quote:

Originally posted by TXJIM:

I was talking about all of time. Back to the days of hunter gatherer societies that believed in magic to early civilizations with multiple deities, etc. This history of man’s evolving beliefs over time and across civilizations. Early Egypt, Aztec and Mayan cultures, the Far East and Middle East all have religious histories that show evolution and change but individually and as a collective history of man. Which was my original point about science and faith. If you discount all science because some science has been abandoned as false do you similarly discard all religion as some have come and gone?

I don't discount all science. Science is a pretty broad term. According to the Science Council, Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following systemic methodology based on evidence.
The practice of science has been incredibly beneficial to mankind, just medial science alone. I love aviation. We apply scientific principles to aircraft design to lift off the ground.
One of my biggest hang ups however, is when absolute statements are made saying science has proven something that cannot be observed or recreated.
That is not to say that science cannot or should not be applied to the pursuit of knowledge, such as, how old the earth might be. Go ahead, we will probably learn a lot of other stuff endeavoring in that pursuit. Who knows what advancements will be made, what new theories we will have, and what old theories will be proven wrong in the next 20 years as we apply scientific method to the wide array of scientific fields.
Science and Christianity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I have seen more and more where modern science is actually bolstering the case for what the Bible teaches...The global flood as an example. So as a Christian, me and "science" are cool...Just not everything that some people claim science tells us.

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Originally posted by Micropterus:

quote:

Originally posted by bogeyman:
MICROPTERUS - that is not...

But it started somewhere. And how do they start, if not by someone putting them in order, but randomly? For anything to evolve, there must be some information telling it to evolve. To comprehend information, there must be some intelligence. How does a non-living structure transform with no intelligence capable of interpreting information evolve into a living structure with that itelligence? To get bigger, how did a cell ever know to replicate itself?

In my view there must be an intelligent designer. Because I think it is impossible to get from randomness to order.

With my Lego dick example: that Lego dick was clearly designed. The chair he was sitting him when he told me that dick didn't put itself together. It';s ordered existence was proof that it had a creator. So he sat on a chair, on a floor, on a foundation, on the ground, on the earth crust, floating on a ball of magma, forming a sphere, orbiting a star, neither too close nor too far, riding around on the arm of a galaxy, among countless other galaxies. And his believe in a creator stopped at the foundation of the house. I think that's weird.

The burning need to understand things is an important human adaptation. Innate curiosity has propelled the species further than perhaps any other trait, right up there with the relentless desire to fornicate in terms of propelling us to dominate our world.

The capacity to invent and buy into explanations for things which we can’t comprehend is an integral part of that curiosity. I think it helps us feel secure, having an explanation, as the unknown makes us feel unsettled. There was a point not all that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, that humans were comforted by the idea of Helios transporting the sun across the sky in Apollo’s Chariot. That seems childish and ridiculous now given how much the average person knows about our universe....comparatively speaking.

I personally fill that unsettled feeling of not knowing with the belief that I simply don’t live in a time when that specific knowledge is within humans grasp. At the accelerating rate of discovery can you image what knowledge humans will take for granted a few thousand years from now.....if we haven’t managed to meet Para’s comet of course....

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TXJIM,

Micropterus - the YouTube video below is by Richard Dawkins, and discussed the evolution of the eye. It’s around 15 minutes, but is a pretty good and simple explanation.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2X1iwLqM2t0&feature=share

Sorry, I'm not interested in Dawkins. I've read enough of him, and listened to enough of him, that I've come to the conclusion that he's full of shit. His attacks on God and his attempts to talk people out of believing smack of someone who actually believes in God, but hates him, and thinks his tantrums and books are the best way to hurt God. He so un-atheist-like. It's the biggest giveaway that he isn't one. He fancies himself a postmodern intellectual but constantly levels straw man attacks on people's faith, intentionally misrepresenting the Christian faith, simply so he can knock those misrepresentations down. I've found him to be among the most intellectually dishonest of the postmodernists. In fact, he's not even really accept by most postmodernists. He's pretty much out there on his own.

