The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

BrianCalgary

JimiTime wrote:

You still stop short of the point here. What if he tells you to stick it? yet still comes and mingles with your church and is still messin with one of the wives of another member of your church?

Being that the church is considered public property, there isn't much I can do about him being there. If he and his squeeze had that type of attitude, I don't think the board would ever have to ask them to leave.

They would probably get the icy treatment from all concerned and end up leaving on there own accord.

Are they being asked to leave because of their sin or because of the damage created by this particular sin? Someone who is struggling with pornography as an example, is not creating the realtional problem as the couple having the affair and is much easier to work with and not as uncomfortable.

That is why I contend that you can not come up with a hard and fast rule on how to deal with unrepentant sinners. Each case has its own unique complications.

I know we have gays in our church, no idea who they are, but they are there. And I am glad that they are coming and hearing the gospel, they may repent. We also have those struggling with a plethora of other sin, and I'm also glad they are there hearing the gospel.

JimiTime

BrianCalgary wrote:

Being that the church is considered public property, there isn't much I can do about him being there. If he and his squeeze had that type of attitude, I don't think the board would ever have to ask them to leave.

They would probably get the icy treatment from all concerned and end up leaving on there own accord.

Are they being asked to leave because of their sin or because of the damage created by this particular sin? Someone who is struggling with pornography as an example, is not creating the realtional problem as the couple having the affair and is much easier to work with and not as uncomfortable.

That is why I contend that you can not come up with a hard and fast rule on how to deal with unrepentant sinners. Each case has its own unique complications.

I know we have gays in our church, no idea who they are, but they are there. And I am glad that they are coming and hearing the gospel, they may repent. We also have those struggling with a plethora of other sin, and I'm also glad they are there hearing the gospel.

OK, if we stick to what Jesus says in Matthew 18.15:
'Moreover, if your brother commits a sin, go lay bare his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take along with you one or two more, in order that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every matter may be established. If he does not listen to them, speak to the congregation. If he does not listen even to the congrgation, let him be to you just as a man of the nations and as a tax collector.'

Does this tie in with what you suggest above? or Do you interpret this passage differently?

Son Goku

JimiTime wrote:

If we make it mathematical, the insight is lost not gained in my opinion.

Do you truly understand the insight gained by appreciating things on a mathematical level? I have a much greater appreciation for nature once I understand the mathematical structures underlying it.
As somebody who is in physics, this is something I get told all the time.
e.g. science destroys the beauty of the rainbow.
I don't understand this, because a great number of insights about nature exist solely in a mathematical understanding.
There is a lot of things mathematical understanding doesn't cover, such as your rose example, but there is just as many things that it does cover that other forms of understanding don't offer any comprehension of at all.
I could equally criticise other forms of understanding for missing these insights.

Do you truly feel it logical that we were not intelligently designed? Even from a scientific perspective. I always think, if we weren't intelligently designed, why are we not just surviving? How do you scientifically explain emotion? Food is sustenance, but it can make you feel amazing. The variety of flavour, tantalising ones sense of taste. A pink lady apple tingling both sweet and bitter receptors, fantastic. I mentioned before about seeing a rose garden as evidence of not only Intelligent design, but also a creator who Loves us, and created us to experience beauty in so many forms. A poster noted that, why can't it just be a rose. Personally, I think insight into that rose makes it more beautiful.

That poster was me (and possibly Wicknight). Basically I think all the same things, but I just don't think it implies a designer. I don't see why these things can't just be as they are. The insight into a rose, does make it more beautiful, as does social context.
However, can it not just be that I'm a guy who likes somebody giving me roses and a rose is nice to me because I like roses, for whatever reason, to use simple language. I don't understand why a massively powerful being who loves me personally has to be invoked.

Also with regard to "why are we not just surviving" or "how do you scientifically explain emotion", make sure you do not confuse science with nature. Although I think it will be difficult, or take a long time, for science to come to terms with something like emotion (for a variety of reasons, mostly relating to it lacking what is called a control parameter), that doesn't change the fact that it would come as no surprise to me that nature can produce something like emotion.
We can't scientifically explain many structures found in nature, but that doesn't change the fact that they are a natural formation.

Scofflaw

JimiTime wrote:

To be honest, I'm not sure. The point I was making was more along the lines of, what came first. The theory or the evidence? was evidence discovered, or was a theory produced and evidence saught to back it up?

Fortunately, you have picked one of the better-recorded processes of theorisation in scientific history!

From Wikipedia:

Wikipedia wrote:

The Australian marsupial rat-kangaroo and platypus were such strikingly unusual animals that on 19 January 1836, in New South Wales, he recorded this in his journal:

Charles Darwin wrote:

I had been lying on a sunny bank & was reflecting on the strange character of the Animals of this country as compared with the rest of the World. An unbeliever in every thing beyond his own reason, might exclaim ‘Surely two distinct Creators must have been [at] work; their object however has been the same & certainly the end in each case is complete’.

