Evolution vs. Creation

[Redzeppelin]

OK, if a Divine being exists and is responsible for all creation, why did this Divine being create human reason? I never understood how Creationists deal with this one.

He created human reason for the same reason you probably think it exists - to process the world around us, examine it, draw conslusions about the world. He gave us "reason" because He desired us to be independent thinking creatures. In fact, the existence of reason is an argument for God - because without God, then what agent would you attribute to the existence of the rational faculty in human beings?

I find it astounding that an one can say that belief does not have to based on principle. If this is a serious claim, I wonder whether the implication is that Creationists are renouncing human reason as a faculty for understanding the world.

Define "principle." I believe that Shakespeare is one of the greatest writers of all time. To what "principle" should I attribute this belief?

We are not renouncing "human reason as a faculty for understanding the world" at all; I am rejecting it as sufficient to understand God - since He's the basis of the creationist claim, then understanding Him cannot be separated from understanding the account of creation that the Bible gives us. I'm simply telling you that human reason will ultimately fail in its attempt to ravel out God; as such, His creation - an expression of Him, His power and creative ability - will ultimately transcend human reason. I'm not invalidating human reason - I'm claiming its limits.

Thank you for you comment. It is unfortunate, in my view, for Creationists to become defensive towards demands to explaining how potent their views are in terms of explanatory capacity, to the point of rejecting any standard of proof. To renounce any standard of "proof" is simply an abdication of willingness to engage in an open debate. Certainly, there are reasonable standards of proof which can respond affirmatively to questions such as whether your parents loved you or we went to the moon (these questions are different questions of whether consciousness" and "uncosnciousness" exists). I also see no problem with so-called inductive proof. Are you implying that Creationsts have deductive proof? Or perhaps that proof is an irrelevant standard for the Creationist argument?.

Don't know where you got "defensive" from.

This debate has no end - largely because the standard of proof the evolutionist demands to "convince" him/her that creationism is correct does not exist (at least not yet; but I'm not sure it ever will). The Bible wasn't written as s scientific treatise: it is the revelation of God's character. You talk of "standards of proof" - but the problem is that God is not that which can be "proven." But of course, neither can evolution. Despite its impressive finds, science has not definitively proven anything. You want us to engage, but to what end? So you can simply dismiss everything we say, because ultimately, our argument falls back on a premise you will always reject: God says so, and we believe God. What argument would actually convince you that creationism is correct? I don't think there is one. You can't convince anybody of anything when each party is basing his argument on a different foundation.

It may be that there cannot be a debate on this because there is simply a lack of willingness to agree on standards for a debate.

Probably the only thing you've said that I agree upon.

[lumiere08]

Thanks again.


[QUOTE]

He created human reason for the same reason you probably think it exists - to process the world around us, examine it, draw conslusions about the world. He gave us "reason" because He desired us to be independent thinking creatures. In fact, the existence of reason is an argument for God - because without God, then what agent would you attribute to the existence of the rational faculty in human beings?

(1) But, it would seem to me, you are arguing this faculty of reason whose existence you accept, is irrelevant to the process of accepting a belief.

(2) The existence of reason by itself is not a necessry argument for God. You can explain the existence of reasons in many ways -- why do you claim that God is the only explanation?

We are not renouncing "human reason as a faculty for understanding the world" at all; I am rejecting it as sufficient to understand God - since He's the basis of the creationist claim, then understanding Him cannot be separated from understanding the account of creation that the Bible gives us. I'm simply telling you that human reason will ultimately fail in its attempt to ravel out God; as such, His creation - an expression of Him, His power and creative ability - will ultimately transcend human reason. I'm not invalidating human reason - I'm claiming its limits.

Again, my question is whether reason plays ANY role in establishing the existence of God, in the Creationist view, according to you. What is this role, if any? Your comment above "...reason will ultiamtely fail in its attempt to ravel out God..." suggests that reason is anathema to belief in God.


