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Author | Topic: Is Evolution the only option in a Naturalistic point of view ? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 284 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I would be curious to know what that statement is ? That the laws of nature are not violated. For example, all the observations I've ever made confirm the consistent operation of the law of gravity. One can't have better evidence than this. Therefore, if someone tells me that a friend of his has an uncle who saw an Indian guru levitate --- well, this is evidence too, of a rather lower quality. And if I weigh one set of evidence against the other, I find that the probability is that the guru did not levitate. How too too doctrinaire of me.
I consider something that if something truly disappears, it would violate the law of conservation of energy I'm hoping that that was a joke. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4640 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
That the laws of nature are not violated.
For example, all the observations I've ever made confirm the consistent operation of the law of gravity. One can't have better evidence than this. Therefore, if someone tells me that a friend of his has an uncle who saw an Indian guru levitate --- well, this is evidence too, of a rather lower quality. And if I weigh one set of evidence against the other, I find that the probability is that the guru did not levitate. How too too doctrinaire of me.
So all miracle reports are false because the laws of nature are never violated ?
I'm hoping that that was a joke. I defined what a miracle was: a violation of a law of nature. I then told a story that, if true, would be a violation of a law of nature (conservation of energy). The question is not wether my story is true or not (I know you think it is not), but rather if this is a legitimate report of a miracle (once again, if true), which you said it wasn't because it did not violate a known law of nature.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 284 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
So all miracle reports are false because the laws of nature are never violated ? To believe in a miracle, one would need stronger evidence for that miracle than for the law that it violates. To believe that a guru levitated by the power of his mind, I would need stronger evidence for that proposition than I have for the consistent operation of the law of gravity. Now my point is that I do have evidence for the latter. If I doubt the story about the experience of my friend's friend's uncle, this is not, as Chesterton claims, a conflict of evidence with doctrine, but of evidence with much better evidence. And you yourself, I believe, would follow this rule. Even believing, as you do, in the possibility of miracles, how much consideration would you give my claim if I were to tell you that I had just levitated? Even supposing in principle that the laws of nature could be supervened, that's still never the way to bet, is it?
I defined what a miracle was: a violation of a law of nature. I then told a story that, if true, would be a violation of a law of nature (conservation of energy). Blimey, you weren't joking. It would violate that law if, and only if, the supposed tumor vanished by virtue of the atoms that constituted it being annihilated. But there are lots of other ways for things to vanish. Ou sont les neiges d'antan? Did they violate the law of conservation of energy?
The question is not wether my story is true or not (I know you think it is not) And what you "know" is wrong. Why should I doubt your story? What I doubt is your grasp on physics.
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4640 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
We'll continue this later, but I'll just settle that last part:
Blimey, you weren't joking. It would violate that law if, and only if, the supposed tumor vanished by virtue of the atoms that constituted it being annihilated. But there are lots of other ways for things to vanish. Ou sont les neiges d'antan? Did they violate the law of conservation of energy? I don't know if your playing with words here, but that first description (atoms being annihilated) was what I meant by that the cancer had disappeared.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 284 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I don't know if your playing with words here, but that first description (atoms being annihilated) was what I meant by that the cancer had disappeared. Then you have jumped to a very strange conclusion. And one that is based on not a shred of a scrap of a scintilla of evidence ... proving once more that Chesterton was wrong.
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Meddle Member (Idle past 1270 days) Posts: 179 From: Scotland Joined: |
I don't know if your playing with words here, but that first description (atoms being annihilated) was what I meant by that the cancer had disappeared. Just to add to what Dr Adequate was saying, there are immune responses present to deal with the suppression and elimination of cancer. These usually involve the production of cytotoxic chemicals which induce a controlled cell death of the cancer cells. The cells don't just spontaneously cease to exist. Although this usually occurs in the initial cancerous cells, spontaneous remission in more mature cancers, when a detectable tumour has formed, is known.The other possibility is the x-rays damaged the cancer cells. X-rays have been used to treat cancer, and although x-rays are a much lower intensity, she did have three in quick succession. But doesn't this example illustrate the importance of a naturalistic point of view. We don't know the details of what is involved in spontaneous remission of cancer, so what we do is look at the evidence to try and understand. This understanding may lead to new methods of treating cancer. However, by assuming it is a miracle, how do you then proceed to understand the process, or do you simply accept that it cannot be understood?
