The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

wolfsbane

Galvasean wrote: »

Considering this is all VERY hypothetical I'll give it my best shot. Perhaps the creatures would simply run out of room/food and end up being very cramped/hungry?
In fact I have no idea what you are trying to get at here. To be honest your notion of interbreeding levelling out differences is at best illogical and at worst nonsense.
May I suggest we get back to debating things which are potentially plausible?

I'm trying to see how biological evolution can be squared with the absence of suffering and death. Cramped/hungry negate that. I am of the view that evolution in the absence of suffering and death is not at all plausible. I take it you agree?

Does not interbreeding level out differences in a population over time? I mean, if one family line were more prolific than average, would their breeding with a less prolific line not alter that?

wolfsbane

robindch said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Without death, the faster breeding species would predominate, but not displace the slower breeders. Indeed, would any distinction in breeding levels arise, since interbreeding would level out any differences?
I'm not at all sure what you're getting at here. Are you saying that, over time, all species would merge and create a single uber-species? There are many, many reasons why that'll never happen and I don't have the time to list them at the moment. Suffice it to say that you would run out of resources on the earth a long, long time before you could convince a whale to mate with a billy-goat successfully.

My fault. I meant 'of the species' - the more prolific breeders in a species vs the less prolific breeders. Given no death, with interbreeding would not the capacity of the species become homogenous?

By disallowing death, you also have a much more basic problem which is food supply. Photosynthesis, or equivalent processes, do not supply enough energy to sustain animal-level life forms, so animals tend to eat plants or other animals, and plants are left to do the low-level energy-conversion. Hence, a theoretical Adam in a death-free world could only eat fruit, nuts, milk, and other plant or animal by-products, and never eat meat, cereals, eggs and so on. Sounds awful to me!

I don't see why cereals are excluded. But anyway, Adam was indeed a non-meat eater, and very happy about it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
How did Adam come to be if death was not part of his physical nature?
What do you mean?

How could evolution deliver a being (Man) who was not subject to death (nor suffering)?

Galvasean

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm trying to see how biological evolution can be squared with the absence of suffering and death. Cramped/hungry negate that. I am of the view that evolution in the absence of suffering and death is not at all plausible. I take it you agree?

I certainly do agree with you on this one. In a real world for sure. Death is just a part of the natural order of things.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Does not interbreeding level out differences in a population over time? I mean, if one family line were more prolific than average, would their breeding with a less prolific line not alter that?

Assuming they are all the same species it might. Depending on the structure of said breeding it is certainly not impossible, just not probable to happen naturally or without intervention of some sort.
(However among creatures of completely different orders I can't see any plausible way for such a singularity to occur.) *edit* I see your other post now. Discard what is in brackets.

Galvasean

wolfsbane wrote: »

How could evolution deliver a being (Man) who was not subject to death (nor suffering)?

I don't think it can. Although that question is phrased a lot better than the previous:

wolfsbane wrote: »

How did Adam come to be if death was not part of his physical nature?

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

As I asked Robin, But where does the selection come in if the less fit do not die off?

Well both the fit and the less fit die off. The difference is more in how they live, how successful they are at reproducing.

Due to the finite resources on Earth death is one way the system keeps itself ticking over, but as Robin points out it is possible to imagine situations where both the selected or non-selected strains of replicating units continue to live on for ever.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Yes, I did read it. The pope is certainly making Genesis to be only about the 'spiritual' origin of man. However, Roman Catholic dogma - the article I quoted - deals with man's physical nature also.

Well that isn't how I would interpret what I quoted.

I think it is vague enough not to tie the RCC down to that specific interpretation (probably on purpose). The passage talks extensively about the spiritual but mentions very little of the physical. Which is handy because the spiritual is largely outside the realm of science.

wolfsbane wrote: »

So if the President and/or Directors of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Inter-University Research Institute Corporation were to pay themselves more than you reckon a fair wage, you would dismiss the material the organisation produces?

If by "material" you mean opinion and conjecture, and they peddled their opinions for money, yes probably.

Add in a religious agenda, and peddling their opinions to gullible folk who in turn spend millions supporting them for doing so, double yes.

But I'm not too familiar with the NINS or the IURIC. Do they do that?

robindch

wolfsbane wrote: »

Given no death, with interbreeding would not the capacity of the species become homogenous?

