A few years ago when the Catholic church through the pope supported evolution he made a point that was all but ignored by the media. JP2 stated that the human body may have been created by natural means but the mind/consciousness was a product of the divine and any attempt to explain consciousness by natural means was an affront to human dignity. The entire field of cognitive neuroscience at least in the opinion of the Catholic church is demeaning to human dignity.
Natural law refers to the classical sciences.
And in my mind totally irrelevant. Because, it is the choice of the soul (which in fact, IS you) to make all moral decisions. Your brain is merely an interpreter thereof. To me, life is all half illusion: we “think” we are “here” in a physical space and form. Yet this is not truly so. We are beings without matter. Matter exists, but it our lives in it are but slight delusions we invent to get through the day. In any case, since I define conscious life as being a gift from God, no conscious “thinking machine” whether its a human life, a human life made in a test tube, or even a computer system or alien is not an embodied soul.
Neuroscience is not bad, but it is umimportant, mostly. Although, anyone trying to use some advanced technique from that to force people to “think” or believe something would effectively be guilty of rape.
Its not quite like that, but I suppose its a decent example. Part of the reason I like it is because I really get “into” a character. For a short while, I can convince myself into almost thinking I am the character. It is a harmles delusion, but for just a few moments of time, a very real one to me. And then I’m me again. But I was me in the game, though, right? I made the choices that led to victory or defeat. In some games, I even made moral choices to do one thing or the other.
And for me, there is no breaking of the laws of physics required. They don’t matter at all. Am I breaking the computer’s system when I choose to go left or right? It is simply the way the game is played. Heck, for all I know, the laws of physics are defined in an absolute and concrete fashion with no “choice” in the system simply because we already made the choices (from God’s perspective, being omnitemporal)!
Anyway, I’m not very intereted in this debate. I’ve said my piece and suggest we take it to another post to continue.
PRECISELY.
If the soul has no physical reality, it can’t be affected by the physical world and the physical world can’t be affected by it. Therefore, nothing we do can be attributed to the soul. The soul cannot retain our memories or minds, since those things are affected by our physical experiences. The soul cannot be “released” when the body dies, as the soul cannot be linked to the body in the first place.
You have no idea what a can of worms you open when you declare that souls don’t obey natural law.
Nope. “Natural law” is a concept that exists in all of the sciences.
Okay, so why are moral decisions different from any other type of decision? How does the soul interface with the brain so that its decisions can be interpreted, and how does the soul receive information about what’s going on around us?
What is the soul? How does it function? If it doesn’t obey the physical laws we understand, what laws does it obey?
But you’re missing the point. Your interactions with the computer are well-understood with current physics. How does the soul interact with the body?
The Papal statement on evolution refers first to the “spirit” or soul, which in the doctrine are different things than the “mind” (after all, it’s clear that physical damage/chamical alteration of the brain does alter the rational and emotional capacity of the person); the way I read it, the “affront” paragraph refers to explaining the “spirit” exclusively materialistically. It then goes on to talk about “consciousness”, awareness and moral choice, and on that must be analyzed philosophically, but “experimental research can discern very valuable signs” … sounds like neuroscience is not flatly excluded, but only limited to an observational tool.
(The existence of a “spirit”, or “soul”, being IMO unfalsifiable, is outside the realm of hard science and it’s IMO pointless to seek to either prove OR disprove it. Now, arguments that the spirit or soul can influence the here-and-now, a-la John Edward, ARE testable…)
BTW, that Papal statement also has had some trouble because the phrase “findings lead us to recognize in this more than a hypothesis” (meaning, it’s more than hypothetical, it’s supported by evidence) was rendered in many English versions as “findings lead us to recognize in this more than one hypothesis” (as if meaning, it’s just one of many hypotheticals) , due to an ambiguity translating the indefinite article (“une”).
I’m just using this quote to make it clear that I’m referring to the turn this thread has taken toward arguments of the soul rather than evolution.
In order to declare what relation a soul may have to the physical world, you have to be able to define it within that system, either derived from other entities or from observations. I am not aware of a definition of a soul in either of these senses within the system describing the physical world.
Until such a definition exists, there is not much the physical world can say about the soul. We can’t create equations showing the energy of a soul, etc. To be included in the system, the concept of a soul needs to be shown as a required assumption to explain observed phenomena. That is, there must be a physically testable question the results of which show that the existence of a soul in the only explanation for an observed phenomenon. If such a test has been proposed, please post.
It is not enough to say, as has been put forward a number of times in this thread:“Look at that. It could not have happened without the intervention of an intelligent entity.” to get me to buy that, you must point to the apparently vast body of research into the nature of intelligence that has resulted in measureable guidelines to determine what in the physical world requires intelligent design in order to exist. Again, if you are aware of such a body of research, please post.
Until these questions are resolved, the questions about the soul (and for that matter the conscious mind, which also as far as I know has not been defined in terms of the system of the physical world) remain in the area of metaphysics, which to me is the Godelian area of underivable truths and/or falsehoods within the axiomatic system of the physical sciences.
Quite right, scotandrsn. I am very impressed by your concision.
