Evolution vs Creationism

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Being an ex-cancer biologist, I go with evolution. There is insufficient data on creationism, won't comment on that.

 

Christianity does not predate Hinduism at all. Judaism does not predate Hinduism at all. Hinduism is one of the only surviving Indo-European religions left, along with Zoroastrianism and Buddhism. The rest were destroyed by Romanized Afro-Asiatic mythology. If you have to skew knowledge and facts to fit your beliefs then it is obvious that your view of reality is distorted by these beliefs you hold above reality and try to super-impose on to reality.

Wow you said a swear...ahem, anyway. Afro-Asiatic mythology, which was Europeanized (Im assuming you know what Europeanization is), which was then North Americanized (again, same assumptions...). In other words, mythology that was taken from one group, transformed and changed and adapted, and then again transformed and changed and adapted, ending up completely wrong and extremely out of context with what originally was the foundation of the beliefs in question.

Yes, technical indeed . I see again you have taken mythology to be literally true, tsk tsk. So can you actually prove this empirically? No, didnt think so. But then again, you cannot prove that blacks were cursed with a skin of darkness for their wickedness in pre-existence. While I respect that you hold these things as being true, they really actually arent true beliefs. This again is an example of knowledge vs belief. No matter how hard you believe that a red square is a blue triangle, the fact is is that it will always remain a red square and not a blue triangle, unless you cut the square and paint it blue...which is what Christians have to do with facts to make them fit their beliefs, instead of letting reality form their beliefs for them. Another analogy is those toys with the different shaped holes that only a specific shape can fit through, and no amount of pounding on a square will get it through the star shaped hole, no matter how much you believe it can be done.

At last, something we can agree upon. Respect...I to hold that belief, and Im glad we can agree upon even just this, because I think youre a pretty cool guy actually. I cannot prove it however, and it really isnt my area of academic research, so I wont bother...I will leave physics to the physicists. As a belief, I wouldnt consider it knowledge of any kind, so it is not worth anything here at the moment.

The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.--Deuteronomy 28:22

More amazing things here

Oh I fully agree, primitive people with small minds cannot fathom anything beyond their passions and superstitions. And even afterwards the people were not ready for peace and love...even to this day most wars are fought by supposed Christians.

Well, lets disregard the overwhelming evidence that humans are actually another species of animals...for the time being. Yes there are things that seperate us from the other animals, to an extent. So far all it seems to be is that we as a species devote a lot more time to thinking about things, calculating and pondering things. Now, back to the overwhelming evidence of humans being another species of animals...think about it. Look at the evidence, then think. What exactly separates humans from the other animals? Our behaviour. What is the part of us that controls our behaviour? Our brain. Not our soul, spirit, or any other non-existing thing. We are who we are because our DNA makes us to be such. Human DNA = Chimpanzee DNA...almost. If you really want though I can dig into my notes from my human evolution class I took this year...might take a while...

If you are talking about spiritual or mystical experiences, I too experience them a lot. However, I take the rational approach to explaining them. I spend most of the day doing some sort of meditation, and I have experienced the Kundalini Shakti opening up and my ego dissolving into the ocean of pure consciousness. Yet, I know what happened to me on a scientific level. It was nothing that no one else can experience. As I wrote in an essay for Religious Studies many years ago, "Mystical experiences are nothing more than temporary psychosis in the temporal lobes". And, yet, knowing what I know about science, and being a scientific philosopher scientist guy, I still open myself up to spiritual experiences all the time. I cannot help but having spiritual and mystical experiences during my labs, or during my field trips...and not just in biology labs, but also in chemistry labs too. Being spiritual is part of what makes us who we are as a species of animals.

Of course I do, because I know that they dont. If it was a belief that was shared by me alone, or even by a select few people (which could be thousands and hundreds of thousands) then I would say that it was just my belief. However, because it is not just my opinion and is a fact, act like I know it because I do in fact know it.

I would love to, but since souls dont exist, it is a bit hard to prove that they exist by testing them, since, you know, they dont actually exist. All you will achieve by testing is that they are absent.

Well, maybe I should ask you to stop trying to pass off your belief in souls as knowledge. Does this criterion you have imposed on me also apply to anyone else who agrees with you concerning animals (including humans, obviously, since we are animals too) and the existence of souls? If not then it should, because I see Christians on here passing their beliefs off as being knowledge all the time, and for some reason its ok for them to do that. But not for scientists it seems.