No, because selection is still happening as before and there will always remain a wide variety of outcomes from mutations, some good, and most neutral or bad. Convergence doesn't happen now (any more than r/K selection would be happy with), and it wouldn't happen if you stopped things dying either, even if you could deal with the resulting resource conflicts, which you couldn't.

wolfsbane wrote: »

I don't see why cereals are excluded.

Because grain germinates from a seed, grows, then dies after creating more seeds; AFAIA, no grains cycle of endless seed-creation. Same problem happens for carnivores like lions, tigers, sharks, venus fly-traps (and so on and so on) -- how could they survive without fresh meat from dead carcasses? And why would god have designed something which requires death to survive itself? Makes no sense from a creationist perspective.

wolfsbane wrote: »

How could evolution deliver a being (Man) who was not subject to death (nor suffering)?

Since there is a known selective advantage (organisms dying and freeing up the resources they acquired during their lifetime, permitting better-adapted organisms to flourish without resource conflict), evolution is most unlikely ever to evolve an organism which doesn't die.

However, if you take the view that many biologists (and myself) take, which is that the fundamental unit of selection is not the organism, but the genetic material which produces the organism, then you're on reasonably good philosophical grounds in saying that evolution in fact has produced something that doesn't die -- the genetic material which makes us, and every other life form, up.

This stretches back in an unbroken line for billions of years on this earth, and seems to be as close to immortal as makes no difference.

wolfsbane

robindch said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Given no death, with interbreeding would not the capacity of the species become homogenous?
No, because selection is still happening as before and there will always remain a wide variety of outcomes from mutations, some good, and most neutral or bad. Convergence doesn't happen now (any more than r/K selection would be happy with), and it wouldn't happen if you stopped things dying either, even if you could deal with the resulting resource conflicts, which you couldn't.

OK, but I still don't see how any changes are not going to be submerged in the non-changed mass.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
I don't see why cereals are excluded.
Because grain germinates from a seed, grows, then dies after creating more seeds; AFAIA, no grains cycle of endless seed-creation. Same problem happens for carnivores like lions, tigers, sharks, venus fly-traps (and so on and so on) -- how could they survive without fresh meat from dead carcasses? And why would god have designed something which requires death to survive itself? Makes no sense from a creationist perspective.

Surely what applies to fruit trees applies also to grain stalks - in a non-dying world they would just keep on producing - their fruit would not be needed to ensure continuity.

But that scenario is not necessary, as death in the theological sense does not apply to plants. The animals and man had the plants for food before sin (and death) entered.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
How could evolution deliver a being (Man) who was not subject to death (nor suffering)?

Since there is a known selective advantage (organisms dying and freeing up the resources they acquired during their lifetime, permitting better-adapted organisms to flourish without resource conflict), evolution is most unlikely ever to evolve an organism which doesn't die.

As I thought - see above.

However, if you take the view that many biologists (and myself) take, which is that the fundamental unit of selection is not the organism, but the genetic material which produces the organism, then you're on reasonably good philosophical grounds in saying that evolution in fact has produced something that doesn't die -- the genetic material which makes us, and every other life form, up.

This stretches back in an unbroken line for billions of years on this earth, and seems to be as close to immortal as makes no difference.

But our discussion relates to the death of the organism - man and beast - not to genetic code. It is the organism that the RCC dogma refers to.

wolfsbane

Wicknight said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
As I asked Robin, But where does the selection come in if the less fit do not die off?
Well both the fit and the less fit die off.

You miss the point of the discussion - it is all about whether evolution can occur without any death.

but as Robin points out it is possible to imagine situations where both the selected or non-selected strains of replicating units continue to live on for ever.

I still can't see how they retain their changes while interbreeding with the non-changed.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Yes, I did read it. The pope is certainly making Genesis to be only about the 'spiritual' origin of man. However, Roman Catholic dogma - the article I quoted - deals with man's physical nature also.
Well that isn't how I would interpret what I quoted.

I think it is vague enough not to tie the RCC down to that specific interpretation (probably on purpose). The passage talks extensively about the spiritual but mentions very little of the physical. Which is handy because the spiritual is largely outside the realm of science.

