What's Best Reconciliation of Gen 1 and 2 You've Heard?

Hey, for once I am in agreement with you nwr. I don't understand that either. Facts should match meaning or someithng is amiss in the worldview. Heart and mind should also match. Coherence is essential to any system. At the risk of getting off topic, thats the whole point of Ireducible Complexity.Back on topic, if evolution is true, the Bible is false! I tried to get around it for a long time by personally viewing Genesis as more symbolism and metaphor than fact. But I was against the wall, and was totally unprepaired for the philosophical clarity of the intelligent design arguments.Obviously I was 'pleasantly suprised', after-all, I hold my intellectual faculties in higher regard than I should have at one time. As it turns out (a former evolutionist here) I didn't know jack!Rob

---

Any biters in the stream?

''i wouldn't call blatant logical fallacies "philosophical clarity."''Logical fallacies? That's rather 'either/or' of you...And to another, You are half right. Biology is more complicated indeed. However, it is the increased complexity that is a problem for evolution, not the I.D. argument.The simpler the root components of a system, the easier it can be explained by chance and necessity. The more complex and interdependant the system, the more logically necessary becomes the need to invoke intelligence.For example, Darwin never proposed that a human being formed from chemicals out of the primordial oceans, because it is a logical absurdity. Instead, he imagined a simple one-celled organism emerging and then evolving.As it turns out, those one-celled organisms are complex enough that we still don't understand all there is to learn about them. The plot is thickening not thinning...Most envision DNA emrging in some simple form (some like Francis Crick think it came in missile from from elsewhere in the Cosmos) and then evolving into more and more complex arrangements. The problem is that DNA is not alive. It is a component of a system that needs almost all of the other thousands of components in place for the whole organism to be alive (i.e. an arm is not alive, without the rest of the body). And each component is a precise piece of a puzzle that is not within our capacity technologically to appriciate. In biology, we have technology at a level that a man cannot say is within his reach to grasp.Obviously, healing does take place, so you and I do not die if we lose a finger, but as a rule, biology is a fragile system and in an cosmological environment that is hostile to life, not conducive to it.Nature does it's best to kill, I have to invoke supernature to be intellectually satisfied, speaking for myself. You're all free to believe what you want, I just think you have more faith than I.As for the Bible, the only reason I didn't understand it for so long was because I didn't want it to be true...Rob

---

Any biters in the stream?

Actually, when computer systems are programmed with evolutionary algorithms to generate structures, they routinely come up with systems that behe would call irreducibly complex.That is an old and utterly absurd argument that a friend of mine gave me years ago.It is true that this experiment yeilded that result, but the result did not take place by itself... It took an intelligent agent to build the computer and design the software.Now, if it was proveable that we evolved... then you might have something there, but you cannot travel that path now, without using circular reasoning and I see your much brighter than that.If I may digress (though you will probably dismiss it automatically) chaos cannot produce order and order cannot produce chaos. Jesus explained this with clarity.Matthew 7:15-20
15 "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.That was one His warnings to 'us'...Rob

---

Any biters in the stream?

'''well, yes, it did. that is the nature of creating a model. someone has to make it, and using some tool. the "design" of it is meant to replicate natural occurances'''We're in agreement then. you just proved that a creation needs a creator. It's not complicated...

'''saying that "creation needs a creator" in this case is about like requiring belief in god to study mathematics -- because someone had to set those rules, too.'''That is correct if we want to believe they reflect reality. Most of us do, we just take it for granted and don't think about the implications. We do the same with morality (we take it for granted)as you have seen by now in the other post.Your going to 'get it' after all.Got to go to work bro...

---

Any biters in the stream?

Was anything you said factual, and if so, it is all meanignless to me...You think this... I think that. Well, then go away and keep your pivacy private. Personally I believe in community.

---

Any biters in the stream?

considering that i am a theistic evolutionist, i think you have less argument with me than you think.Very good! I was too for a long time, so yes we are very near each other.ok got to run boys and girls, duty calls. I enjoy the discussions...