 

Hmmm.....I could have sworn that I titled this thread as thread as 'evolution vs creationism', not 'do souls exist'....

 

The lack of the existence of souls is part of my 'reasons for why I know evolution is true' evidence thingy thing. My argument is: "if the theory of evolution is true and we share a common ancestor with the other great apes then we are just another animal species, then we have no souls or spirits because we are not created in the image of any god, and therefore christianity and evolution are not compatible".

It has since move off on various other tangents that I think are less to do with evolution vs creationism than my current 'humans are animals and have no souls' arguments.

If any creationists have any empirical evidence that is not faith based or belief based, then feel free to go ahead and post it. So far the burden of presenting evidence and empirical proof has rested solely on the scientists, and as expected little of it has been accepted by the creationists solely on the ground of 'it goes against my beliefs which I hold above reality and try to super-impose on reality using mental gymnastics'.

 

I've noticed that nobody on here has said that they solely believe in creationism...I wonder if they're too scared to come out?

 

Im just glad no one has shown themselves to be a Kent Hovind fan or a Ken Ham fan.

 

Nataraja, that makes a lot of assumptions. And most of them are bad ones. First off, as I have said on these boards hundreds of times, lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack. That means that, just because you can't prove it is true, doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true. On top of that, if we evolved from great apes, then we changed between being great apes and being human, obviously. This means the addition of some features and the removal of others. Aside from your blind claim that souls can't exist because we can't prove they exist, who's to say a soul wasn't one of those changes? Arguably, it didn't even need to be associated with genetic changes if the spiritual level is seperate from the physical.

And the question wasn't 'prove there are souls', but rather 'prove there aren't souls'. If souls can exist, and if they can be added to certain creatures that didn't have them before, then there is no contradiction between the Biblical account of creation and modern evolutionary theory.

 

Can you explain that more fully? Because I feel that it's one of the things that makes us human, not animals. Only through self-examination and self-knowledge can one have a religious experience, for the most part. I'm not really sure if animals have the ability for self-reflection, and hence, knowledge of the self.

Sort of, you are really allowing your conscious self to integrate with the unconscious, the only major source of religious experience. Your conscious self through the unconscious, has encountered a primordial archetype; the sense of "ocean" and dissolving into it. Just as man, or all life coming out of the ocean, is another archetype, and also like the "big bang" that some believe formed the universe. All these archetypes are already latent within the unconscious self. It is the medium through which we communicate with God.

This is a fearful idea and one that is unpopular, as Jung often pointed out. Because it is a hidden part of our psyches, that for the most part, of which we have little self-knowledge. How else does God hear us in prayer? Do people really believe that their thoughts just float through the air and God just snatches them? Or that he reads our minds all day? The unconscious part of our psyches is a built-in medium for such experiences. The ancient prophets often "dreamt" things that came to pass. Again, it is when the unconscious is an active part of our pysches through which symbols and dreams are expressions of such experiences. Look for yourself, Nataraga - these archetypes are all over the world map, in many places and in many times. But these archetypes also illustrate the universality of God.

http://aras.org/

 

Again you misunderstand...humans are a species of animals, to be human is to be a member of our species, and part of being human is experiencing all of the things humans experience. As a member of our species we are capable of many things other animal species are not capable of. Other great apes are self-reflective, this can be clearly seen in quite a lot of studies done on them. Also, dolphins and other cetaceans are for the most part just as self-reflective as humans are. Anything that passes the mirror test is self-aware. Humans are not the only ones who are capable of this self-awareness. There are also many other species of animals that can do things that we cannot, most of them have adaptations that surpass our own adaptations in every way...except for the brain adaptations. Our sense of smell is poor, our hearing is poor, our taste is poor, but our vision is good, and our dexterity is good too. As a result of having poor smell, taste, hearing and being a lot more fragile than most other species, our brains adapted to give us the edge over the species that hunted us. In other species it was speed, sharp claws, certain metabolic adaptations, and so on. But in our lineage it was almost entirely adaptations of the brain that lead us to being who we are today.