Again, you miss the point: my quote was of official RC dogma, yours was merely a cardinal's opinion. The RCC can adopt or jettison an opinion anytime, but never a dogma (according to their claim to infallibility).

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
So if the President and/or Directors of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Inter-University Research Institute Corporation were to pay themselves more than you reckon a fair wage, you would dismiss the material the organisation produces?
If by "material" you mean opinion and conjecture, and they peddled their opinions for money, yes probably.

No, I mean their science.

So we see you would have no bother accepting the scientific work of an institution, even if led by money-grabbers. I concur.

The only difficulty you have with creationist institutions then is that you don't accept their scientific work as scientific, rather than rejecting it because you think the leaders are money-grabbers.

But yet you questioned their material on the basis of their supposed love of money - you are rather confused.

Go back to basics, and base your criticisms on principles that hold true for creationists and evolutionists alike.

robindch

wolfsbane wrote: »

OK, but I still don't see how any changes are not going to be submerged in the non-changed mass.

"submergered" isn't the right word -- you're just going to get uncontrollable population growth with evolution driven by the types of selection that aren't caused by resource shortages. I don't understand either where the idea of an "unchanged mass" comes from either. Mutation happens for lots of good reasons, and things will continue to evolve and change over time, but you'll just be able to track back more easily since all the "missing links" will be present (somewhere).

wolfsbane wrote: »

Surely what applies to fruit trees applies also to grain stalks - in a non-dying world they would just keep on producing - their fruit would not be needed to ensure continuity.

Well, you're moving the goal posts and thereby missing the point. Apple trees will make lots of apples, year in year out. A wheat stalk will germinate, grow, make lots of sees and die, scattering its seeds where it can -- that how wheat works and that's what wheat is. If you change that, then you don't have wheat any more.

Alternatively, look at it a different way: the cells in your body are constantly replenished to make up for breakages, rubbing off, running repairs and the like, through a process which involves programmed cell death. If the cells in your body didn't die, you'd end up with your body acting as one enormous cancerous growth, and where bruises never got sorted out, bones never mended and so on.

wolfsbane wrote: »

But our discussion relates to the death of the organism - man and beast - not to genetic code. It is the organism that the RCC dogma refers to.

The RCC dogma refers, kind of, to the phenotypical results, but the dogma was thought up before there was much real understanding of biology, or how biology works.

It really does need to be updated to reflect reality, in the same way that creationism does.

Thomas Aquinas wrote:

The truth of our religion becomes a matter of scorn amongst the unfaithful if any Catholic who is not skilled with the necessary learning, presents as dogma what scrutiny shows to be false.

robindch

wolfsbane wrote: »

it is all about whether evolution can occur without any death.

As I said above a couple of times, yes, evolution will occur. But the discussion is entirely theoretical, given that something a single pair of fruit-flies will produce enough offspring, and their offspring produce more (and so on) so that their combined mass will outweigh the earth in no more than a couple of years.

Evolution happens much faster because of the selection pressures that build up to balance this tendency to over-populate.

MooseJam

Isn't it an amazing coincidence that in every religion ever invented, all of them going back through the millenia, that everything happens after you are dead, gives pause for thought ?

Fanny Cradock

If you believe this then you don't know a great deal about Christianity.

PDN

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

If you believe this then you don't know a great deal about Christianity.

Or indeed many other religions

MooseJam

All the big stuff of every religion happens after you are dead, you know the whole going to heaven and meeting god stuff, it's the same for every religion , it all happens after you are dead , you go to heaven or valhalla or whatever, common point is it's after you are dead, it's an amazing coincidence

robindch

MooseJam wrote: »

All the big stuff of every religion happens after you are dead, you know the whole going to heaven and meeting god stuff, it's the same for every religion , it all happens after you are dead , you go to heaven or valhalla or whatever, common point is it's after you are dead, it's an amazing coincidence

It's certainly a common element, but it seems to have been a relatively recently-evolved religious trait and doesn't generally appear in many of the older religions.

For example, the OT doesn't really talk about life after death, preferring instead almost universally, to threaten, damn, cajole or treat people while still alive. Christianity's idea of a soul and its survival of death seems to have derived in part from similar fairly basic Zoroastrianism beliefs, together with the far more refined and developed Greek-derived ideas of soul and reward, for example, as appears in Plato's Myth of Er.