He puzzled over all he saw, and, in the first edition of The Voyage of the Beagle, he explained species distribution in light of Charles Lyell's ideas of "centres of creation". In later editions of this Journal he foreshadowed his use of Galápagos Islands fauna as evidence for evolution: "one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends."

It's generally clear from Darwin's notes that he began his journey as a Creationist - as virtually all Christians were at that time. The evidence he saw contradicted what he believed, and he very gradually came round to his eventual position. En route he passed through some adaptations of Creationism - creation and modification, creation in several places, etc - hardly the work of someone who had set out to remove God from the picture.

Indeed, you can see from the excerpt above that Darwin imagines "an unbeliever in every thing beyond his own reason" as suggesting "two distinct Creators". That, I hope, gives you a pretty clear idea of where Darwin regarded himself as being - firmly within the Creationist box.

All of this is independently verifiable - pretty easily, there's a lot of sources on Darwin.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

Son Goku wrote:

That poster was me (and possibly Wicknight). Basically I think all the same things, but I just don't think it implies a designer. I don't see why these things can't just be as they are. The insight into a rose, does make it more beautiful, as does social context.
However, can it not just be that I'm a guy who likes somebody giving me roses and a rose is nice to me because I like roses, for whatever reason, to use simple language. I don't understand why a massively powerful being who loves me personally has to be invoked.

Plus, we can marvel at the fact that not only has the world, unaided, produced the rose, and us, but that we find it beautiful. Personally, I would find it more disturbing the other way round: God makes man, God makes rose, God makes man like rose - you're just following your programming!

cordially,
Scofflaw

robindch

> The point I was making was more along the lines of, what came first. The
> theory or the evidence?

In Darwin's case, it was the evidence -- specifically, it was the geographical distribution of species: the question of why you get one species in one country and not in another, and why it varies so much from place to place. If a deity had created it all, you'd expect a uniform distribution and you get nothing like that at all, even in creatures that are highly mobile.

By the early 19th century, it was known that languages evolved from earlier forms -- Latin to French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian -- and Darwin noticed that the same principle of localized, gradual change over time can be applied to biology to explain how species arise. The full story is rather more complicated than that, but you get the general idea.

> If we make it mathematical, the insight is lost not gained in my opinion.

Take a look at the first minute or two of this video of the Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman, where he talks about this point rather eloquently:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6586235597476141009

.

Zombrex

JimiTime wrote:

So a man who is having an affair with his neighbours wife should keep it to himself and pretend to all its not happening, and continue deceitful.

Well I imagine he shouldn't be having an affair with his neighbours wife, so whether or not he keeps it to himself is rather beside the point...

JimiTime wrote:

Remembering the point is an 'unrepentant' man.

The point is why do you get to decide if the man is or is not repentant. That is supposed to be between him and God is it not?

JimiTime wrote:

If in all these cases the man still says 'I don't really care what you say, I'm doing my own thing', what should be the next step?

You should leave him alone ....

You are talking about blackmailing people into acting the way you believe they should. "If you don't do this we aren't letting into the church"

As BC says church should be some where for people to learn and heal, not a club of everyone who thinks they have made it. If a person goes un-repentive into the church the best you can do is hope that he learns his error from the church and eventually repents. Forcing him to admit he has done something wrong when he doesn't want to is counter productive and also rather un-Christian (I say as an atheist). Or you might learn that his sin (say being an active homosexual) isn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things and that he is a better person that most literal bible throwing attendance. We are all sinners after all.

If you have to be a perfect Christian to allowed into the church in the first place that kinda defeats the purpose, does it not?

Zombrex

JimiTime wrote:

How exactly did the theory of evoltion come about?

People observed that things in nature where not static, that they change. Evolution was on of the ideas that was put forward to explain how biology changes over time. After Darwin it became clear that evolutionary models fit most biological evidence, so the theory developed. It was "chosen" because it works as a model explain the biological world, and it still works. It might be completely wrong, but then it would be a bit weird that a completely incorrect model some how manages to fit around so much biological evidence.

JimiTime wrote:

Was it, hey look at this evidence I found showing the origins of earth and man?

Yeah, pretty much.

JimiTime wrote:

Or was it, 'lets take God out of the equation. What other explanation could there be?'

God wasn't taken out of the equation. In fact the most theories (if not all) of evolution never mention God, and the vast majority of scientists who have followed, studied and expanded the theories of evolution have been Christian.

It is actually the various churches that started the idea that evolution disproves God, not because evolution contradicted God but because evolution contradicted their teaching.

JimiTime wrote:

Come up with an interesting theory, then say. 'Ok class this is what I think now lets go look for evidence to back it up.'

Again, yes that is pretty much what happened. Darwin, and others, spent years and years finding evidence to support the growing shape of darwinian evolution theory.

JimiTime wrote:

Remember evolutionists, you should not be so cocky as you are certain of nothing.

That is actually one of the corner stones of modern science. Any scientific theory must be falsifiable, in that it must be possible that it is wrong. Otherwise it is not considered a valid scientific theory. Which is one of the reasons why Creation "Science" is largely ignored by science, since it asserts things no one can possible know for sure as being axoms of truth.

