God is immutable, and thus can't change her mind. On the same grounds, it is also absurd that God would guide evolution via seemingly random mutations.
Great questions. I think it probably depends who you ask. And i'm not pretending there isn't dualism within Christianity. And I realize to the extent there is, it is in conflict with Buddhism. But as my Buddhist neighbor and I say to one another all the time: "on that we can agree to disagree." ahhh..very interesting. thanks for pointing that out. now what does it have to do with Kaley Cuoco?? right?? i know.
If we perceive these phenomena as random, then God could not be responsible for determining them individually. As I said before, God cannot change her mind, which means she could only determine the individual mutations by some eternal law. The law and its application to "random mutations" would be internal to the system of evolution, which contradicts the notion of an external creator-god.
If you're saying that God must act in accordance to some eternal law, than such a God's actions would be indistinguishable by science from Nature, wouldn't it? Whatever that eternal law is, scientists would eventually discover and incorporate into a scientific theory. I think God (if the idea of God has any meaning from apart from Nature) must have free will, and as such he can determine mutations as he sees fit. And it may be that we are incapable of detecting patterns in his choices. You don't think that makes sense?
No it doesn't. I think you're missing everything I've been saying. If there were a god, evolution is a matter of prospective and not confound same realms... science is science and faith is faith. There would no external law from the prospective of science and vice versa. Think of it this way, a book: A writer defines the story. Whatever's in the story has it's own set of rules laws. Harry Potter has magic, A pirate story is based in the 1800, etc.. with each respective characters understanding and living by it's rules. These rules has no baring on the writer. The writer gives writes a chance meeting between two characters, but we, outside the prospective of the book understands it's not chance. However, the characters will know it as fact, always was and always will be. In this sense, God doesn't necessarily changes His mind (though I may disagreement with you, since I'm not a Christian but rather agnostic leaning towards dualism), He made the story and we conform to it. So by the same token, if we were to study science, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to include the supernatural. It takes a little thinking about, but it's not my own theory. Unless something supernatural happens, that's the only way I can resolve an existence of a God.
Yes. No. God, an infinitely perfect being, cannot have will or make choices. Any choice God makes would necessarily be better than the alternative(s). But in order for God to have free will, she must be able to actually choose any number of alternatives, which would imply the absurdity that she could make an inferior choice. Some say that whichever choice is "better" is not itself determined until God makes it. This, however, would imply that God can change her mind, and thus her nature, which is impossible because God is immutable. This immutability, or inability to change, is necessitated by God's infinite perfection.
You're positing a creator-god that "writes" into existence a world with an internally consistent set of rule, as an author creates the rules of the world within her novel. That is not consistent with a god that would be able to change the accidents in genetic mutation, for reasons I explained in my response to durvasa. Just like a writer can't change her story after it's been printed, distributed, read, reread, etc., God can't change her creation once it is filled with the presence of being. If you accept that God is infinitely perfect--and I don't see how you could conceive a creator-god without that quality--then things cannot be otherwise than they are.
A Christian would be able to respond to this better than me, probably, but I think the idea is that God can choose to do anything. But God also always knows what is the best choice, and hence always makes that choice. That's what makes him both omnipotent and omniscient. You wrote that God's choices are not determined "until" he makes it. But as God exists outside of time, I'm not sure that makes sense. God's choices have already been made, for all time, right from the beginning. At least, that's how I understand it. Its hard for me to wrap my brain around the implications of his immutability.