Now, let’s abandon that line of argumentation that says “humans evolved, but were then gifted with souls”. Such an argument contains no debatable content; it is neither scientific nor strictly rational.
That’s true. The soul talk is kind of a hijack. I think we can agree that evolution has nothing to say about the soul.
Getting back to evolution then, the original question was: How do Christians explain human evolution, which the first few posts made clear should be
“How do the fundamentalist Christians who vehemently oppose the teaching of evolution in children’s education explain human evolution?”
The answer, as this thread has made clear, is: they don’t. They pretend the evidence doesn’t exist, or that it is not “good science” to interpret it as implying human evolution.
The trouble with these debates is that science has such a good track record of explaining the world we observe, we who support its conclusions often take the word of the science community as much as gospel as the fundamentalist Christians do the word of the Bible. We therefore end up unable to explain the reasons for our beliefs clearly, putting us on no better footing for debate than those who oppose science.
My point in posting, a couple of pages ago, my own synopsis of Darwin’s development of the Theory of Natural Selection was to get back to the root of the science:
Here are the observations he made. If you can not afford a trip to the Galapogos to see the finches yourself, you can take the word of the hundreds who have gone since and seen the same finches, unless you are a total paranoid conspiracy theorist. Or you can start breeding animals and plants yourself, and amaze yourself at the ability to turn one type of creature, over the course of many generations, into two types which may not (probably for anatomical reasons) be able to mate with one another, thus paving the way for two new species.
Explain this in terms of fundamentalist Creationism, which declares all species on earth to have been created at the time of the first chapters of Genesis. Or modify Creationism, as some have, to say that evolution has occurred since Creation, but all the base species were there at once.
Do that, and if you want Creationism accepted as science, you must explain the fossil record, which shows ancient species that no longer exist, modern species that have not left traces in ancient times, and pairs of distinct species whose ancestors in the lower strata appear less and less dissimilar, until the point where ther is one ancestor with similarities to both later ones. It is because such observations have been made that we believe humans and modern apes had a common ancestor, not because we have some death wish for anyone’s sacred beliefs.
It’s sad when people who want ideas accepted by science aren’t willing to do any science to substantiate their claim. One human fossil from the same strata as the dinosaurs would turn evolution on its head, but so far, the evidence just isn’t there.
It’s sadder when proponents of science accept science just as religiously as the fundamentalists. I have seen several references in the last 25 years to a new “religion”, Scientism, a creation of fundamentalists who wish to drag science into their kind of battle. Those who wish to defend science should realize that “Because Darwin said so” is no better an argument than “Because Moses said so.”
Science is human reason applied to human observation. To place your philosophy within it, you should have to have new observations and/or better reasoning, not just unproveable metaphysical arguments.
I’ve met a few, but they’re a distinct minority. Most of the intelligent and educated people I know are perfectly capable of explaining the evidence and reasoning that lead to evolutionary theory.
But are they always well versed enough in geology (specifically the reasoning behind carbon-dating) and probability theory to explain why evolution makes sense in that framework? My point is, we support evolution because the reasoning hangs together when you take the observations into account.
Most of the arguments I have heard against it, when they are not speaking from a point of view of ignorance of the science, argue that evolutionary theory disagrees with their sense of rightness in the world. I have heard many more rebuttals (not in this forum, of course) that more or less argue that Darwin was right since evolution sounds cooler ‘cuz it’s scientific an’ all. Many devious people have learned to incorporate words like “quantum” into their vocabulary to appeal to the same level of reason.
The whole point of science is to reason about observations. If you really want to have a good debate (or more often, a quick end to one) about evolution, put Darwin’s original observations on the table along with the fossil record, and ask for a better explanation than science came up with. Science needs no more defense than that.
Then I’ve been fortunate not to have come across these individuals.
[sigh] The gene pool is in desperate need of a good chlorination… 
Well, lets discuss Behe’s “lie” about the textbook reviews. I read your cite. The author does refute Behe- but not becuase Behe is a “liar”, but becuase Behe used a poor model for his research. See, what Behe did was take all the BioChem textbooks he could find, and searched for mentions of evoltion in the indices. He found few. No dispute as to that. No “lie”. However- the cite shows this is a poor model to show what Behe wanted, as BioChem texts are not where you’d go to get a lot of instruction, and that the indices are not that good a place to search for such reference. Fine, that seems to be a good refutation- Behe used a poor model to prove his point. BUT that’s not a lie.
Then let’s go to your point about Tubulin monomers, and Behes claim about “needles & holes” being “crap” and a “lie”. First, yoiu can’t link us to where Behe claimed that. Next, you can’t find a link that agrees with you. So I researched it carefully. There is one “hit” on “behe tubulin needles holes”- and that is Ben, quoted here. There are 7 hits on “behe tubulin monomers”, all of whom discuss at great length Behe’s thesis on Microtubules, Cilia, and Dynein. None of these papers mention anything about “needles & holes”, or about this glaring “crap lie” that Ben found. Again, they go on for PAGES with detailed scientific discussion, and refute & argue every single error they can find in Behes work- but no expert mentions “needles & holes” (or even calls Behe’s work “crap”, or calls him a “liar”). Then there are the links above, to dozens & dozens of refutations, reviews & critiques of Behes work. No one else has seemingly found this glaring “crap lie”.
