Creation vs. Evolution

[H2Andy]

oops... i shouldn't have said "your" logic, i meant adza's logic

it was his metaphor i was commenting on

 

[agilis]

Adza, the concept you describe is known as Pascal's Wager. Blaise Pascal, a famous 17th Century mathematician who almost certainly could see through the silly religious beliefs of his family and society, but who was unwilling to act on that insight, devised exactly the construct you summarized, to justify his continued adherence to the patently absurd.

 

[sandjeep]

My job is taking much of my time, but quickly,

H2Andy said
hair on our head evolved to keep the head warm and it helped survival, particularly in cold climates

I'm confused, what did we look like before, according to ToE?

 

[Kim]

That's why I don't bet....so if the rules of Christianity apply, I better start investing in asbestos.....

I wouldn't worry...

If we needed it I'm sure it would have evolved by now!

As for the earlier question about the evolution of spirituality, who says it's contributing to anything in evolutionary terms? It hasn't been round anywhere long enough to have any chance yet of making any noticeable effect on evolution. 5000 years is really nothing in evolutionary scales. That's just an example of the self importance we seem to attach to ourselves in the greater scheme of things. The real question to me is whether it will still exist in another 5000 years. It's just my opinion but I'd guess that if we'd still be around then we'd have long outgrown religions, or at least perceive spirituality in a very different way, or we wouldn't have made it that far as we destroyed ourselves already because of basically...religious differences.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Intelligence is the capacity. Natural Selection produced intelligence. Ideas come from intelligence. People have lots of ideas. God(s) are/is just one of those ideas. I have lots of ideas all the time. That doesn't mean that each idea was a result of some evolutionary process. They are just ideas that stem from the level of intelligence that we posses. My cat has ideas, too...I can see her thinking all the time, but those ideas are less sophisticated than "God" or building a bridge or programming a computer.

What's an idea?

It seems to me that if there's no God and no sole (is that the way it works?) and life sprang up out of the ooz by a pure chance combination of chemicals, that a "thought" is just a biochemical reaction. It would think that it must have a cause.

 

[Snowbear]

third example:

hair on our head evolved to keep the head warm and it helped survival, particularly in cold climates

Sooo .... I gotta ask .... if people evolved from hairier primates, of what benefit in cold climates was losing all the body hair?

 

[adurso]

Personally, I find it interesting with evolution that it is the only 'science' that ignores the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

I don't buy into evolution, and from what I've experienced - science disproves the theory of evolution more than it adds credit. (Especially when you start looking into Quantum Physics). It's just that "he who speaks loudest" is heard, and in this modern day and age the schoolbooks and TV documentaries are full of evolution statements. It's part of our human trait that we normally believe what we hear most of.

However, in the end - it doesn't matter what anyone believes - truth is truth.

If the truth is that there is no God, and we all 'end' when we die - it doesn't matter what we believe, we all end up the same.

If the truth is that there is a God, and we end up in different places when we die - then it does matter what we believe / do - as it will have a large impact in the future.

So - if 2 offers are given:

1) The chance to win everything, but you can't loose - the worst is you leave with what you have, but the chance is there for you to winall, or

2) The chance for you to loose, and the best you can hope for is that nothing happens at all

... I know which one the prudent betting man would go for.

Second Law postulates an isolated system; biologicals are not isolated systems. There is a school of thought that does look at biological fecundity as opposing the second law, read Rod Swenson's essay on Thermodynamics, Evolution and Behavior. Simply stated the planet is viewed as a population of one, all systems are autocatakinetic and minimize potentials to compensate for internal ordering, the world selects dynamics that minimize potentials at the fastest rate given the constraints and will select order because ordered flow produces entropy more rapidly than disordered flow....

This is a different viewpoint but does not negate natural selection by any means..

How does Quantum Physics disprove this?

A 2x2 matrix seems rather simple to bank upon.....

 

[sandjeep]

Sorry to pipe in Mike,

Agree that *IF* evolution were true, then thought is just a reaction to chemical changes and zero free will can exist.

 

[MikeFerrara]

lol

frontal lobe, my friend

it's all about the frontal lobe

and then what you get is "potential" you have to develop. now, whales appear to have rather complicated language-like abilities, so ... i'm not saying they're dumb, they just can't, for example, develop fire or start a farm, since they live in water.
thus, their environment limits how much they can use their potential.

frankly, without primate-like hands to manipulate the environment (or the like), i don't see even the most potentially smart animal developing abstract skills to the level humans have.

it's sort of a cumulative effect: we're smart, so we do xyz, which makes us smarter, and then do abc which we coudlnt' do before, and doing that makes us smarter, which allows us to come up with nmp, and so on...

I only had time to do a little looking but I haven't been able to find anything that really correlates intelligence with the size of the frontal lobe or, for that matter, any specific physical attribute.

 

[mislav]

I'm still waiting for any one of the creationists to give me an answer to this question:

If the whole point of Christianity is about Jesus coming back from the dead, why not let science get some recognition for proving it's own, bacterial - Jesus?