There are two aspects of evolution that raise issues for religion. One is the obvious conflict between the theory of evolution and the traditional literal reading of Genesis. If, as traditionalists assert, the Bible gives us a comprehensive genealogy of the human race, then the age of not only "the earth" but also the heavens can at least approximately be calculated, and it comes to about 4004 B. C. (at least, that is what Bishop Ussher thought). That, of course, conflicts with evolution, but it also conflicts with garden-variety astronomy, which teaches that distant stars can be a million light years away. This site attempts to answer that question on behalf of the traditional reading of Genesis. But such a reading of Genesis was rejected not merely by moderns who have been shown the problems with this by modern science. It was rejected by St. Augustine, hardly someone running scared from modern science.
The other, and more serious issue, is that evolution attempts to provide an explanation of speciation which replaces design with a trial and error process without design. At least in theory, you should be able to get to any level of sophistication in the engineering of the human body through genetic replication, natural selection, and, of course, enough time. So we can't go as easily as believers would like from what looks like the tremendous engineering of the human body to an intelligent designer, much less a creator. What looked to even our eighteenth century forbears like overwhelming reason to believe that there was an intelligence behind our universe (even for deists, who claimed that God created and designed the universe, but did not interfere in its operation, and did not incarnate himself as Christ to save the world). Even Hume, depending on how you read him, seems to cave in to a very denatured form of the design argument at the end of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. But ever since Darwin, the sledding has been tougher for arguments from design to a Designer of the world. Some of the most popular forms of the design argument today make an end run around evolution, and look at the cosmic constants in place at the Big Bang, which, by definition cannot be products of an evolutionary process.
The other, and more serious issue, is that evolution attempts to provide an explanation of speciation which replaces design with a trial and error process without design. At least in theory, you should be able to get to any level of sophistication in the engineering of the human body through genetic replication, natural selection, and, of course, enough time. So we can't go as easily as believers would like from what looks like the tremendous engineering of the human body to an intelligent designer, much less a creator. What looked to even our eighteenth century forbears like overwhelming reason to believe that there was an intelligence behind our universe (even for deists, who claimed that God created and designed the universe, but did not interfere in its operation, and did not incarnate himself as Christ to save the world). Even Hume, depending on how you read him, seems to cave in to a very denatured form of the design argument at the end of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. But ever since Darwin, the sledding has been tougher for arguments from design to a Designer of the world. Some of the most popular forms of the design argument today make an end run around evolution, and look at the cosmic constants in place at the Big Bang, which, by definition cannot be products of an evolutionary process.
223 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 223 of 223@Walter
Good quotes.
>Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm.
But since we have only individual human intellective and subjective perceptional experience to go on wither this applies to animals is still at issue in the sense of mental pain.
>Suffering may be qualified as physical or mental.
True, a planet suffers the physical loss of it's atmosphere when it's star goes nova but there is no mental intellective cognitions there that feels fear, terror, horror or dispair at that phenomena. An animal who has a conciousness of Sense only, senses pain and reacts with fight or flight as Evolution programed it to do so. But is there really an "individual" in the sense you or I are "individuals" present to suffer in the contradistinctionary sense I have advocated?
I say no.
>I am referencing *physical* suffering, and I suspect Ben is referring to the latter definition of mental suffering.
Tentatively I might accept that to build common ground.
>My claim is that animals can physically suffer, even if it impossible for them to experience mental or emotional anguish.
But of course I see their physical suffering as no different than the suffering of planets caught in Supernovas. Accept there is a conciousness of Sense with higher animals. But that is still matter "suffering" not spirit. Thus it is not morally significant anymore then planet suffering.
As Aquinas says this is a consequence of God creating a natural material world. Material things must seek their own goods, perfections and ends at the expense of other things. But animals are by definition material only.
God could have created a world where this is not so but it would not be a material world.
There is no world so "good" God is obligated to make it and none so "bad" as long as it participates in being God must refrain from making it.
The Best of all possible worlds is an incoherent concept in Thomist as far as I can tell.
>walter is winning this one hands down. ben u r coming off as vivisectionist.
It seems parbouj thinks a little rah rah naysaying is meaningful? But I fail to see how this is any different then the kneejerk naysaying responses of Ilion.
Also it seems no matter how many times I say persons who inflict pain for fun on animals put their souls in danger of Hell Fire I am somehow a vivisexrionist or is parboug a fanatical animal right activist who equates humans with animals I wonder?
I guess my successful arguments struck a nerve there.
@Walter
>Your view is that God did a timeline reboot like J.J. Abrams did with the new Star Trek movie. I haven't heard that one before. Bilbo's theory is similar in that he thinks that Eden happened in a different "realm" and that the earth was already corrupted by Satan. These are some pretty novel theories!