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9076 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.7 |
Rejecting a law is, in my opinion, much more difficult than a scientific theory, as it is at the top of the ladder of science. I know this is off topic, but this statement just demonstrates the ignorance you and most creationists bring to the table. There is no hierarchy in science like this. Theories do not get elevated to laws.In a nutshell. quote: Read thisScientific Theory, Law, and Hypothesis Explained | Wilstar.com it might help you with your basic understanding of scientific laws and theories. Then again maybe it won't. Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
I don't know if your playing with words here, but that first description (atoms being annihilated) was what I meant by that the cancer had disappeared. Now THIS requires serious evidence to support. Disappear is really a laymans term, no medical professional would say "it appears the atoms that formed the cancer have disappeared from the universe", disintegrated or broke down would be a better term. The cancer broke down into lower components so it was no longer cancer. Same as if you took apart a car. The components are still there, but you no longer have a car. Now, cancer is one of the most difficult diseases to claim "miracle" on. Cancers do occasionally go into remissions and disappear. Or sometimes people pray like crazy and the cancer still takes its full course. Why Won't God Heal Amputees? provides a good overview of the problem. Some diseases(the ones that are difficult to track) have numerous claims of miracles, but then others(losing a limb for instance) are never cured by miracles. I believe this falls under the "God of Gaps" scenario. We have some gaps in our medical knowledge and whenever someone is cured in these gaps, its a miracle of God. However, we have numerous illnesses which are never cured. Lost limbs or genetic disabilities(show me a patient with trisomy 21 which was cured, now THAT would be a miracle or someone who regenerated an arm). Now, naturalism would suggest we dont claim a miracle cure on cancer because there is allot of things we dont know about cancer, and cancer reacts differently in different cases. This is a reasonable conclusion and is consistent with the fact that plenty of other horrible disabilities are not cured. If you wish to refute this, you would need to either explain what barrier is preventing God(whatever god you think did this) from curing the other diseases. It does not make much sense to think God will only cure some illnesses, while completely ignoring others.
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lyx2no Member (Idle past 4715 days) Posts: 1277 From: A vast, undifferentiated plane. Joined: |
Regarding your story (I first thought the miracle was the three, timely x-rays under the rationed, Canadian health care system.) . does it not bother you the all the right bits are there. And all the right bits are missing. The pious lady and her pronouncement that ''God didn't say his last word on all this!'' and a Dr. who agrees to having a miraculous case study on hand but appears to have done no follow-up. Surely modern medicine would find this a tad curious. Might want to collect the x-rays and stuff. You know, do some of that documentation junk. Or has the Canadian health care system replaced name brand documentation with generic anecdote?
