On 10 Aug 2005 12:43:29 -0700,
Jim Spaza <spaza9@yahoo.com> wrote:

AC wrote:

On 2 Aug 2005 08:39:10 -0700,
Jim Spaza <spaza9@yahoo.com> wrote:

I am not comfortable with the conclusion that speciation can occur
beyond the genus or family level. Now, I can understand this
conclusion if science excludes the possibility of a Supreme Being
creating and tinkering with life on this planet. Without God in the
picture, what else could explain life as we see it?

Science has to exclude a Supreme Being, because how would one quantify a
Supreme Being's actions? Can you think of a test that would falsify the
claim that "Supreme Being did <x> to <y>"? What sort of predictions can you
make about a Surpeme Being's actions? What sort of observation or
prediction would be incompatible with a Supreme Being's involvement in any
phenomona?

Well, you could test each religion to see if it stands up to scrutiny.
As each religion fails, wouldn't the chance of God's existence drop, if
only a little?

If it was this easy, Jim, then I'm sure the true religion would be
worshipped by all. Reality is taht supernatural claims really can't be
tested, which while it may make a skeptic scratch his head, also gives
believers the liberty to think as they please.

But, if one religion had tests imbedded within it, that would make
things a lot easier. The Bible has promises of God within it which can
be easily tested, even by skeptics.

Yes, we know all about the prophesies, written conveniently after the fact.

But, you are right. We would have to define God somehow before
beginning any test. The Bible defines God very well. It defines what
He will do and won't do. It even defines how to communicate with God
on a personal level.

So you're saying the Bible actually defines God so well we can measure His
actions? Think very carefully, Jim, I think you may be stepping into the
realm of heresy here.

There is an obvious problem here. We are trying to use purely
scientific, natural-based tools for observing, testing, and measuring
God.

That is the point of science, Jim, to measure natural phenomona.

This can sometimes work as God does interface with the natural
world quite often. But, much of His interaction with human beings is
personal and spiritual. The subjectivity and lack of testability of
such person, spiritual interactions makes scientific testing extremely
difficult.

I'd say it makes it impossible. How could I tell whether a Hindu's
religious experience was legitimate and your's not, or visa versa? How
could I tell if your dreams were really angels speaking to you, or a
chemical imbalance, or just simple wild imagining? Do you really want oyour
faith dissected?

The Bible says that such interactions are intentional on God's part.
It seems that God wants each person to judge for themselves and have a
personal relationship with Him as opposed to simply being shown
objective proof of His existence, deciding to believe, and going on
with their lives. Apparently, God has designed knowledge and
experience of His existence to necessitate a heartfelt search by each
individual person.

This has nothing to do with science, Jim.

Such an arrangement makes one's belief in God extremely solid, but
makes convincing others' to believe without those others seeing it for
themselves extremely difficult.

I don't see how it makes belief solid, Jim. It could, from my perspective,
simply be self-hypnosis.

Beyond that, you haven't actually provided me with the required tests, but
have confirmed what I've been saying all along. You do indeed reject
science, but will incorporate certain scientific findings that you don't
find offensive.

Yet, my belief is that there is a God and that He did create all life.
Thus, you might understand why I see other possibilities (1000s of
common ancestors, humans being created not evolved, etc.) as to how
life came about and evolved rather than the
speciation-explains-all-life/abiogenesis conclusion.

The problem here is that, while there a lots of possibilities, science can
only go with the ones for which there is evidence.

Understood. We'd then have to discuss evidence for God's existence.

Determining emperically whether or not your deity actually existed would be
helpful. The problem is, Jim, that he is conceived in the Judeao-Christian
faiths as being an omnipotent being, so in reality I can't conceive of any
emperical test to falsify His existence.

I guess that we're at the point where neither of us will be moved in
our conclusions until this question of God's existence is answered...at
least, this is where I am in my thinking.

This has nothing at all to do with the existence of God. You've created a
false dichotomy. Nothing in evolutionary theory states "there is no God"
any more than there's anything in the theory of radioactive decay that
states "there is no God", and yet your acceptance of a 4.5 billion year old
Earth means that you (intentionally or otherwise) accept that the theory of
radioactive decay must have some merit, as it is the primary means by which
we date the Earth's formation.

Yes. I accept radioactive decay as a tool, if used properly, to
somewhat accurately establish dates.

So again, your acceptance of science is inconsistent, and appears to be
nothing more than cherry picking bits that fit within your theological
framework, and rejecting other evidence that doesn't.

But, the conclusions made by evolutionists are not made conditionally
on their being no God, no alien spores (example of non-religious
origin), or that not all the facts have been established.

Researchers into abiogenesis theory (which are just as often to be chemists
and biologists) will tell you that their theories cannot be absolutely
confirmed as being the means by which life started. Never the less, even
these theories work from the evidence we have for the conditions of this
planet somewhere between 4 and 3.5 billion years ago. These theories make
predictions, are testable and falsifiable, and interestling enough,
reproducable in a lab.

But abiogenesis is a separate (though related) field of study. Evolution
only requires that some sort of imperfect replicator already exist. Even if
God put the first self-replicating protocell on this planet, evolutionary
theory could still explain how its descendants evolved into the myrad forms.

The theory of evolution is taught as established, unconditional FACT.

No, that's not the case, Jim. Evolution is observed, therefore it is a
fact. We have a series of theories, including common descent, natural
selection and genetic drift, which attempt to explain the evidence. These
theories are based on observations, make predictions and are falsifiable.