Not really I've read similar theories from Orthodox Jewish perspectives on creation.
Indeed where as I have long ago abandoned Young Earth Creationism if I where to today give it a second look I would look at it from the Orthodox Jewish perspective. It's way more sophisticated IMHO then the Answers in Genesis stuff.
What they do with Quantum Idealism is quite creative.
But I am a committed Moderate Realist so it's a non-starter.
Cheers.
Randal Rauser on the question of why did God create carnivores.
Carnivores
Rauser takes the greater-good-comes-from-evil route when explaining animal predation.
Word Verification: nograce
Thanks Walter for the link. I'm gonna print that one out & read it when I get a chance.
I guess Randal still believes in Theodicy? I gave up all Theodicy when I read Thrakis and Davies. I don't believe in them.
I am off to game.
Well I couldn't resist answering the Questions at the end of Randel's paper before I go. This is before reading it however.
1. Do you agree that the problem of animal suffering seems to be incompatible with the goodness of creation?
Not if I define Goodness in Thomistic terms of actuality and being and reject delusions that God is a moral agent obliged to create the "best of all possible worlds" of Paley post-enlightement era nonsense.
2. Do you think the idea of animal resurrection is possible? Is it plausible?
Animals don't have immortal spiritual souls so what in principle would be "resurrected"?
Doubtful IMHO.
3. Most scientists dismiss the claim that predation, carnivory, and death post-date the existence (and fall) of two original human beings. Does that strike you as significant?
So did St Augustine. If I was into YEC I see no reason to disagree with him.
>4. How do you think the fall impacted or relates to natural evil in the world?
It likely means God will not supernaturally or providentially protect us from natural evil as He might have done do had man not fell from Grace or maybe un-fallen Humans in a State of Grace would not heed the suffering of natural evil with the extra-ordinary knowledge of Grace.
Sort of like in OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET when the Archangel who runs Mars said to the bad guy "The smallest and the weakest of my people do not fear Death. But I see how the Bent One the silent Lord of your world wastes your lives telling you to run from that which will overtake you in the end. If you served Maledil you would be at peace".
Re: "greater-good-comes-from-evil"
What complete heresy. God doesn't need a passage through evil to accomplish any end He desires. (this is one topic on which Aquinas was dead wrong)
That said, I really like Myshkin's idea of priesthood and fallen time. Makes a lot of sense actually.
Son-or-Confusion: "How can something that isn't even a "Self" suffer?"
It can't, of course.
But, consider this: are the three Persons of the Trinity "selves"?
Yes, they are. Do you deny this? On what grounds?
So, can God suffer?
Your amusing co-called "Classical Theism" -- which is just repackaged Aristotle, and thus carries the hidden cultural assumptions of Aristotle (*) -- asserts that God cannot suffer, that is it logically impossible for God to suffer. Actual Christianity says otherwise.
(*) specifically, in Aristotle's culture, to love another, to be "vulnerable" as we phrase it these days, was a weakness, was an imperfection, and was in almost all situations something of which to be ashamed; thus, "the God of the Philosophers" is impassive, and ultimately impersonal.
Your strange and un-Biblical depersonalized beliefs/assertions about God's nature are based upon nothing deeper than the phychological phychoses of ancient pagan cultures which imagined love to be a weakness to be overcome.
Well, Ilion, too bad. The arguments of Aquinas for God's existence work, and they succinctly demonstrate that God is Pure Actuality. In other words, classical theism is true, as the most prominent Christian philosophers and theologians throughout the centuries have all recognized.
Deal with it.
Silly, foolish Anonymouse, did Aquinas ever assert that God is impersonal, that he is impassive, that he is unloving, that he is amoral?
But, regardless of Aquinas, the strange "classical theism" that BenYachov (and Fesser) assert is not Christianity.
... deal with it.
Son-of-Confusion: "1. Do you agree that the problem of animal suffering seems to be incompatible with the goodness of creation?
Not if I define Goodness in Thomistic terms of actuality and being and reject delusions that God is a moral agent obliged to create the "best of all possible worlds" of Paley post-enlightement era nonsense."
I've previously pointed out this very habit-and-rational-defect in BenYachov's "reasoning" -- his "reasoning" is really not much different from that of the logical positivist of the 20th century and the positivists of the 19th.
There is a line in Time Bandits that applies to you Ilion.
"Oh Benson you are so completely void of the ravages of Intelligence!"
-Evil Genius
"Say more nice things Master!"