JimiTime wrote:

The thing is, you like to pride yourself on having the 'upper hand' over the 'crazy' Christian.

Well its not hard to have the upper hand over someone who is crazy ....

JimiTime wrote:

Conclusive evidence cannot be offered to you to convince you of Gods existence, but you cannot offer conclusive evidence to the contrary.

Again, that isn't anything to do with the theory of evolution. Neo-darwin evolutionary theory does not say that there is no God. It doesn't say that there is a God. In fact it doesn't touch on the question at all.

It is the "crazy" Christians (ie Christian young earth literal bible belters) who claim that if evolution is correct then there is no God. The atheist already don't believe there is a god so the point is largely mute to them.

Zombrex

JimiTime wrote:

Secondly, an honest question. Leaving out who created us. Do you trully feel it logical that we were not intelligently designed? Even from a scientific perspective.

From a scientific perspective it is not logical to believe we were intelligently designed.

JimiTime wrote:

I always think, if we weren't intelligently designed, why are we not just surviving?

Why would we be "just" surviving?

The real question you should ask is why if we were intelligently designed did it take so long for us to get where we are now?

JimiTime wrote:

How do you scientifically explain emotion?

In a large number of ways, probably too detailed to explain here. Put simply emotion is a system evolution developed to influence behaviour in certain ways often to benefit the individual or the community group. Humans are after all social animals. Guilt would be an example

JimiTime wrote:

A poster noted that, why can't it just be a rose.

That was me

JimiTime wrote:

In the same way, if you believe in God, you believe that he Loves you and created you to be tantilised by the many forms of beauty that tantilise the senses.

Fair enough ... as I said, I'm quite happy with it just being a rose

JimiTime wrote:

If we make it mathematical, the insight is lost not gained in my opinion.

Maybe you don't like maths. Personally I think mathematics is possibly the most beautiful thing in the universe.

JimiTime wrote:

If it wasn't creation by a being that loved us, why are we receptive in such a way?

Because we evolved that way. From a scientific point of view you think a rose is beautiful because it stimulates your visual senses with bright vibrant colours, often contrasting with the dark paler background. A rose looks more beautiful the less there is in the back ground.

Scofflaw

It's interesting - I've seen the "science analyses a rose" argument quite a few times, variously put forward by arts students, writers, the religious, etc, so presumably a lot of people feel this way.

Speaking as a scientist (and someone who studied botany), I like roses. My wife, who did her MSc in Botany,loves roses. In general, neither of us look at roses scientifically, unless there is some reason to. Come to that, we don't usually look at them from a gardening perspective, either. We usually look at them as roses.

What is it about the scientific viewpoint that is so perplexing? What makes non-scientists assume that, because we know about sepals, phloem, the evolution of floral structures, pollination and co-evolution etc, we automatically engage this when we look at a rose?

Can a gardener look at a rose, and not think about mulch? Can an artist look at a rose and not think about pigments and brush strokes? A historian, and not think about York and Lancaster?

Those who cannot disengage the technical viewpoint in everyday life are generally suffering from Asperger's, not science. Science does not narrow - it deepens the world, by providing additional/alternative views of the same things.

I blame Mr Spock, myself.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Diogenes

Scofflaw wrote:

It's interesting - I've seen the "science analyses a rose" argument quite a few times, variously put forward by arts students, writers, the religious, etc, so presumably a lot of people feel this way.

Speaking as a scientist (and someone who studied botany), I like roses. My wife, who did her MSc in Botany,loves roses. In general, neither of us look at roses scientifically, unless there is some reason to. Come to that, we don't usually look at them from a gardening perspective, either. We usually look at them as roses.

What is it about the scientific viewpoint that is so perplexing? What makes non-scientists assume that, because we know about sepals, phloem, the evolution of floral structures, pollination and co-evolution etc, we automatically engage this when we look at a rose?

Can a gardener look at a rose, and not think about mulch? Can an artist look at a rose and not think about pigments and brush strokes? A historian, and not think about York and Lancaster?

Those who cannot disengage the technical viewpoint in everyday life are generally suffering from Asperger's, not science. Science does not narrow - it deepens the world, by providing additional/alternative views of the same things.

I blame Mr Spock, myself.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw beneath the brain of a rational scientist lurks a poetic soul.

Me I like flowers and I like fruit and nice tasting things. I will not take this as prove that a god made them smell nice to us. I'd suggest the taste and olfactory reaction is a pleasure/pain reaction, certain things smell "good" taste "good" because we know they are good for us, and as we grow up we are instinctively made aware of good and bad smells and tastes./ We know sweage/effulence is bad because of the smell, while we know winter fruits like blackberries . are okay because of the smell.

Deciding things look look or smell or taste good because god wanted us to eat them, is like saying fire burns because god didn't want us to get too hot, it's adding a dimension of divide order to the universe when simple rationality will surfice.

Asiaprod

Diogenes wrote:

Deciding things look look or smell or taste good because god wanted us to eat them, is like saying fire burns because god didn't want us to get too hot, it's adding a dimension of divide order to the universe when simple rationality will surfice.