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them. Thomas Jefferson
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9076 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.7 |
There is a lady I know very well that was diagnosed with a cancer by her doctor, who used x-rays etc. to identify it. Despite that she had the x-ray right in front of here, she refused to believe it and so went to another city to see another doctor so that he would examine her if she had a cancer. (Health care is free here in quebec, so she was paying herself a little 'luxury' haha) Same tests, same results with the same cancer at the same place. She still didn't accept it, and drove 2 hours to another hospital in another city, and was rechecked if she had cancer. Again, exactly the same results. Now seeing these three independant confirmations that she had a cancer, she finally accepted it. After scheduling here operation to have it removed, she said to the doctor: ''God didn't say his last word on all this!'' and left. Fast forward a month or two later, at the day scheduled for here operation. She was in the hospital elevator with the doctor, all set to go down to the operation room when a nurse came running to announce that the pre-operation tests had revealed that there were no more cancer. The new x-rays were totally different from the three previous ones, and the cancer had in fatc disappeared. When the lady turned to the doctor and asked: 'What happened ?' the doctor simply replied: 'It happenned exactly what you told me.' This was revealing because that doctor was not a christian at all, and yet didn't even try to explain what had happened. He had recognized a miracle when he saw one. Anyone can provide an anecdote. There are many places in this story where the facts could be altered. Evidence is what is required. Was this written up in medical literature? I think something like this would get some sort of mention. What is your proof the doc wasn't a christian? Seems like a convenient addition to me. Show me evidence. Xrays, testimonials from doctors, follow up exams. I am sure you have none of this and there is none. This not evidence. This is folklore until there is independent verification. Nothing more. Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 284 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Anyone can provide an anecdote. There are many places in this story where the facts could be altered. Evidence is what is required. Was this written up in medical literature? I think something like this would get some sort of mention. Spontaneous remission isn't that rare. The only surprising thing here is the stuff slevesque's made up, i.e. the cancer disappearing as a result of its constituent atoms being annihilated.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Dr Adequate responds to me:
quote: Incorrect. I took "naturalist" to mean "one who accepts that natural things have natural causes." Evolution happens to be one of those natural things and thus has a natural cause, but "naturalist" is not a synonym for "evolution." Note, even evolution accepts the possibility of outside interference: There is "artificial selection" in contrast to "natural selection." This doesn't defeat "naturalism." It simply points out that there are some things that are not "natural."
quote: You misunderstand. The Catholic Church certainly agrees that natural things have natural causes. They don't think that god creates stars: That's collapse of stellar nebulae. While the Church also thinks that there are other things out there that are not natural ("ensoulment," for example), they do not contradict the concept of naturalism. It's just that they think certain things aren't natural.
quote: But his comment was that "naturalism" was "atheistic." But the official position of the Catholic Church is "naturalism" and clearly they are not atheists. Naturalism can co-exist with theism. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Dr Adequate responds to me:
quote: Not quite. The creation of the universe is a non-natural occurrence in their view. Even science distinguishes the creation of the universe from the universe itself. That's why the Big Bang isn't about the creation of the universe but rather its expansion. Similarly, the origin of life is distinct from the diversification of life. That's why evolution doesn't discuss origins...that's for investigation into abiogenesis. And again, even evolution understands a distinction between "natural selection" and "artificial selection": Sometimes you do have outside agencies fiddling around with things. Just because humans have been involved with the breeding of their domesticated animals and plants doesn't mean that evolution isn't natural. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1404 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi slevesque, I thought I would give you my input on this question, in case you want to get back on topic.
We know that the universe has not existed forever, that is, it had a beginning, a start. Either be it the Big Bang or God creating everything, the universe hasn't always existed. This is a logical deduction from thermodynamics, because if the universe has an infinite past, then there should be no mroe energy 'transfer'. Unless the process that began it - be it an inflation event or god/s - is a intermittent but somewhat continuous or recurring event. "White holes" that "inflate" new materials\mass\energy into an existing system, extending the thermodynamic "life" of the universe in question. "Branes" could also provide a "ripple" effect, a wave of continuous creation of universe that spreads out within another dimension extending the universe (perhaps just not visible to us). However to reduce speculations upon speculations we can limit the discussion to what we know about the solar system, and how long it has existed. Age of the universe - Wikipedia
quote: So the universe that we think we know is ~13.5 billion years old, minimum, in the "neighborhood" that we can observe. We also (think we) know that the materials that make up the solar system, including the earth - the elements that are more complex than hydrogen and helium and lithium - have been forged in the furnaces of older stars that then exploded in super\nova events, releasing these higher elements into space to form clouds that can condense into new stars. Star - Wikipedia
quote: So it took the birth and death of older stars to form the materials that make up the earth before the solar system could form. Age of Earth - Wikipedia
quote: So we can be fairly certain that ~4.55 billion years ago the earth was condensing from a cloud in interstellar material left over from the nova death of previous stars, and was likely to be sterile at the time, due to the processes involved.