Your whole view of science, of what you accept and don't accept, is really
quite inconsistent. You reject evolution, or at least a big part of it,
because it doesn't include reference to a Supreme Being, and yet you say "I
believe in a 4.5 billion year old Earth", when that age is arrived at by a
theory that doesn't reference a Supreme Being either.

But the dates of the earth's age are not conclusions themselves. They
are, more or less, provable facts.

Science doesn't "prove" anything Jim. The age for the Earth rests upon very
solid evidence, yes, but the age is still provisional, as with all things in
science.

That all life evolved from a single
bacteria over 2 billion years is a conclusion, not an established fact.

It is an obvious conclusion based upon the most ancient microfossils, the
conditions of the early Earth and the fact that all extant organisms fit
within a nested hieararchy demonstrating a common ancestor.

It's the same series of processes in determining past events as is used to
determine the age of the Earth, and in fact, the evidence of the earliest life
and the evidence of the more ancient epochs in Earth's history are
intertwined. You are attempting to separate them, because the age of the
Earth is convenient to your preconceptions, but common descent isn't.

I'll go out on a limb here and state that your rejection of common descent
has nothing to do with the lack of inclusion of a Supreme Being (something
that no scientific theory contains), but rather because it goes against your
interpretation of Genesis and the ancient Hebrew notion of "kind". You're
willing to accept just enough evolution to satisfy you that your
interpretation isn't utterly absurd, but when it comes to looking at the
whole body of evidence, you suddenly trot out some silliness about God's
existence.

Good guess, but not entirely accurate. If there is no God, then I
would probably believe in the conclusion that abiogenesis and
macro-evolution is why I am here.

The false dichotomy appears again.

But, since it has been proven to me
that there is a God and that the Bible is accurate, then I cannot make
the abiogenesis/macro-evolution assumption because I have a proven
better explanation.

Your explanation explains nothing. It cannot help us understand primitive
life. It is an exercise in handwaving solely to comfort your religiuos
beliefs.

You're correct about "kinds". That is a big reason for my genetic
island theory.

So, in other words, your "theory" has nothing at all to do with the
evidence, but is simply a bit of pseudo-scientific musing.

God's existence has nothing to do with it. Ignore any atheist that is silly
enough to say that it does. I'm an atheist and I know full well that my
position on God's existence is no more scientific than yours. Any atheist
that says otherwise is pretty seriously deluded about science.

God could do it any way He pleased, at least God as most Jews, Christians
and Muslims believe exists; that is an omnipotent, omniscient being. God
could have created every species separately with the appearances of
relatedness, or he could have been the Grand Tinkerer, nudging a gene here
and there to get what He wanted. There is an infinite number of
possibilities here, and each and every one of them just as likely from the
point of view that we're dealing with an all-powerful entity.

Considering the above, you seem to be an atheist who is more
open-minded to possibilities than others.

I don't know if I'm open minded so much as I have spent some time thinking
about such things.

Science can only deal with the observable, the measurable, the testable. It
is a tool for studying the natural world, for formulating theories to
explain phenomona based upon the evidence at hand. In that fashion it can
be used to weed out various assertions, but it could never weed out a claim
that boiled down to "God did it", because how could you test that?

Well, you would have to test the reliability of the religion from which
the notion that "God did it" was derived. Christianity can be tested,
even by skeptics. The Bible tells you how to do it.

I know of no honest way to judge a religion like Christianity, Jim. The
results of such testing would, I'm afraid, simply confirm what a believer or
nonbeliever already held to be true.

It isn't a rejection of God, it's a rejection of the notion that God is a
quantity that can be emperically tested. In short, science, all of science
mind you, including theories about the age of the Earth, does not go into
the territory of God's existence. That is not science's job, and the only
reason you seem to insist upon it is because science has not given you the
answer that you want in regards to biological evolution. You are quite
happy, it seems, to accept science in other regards, but in this singular
regard, you suddenly demand the inclusion of the Supreme Being.

Actually, I "demand" the inclusion of the Supreme Being into
everything.

Why, Jim?

It's certainly not my place to tell you what to believe, but I do think it's
important for you to explain what appears to be a very serious inconsistency
in what you accept from science, and what you demand of it. You have a very
severe case of cognitive dissonance, and it's going to cause you some
headaches here as you try to explain why science is trustable in some
regards, but in others suddenly can't be.

I have been called many things and been accused of having many
problems...but cognitive dissonance is a new one. :-)

Your acceptance of a 4.5 billion year old Earth and rejection of common
descent, with vague excuses about how geology is a "provable" while
evolution is not (betraying, I'm afraid, a serious problem with not
understanding how science actually functions) is cleary a sign of cognitive
dissonance.

Look at it from my standpoint, if only for a moment. If God's
existence as the Bible describes has been proven to me (I mean really
proven), then what would you expect my responses to be?

I would expect you to look at what you regard as "proof" and reconsider.

If my inherent skepticism, my need to see everything for myself, my
logical way of thinking, and my need for honestly at all levels has all
been satisfied in my belief in the God of Israel...

This has nothing to do with science, Jim, nor with your cherry picking of
scientific conclusions.

...then what should my response be to an atheist who declares that
science has proven that I evolved from a bacteria?

Again, science does not prove things. It is the evidence that demonstrates
common descent. It has nothing to do with atheism, and it seems clear to me
now that part of your ease of rejecting common descent is that you consider
it an atheistic theory, which is utterly absurd.

--
Aaron Clausen
mightymartianca@hotmail.com