Still no answer to how Creationism accounts for species extinction -- perhaps it doesn't?

[Redzeppelin]

(1) But, it would seem to me, you are arguing this faculty of reason whose existence you accept, is irrelevant to the process of accepting a belief.

(2) The existence of reason by itself is not a necessry argument for God. You can explain the existence of reasons in many ways -- why do you claim that God is the only explanation?

1) I didn't say "irrelevant" - I'm saying that it is not a prerequisite. Human beings believe plenty of things that go against reason. Think about some of the great inventors of the past - how many of them were thought to be reasonable? Orvil and Wilber Wright come to mind. People thought their belief that human flight was possible was sheer insanity - Harvard professors predicted that humans would never fly - and Harvard professors are supposed to be reasonable, rational beings, aren't they?

2) I didn't claim God was the "only" explanation - I said I believe the existence of reason supports the idea that God exists.

Again, my question is whether reason plays ANY role in establishing the existence of God, in the Creationist view, according to you. What is this role, if any? Your comment above "...reason will ultiamtely fail in its attempt to ravel out God..." suggests that reason is anathema to belief in God.

It suggests no such thing. Reason and God are not opposites. I said: reason will ultimately fail in its attempt to explain/comprehend God. Reason has its place in life - I'm not dismissing its value; I am - as I said earlier - claiming its limits.

Still no answer to how Creationism accounts for species extinction -- perhaps it doesn't?

I'm probably going to give a really stupid answer here. Species get extinct because we kill them. Did I miss something? Why should an event in the far past explain why species disappear today?

[lumiere08]

1) I didn't say "irrelevant" - I'm saying that it is not a prerequisite. Human beings believe plenty of things that go against reason. Think about some of the great inventors of the past - how many of them were thought to be reasonable? Orvil and Wilber Wright come to mind. People thought their belief that human flight was possible was sheer insanity - Harvard professors predicted that humans would never fly - and Harvard professors are supposed to be reasonable, rational beings, aren't they?

2) I didn't claim God was the "only" explanation - I said I believe the existence of reason supports the idea that God exists.

(1) Belief and reason are NOT incompatible. Belief leads to pursuit of specific hypotheses and these can be tested against reasonable standards of proof. Our belief in a heliocentric solar system and the workings of Newtonian physics and/o relativity leads to specific predictions which can be tested. We expected the sun to rise tommorow, the tides to change, the moon to change phases, and all these things happen. These predictions can be tested and validated, and a consistent explanatory framework can be develop whose proposition can explain a wider and wider range of phenomena unless and until it is itself invalidated by new observations. Such is the agency of human reason.

Bu itself, the belief that "God" created the universe and living creatures cannot be similarly tested. Unless it yields specific predctions which can be tested and the results fo these tests are then used to refine and build up a consistent explanatory framework.

Human reason is a faculty which enables humans to logically and empirically develop an understanding of the world based on beliefs which lead to verifiable propositions. It provides a method by which humans can compare different belief systems based of standards of proof. It is an "open" instead of a "closed" system of thinking, a "closed" system being impervious to external logic and empirical invalidation.

The Creationist view, it seems, sells itself this way. You can't test what it says, so you must accept it simply because someone else accepts it, and you cannot really compare it to some other belief. If instead of God, I said that the universe was created and operated by the breath of the supreme Creator, would this belief be any less valid than the claim it was God?

2) You still have not explained how the existence of reason supports the belief in the existence of God. Unless you simply believe this and also believe it cannot be explained.

It suggests no such thing. Reason and God are not opposites. I said: reason will ultimately fail in its attempt to explain/comprehend God. Reason has its place in life - I'm not dismissing its value; I am - as I said earlier - claiming its limits

.


But belief, unsubtantiated and untested, has its limits, too. You have not really produced an argument here for a superior reason in accepting a belief in God over the use of reason (which, of course, would appear to have it "limits" if it does not explain what you want it to explain)

I'm probably going to give a really stupid answer here. Species get extinct because we kill them. Did I miss something? Why should an event in the far past explain why species disappear today?