-Benson
"William Lane Craig commented on animal suffering this week:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=q_and_a "
Bill Craig writes in detail the biological underpinning of pain and suffering and then without embarrassment and in an undignified and unscholarly manner proceeds to attempt to spin the biology as if it were substantive proof in description of the character of a god. As if he is best apprised to tell us of the character of an unknowable entity. A couple of words come to mind: conceited, self-important, pompous, puffed-up; and full of christian hubris.
The thaumaturgic attempt at segueing from the biology paragraph on pain to the following paragraph on christian malarkey, as if there were some causal connection between the two, is deceptive and dishonest at best.
All jejune theological nonsense of course with a pretense of speaking from authority, as if Craig knows the mind of god.
What wankery.
A couple of excerpts from commentary on PEW survey: But I warn you they come from: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/dr-coyne-gets-religious-pushback/
"The problem with America and evolution is not the lack of instruction. We have more evolution education than ever (after all, these kids are reading my book), and we have tons of books and eminent scientists lecturing about evolution. We have Dawkins, and the works of Sagan and Gould, the shows of Attenborough, and high-school textbooks that deal in depth with evolution. But statistics show that acceptance of evolution in America has hardly changed since 1982.
The problem is religion. Until America becomes less religious, we have no hope of educating people about the wonders of evolution. Remember this from the Pew Forum website:
When asked what they [Americans] would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll. Indeed, in a May 2007 Gallup poll, only 14% of those who say they do not believe in evolution cite lack of evidence as the main reason underpinning their views; more people cite their belief in Jesus (19%), God (16%) or religion generally (16%) as their reason for rejecting Darwin’s theory.
Religion poisons everything. The National Center for Science Education can put out the fires in school boards and courtrooms, and the rest of us can teach ourselves silly, but not much will change until we weaken religion’s death grip on America."
It seems to me that a BenYachov is closer to, and more likely to be, a "Benson" than an Ilíon is.
My half-uncle married a Benson ... who was the offspring of first-cousins. Is something like that Ben(Yachov)son's problem?
Paps! Ilion!
I am bored.
Fight each other for my amusement!
Now!
So, you bore even yourself? Well, I can't say that that is that great a shocker.
Walter: “When you say "reason" what you mean is that I must agree with you completely. Anyone who has a degree of separation from your ridiculous beliefs is labeled as "intellectually dishonest" or a "fool."”
This isn’t actually the truth of the matter, and even Walter must be aware. When I finally decide to attach the label “fool” to someone, as a shorthand reference to his intellectual dishonesty, it has nothing to do with his “degree of separation from [my] ridiculous beliefs”, but rather, with his, oddly enough, intellectual dishonesty, with his disinclination to reason soundly, with his inclination to argue ‘A’ or ‘not-A’ alternately as the shifting need of the moment dictates.
Walter: “But that is okay because I consider you to be a poor "joke."”
Which consideration surely has nothing to do with the fact that in the previous two sentences Walter is describing himself and projecting his own attitude onto me.
Oh? What’s that? That he don’t openly use the phrases “intellectually dishonest” and “fool” somehow means that he doesn't engage in the sort of behavior he incorrectly ascribes to me?
Look at how this went --
Shackleman: “Yeah, I was an agnostic too. And then I decided to actually seek answers, rather than continue to ask an infinite series of hypothetical questions designed to keep me from ever making a stand.”
Walter: “I have "made my stand." I affirm a minimalistic form of deism.”
Shackleman: “You stand on sand.”
Walter: “Do tell, oh wise Protestant! Show me the error of my ways.”
Walter has no intention of being shown the error of his ways. And, he's calling Shackleman stupid for having the audacity to tell him that his "minimalistic form of deism" isn't worth too much.
The observant reader may note that while I may excoriate another for his choice to act as though he were stupid, which is to say, to decline to reason properly, I don't call people stupid. And, if I thought someone were stupid, I'd do my best to spare him further discomfort; for, after all, someone who truly is stupid does not choose to be stupid; whereas the intellectually dishonest man chooses to be so.
Idion the cyber ignis fatuus tries out Aristotle for dummies.
You don't even get the wiki, right jewboy anymore than the rest of the frauds here do, including Yakiberg.
""Seems there hasn't been any original thought since the Middle Ages!""
Porkchop with his pseudo-catholic belch of the day (and plagiarizng Aquinas). Maybe like quit using ....your car/trains/planes. or penicillin. Or voting.
I have changed my mind.
01010101 & Ilion will fight each other for my amusement!
Begin!
"And now as we come to the end
of another broadcast day we offer you these words of inspiration.
Tonight's message is from the Church of Confusion. Our sermonette
this evening will be delivered by his confused holiness, the most
reverend archbishop Maharishi O'Mulliganstein Ben Yachov, D.D.S."