Reminds me of a post we had ages ago in A/A; the one on how god made the Banana the perfect shape with ridges to be held by the human hand and angled in just the right way to take a bite. Then I remember the photo that was posted of what a real Banana looks like, eww. Guess that one started wrong, but man fixed it so no worries.

Zombrex

Another problem is the large ignorance people seem to have regarding what the theory of neo-darwin evolution actually says. There is a design in evolution, it just doesn't have to be divine design the way Intelligent Design has to have a divine creator.

For example evolution doesn't say it is a pure accident that a rose looks like a rose. A rose looks like a rose because 4 billion years of design made it look like a rose. It looks like a rose for a purpose, though that purpose is not for our enjoyment. The idea that things like roses, stars, water falls, rainbows etc were created and exist for our enjoyment is a little egotistical towards the importance of mankind in the grand scheme of things in my opinion. Roses, stars, water falls etc etc exist and we enjoy them, but that does not mean they exist for us to enjoy. The rose exists for the rose, the reason it is bright and colourful is to attract insects to help it breed. The rose is bright and colourful not for us, but for the rose. The fact that we enjoy looking at it is secondary to that. "Things" exist independent to how we view them, and some things we enjoy looking at, and others we don't.

Likewise we did not develop our complex emotional systems simply by chance. We developed them to serve a purpose (a large number of purposes actually) in society.

One of the most frustrating things when trying to explain evolution is that a people who don't understand it that well (and I blame the lies of the Creation Science movement for this) tend to believe that evolution is the opposite to design and purpose.

Of course it isn't. Evolution is both design and purpose coming about through a natural process, ie natural selection.

judomick

JimiTime wrote:

Remember evolutionists, you should not be so cocky as you are certain of nothing.

could the same thing be said of christians? The thing that drives science forward is the fact that there is always doubt

I find it funny how christians demand a level of proof from science without being willing to furnish the same level of proof to science

BrianCalgary

JimiTime wrote:

OK, if we stick to what Jesus says in Matthew 18.15:
'Moreover, if your brother commits a sin, go lay bare his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take along with you one or two more, in order that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every matter may be established. If he does not listen to them, speak to the congregation. If he does not listen even to the congrgation, let him be to you just as a man of the nations and as a tax collector.'

Does this tie in with what you suggest above? or Do you interpret this passage differently?

Yes it does. Jesus finishes His talk with 'let him be to you just as aman of the nations and as a tax collector'. He does not say 'turf him from your church and never let him darken the doorway'.

The man is puting his desires first. He is not walking with God. You have done what you can to help, he is not repentant. Only the Holy Spirit will be able to convict him of his sin and turn him away. Let him come to church and hear the messages and be convicted. And we will treat him as the first time new comer to the church. Treat him as the seeker.

Be ready to love him adn welcome him when he does repent. Like the prodigal son. Or the invitation Jesus has to all tose who are heavy laden, come for rest. What right do we have to bar someone from that opportunity?

JimiTime

Great scope of answers there pertaining to the rose analogy. If I may address a few points.

Son Goku wrote:

Do you truly understand the insight gained by appreciating things on a mathematical level? I have a much greater appreciation for nature once I understand the mathematical structures underlying it.

To be honest, no I don't, but I find it hard to see how you can quantify beauty. Could you elaborate on how mathematics gives you a much greater appreciation of the rose, because like I said before i really don't get it? please excuse my mathematical ignorance.

There is a lot of things mathematical understanding doesn't cover, such as your rose example, but there is just as many things that it does cover that other forms of understanding don't offer any comprehension of at all.
I could equally criticise other forms of understanding for missing these insights.

If we stick to the rose, is there an example of this?

Basically I think all the same things, but I just don't think it implies a designer. I don't see why these things can't just be as they are. The insight into a rose, does make it more beautiful, as does social context.
However, can it not just be that I'm a guy who likes somebody giving me roses and a rose is nice to me because I like roses, for whatever reason, to use simple language. I don't understand why a massively powerful being who loves me personally has to be invoked.

See this is what I have a problem with. The 'why things just can't be as they are'. I just think that logically, how could things just be as they are? The variety, the senses, emotion, the perfect distance from the sun for life to flourish. Even the laws of physics. If we really did evolve, there must be millions of very lucky coincidences? To use Maths, I'd say probability would say its highly unlikely? Did we evolve to like what was around us, because if we didn't like what was around us we'd be miserable? Why did we evolve to 'like' things then in the first place? why did we evolve to become vulnerable in love? These are questions I want answers for, and science has never answered them to me. Have i been asking the wrong scientists?

Also with regard to "why are we not just surviving" or "how do you scientifically explain emotion", make sure you do not confuse science with nature. Although I think it will be difficult, or take a long time, for science to come to terms with something like emotion (for a variety of reasons, mostly relating to it lacking what is called a control parameter), that doesn't change the fact that it would come as no surprise to me that nature can produce something like emotion.
We can't scientifically explain many structures found in nature, but that doesn't change the fact that they are a natural formation.

Nature: The materiel world outside of humankind and civilisation.
Science: systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
Why would nature, 'produce' something like emotion?