Well, species became extinct long, long, long before humans emerged to kill them. Plenty of incontrovertible evidence to that effect. The question for the Creationist is this: If God created species, why would he want some of them to become extinct? Actually, until empirical evidence started pouring in in the nineteenth century evidencing species extinction, most people (e.g. Thomas Jefferson, who was an amateur scientists) were not aware of extinction, nor would they understand why a Supreme Creator would will it. Species extinction has created a real quandry for the Creationist argument -- and I am wondering how the Creationists are dealing with it, if other than simply to dismiss it.

[lumiere08]

Don't know where you got "defensive" from.

Sorry, I had meant, but overlooked, in my previous post, to reply to this point above too.

The "defensiveness" of the Creationist argument, as you have laid it out, seems to come from an unwillingness, if not incapacity, to submit to a standard of proof. It seems the Creationist argument is that proof is unnecessary. The unfortunate consequence is that this type of argument can lead to naked intellectual terrorism, rather than enlightenment.

The Creationist argument seems to build on maligning reason as imperfect and limited. However, if the faculty of reason is used to its fullest, we can enter into a community enterprise where the "rules of the game" for accepting propostions are agreed upon, and we can test, prove and disprove propositions.

Such is the method of the evolutionist framework. It can test its propositions. Einstein himself used a mathematical framework to develop relativity which yielded testable propositions (it took several years for astronomical observations to test some of these). So startling were some of his predictions that Einstein himself refused to accept some of them -- like the one that the universe was expanding, which observational astronomy verified much later (leading Einstein to later admit his "greatest blunder" for not believing his own theory!).

Sadly, the Creationist argument remains a "closed" system impervious to such open validation, as further developed in my previous post.

Hence, its defensiveness.

[lumiere08]

Reason and God are not opposites. I said: reason will ultimately fail in its attempt to explain/comprehend God. Reason has its place in life - I'm not dismissing its value; I am - as I said earlier - claiming its limits.

I may not have addressed the above point fully in my previous posts. Sorry.

It seems that in order to persist, the Creationist argument must survive by a continual assault on the faculty of reason. Reason, in the Creationist creed which has been laid out, is faulty, limited, and imperfect. Oddly, it is also at least part of the Creationist proof of God's existence -- a leap of faith I frankly find baffling.

This Creationist argument is built on a misleading foundation and total misunderstanding of the nature of human reason. Logic and empiricism -- the basis of the Evolutionist argument -- do not demand an unswerving intellectual loyalty impervious to refutation. The Evolutionist argument instead allows a standard for falsification and invalidation -- and in doing so, leads to more potent explanatory power.

[Redzeppelin]

It seems that in order to persist, the Creationist argument must survive by a continual assault on the faculty of reason. Reason, in the Creationist creed which has been laid out, is faulty, limited, and imperfect. Oddly, it is also at least part of the Creationist proof of God's existence -- a leap of faith I frankly find baffling.

One of the reasons that I think Pendragon tried to end this thread above is being demonstrated in this conversation - I feel like we're both just repeating ourselves. Your posts essentially repeat themselves: the Creationist position goes contrary to reason; hence the evolutionist position has a more substantial basis for belief because it is not contrary to reason. In a nutshell, that's what I'm hearing. My position, that I have to keep repeating is this: Creation is a product of a Divine Being - a being who, based on the account He gives of Himself in the Bible, is omnipotent, omniscient and eternal. Those three adjectives describe a being that humans cannot fully comprehend because the terminology used to describe Him contradicts the characteristics of the world we observe (and science is based upon the observable world - whether "observable" means with the naked eye or other measuring devices). The creationist argument will never really be satisfying to an evolutionist because the evolutionist demands "scientific proof" for our claims - but how do you provide "proof" for a being that exists beyond human comprehension? You're right: the "leap of faith" involved is "baffling" - if you read the Bible, you would see that Christianity - at its base - offers a rather revolutionary vision of life - one that is almost paradoxical to human reason and human nature. To believe that all of reality can be apprehended through reason strikes me as absurd as my claims may seem to you. The human heart is pretty resistant to "logic," "reason," "rationality." The existence of love is almost an argument against reason - don't tell me that the romantic episodes of your life were chosen and based on your logic, your reason, your rational faculties. (Which, by the way, points back to the examples I listed earlier that you neglected to address.)