If one could control the earth and weather and live for millions of years, He could pretty much shape the course of life on earth. Good point. Let me share my opinion on why: The closest relative in the conflict is astronomy with things like the Big Bang. I don't understand it all, but I and many others are more are inclined to accept it than evolution. There's less contention in part because the movement to displace Earth from the center of the universe started long before the Big Bang. One could say more Americans accept the Big Bang because of the numbers are more "solid", but it's the numbers and the vast scale of it that make it harder for people to grasp. What is ten billion years ago? What is a million light years away? When we compartmentalize the universe, is it a little bigger than our mental approximation of the size of the solar system? At Griffith Park Observatory in LA, they have a stand of Alpha Centauri. It's a sister exhibit to an English observatory that had our solar system in scale. So that 5,000 some odd real miles away from the closest star is the equivalent of ~4.3 light years. And the universe is what...a hundred billion plus light years wide? How the heck do we conceptualize that and apply it to anything meaningful? How do we cope with how small we are? For most people, space is a good story with great and imaginative pictures. The story of evolution is not that inspiring. Both examples challenge our human centric views, but here, the scale of time works against accepting evolution. Our lifespans average around three quarters of a hundred years, and most of us don't even know who our great grandparents were or did. Some living trees surpass the oldest known source of human writing. What will happen a thousand years from now, let alone a million? Moreover, we commonly hear of our impending doom as if civilization has a lifespan as intense and bright as our own lives. Isn't the Y chromosome going to shrivel up some time in the future? Are we at our evolutionary peak? When is the Day of Judgement coming? God's taking the earth with us too right? We accept enough to understand geological scale such as continents shifting away from and to each other, or that river can, over a long period of time, carve up something as deep as the Grand Canyon. But our humanity is in a different standing. We like to think (if one accepts the time) that it took 4.6 billion years to come up with Plato or Mozart. But all of it could've been by chance or a lucky mutation. There could've been life with our intelligence on earth a billion years ago, but just didn't make it. Even if they did, the earth's good at recycling and hiding evidence. That doesn't sound too great, meaningful, or special. To some, life itself or knowing it is not enough. When one has that doubt, it's easier to lean towards option B.
^^^^^^ Made me think of this: Hopefully, this seems crazy to most of you, even the ones who disbelieve in evolution. If you creationists want to know how you appear to the people who accept evolution, a good place to start may be thinking how these people seem to you. Unless you believe in a geocentric solar system. If that's the case, your just plain bat **** crazy.
The above has, whether true or not has nothing to do what what I'm trying to say throughout this thread. However: This is close and I don't disagree except you're missing my point. Accidents are "written" in our natural world and by extension, there are mutations and by further extension, evolution. IF god exist we can only see what is written and that the "rules" are as our science. Thus, we study biology as a science and not as a supernatural intervention, i.e. intelligent design. Even if there were, it's beyond our scope, just as a character does not, and will never know of things beyond our story. Same goes with the origin of the universe. It's not about whether god is perfect, etc... Whether or not the past, present or future is already ordained, is irreverent. It's about the intersection of science and faith.
All the other great apes have 24 chromosome pairs, while humans have only 23. This scientist is presenting evidence that one of our chromosome pairs is actually the result of two fused chromosome pairs from our primate ancestors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_(human) <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zi8FfMBYCkk&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zi8FfMBYCkk&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object> Can someone explain creationism, in light of this?
I did, I'll tell you what they said: they said that evolution was exactly how I have portrayed it... but in the time period of the earth's existence, the unlikelihood of the events I am talking about...2 random mutations happening simulatenously, coming together and mating, can occur given the long period time of the earth's existence. In the context of the chicken and the egg, the "chicken" came first. But the "chicken" in this case was actually a "bird". There can be 2 ways of this happening (i) 2 "birds" with the same mutation, came together and produced an egg (very rare) (ii) 2 normal birds produced two eggs, which contained a mutation within the egg, the two eggs hatched and the two "chickens" mated with each other (very rare) (iii) due to the long period of the earth's existence, either (i) or (ii) happened. My conclusion: sounds like a load of bull to me.
Why do the mutations have to mate together? Thinking from a genetics perspective, if a mutated gene is a dominant trait, it doesn't require its mate to also be dominant to produce mutated offspring.
let's assume what you say to be true.. think of human beings... if there was a mutation in the human sex genome the resultant progeny would most likely be sterile. mutations are generally BAD... one bird with a mutation mating with another bird without it will be more likely to create offspring who are sterile rather than offspring who become "better"
also the "fish crawling onto land" thesis is quite illogical to me. fish swim in the water to escape prey.. why on earth would "walking on land" mutation be selected for since it exposes them to predators more easily.