Scofflaw wrote:

Plus, we can marvel at the fact that not only has the world, unaided, produced the rose, and us, but that we find it beautiful. Personally, I would find it more disturbing the other way round: God makes man, God makes rose, God makes man like rose - you're just following your programming!

limited reasoning here in my opinion. Firstly, how are you following programming? I like apples, I hate cabbage. My wife loves cabbage. Part of the point is that there is such a huge variety of things that tantilise the senses, and that we have our tastes that are unique to us. Some things more people are agreeable on, like the rose, but certainly not in an automatonic way as you suggest. If I may correct your reasoning. God makes 'nature'. God makes man with the ability to sense it all and decide what he likes and doesn't like.

Wicknight wrote:

evolution doesn't say it is a pure accident that a rose looks like a rose. A rose looks like a rose because 4 billion years of design made it look like a rose.

4 billion years of design? please define what you think design means. As for saying that I think they were created for our enjoyment, that is not what I said. I said we have been made with the abilty to be receptive to these things.

Likewise we did not develop our complex emotional systems simply by chance. We developed them to serve a purpose (a large number of purposes actually) in society.

Therein lies the question. Why did they develop? Why did it not remain instinct? Why did love develop? Why did our ability to like or dislike develop? Why did enjoyment come about?

One of the most frustrating things when trying to explain evolution is that a people who don't understand it that well (and I blame the lies of the Creation Science movement for this) tend to believe that evolution is the opposite to design and purpose.
Of course it isn't. Evolution is both design and purpose coming about through a natural process, ie natural selection.

Again, i'd like to get your definition of design.

judomick wrote:

The thing that drives science forward is the fact that there is always doubt
I find it funny how christians demand a level of proof from science without being willing to furnish the same level of proof to science

Well, I can only speak for myself, but most of the time when talking to people who believe in evolution, they believe that the evidence amounts to proof. I have never been convinced of the 'evidence', and I never claim to have the level of evidence that science demands for a belief in God. All I know is that science has never answers my questions adequately. I'm more of a why? than a how? person.

robindch

> I find it hard to see how you can quantify beauty. Could you elaborate on how
> mathematics gives you a much greater appreciation of the rose, because like I
> said before i really don't get it?

Take a look at the first couple of minutes of that video I recommended above. It explains it quite well:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6586235597476141009

JimiTime

BrianCalgary wrote:

Yes it does. Jesus finishes His talk with 'let him be to you just as aman of the nations and as a tax collector'. He does not say 'turf him from your church and never let him darken the doorway'.

Could you tell me how the Jewish nation behaved with tax collectors or men of the nations if they entered their synagogue?

The man is puting his desires first. He is not walking with God. You have done what you can to help, he is not repentant. Only the Holy Spirit will be able to convict him of his sin and turn him away. Let him come to church and hear the messages and be convicted. And we will treat him as the first time new comer to the church. Treat him as the seeker.

So if you or you and witnesses could not reason with the man, you would take the matter before the congregation?

Be ready to love him adn welcome him when he does repent. Like the prodigal son. Or the invitation Jesus has to all tose who are heavy laden, come for rest. What right do we have to bar someone from that opportunity?

Absolutely! but you are missing the purpose of the lesson. It is for protection of the rest of the flock. If he repents he will come back and should be forgiven, I'm not denying that. Would you leave him in the congregation if he was an unrepentant murderer? No, you would probably have him before the courts. So why would he be left if he was an un-repentant adulterer? Remember all along, Love is the motivation. So would it be loving to have the 'un-repentant' man pose a threat to the flock. How would you feel if he also gained anothers wife? I do agree that there should be no rule, as that binds you. But as a lesson, you cannot ignore its principle.

JimiTime

robindch wrote:

> I find it hard to see how you can quantify beauty. Could you elaborate on how
> mathematics gives you a much greater appreciation of the rose, because like I
> said before i really don't get it?

Take a look at the first couple of minutes of that video I recommended above. It explains it quite well:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6586235597476141009

I had a look. I know where he's coming from, and i guessed that this would be where Son Goku would be coming from. One difference is that I'm not saying that Son Goku doesn't appreciate the rose as much as me. I am saying that knowing that its there for you to enjoy (not soley for that purpose) but that you have been given the ability to appreciate it makes it like a gift. This is why I made the analogy of the garden rose and the given rose. It makes an emotional connection, in that someone love you.

robindch

> This is why I made the analogy of the garden rose and the given rose. It
> makes an emotional connection, in that someone love you.

Yes, but we disagree that it's a gift.

For example, I could walk around Dublin and see every flowerbed in town and say to myself that this was planted for me by my gf. It wouldn't be true, but it would make me feel good. Does that mean that it's reasonable for me to believe that the flowerbeds were actually planted by my gf? Or do you think I'd be misleading myself, just to make myself feel loved?

(Btw, the rest of that Feynman video is good too )

Son Goku

JimiTime wrote:

To be honest, no I don't, but I find it hard to see how you can quantify beauty. Could you elaborate on how mathematics gives you a much greater appreciation of the rose, because like I said before i really don't get it? please excuse my mathematical ignorance.