: "Good afternoon. And, thank you, Father-in-laaaaw,
for guiding us through another day. As the prophet Lao-tse said at
the bottom of the mountain when he first saw the first glimmer of
the haze of confusion: 'Barukh atah Alouette gentille.'
Caveat emptor. Eat the wafer Maria.
Hi. How are you? Oooommmm...
Chante: ooommmmmm. And the confused deity speaketh under Krishna.
He said, 'Bill, e pluribus unum. In Troy, there lies the scene. Close
cover before striking,
please keep your feet off the jump-seat. Bhagavad-Gita. Amen.' And
Bill understood.
You see, he too was confused. Fellow confusers, we
must reaffirm our confusion, every day. Zeus loves you! He loves aaaall
Mormons.
'Rock of aaaages, take my wiiiife.' Prepared
to drink from the kiddish cup. For as God giveth... He also giveth.
I'm reminded this aaaash of the story called 'Bow to the Koran and
The Analects of Confucius,' about a man who wandered aimlessly throughout
his... life, and this story, for
40 days and 50 nights. When he came upon a clearing,
before him were five roads.
Five roads not taken and miles to go before they slept! Now, he was
truly confused. Which road should I take? It was a rhetorical question
indeed, for the traveler knew [now?] or where he was going but not
where he had come from. But then, a sign appeared before him. A sign
from above. A star rose in the heavens, the wind howled from the West,
the Red Sea parted, a pyramid fell, and a baby cried. And, another
sign. Like thunder! A small foreign car exploded and... the traveler
knew that he could no longer be driven out of the Promised Land. Bless
You.
And finally, the traveler came upon a giant
footprint of the vaaaan and he spaketh truly that this MUST BE the
hand of God. And he was confuseth. He went to the foot of the mountain
and he cried, 'CONFUSED AT LAST! Confused at last! Lou! Lou! Mr. Fields
wants to run! We are confused at last.' And so, as WE prepare-to-meet
another day ,
in closing,
I would like to read from... well, from Leviticus, Leviticus One,
Chapter 4, Jackson 5. Take, eat. This is my body. How do you like
it? So, in closing,
may your Karma be fine, when combined with a conscientiously applied
program of oral hygiene and regular dentist care. Amen. Goodnight.
Hello."
"the obvious conflict between the theory of evolution and the traditional literal reading of Genesis. If, as traditionalists assert, the Bible gives us a comprehensive genealogy of the human race, then the age of not only "the earth" but also the heavens can at least approximately be calculated, and it comes to about 4004 B. C. (at least, that is what Bishop Ussher thought)."
The assertion that a "traditionalist" reading( literal interpretation) of Genesis, necessarily commits one to a 'Young Earth' theory (resulting in an "obvious conflict" between important scientific theories and a literal hermeneutic approach), attributes an unwarranted idea to one propounding a "traditionalist" position in terms of hermeneutics. Even if one contends that the '7 days' in Genesis ought be conceived of as a literal 7 days, and that the Old Testament genealogies are accurate and historical, notice the concept that the universe is only a few thousand years old, conflicting with modern astronomy, (the problem with evolutionary theory remains only if one presupposes a naturalist metaphysic [ which would require lots of time to make plausible the random, non-purposive mutation or mutations exemplified in at least some species, resulting in that species survival, etc...]). However, the rejection of philosophical naturalism (that the origin of all things is ultimately impersonal, non-rational, and non-purposive) eliminates the conflict between a literal reading of Genesis and the belief that the cosmos are billons, maybe trillions, of years old. For in the creation accounts found in Genesis, after reading about God breathing life into man, thus making him a living being, the commentary jumps to the garden and humans maintaining a perfect relationship with God. Now given that until sinning humans were immortal, there is no portion of Genesis (nor any other scripture) that logically entails the thesis that trillions of years did not pass between the creation of humans and the fall( or to put it another way, that the commentary should be read in the context of a definite time frame. So one can coherently maintain that both, (1) the universe and the earth are very old (in the sense which astronomers speak), and (2) the Genesis account of the origin of all things, and the Old Testament genealogies are historically accurate and should be understood literally.
Of course, the epistemic assumption that finite, autonomous human reason (including scientific 'knowledge') ought be the final court of appeal concerning issues of truth', is an unwarranted presupposition, a fact oft missed by modern scientist( so that any Christian Theist need explain apparent incoherence between 'science' and 'religion', in order to be rational in her belief in the truth of Christianity, rests on the a priori denial of a Christian epistemology, and thus begs the question off the bat).
Post a Comment