It seems to me that one of Jesus' principal contributions to religion was his claim that everybody would suffer eternal torture if you didn't believe what he told you. In memetic terms, that's one really fit idea.

Flamed Diving

robindch wrote: »

It seems to me that one of Jesus' principal contributions to religion was his claim that everybody would suffer eternal torture if you didn't believe what he told you. In memetic terms, that's one really fit idea.

That sales pitch is quite common across religions, isn't it?

Fanny Cradock

PDN wrote: »

Or indeed many other religions

True. I was going to mention that but thought it best to stick to something I know a little about.

robindch

Flamed Diving wrote: »

That sales pitch is quite common across religions, isn't it?

Similar ideas do appear in other religions subsequently -- Islam, for example -- but I believe that Jesus was the first guy who explicitly linked eternal torture with disbelief of what he said, and eternal bliss to those who did believe him.

With that, he created a cost-free (belief-only) buy-in to a system which provided an infinite payoff. You can't get a better deal than that.

PDN

robindch wrote: »

Similar ideas do appear in other religions subsequently -- Islam, for example -- but I believe that Jesus was the first guy who explicitly linked eternal torture with disbelief of what he said, and eternal bliss to those who did believe him.

With that, he created a cost-free (belief-only) buy-in to a system which provided an infinite payoff. You can't get a better deal than that.

While I agree with little else of what you say, Robin, I am heartily in agreement with your last sentence. Although Christianity is certainly not cost-free, you can't get a better deal than the Gospel

robindch

PDN wrote: »

While I agree with little else of what you say

hmm... what bits do you disagree with? The similarity of christian ideas to those in many other religions? Jesus linking belief in him to damnation/bliss? Something else? I'd like to understand what facts you disagree with, before we can reasonably disgree about the conclusion

PDN wrote: »

Christianity is certainly not cost-free

Didn't say it was. The buy-in is pretty much cost-free, but once bought, the costs of belief stack up quite quickly.

Galvasean

A life without sin? That sounds like a pretty expensive buy-in to me. :cool:

Flamed Diving

Galvasean wrote: »

A life without sin? That sounds like a pretty expensive buy-in to me. :cool:

Not only that, but then you have to spend an eternity with the sinless.

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

You miss the point of the discussion - it is all about whether evolution can occur without any death.

Well I was more replying to direct misunderstandings.

And yes, evolution can occur without any death, though in most systems it probably wouldn't

wolfsbane wrote: »

I still can't see how they retain their changes while interbreeding with the non-changed.

Well they do that anyway, even when death is a factor.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Again, you miss the point: my quote was of official RC dogma, yours was merely a cardinal's opinion.

It was the cardinal's opinion on how to interpret official RC dogma. The dogma, like all good religious dogma, is significantly vague to allow for various interpretations, including one where the passages refer to spirituality and spiritual death.

Being a Christian I would have though you would understand that better than most

wolfsbane wrote: »

No, I mean their science.

Science is independent of opinion and conjecture. As far as I'm aware Answer in Genesis has never produce science, so I'm not sure why you are comparing or contrasting the two.

wolfsbane wrote: »

So we see you would have no bother accepting the scientific work of an institution, even if led by money-grabbers. I concur.

None what so ever. The pharmaceutical industry would be classified as "money-grabbers".

I certainly would have bother accepting say the marketing department of a pharmaceutical company on the other hand, which is more of a appropriate analogy to a site such as Answers in Genesis. While the science is what it is, and is independent of opinion, that doesn't stop say the marketing department lying or misrepresenting the science for the purposes of making money. The marketing department doesn't produce the science.

wolfsbane wrote: »

The only difficulty you have with creationist institutions then is that you don't accept their scientific work as scientific, rather than rejecting it because you think the leaders are money-grabbers.

I have a number of difficulties with creationist institutions such as Answers in Genesis.

Firstly they don't do science (though I still don't think you understand what doing science is, so I doubt you will understand that point)

Secondly they misrepresent actual science for the purposes of either advancing a religious agenda, or in the case of AiG, making money (see marketing department of a large company).