My argument isn't that mathematics can capture the emotive beauty of a flower, but that it can reveal an entirely different level of understanding and beauty that you wouldn't see if you solely used emotional understanding.
There are several deeply complex structures and relations in a flower you have no hope of understanding with your eyes alone.

If we stick to the rose, is there an example of this?

I think of 20+ of the top of my head.
The commonly used one is the appearance of the Fibonacci sequence in their structure. Most flowers have a Fibonacci number of petals. This would be trivial on its own, except it relates to a deeper problem. Unfortunately it is very hard for me to convey this deeper problem and most of my other examples as they require quite a detailed knowledge of the subject.
I can if you wish.

See this is what I have a problem with. The 'why things just can't be as they are'. I just think that logically, how could things just be as they are? The variety, the senses, emotion, the perfect distance from the sun for life to flourish.

There are at least around 12,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe. Does it surprise you that one possessed reasonable conditions for life?
If it does, then all we have is that it surprises you, it doesn't state anything in general about Earth.

Even the laws of physics.

Physics, to me, seems to have very little design in it. I can expand on this.

If we really did evolve, there must be millions of very lucky coincidences? To use Maths, I'd say probability would say its highly unlikely?

Probability in such situations doesn't apply, as I am blue in the face telling JC.

Did we evolve to like what was around us, because if we didn't like what was around us we'd be miserable? Why did we evolve to 'like' things then in the first place? why did we evolve to become vulnerable in love? These are questions I want answers for, and science has never answered them to me. Have i been asking the wrong scientists?

Your thinking with regard to evolution is too linear.
To give you a fictional example, a white moth species could be afraid of the colour black, because that is the colour of its main predator. As time goes on the moth migrates to a new area. Eventually the new area becomes polluted and the moth evolves to adapt to its now polluted landscape, becoming a black moth. However even though the moth is black it never evolved away the fear of black, so it avoids other moths of its species. Avoiding the other moths is harmful for the species so the moths evolve a hormonal cycle so that for a three month period they are insatiably horny (I know this sounds stupid) to the point where they don't notice the blackness of the other moths.

Meanwhile people discover these moths and say "Weird!, why do the moths all avoid each other for the whole year and then start mating like crazy for three months."

This is to give you an example of how complex the origins of some behaviours are. Being "vulnerable in love" might have come about as a result of a long sequence which started with something entirely unrelated.

Nature: The materiel world outside of humankind and civilisation.
Science: systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
Why would nature, 'produce' something like emotion?

Why not? Why would it produce snowflakes? Simply because it can.
Why do you think nature is so limited?

Zombrex

JimiTime wrote:

Why would nature, 'produce' something like emotion?

Why would nature produce a rock?

Nature produces what it produces. From an evolutionary point of view there are lots of reasons why natural selection would produce human emotions, but even if we were not aware of them it doesn't change the fact that it did.

JimiTime wrote:

I like apples, I hate cabbage. My wife loves cabbage.

But there are reasons why you like apples and hate cabbage, and they are to do with the way your body, especially your brain, has constructed itself as your have grown from a single cell.

JimiTime wrote:

God makes man with the ability to sense it all and decide what he likes and doesn't like.

But you don't decide what you like. Did you choose to not like cabbage and like apples? Your body and brain decide for you, this process if largely beyond the control of your higher brain functions.

So the question is did God decide you like apples, or did nature?

JimiTime wrote:

4 billion years of design? please define what you think design means.

In the context of evolution "design" means the selecting of useful traits and the discarding of non-useful or harmful traits, to better adapt an organism or species to a particular enviornment.

JimiTime wrote:

I said we have been made with the abilty to be receptive to these things.

We have, but then there is an evolutionary reason for this.

JimiTime wrote:

Why did they develop?

"They" (i assume you mean emotions) developed for a large variety of reasons.

JimiTime wrote:

Why did love develop?

Well it is arguable if "love" is a single emotion. For example "I love pizza" is not the same as "I love my mother" and that isn't the same as "I love my girlfriend"

But the reason fondness and attraction developed in animals, including humans, is to manipulate us into doing things that benefit either ourself, our society or at a basic level our genes.

I love my mother because it is helpful for the family unit that I love her, that I don't treat her as just another person, and vice versa. Imagine if a mother didn't love her child? What would happen to the child?

JimiTime wrote:

Why did our ability to like or dislike develop?

Well it depends on the thing.

For example the smell of rotten flesh. The vast majority of people do not like the smell of rotten flesh. There is a very good reason for that, it isn't a good idea for our health for us to go near rotten flesh, since it normally carries diease. Like wise with fecies, we have evolved to find the smell of poo not very nice, and we wish to stay away from it.

JimiTime wrote:

Why did enjoyment come about?

Again "enjoyment" is not a single thing. The reason why I enjoy playing sport is quite different to the reason I enjoy having sex. But the common aspect is that my brain rewards me for doing things that are benefital by releasing chemicals into my brain that make me feel happy. You don't feel great after going for a 5 mile run by accident, your brain is flooding your body with chemicals that make you feel great because evolution wants you to go on more 5 mile runs.