Micropterus - Okay.....I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that, although you don’t like Dawkins, your mind is still open to see and hear facts. The link below is to a YouTube video by the BBC on the evolution of the eye. If you don’t like the BBC, there are more videos on the same subject.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dWFteFfg2J0&feature=share

For another resource, I highly recommend The Christian Research Institute (Hank Hanegraaff) The Bible Answer Man.

I am not a Theologian nor a Geologist, so therefore CRI is where I go to answer my questions.
I am confident in Hank’s solid biblical basis and research.

Books I have read that are very compelling as well.
More Than a Carpenter, Josh McDowell

Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell

On-Line Read and Listen:

Is the Big Bang biblical? (Article to Read)

Young Earth-Old Earth: Debating the Geological Evidence (Article to Read)

The Origin of Life and the Universe, and Q&A (Listen)

Christian Research Institute (CRI) Search for Origin (Multiple Read, Listen resources)

CRI Search for Big Bang

Okay, I watched that. But it's still filled with "could haves". And it doesn't speak the mechanisms involved in evolving upwards. "Maybe the eye got a small indentation." Okay. So, perhaps an eye suffered an injury and got indented and actually became more functional than the last eye. How does that translate into all future eyes? There would have to be something in that cell, eye, brain, or whatever, that recognizes that the change is good, and then changes a gene to replicate the "injury" as a modification in future organisms. That requires a high level of intelligence because it's not merely a recognition that it's good for me, but also that its good for future generations.

It goes back to the fact that there has to be some intelligence to recognize a need to change. Whether that is an unknown part of an organism's intellectual intelligence, or some innate intelligence in the cells seperate from intellectual intelligence, there has to be something that recognizes that a change is necessary. Nothing in science has explained that.

The great leap from clumps of molecules to life had to have carried with it that intelligence needed to continue to recognize a need for change. But that's completely illogical. Because lifelessness is devoid of intelligence.
When clumps of amino acids or whatever, with no life in them (thus no intelligence) became life, how did it acquire intelligence that it didn't have before, and how was that intelligence so advanced that it could guide it into present life forms?

There does not need to be an “intelligence” to make the change. The change that is more beneficial is the one that survives and as the organism reproduces that change becomes a part of the new/better/evolved organism. It doesn’t have to “recognize” that the change is good, or even that the change occurred at all. Because that change allows better adaptation to the environment, it survives at a higher rate than those organisms that do not have that adaptation.

There doesn't have to be intelligence to suffer a change. Like in the above reference, and injury to an eye injury that actually improves the function of the eye. But to recognize that change as worthy of replication in future generations, some decision somewhere has to be made to pass along the improvement. Otherwise, an organism that suffers a severed appendage would produce an offspring missing an appendage.

In the case of the injure eye, something somewhere has to decide: is this change an improvement or not? Do I heal this or leave it? Do I change my genes to pass along this alteration of design? That has to occur on some level. Otherwise, we're back to randomness.

Seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of how Darwinian evolution through natural selection works. Reproducible change occurs because the DNA changes (from environmental chemicals, radiation, but mostly from replication errors through millions of replication cycles). Most mutations are useless or even harmful. But given enough time (and we're talking millions of years) some of these "errors" are actually valuable. Meaning they confer an "adaptive advantage" to the organism that bears them, who now live longer and better than others of their species and thus can pass their gene patterns to future generations.

Species intelligence and decision-making have nothing to do with this process. Why it is called "natural selection". I.e. if you injure an organism, even if it's a beneficial injury, it has no effect on its genetic profile and therefore there's no way to pass on the change to offspring.

We're all the product of mutation and loads of time. Evolution is a long, passive process.

Bogeyman has got it right.

(By the way, I am a Christian.)