Also, when I say we are an animal species I dont imply anything like us being barbaric or uncultured or backwards, nothing derogatory in any way. All I am implying is that we are just another organism on this planet, much like any other, and that we are not made in the image of any god. All of what makes us who we are is a result of evolutionary pressure on our ancestors and natural selection. The life our ancestors lived was demanding in the extreme. For most of our evolutionary history we were far from the top of the food chain, far from being the hunter we are now. We were prey for many species of carnivore. Those who could not outsmart the proto-lion (or maybe lion, not sure exactly if lions were at their present evolutionary point at the time) would be food. Those who could not run fast enough...food. Those who were unable to make efficient tools...food. The pressure on human ancestors was intense, it was nothing like what our relatives on the otherside of the African continent experienced. However, the ecology crafted us into who we are today, it allowed us to even out survive a cognitively, culturally, and economically superior cousin, the neandertal. Our evolution made us into the most successful chordate species on the planet. So as far as animals are concerned, we did our ancestors proud.

Obviously not. We did not evolve from great apes, we share a common ancestor with great apes because we are great apes. Humans are a species of apes. Apes, however, is a general term. There is a significant difference between homo and pan, for example, but there are more similarities than there are differences. All that really changed between our lineage and the other great apes is a few biochemical reactions and metabolic pathway changes, a few other changes which are related to things such as blood clotting and other protein specific changes, but most importantly, in our lineage, somewhere along the line, two chromosomes that are separate in the other great apes were fused together, giving us 46 and leaving them with 48 pairs. Two nifty markers chromosomes have are telomeres and centromeres, the telomeres are at the ends, and the centromeres are in the middle. In human chromosome 2, the sequence goes 'telomere, inactivated centromere, telomere, telomere, centromere, telomere'. They match precisely with the corresponding chromosomes which remain separate in other great apes.

My claim is not blind, it is empirically testable. Also, which part of the DNA codes for the soul? Is it perhaps in the fusion site on chromosome 2? Not even so. Reason for there being no soul basically comes down to our biochemistry. All that we are, in a simplified manner of speaking, is self-arranging molecules in water medium. For example, our cell walls are for the most part a phospho-lipid bi-membrane, consisting of hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts to keep water that is outside the cell and water that is inside the cell separate. In water, the basic components of life, all the biochemicals, self arrange due to the chemical properties of the molecules and the way in which they form bonds or repulse each other. As you go up at every level of complexity, there is no soul present. There is no soul at the biochemical level, at the organelle level, at the cellular level, at the tissue level, at the organ level, and so on, right up to the organism level, or even so far as the population level, or the biome level, or the ecosystem level, or the biosphere level. There just simply is no soul or spirit animating life, it is not present, it is not needed. Life is self arranging organic molecules in water. Molecules that have an affinity for each other, for the most part, and for water, or have an affinity for repelling water. It is just that simple. Life is part of the carbon-fixing cycle of the planet. That is all it is.

Assumptions assumptions...

What you are claiming the soul to be is nothing more than our sophisticated brain. Cartesian duality will get you no where, there is no homunculus inside us. The body and the mind are not separate, and there does not exist any form of duality in our bodies. The mind is firmly in the brain, the mind is the product solely of the brain. One of the many ways to test this is to damage the brain in certain areas. A specific injury to a specific part of the will have a predictable result. Another way is to alter your brains biochemistry, a classic way to do so is to smoke cannabis or smoke opium, both of which are molecularly similar to biochemicals our brain and body makes, but both of which are dissimilar enough to produce a noticeable affect on how we perceive reality. Another way to test whether the brain is the source of the mind alone is to sleep and dream, your brain is working in a different way during sleep, and so your consciousness is altered significantly. Hence your dreams are often of the nonsensical kind. While it is true that you cannot reduce consciousness down to a single neuron, you can reduce conscious choices down to 20 (or maybe even less now if my data is outdated, which it probably is) neurons in completely separate areas of the brain. There are still a lot of mysteries concerning the brain and the mind, but relegating it to the area of religion and claiming it is souls or spirits is going to advance our understanding of the brain and the mind by 0%.

 

@Nataraja...what makes humans different from other animals is the mind. We have the ability to discuss things such as this thread and I know of no other animal that can. We have the ability to think beyond our immediate needs and to create some very advanced things and philosophies.

I can sit here and type this and read the posts because some human or humans came up with an injection that has helped my vision. It was not created by a chimpanzee or an ape but by a human being.

As to the argument over 'First Cause' we can keep going back and saying this created that and that created this and on and on. Either the Multiverse is a circle or in some form it has always existed. Nothing begets nothing so to have something it needed something or someone to cause it.

Personally I don't care what that something is called. I find rigidity in either religion or science distasteful.