JimiTime wrote:

Well, I can only speak for myself, but most of the time when talking to people who believe in evolution, they believe that the evidence amounts to proof.

Well, using the laymans definition of "proof", rather than the scientific or mathematical defintion, it does. This is proof in the same way that "if I drop this stone it will fall to the ground" type of proof.

It is important to remember the difference though. From a scientific point of view you can't actually say that dropping a stone proves that if you drop a stone it will fall to the ground. Absolute proof doesn't really exist in science.

JimiTime wrote:

All I know is that science has never answers my questions adequately.

Well if you wish to ask them here I will be more than willing to attempt to answer them, if I can.

JimiTime wrote:

I'm more of a why? than a how? person.

The problem with that is "why?" often implies purpose where there might not be any purpose.

For example, if someone asks "Why is that boat moving up and down with the waves?" the person is not asking why the boat is choosing to move up and down in the waves, because it is a boat, it doesn't choose to do anything.

No intelligence has decide that it is a good idea that the boat bobs up and down in the waves. it is bobing up and down because it is sitting in the sea which has waves. The sea has waves because of the weather and because of the gravitational pull of the moon. Asking "why is the moon asserting gravitational pull on the earth?" again makes no sense, because the moon is not choosing to assert gravitational pull on the Earth, either way, so there is no rationality or reason behind that action.

If one assumes there is an answer to the question "Why did the boat choose to bob up and down in the water?" they are never going to get a satisfactory answer, because the question is wrong. The boat didn't choose to bob up and down in the water, so there is no answer to why?

bmoferrall

(Btw, the rest of that Feynman video is good too )

Yeah, thanks for that. He seems to have the gift of making all that stuff accessible. If only we had teachers like him (or parents like his own father) in school/college - I might have lasted longer anyway.

How highly regarded is he in his field? Does he measure up to the likes of Einstein etc.?

(He touches on creation/evolution at the end.)

JimiTime

Wicknight wrote:

The problem with that is "why?" often implies purpose where there might not be any purpose.

For example, if someone asks "Why is that boat moving up and down with the waves?" the person is not asking why the boat is choosing to move up and down in the waves, because it is a boat, it doesn't choose to do anything.

No intelligence has decide that it is a good idea that the boat bobs up and down in the waves. it is bobing up and down because it is sitting in the sea which has waves. The sea has waves because of the weather and because of the gravitational pull of the moon. Asking "why is the moon asserting gravitational pull on the earth?" again makes no sense, because the moon is not choosing to assert gravitational pull on the Earth, either way, so there is no rationality or reason behind that action.

If one assumes there is an answer to the question "Why did the boat choose to bob up and down in the water?" they are never going to get a satisfactory answer, because the question is wrong. The boat didn't choose to bob up and down in the water, so there is no answer to why?

Why is the moon asserting a gravitational pull on the earth is a valid question if you are looking for purpose. The example of the boat is more bad grammar. A valid question could be, why is there weather? why is there water? why does it act in this wavy manner?
Here in may lie the distict difference between our minds. I look for purpose, I want purpose. i want to know why I'm here, whats my pupose? Why do we die? What happens after we die?(I know I cheated and added a 'what':) )

How? gives knowledge, and thats great. Why? gives pupose. I want pupose, so science cannot give me what I want. Spirituality goes beyond the scope of science, I do know that. Science studies the materiel world, so science could never embrace the spiritual, unless they take it as an axiom.


As for the other points by yourself and Son Goku, there is way too much for my fragile mind to take in all at once. If I may hit upon the following points however.

1. What is the most conclusive evidence that the world is 4.5 billion years old? are there any assumptions that are made?
2. What is the most conclusive evidence that man evolved from 1 cell through ancient apemen to where we are now? are there any assumptions made?
3. what is the most conclusive evidence that life came from inanimate matter? are there any assumptions made?

bonkey

I notice that a lot of JimiTime's questions basically boil down to one simple question : Why?

Ultimately, he sees this as a reason to invoke a deity. He cannot understand why he hates cabbage but his wife loves it, and sees the miraculous in that.

JimiTime....let me ask you one question in return : Why did God make you hate cabbage and your wife love it?

Invoking a God-of-the-gaps approach to explaining something that you otherwise cannot isn't answering the question. Its simply adding one layer of indirection to the non-answering of the question.

Old version :

Why do you hate cabbage?
I don't know.


New Version:

Why do you hate cabbage?
Cause God made it so.
Why did God make it so?
I don't know.

What have you gained? You still don't know why you hate cabbage.

Having said all of that, there is a point worth remembering...

When push comes to shove, science is about how, and religion is about why.

Its not entirely true, and you can pick holes in it, but there is a strong element of truth to it as well.

Belief in a God is by no means incompatible with evolution. Indeed, the Catholic church, amongst others, have embraced evolution and see no issue with a system brought about by God which has led us to where we are.