Silly me I forgot that link.

Evolution

^^My God, man...you've found the missing link??!!

What is scientifically true today may be found scientifically false tomorrow. Don't be too quick to judge current scientific dogma as being automatically superior and accurate to religious dogma without further consideration or evaluation. Until the mid-1600s, the prevailing scientific view was that the sun revolved around the earth. [Heliocentrism]

As late as 1902, the leading scientific minds thought that heavier-than-air flight is impossible. Those who believed in the impossibility included Thomas Edison, Lord Kelvin for whom the absolute temperature scale was named, Simon Newcomb who worked on the speed of light and discovered Benford's law, and many other thought leaders of the time. In 1903, the Wright brothers proved the prevailing scientific dogma was wrong. [Heavier-Than-Air Flight Is Impossible]

Up until the 1920s, the prevailing scientific minds thought the universe was static. Most notable was Einstein who developed his theory of general relativity between 1907 and 1915. But when Einstein realized his theory dictated that the universe must either be expanding or contracting, Einstein introduced in 1917 the cosmological constant concept that allowed for the universe to be static. Even after Hubble published the proof that the universe was indeed expanding, Einstein waited until 1931 to abandon the cosmological constant idea and referred to it as his greatest blunder in all of physics. [Who Really Discovered The Expanding Universe?]

In 1935, Albert Einstein did not believe anything can break the speed of light as theoretically indicated by quantum physics via the phenomena of quantum entanglements. Speed of light as the maximum possible speed is a given in Einstein's General Theory of relativity. Since then, experiments have proven that greater than light speed is possible and quantum entanglements (which is the phenomena of instantaneous communication over distances) is being used as the basis of a future much faster internet. The latest experiments has instantaneous entanglements occurring over a distance of kilometers. [The Quantum Internet Is Emerging, One Experiment at a Time]

In contrast, a snippet of religious dogma found in the Old Testament has unsheathed several significant scientific correlations regarding circumcision. In Genesis 17, the commandment was given to Abraham and repeated in Leviticus 12 to Moses every male child was to be circumcised on the eight day. There are other people groups that practice circumcision but no others specifies the eight day as when the circumcision is to be performed. It turns out that blood clotting factors are the highest on the eight day of a person's life and is 110% of normal. This was discovered by a non-Jewish doctor who specialized in blood research. In the first days of a newborn, the amount of blood clotting material is limited, sot that even a small cut is liable to cause serious danger to the point of threatening the newborn's life. Only on the eight day of life do blood clotting substances reach their all-time high - well beyond the amount that a normal human being will have for the rest of his life. [OF BRISSIM AND BLOOD CLOTTING]

To preempt the argument that the eight days was reached by trial and error, the odds against this is astronomical and would have endangered their bloodline and the number of males besides the morality of killing hundreds or thousands of babies by trial and error in search of determining the optimum day which was only confirmed scientifically within the last 60 years.

Furthermore, circumcision has been demonstrated to have medical benefits such as tenfold lower urinary tract infections, reduced acquisition of HIV, human papillomavirus which causes cancer, and other STDs. You could say this is just the tip of the available evidence. [Male Circumcision: Integrating Tradition and Medical Evidence]

I'm going to cut this short and end here. People are free to draw their own conclusions. I've listed several for-sure scientific truths that have later proven to be false. I listed one religious ritual with a specific seemingly arbitrary timing. It took thousands of years and a lot of progress for science to be able to catch up and confirm the wisdom and the optimal value of that timing. What is scientifically true today may be found scientifically false tomorrow. Don't be too quick to judge current scientific dogma as being automatically superior and accurate to religious dogma without further consideration or evaluation.

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
^^My God, man...you've found the missing link??!!

Not exactly.
The Missing Link is here.

Quick drift for Rey HRH:

I have read that a sterile neutrino can pass through the nucleus of an atom, neither knows the other is there. IE, matter can pass through matter.