So Ben, I am impressed at one of three things:
- Either your absolute brilliance in the field, finding such a glaring “crap lie” that not a single other expert in the field has found, despite dozen of experts pouring over Behe’s work with a fine tooth comb. In this case, I applaud you. I assume you’ll be publishing your paper soon? Maybe Scientific American, or if not, at least “Talk Origins”? Please let us know when it gets published. That will certainly satisfy me.
or 2. Your fantastic Hubris at assuming you have found an error that no one else has.
or 3. Well, what was that bit about lying in such a technical way that few could call one on it?
Now don’t get me wrong folks. Behe has been refuted. A LOT. I wouldn’t call him “debunked”- after all, any controversial scientific book gets a lot of reviews & refutations, and Behe does come back with some good sounding counter arguements. However, his work seems to slide into “doubtful”. Hardly on a level with Piltdown man, or cold fusion, but still…
I am sorry about that link to Prof Dave Ussery’s site. I’ll try again:
http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/staff/dave/behe.html
If that doesn’t work, go to the Talk Origins site, linked to several times here. Go to the “Irreducable Complexity FAQ”, and then “other links”. One of those will take you to “Behe’s Empty Box”, which at the bottom has a long list of links, and one of them, under “Book Review & critiscm” is Ussery’s link to his artilce.
Insert “on evolution” after “instruction” in my first paragraph.
Damn link still doesn’t work. Try my route suggested.
What makes you think that? Something that is supernatural can do whatever the hell it wants. Where do you get this idea that something that is without physical substance cannot affect something that does have physical substance? You’re invoking physics when, by definition, we’re talking about something that can and does “break the rules” of physics.
Nope. Even if we discard the rules generally used to describe the world, there must still be a rule that describes how the soul affects the body.
If the body cannot affect the soul, the soul cannot be changed by actions and experiences that affect the body. If the body can affect the soul, then the rules that describes how this occurs will necessarily permit the soul to be disrupted or destroyed.
You can’t escape rules by ignoring physics.
Why must there be a rule that describes it? You’re not discarding the rules generally used to describe the world if you still insist that there must be a rule.
Mostly-right:
And there is no way to tell in what way the soul is effected by the body, unless you happen to have one strapped to the table down in your lab. Since the supposed metaphysical soul is drawing its information from the body in an undetectable manner, you cannot know wether its survival is dependent on that interaction, or wether it is as effected as you are when your game character dies. There’s simply nothing to study and find out, because by definition, the soul is ignoring physics in its methods of passive observation.
If there is a soul that controls the body in any way, then we should be able to start from the act that was controlled (such as the movement of the arm) and trace the cause of that action back through the nerve impulses to the brain and back in circles through the brain chemicals and impulese until we reach the point where the intervention occured, violating the laws of physics. Since it’s not hard to find people who think their every movement is controlled by their soul, we should reasonably be able to study their brains and catch some examples of these ongoing inverventions in action.
It’s okay if souls ignore physics, but we should be able to catch them at it.
If there isn’t a rule, then the final state of the soul-body system cannot be determined regardless of its initial state.
In other words, the effect of the soul on the body is random. This is inconsistent with the idea that the soul directs the body.
I’m starting a new thread on this topic to prevent further contamination of this one.
You know, I find the loud screams of vitrolic hatred coming from some dudes here & elsewhere about Behe to be a bit surprising. The dude is not a “creationist”. To him, the whole idea of a “7 day creation” is not even worth refuting or debating. Next, he is not an “anti-Darwinist”- he accepts darwinian evolution as a mechanism- just not ALL the time. Thus- those fundies who want to use his book & views to prove “evolution” wrong are deluded. Nor does he claim that the World or life was created by the Judeo-Christian God- sure, he postulates the existance of a “watchmaker”, but no specific faith.
So let us go down his book & thesis, and break it into broad laymans concepts:
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Life is marvelous, mysterious & wonderful. Every other Scientist agrees.
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Life is enormously complex, especially some of the microscopic mechanisms of life, like cilia. Every other Scientist agrees.
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Some mechanisms of life are so complex & so “one piece” that we cannot explain at this time just how they would/did evolve. Every other scientist agrees.
(3a “Here are some of these” and this is where he is debated & refuted, to varying degrees of success)
THUS: We won’t be able to explain them, thus there must be a “watchmaker”. Most Scientists disagree. But- that is Behe’s opinion.
Mainstream Science has as their “THUS”= BUT, we will be able to explain them someday, thus there is no need for a “watchmaker”. Which is their opinion.
The broad concepts are the same- all the way down. They do disagree in the details, but there is no sharp division until you get to the “Opinion section”- that is the “THUS”. I have no proof either is right, nor do I accept Behe as nessesarily right.
My God, you WOULD think that “Darwinism” is a “religion” by some of the reactions.