Thirdly the put forward their own opinion and conjecture on subjects as being as valid as science, and get cross and annoyed and claim persecution when their opinion and conjecture aren't accepted as a scientific theory would be.

wolfsbane wrote: »

But yet you questioned their material on the basis of their supposed love of money - you are rather confused.

No wolfsbane, you are rather biased.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Go back to basics, and base your criticisms on principles that hold true for creationists and evolutionists alike.

Well that would require me to first accept your assertion that groups like Answers in Genesis act in the same way as groups like evolutionary biologists. Which is a falsehood, for reasons I imagine you either don't understand or reject because it isn't pleasing to your world view.

Zombrex

MooseJam wrote: »

All the big stuff of every religion happens after you are dead, you know the whole going to heaven and meeting god stuff, it's the same for every religion , it all happens after you are dead , you go to heaven or valhalla or whatever, common point is it's after you are dead, it's an amazing coincidence

Well its more that everything happens in a manner that is completely untestable in an serious or rigorous fashion. Physical heaven only happens after you are dead. Gods lives outside the universe. All the big events happen in the past. Future predictions are vague and don't give specifics that can be tested.

Any religion (its mostly cults) that has put forward claims otherwise have failed, because people have simply tested them and found they aren't as they claim they are.

Such set up is rather a requirement.

You can't have people coming along and demonstrating in a testable and verifiable way that your religion to be false now can you.

Flamed Diving

Wicknight wrote: »

Well its more that everything happens in a manner that is completely untestable in an serious or rigorous fashion. Physical heaven only happens after you are dead. Gods lives outside the universe. All the big events happen in the past. Future predictions are vague and don't give specifics that can be tested.

Any religion (its mostly cults) that has put forward claims otherwise have failed, because people have simply tested them and found they aren't as they claim they are.

Such set up is rather a requirement.

You can't have people coming along and demonstrating in a testable and verifiable way that your religion to be false now can you.

So in the evolution of religion, the gene for ambiguousness came to dominate the population with reason as natural selection.

:pac:

Zombrex

Flamed Diving wrote: »

So in the evolution of religion, the gene for ambiguousness came to dominate the population with reason as natural selection.

:pac:

The "meme" for ambiguousness certain.

MooseJam

Wicknight wrote: »

Well its more that everything happens in a manner that is completely untestable in an serious or rigorous fashion. Physical heaven only happens after you are dead. Gods lives outside the universe. All the big events happen in the past. Future predictions are vague and don't give specifics that can be tested.

Any religion (its mostly cults) that has put forward claims otherwise have failed, because people have simply tested them and found they aren't as they claim they are.

Such set up is rather a requirement.

You can't have people coming along and demonstrating in a testable and verifiable way that your religion to be false now can you.

yes, and the fact that it's not testable is a very strong indication that it's all just not true, am I allowed say that

PDN

MooseJam wrote: »

yes, and the fact that it's not testable is a very strong indication that it's all just not true, am I allowed say that

It's illogical and silly - but you're certainly allowed to say it.

MooseJam

PDN wrote: »

It's illogical and silly - but you're certainly allowed to say it.

It's perfectly logical , untestable ideas are just made up by people, I could sit here all night coming up with thousands of untestable ideas , you could do likewise, there's a parallel universe where monkeys are the dominant species, there are invisible elephants flying about the place, there's a teapot in orbit near mars etc etc untestable ideas are generally untrue, just the fact that it's an untestable idea means Christianity is probably untrue, doesn't that make sense. Can you come up with many untestable ideas that are more than likely true apart from Christianity ?

PDN

MooseJam wrote: »

It's perfectly logical , untestable ideas are just made up by people, I could sit here all night coming up with thousands of untestable ideas , you could do likewise, there's a parallel universe where monkeys are the dominant species, there are invisible elephants flying about the place, there's a teapot in orbit near mars etc etc untestable ideas are generally untrue, just the fact that it's an untestable idea means Christianity is probably untrue, doesn't that make sense. Can you come up with many untestable ideas that are more than likely true apart from Christianity ?

Thousands of years ago many things were untestable. Anyone positing the existence of black holes, the earth orbiting the sun, the theory of relativity etc would have had no way of testing them. However, that would have no bearing on whether they were true or not.

The fact that people can imagine false untestable ideas does not mean that all untestable ideas are false. That is an unwarranted leap of logic.