And I also read re some deep space observatories witnessed a phenomenon that indicates light can exceed the speed light "but we aren't going there".

As I mentioned earlier, I believe in a Creator, and don't think the Creators level of physics is limited by our understanding.

quote:

To preempt the argument that the eight days was reached by trial and error, the odds against this is astronomical and would have endangered their bloodline and the number of males besides the morality of killing hundreds or thousands of babies by trial and error in search of determining the optimum day which was only confirmed scientifically within the last 60 years.

I wouldn’t say that the odds against it were “astronomical”. I’m certainly no math whiz but I would think that, assuming you would want to circumcise a boy when he was very young, that would narrow the choices down to a few weeks at most. Not all that much trial and error in the grand scheme of things. As for the morality of “killing hundreds or thousands of babies”, the Old Testament certainly has no trouble killing people by the thousands. Of course, they didn’t perform the circumcisions to prevent HIV, STD’s, etc. It was a matter of practicality. After a number of adult males started getting sand where it would be very uncomfortable, someone finally figured out a way to fix the problem.

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:
Quick drift for Rey HRH:

I have read that a sterile neutrino can pass through the nucleus of an atom, neither knows the other is there. IE, matter can pass through matter.

And I also read re some deep space observatories witnessed a phenomenon that indicates light can exceed the speed light "but we aren't going there".

As I mentioned earlier, I believe in a Creator, and don't think the Creators level of physics is limited by our understanding.

That was a mistaken observation in 2011. In 2012, it was corrected. Faster-than-light neutrino anomaly

But to extend the thread drift by just a little bit, speed is distance over time as you know. But we are still continuing to study the nature of time. Quantum physics is discovering that the future can affect the present and not just the present affecting the past. This is just one article that I just googled on the fly and I'm simply hoping it has the gist of what I've previously read. Can the future affect the past?

Time is something we experience only in the present. We only know of the past in our memory but we can't go back there just like I am currently in California and last year I was in Washington but I can still go back to Washington. But if the nature of time is still to be fleshed out then that means it affects the measurements that depend on it such as speed.

For example, we know what the speed of light is and it's a universal constant. But there are other theories that say the speed of light may not always have been what it is now especially in the early moments of the Big Bang nor will it stay the same in the future and may even be changing infinitesimally now.

I'm not sure if time is the fourth dimension that is the current popular way of thinking or whether it's just a proxy or derivative of the actual dimension that we can experience as "the passing of time."

By the way, thanks kkina for the shout out. You were far more articulate than I was on explaining the issue at hand.

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Originally posted by bogeyman:

quote:

To preempt the argument that the eight days was reached by trial and error, the odds against this is astronomical and would have endangered their bloodline and the number of males besides the morality of killing hundreds or thousands of babies by trial and error in search of determining the optimum day which was only confirmed scientifically within the last 60 years.

I wouldn’t say that the odds against it were “astronomical”. I’m certainly no math whiz but I would think that, assuming you would want to circumcise a boy when he was very young, that would narrow the choices down to a few weeks at most. Not all that much trial and error in the grand scheme of things. As for the morality of “killing hundreds or thousands of babies”, the Old Testament certainly has no trouble killing people by the thousands. Of course, they didn’t perform the circumcisions to prevent HIV, STD’s, etc. It was a matter of practicality. After a number of adult males started getting sand where it would be very uncomfortable, someone finally figured out a way to fix the problem.

You're missing the third leg of the triangle: Abraham had only eight sons. There's not that many specimens to perform the experiment on to determine the optimal timing and there is still the time to wait between determining whether a certain day was efficacious trying a new day.

And most of all, they wouldn't have detected that the clotting factor was at 110% on day eight but subsides to 100% the next day and maintains at that level for the rest of life.

Ignoring the majority of the back and forth in the thread...

Maybe I should apply to teach at your school!! 7th grade would be really fun!