 

Exactly, and the mind is solely an emergent property of brain activity. This is something which is testable empirically.

Controlling Robots with the Mind: A Vision of the Future
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Monkey Think, Robot Do

Indeed, it was created by a human, who is a great ape, just like the chimpanzee.

Well, the only rigidity in religion or science here at the moment is from the creationist side. The science used by the supporters of real evolution, ie not the 'mind-first top-down evolution', is fluid, it changes as we find new data and learn more about the universe. However, the likelihood of things which are observable constants being suddenly found to be either unobservable or no longer a constant is extremely unlikely. This is the beauty of knowledge over belief, consistency. Knowing that no matter what, no matter what tests you do, no matter where in the universe you do the tests, the results will be as expected. Science is all about making models for how things work, really work, not how they might work. Junk like souls has no place in science because it does not help us explain how the mind or life itself works. It is not testable in a lab because there is nothing there to test. However, you can deduce from all of the scientific research done in biology, in nearly all the diverse fields of knowledge, that there is no mystical soul ensouled in any form of life on this planet. However, as soon as you start getting into dogma, doctrine, assumed beliefs, faith, prayer, or anything else from religion, you have switched your mind off from what is real and you have instead said to yourself 'I believe this, I will not change despite any evidence presented to me'. When you base your view of reality on unfounded beliefs, no matter whether they are religious or pseudo-science, you will in effect be seeing a very distorted view of reality.

Does any one have any hard scientific objections to evolution? Does anyone want to debate allopatric or sympatric speciation? Or the Hardy-Weinburg principle? How about genetics? Or does any one want to debate the application of evolutionary theory to every day life in various sectors of our society?

 

I would imagine that a big enough hammer would just break the toy into enough pieced that they could fir through any surviving hole...

Actually, I never studied biology beyond Grade 10 Science because I felt queezy during disection. But my point from the begining of the thread has been that God oversaw the process of creation, and that Science has given us a much more detailed view of what happened...

The Scribes and Pharisees were not prophets, so their edicts are not divine, but are recorded as they were part of th ehistory of ancient Israel. Lacking advanced knowledge of medicine, they misinterpreted the symptoms of illness from eating certain foods as a divine punishment. This was simply a civil law based on public health concerns, not a divine edict. This was contained in much of Deutoronomy and Leviticus (likely Numbers as well).

Just as your study of Science started with the basic, simple principles as reading, writing and mathematics, the way the Lord wanted His people to behave also had to be taught in such a way. The first principle was Faith--Faith to know that God lived, would send His son to redem them, and to obey His commandments. At some point, Society was ready for the next lesson, and so Christ was sent to Earth for His mortal ministry. And so Christ taught the people.

As for your point about the abuses of Christianity, this stems from a misrepresentation of one of the Ten Commandments. Thou Shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. This has been traditionally interpretted to mean that swearing was forbidden. Another interpretation would be that it is wrong to claim Divine justification for your own vain agenda. This makes the crusades, Spanish Inquisition or Salem Witch Hunts violations of this commandment...

But the existence of souls neiter proves nor disproves the theory of evolution. Likewise, the theory of evolution neither proves nor disproves the existence of souls.

If you take modern humans as the "final state" of our species, having changed little over the timeframe covered after Genesis 1, then you have not proven that we are not in the image of God, thus you have failed to disprove Christianity.

My experiences have been consistent with what I was told I would experience, thus it supports the faith that I defend here on these boards.

 

Nope, most of those that know you are wrong are not on the creationist side, just the sensible side. You are worse than the most religious zealot i have ever seen in your BELIEFS, because contrary to all your spouting of nonsense you haven't yet proven anything.

I'll answer this one with your own answer :

Of course i do(know that souls exist). If it was a belief that was shared by me alone, or even by a select few people (which could be thousands and hundreds of thousands) then I would say that it was just my belief. However, because it is not just my opinion and is a fact, i act like I know it because I do in fact know it.

See nataraja, your circular logic can be made to fit any argument.
As others have stated numerous times, lack of proof is not the same as proof of non-existance. From someone that is a scientist i would have expected you to know that.

 

My beliefs? Oh, you mean my knowledge. I dont doubt that I have not proven anything, because people do not want to acknowledge the evidence. The only people here with beliefs are the creationists and the 'God controls evolution' creationists. The proper evolutionists are the only ones with knowledge.

No, you dont actually know...this is a baseless belief, no grounding in reality whatsoever.