Knowing this, it seems that there are two option concerning the development of life: ... Now, in a Naturalistic, or atheist etc. point of view, there seems to be only one option: the second one. I come to this conclusion because there are no naturalists that I have ever heard of who are proponents of the first option. The secular naturalistic point of view is that life formed after the earth formed through similar "natural" laws that control/direct the formation of such things as planets and life. Whether this view is "atheistic" or not depends on your point of view - if you believe that the universe was designed in such a way that pockets of heavy elements like the solar system would form via created\designed laws of nature, and that life could form in certain conditions within such systems via created\designed laws of nature, then such a view is not atheistic, but theistic. Certainly we know that, like the heavy elements (heavier than lithium), there are pre-organic molecules existing in the far reaches of space, hydrocarbon molecules containing bits and pieces of such higher elements (sodium, potasium, nitrogen, oxygen, etc) providing a basis for the formation of carbon-based life as we know it. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/mmw/mmwlab/websitepdf/132.pdf
quote: Note that there is some skeptical discussion on just which molecules exist in space, but that there are still many molecules that are currently known. These molecules can form the building blocks for the formation of life through natural laws of chemistry and physics, so that in one sense the universe could be created in a manner primed and loaded to form solar systems capable of bearing life and charged with life forming systems. Certainly for theists that want to argue the anthropic principle, it is only a matter of widening the view of what is involved to include the formation of life, which can then evolve by fine tuned natural means to develop the diversity that we know on earth today, or similar, and resulting in the formation of an observer of the universe. Anthropic principle - Wikipedia
quote: It is something of a tautology that an observer within a universe can only form in a universe that can form an observer.
Also, it seems a logical conclusion from the fact that we know the universe does not have an infinite past, and so since animals do not pop out of thin air, the only option is that they evolved from a lesser state, and a lesser state, etc. up to a primordial soup. I have to be careful here and make a precision: I am not saying that Neo-Darwinism (as natural selection+mutation are the mechanisms of this evolution) is the only option, but only that evolution is. Well evolution is "neo-darwinism" - in science anyway, where "neo-darwinism is the result of the synthesis of "classical darwinism" with genetics, and where genetics forms the explanatory mechanism of how hereditary traits form and are passed from one generation to the next, the mechanism that was unknown in Darwin's time. And once again, we have the natural laws that govern the behaviors of things, laws that could have been part of the creation\design package, the anthropic essence within the created universe, the "fine tuning" necessary to form the observer. Genetic variation and natural selection inevitably resulting in increased diversity of the forms of life, striving to outcompete other life forms by a number of mechanisms, eventually resulting in the intelligence of the observer in at least one type of life. One could posit that life as we know it - from the world around us, from history, from prehistory, from the fossil record and from the genetic record - developed via evolution plus "X" (where "X" is some other non-observed process that "tweaks" the fine tuning of life to become capable of observation of the universe). Evolution is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. This is observed to be a virtually continuous process in all known life forms, such that there is no known population of organisms that are not visibly changing in this manner. Reproductively isolated populations of similar organisms will inevitably evolve in different ways due to (a) having different sets of new mutations causing new variations within the populations, and (b) living in different ecologies that cause different selection pressure on the variations within the populations. This too is observed to occur up to and including the point where speciation occurs - the division of a parent population into reproductively isolated daughter populations - producing new diversity in the process. The question is whether the process of evolution within populations and the process of speciation dividing populations, alone are capable of explaining all the diversity of life as we know it - from the world around us, from history, from prehistory, from the fossil record and from the genetic record - without involving "X" as an additional process. So far, it seems, there is no need for an "X" process to be included in the "natural laws" governing the formation of the observer. Whether those laws are "fine tuned" by design is still a philosophical\theological question, one not able to be solved by science. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4640 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
I'm replying to Dr.Adequate here, but it will adress many comments made after I was gone.
I just want to clear up the misunderstanding on the miracle anecdote. What I was trying to say was this: If it truly is a genuine miracle, in the sense that there really was a supernatural intervention, than it means that atoms have been annihilated. Now, I was not saying that this was the case, but that if it was a miracle, that was what happened. As many others have mentioned, other possible explanations is that there is some unknown physiological process that can make a tumour dissappear in less than two months (she also had regular checkups during that span with the doctor).
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