. You're confusing metaphors instead of paying attention to the logic behind the statements. Dawkins and others who make such statements use the "fact" that we are here as "proof" that we evolved, seeing that there are no other more attractive explanations and theories -- "It (Evolution) happened on Earth because we are here". I don't see how that can be any clearer. "The fact that we are here proves that we are here", would be a more accurate conclusion and even that may be logically flawed because it provides an answer in terms of itself.

  My example of the wet streets is a well know logical fallacy. It takes a true premise and comes to an incorrect conclusion. It's not about water. It's about making the leap that it must have rained when there is no compelling or logical reason to do so, at least not without demonstrating why.

  But the most glaring problem with some of the proposed theories is that for the most part, they fail to specifically delineate the process by which the many evolutionary changes occurred. They fail to specifically show how we got from A to B and so on. I'm not saying that a process didn't occur. What I am saying is that we can't put all our intellectual eggs in one collective evolutionary basked without a bit more certainty about how the eggs came about.

  If you're a fan of Dawkins' you will also realize that in order to justify that we are here and that for the right set of variables (the universal constants) to exist and make it inevitable for us to be here, his introduction of the Anthropic Principle (strong or weak, take your pick) is necessary. The problem is that while a nice and reasonable idea, it can never be proven. That's the same type of logic: Some sort of anthropic effect must exist in order to justify our own universe.

  The anthropic (strong) principle states that in order for all the laws and values we know in physics that make matter behave as we know it, there must be an infinite number of universes (the multiverse) with every other possible combination of values (and laws) in order to justify that the one we find ourselves in is indeed tenable. That requires the kind of faith the apostle Paul hounded everybody about.

  Not accepting such ideas does not mean we are forced to conclude the opposite. The point is that we don't have to accept any of it if a conclusion is not warranted.
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  NewChapter

  "It (Evolution) happened on Earth because we are here"

  That is not Dawkin's reasoning. A great deal of time and effort is put into the actual process, and the details are available to all.

  I've not heard Dawkin's refer to multiverse for any of his arguments, and that is more the realm of physics than biology. Dawkins investigates biology.

  Evidence is everywhere for Evolution.
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  sizemik

  You're confusing metaphors instead of paying attention to the logic behind the statements. Dawkins and others who make such statements use the "fact" that we are here as "proof" that we evolved . . . Etude

  Really. There is no reference to evolution in the statement you quoted. Dawkins is commenting on "origins" not process. Your interpretation requires an extrapolation of the statement based on what Dawkins believes about evolution, outside of the quote you offered. so you are now using projection as well.

  "The fact that we are here proves that we are here", . . . Etude

  Go back and read your post . . . Dawkins is saying simply that the fact that we are here proves we must have originated somehow.

  But you're the one who offered the analogy and now wishes to defend it. Very well . . . carry on.
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  Etude

  NewChapter: Sorry you missed it.

  This IS Dawkins' reasoning. See "The God Delusion" Chapter 4, page 137 --

  "Just as we did with the Goldilocks orbits, we can make the point that, however improbable the origin of life might be, we know it happened on Earth because we are here."

  Whether it's the "origin of life" or its development (Evolution), Dawkins attributes an event to causation tacitly and not with much logic. That's the point I'm trying to make of such statements, rather than making a challenge to what did or did not happen.

  Dawkins wrote quite a lot about the Anthropic Principle. I considered his introduction of this subject matter some of the most difficult concepts of the book. See "The God Delusion" Chapter 4, see sections:

  1. "THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE: PLANETARY VERSION"

  2. "THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE: COSMOLOGICAL VERSION.

  I never contended that there isn't evidence regarding some type of evolutionary change. What I contend is that how it happened is far from established, going from A to B, etc.

  sizemik: " Dawkins is commenting on "origins" not process " Precisely. He really does not emphasize process. But as a naturalist and a Botanist, he well knows that any science needs the riggor of proof and an established repeatable process for verification. That is his main intent (even though I feel he does not succeed) in explaining the "delusion" of god by some means, either the moth suicidal instinct, memes or whatever.

  " Dawkins is saying simply that the fact that we are here proves we must have originated somehow " Even you must admit that this statement is very similar to what a theist may say: "The fact that we are here proves that God must have created us somehow". In either case, the "somehow" does not rise to the level of proof that a natural science requires.
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  bohm

  Etude, suppose your argument is correct, it seems the argument must apply equally to any argument along the lines "life is here, therefore god made it"; where we then end up is we simply dont know where life came from.

  no god there..