At the risk of being more controversial than usual, I'd suggest that the discomfort many have with the notion of evolution being the design rather than mankind is that it doesn't distinguish why humans are any different or more special than any other lifeform which has evolved. It also suggests we're not any sort of nexus - we are not the end-product. Evolution will continue.

Finally, in answer to an earlier question - why aren't we just surviving...

What makes you think we aren't just surviving? The length of time that Homo Sapien has been around compared to the age of the planet is relatively insignificant....and we're already looking at a very scary future where it could all collapse on us again. There is little reason to believe that we've settled in for the long haul, other than that "the long haul" is a timescale that we generally find very difficult to come to grips with . People are pretty confident we'll be around in another thousand years. But 500,000? A million? A billion?

If the world existed for 24 hours to date, we only arrived sometime in the last second. Do you really think we've been around long enough to say we'll be here for the next 24 hours? The next 5 minutes would be an accomplishment in an of iteself....but we're looking at all these problems we've created (global warming etc.) which will occur in microseconds on this modified timescale. Surviving another million years will get us...what...2 seconds further on that clock.

We have problems seeing past a century.

Aren't we really "just surviving" when we start talking about such timeframes?

bonkey

JimiTime wrote:

1. What is the most conclusive evidence that the world is 4.5 billion years old? are there any assumptions that are made?
2. What is the most conclusive evidence that man evolved from 1 cell through ancient apemen to where we are now? are there any assumptions made?
3. what is the most conclusive evidence that life came from inanimate matter? are there any assumptions made?

Science doesn't work on "the most conclusive evidence". It works on the sum total of evidence, and how it matches a given theory. Whether the theory makes predictions which are subsequently borne out is also a factor. Evidence which refutes the theory causes the theory to be revised or discarded.

Look - if you want to understand the scientific perspective, then learn the science. There's no other way. If you don't learn it, you can't understand it. If you can't understand it, then you can't knock it.

You can refuse to accept it, but you must acknowledge that its a refusal based on ignorance rather then on education.

Starting from a position of "I don't know the details, but refuse to accept them anyway" will never get you anywhere....but that's apparently where you're starting from.

ETA : Just to see how difficult it would be to find some answers, I typed "earth age" into google. Here's the first link I got back - a pretty comprehensive answer to one of your questions, also dealing with the common "young earth" theories and why they're wrong.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

Son Goku

bmoferrall wrote:

Yeah, thanks for that. He seems to have the gift of making all that stuff accessible. If only we had teachers like him (or parents like his own father) in school/college - I might have lasted longer anyway.

How highly regarded is he in his field? Does he measure up to the likes of Einstein etc.?

(He touches on creation/evolution at the end.)

The third greatest physicist of the twenty century, after Einstein and Schwinger.
Einstein made relativity (as you probably know), Schwinger and Feynman made Quantum Field Theory. Well Schwinger made it mostly, but Feynman managed to write Quantum Field Theory in a language anybody who wasn't Schwinger could understand.

(Coincidentally enough, I posted this message while taking a break from trying to transform a calculation I'd done yesterday using Feynman's language into the same calculation using Schwingers language. They both gave the same answer, except Schwinger's way took longer and I've no idea what half of the steps in the calculation mean.)

CiDeRmAn

I heard a comedian say this once, If I have two theories purporting to explain the origin of the universe and all it contains, I'll go for the one without the magic spell.

Obviously the difference between those of us that respect the scientific method and those that seek "truths" about why we are here is that the accepted processes of evolution, cosmological, stellar or biologic holds no fear for the scientifically bent, only fascination and wonder, and a desire to understand it better, to comprehend it all.
Those of a religious or spiritual mind however seem to be filled with emptiness when faced with the true breadth of the universe around us, and as science deepens our understanding they only feel more and more dissociated from what, to them, only seems a cold unfeeling godless picture of a world that they have always seen as a place for us, for man, a stage set for mankind to play out its role before being elevated on the last of days.
So you can see why creationists become increasingly desperate to refute such solid evidence as the fossil record, the presence of background radiation indicating a massive event in our distant past "creation" in the big bang sense, the use of carbon dating seems alien to them, evolutionary theory has stood up to so many tests, demonstrably one of the greatest acheivements of modern man, together with Newtons laws of motion, quantum and relatavistic theories. Why do they deny the evidence around them?
When scientists constantly question their own work, trying to find chinks, mistakes, assumtions made that leads to bad results, a thing that the creationists seem unable to do, never questioning the "truth" as seen in a good book, whatever persuasion they happen to be.
I believe Carl Sagan referred to science as a candle in the dark, as the oppressive and ignorant forces of superstition threaten our understanding of the world around us, polluting minds with half truths and nonsense.

wolfsbane

bonkey said:

ETA : Just to see how difficult it would be to find some answers, I typed "earth age" into google. Here's the first link I got back - a pretty comprehensive answer to one of your questions, also dealing with the common "young earth" theories and why they're wrong.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

For the scientific argument on the other side, see: http://trueorigin.org/

Son Goku

The world's most objective website wrote:

NeoDarwinian Macroevolution belief system

Yeah wolfsbane, looks like they're taking a cold clinical attitude right from the beginning.