Emphasis is on belief here. IF my knowledge was just a BELIEF then I would have said that it was a BELIEF, not something that I KNOW. I am saying here that if it was just a belief I would have said it was a belief. On the few times I have stated my beliefs, I have said that they are just my beliefs. On the other hand, when I know something is fact, I state that it is fact. Lack of any souls in any organism on this planet is one of these facts.

Indeed, it is not just my opinion, or in other words, just my belief. So of course I will act like I know something to be true if it is indeed true. Wouldnt you?

Any logic can be made to fit any argument, but the conclusions wont be true. Hence, when you applied my admittedly circular logic to your argument, the conclusion was false because the premise was false.

Indeed I do know that. However, what I am arguing here with the non-existence of souls is that there is actually nothing there...there is ACTUALLY nothing there. Until anyone can show that this is otherwise, I will continue to state that this is the case because all evidence points to souls being non-existent.

So, martaug, can you prove the existence of souls? How is it that you KNOW that they exist? How is it that you know that your knowledge of souls is not just your BELIEF?

Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at UCSD, discusses consciousness, qualia, and self. (oh but its just a SILLY video clip, right martaug?)

 

And that difference is quite profound. Nevertheless, my view of science is reduced at this point if your comments are true, and I certainly don't doubt you. If science really views people as "apes," then it really can only understand the human experience in its most basic operations. It's almost like a child's view of reality, only able to make sense out of the basic, ignoring what is sublime, yet subtle.

Nevertheless, I'm curious how animals are self-reflective. Again, I don't doubt you, but we organize our "image" of the self, as processed by the ego, or conscious self, through language; we organize much of what we reflect upon by words. Certainly in the unconscious, archetypes extract a range of responses, somewhat like instincts must with animals. And we build them into much greater constructs. For instance, if you encounter the symbol of the Holy Grail, it carries with it a full range of concepts and emotions for exploration, ranging from basic, raw emotions, (even sexual), to the spiritually profound (as divine grace); to the most sophisticated language we can bring to bear upon it as an object as the quest for greater meaning (T. S. Elliot's "The Wasteland," as an example).

 

Watch the VS Ramachandran video clip, he makes more sense than me, Im just an undergrad.

And apologies to Americans if they cannot understand what he is talking about. I sometimes have trouble myself as a kiwi (Im not Indian btw).

Also, sometime when I am at university next and get around to paying my fine, I will get out again the Phil. Transactions of the Royal Society B journal issue on the evolutionary development of the human mind through the manufacturing of tools etc. Maybe I could scan a few articles to pdf, or maybe I can find some of them on the internet. Its fascinating stuff, and some times I wish I was still studying it, but Ive found biology to be much more enjoyable than anthropology and philosophy.

Found it here...
Theme Issue ‘The sapient mind: archaeology meets neuroscience’ compiled by Colin Renfrew, Chris Frith and Lambros Malafouris

 

No, you are doing very well. You are presenting the scientific view of the "human quailty" in a very logical and educated manner. But it is more that we are discussing what is really important in the human quality, rather than just the tired argument of "evolution vs creationsim." For me it's not that important, (that just makes me yawn - zzzzZZZZ), but we are more concerned with the qualities that make us human, at least that's how I see it.

 

Why thank you, you have given me the warm fuzzies.

 

No nataraja, you don't know that for a fact, you choose to believe that it is fact.
You are exactly like every zealot that believes that what he thinks is the one & only truth.

Just like you KNOW that your religion is older than any other. Complete & utter

Neither you or anyone else can prove that their religion is the oldest, at least not until someone invents a time machine to go back & observe first hand.

You are blinded by what is known AT THE MOMENT, which isn't to say that it is the truth. 50, 100, 200 years ago scientists & scholars absolutely knew facts that have since been proven false, just like in another 50 years, many of the things that we(as a society) absolutely know to be true, will turn out not to be(or only a small part of a larger thing that we had no idea of).

 

You must really love your belief in souls. Not once have you ever given any fact or empirical proof that souls exist. I have given a lot of evidence for why they do not exist. The burden of proof lies with you now. Prove me and the rest of the scientific community wrong.

You are right. But, I never claimed my religion was the oldest, I said it was older than Christianity. This, again, is a fact, not just my own personal belief. Go an talk to any student or professor of Indo-European studies, ask them if you dont believe me.

How so?

Prove me wrong about souls then, go ahead.