This Creationist argument is built on a misleading foundation and total misunderstanding of the nature of human reason. Logic and empiricism -- the basis of the Evolutionist argument -- do not demand an unswerving intellectual loyalty impervious to refutation. The Evolutionist argument instead allows a standard for falsification and invalidation -- and in doing so, leads to more potent explanatory power.

Evolution does require the same "leap of faith" that Creationism does. Ultimately, no matter how much "evidence" science amasses to support its position, ultimately it doesn't know - because we weren't there at the beginning. As such, since science cannot go back in time, the best it can do is search nature for clues and fashion those into a convincing hypothesis. As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between our positions is the basis of our choice: you have chosen science as your authority; I choose God. Neither of us chose our position because it was proven to us - we chose the one that we felt, believed was true.


As far as reason being evidence for God: if the universe is nothing more than measurable material, then there is no reason for human thought to say anything of truth - because the naturalist view of the universe indicates that there is only nature. If there is only nature, then the thoughts in my head are merely the consequence of chemical reactions, neuroelectric charges randomly firing in the brain, etc. How can these events produce truth? The naturalist argument "eats itself" because there is no reason that science (a product of random, uncontrollable chemical/biological processes in the brains of scientists) should believe its own claims because those claims were determined by physical/chemical/biological processes.

I'm fine if you'd like to go around in circles some more, but really - the choice to choose creation comes after choosing God. That's why we can't convince you of our position - you deny the very reason that creation is real to us.

[brainstrain]

I see some people doubting the point of continuing this thread. Well, is that really your choice? If you're tired of discussing it, then don't! And leave this arguement to the next generation of LitNeters ^_^

[Redzeppelin]

Thanks for the advice.

[Pendragon]

Certainly, mes amis, if you wish to continue to beat the dead horse, continue to do so, it cannot make it any less dead. I still see nothing that has not been brought up before, discussed, even violently argued about with both sides (to their like disgrace) calling names. It is not really a discussion, as in "Let me hear your point of view and I'll consider it carefully." It is simply put an all or none situation, with no room for people like myself who can actually find reason to believe both in a Creator and Evolution. I go to far for the Creationist and not far enough for the Evolutionist. So we are at an impasse. No one is listening, but everyone is talking.

[yingqiee]

Dear Pendragon,
I agree with your point of view:

Please forgive if I repeat something that has been said before; I did not read all the previous posts. I believe evolution occurs, because all animals definitely change over time. For example, the progression of increasingly "human-like" humanoids that have been found. However, I believe that Darwin's theory that we all come from 1 ancestor is flawed. According to Morowitz, a professor at Yale, even with optimistically rapid rates of reaction, the calculated time for JUST BACTERIUM to form from random interaction of particles as implied by Darwin's original theory exceeds not only the 4.5 billion years of the Earth, but also the 15 billion years of the entire universe.

Hence, I find that while evolution in the sense of organisms changing slowly over the years is true, Darwin's original (please note that i mean "original") theory has little scientific backing. Hence, creationism and evolution can coexist; i.e. A superior entity created something(s), and that something(s) slowly evolved into the somethings now.

[Redzeppelin]

Hence, creationism and evolution can coexist; i.e. A superior entity created something(s), and that something(s) slowly evolved into the somethings now.

This would strike me as a great answer if the Biblical account didn't fully contradict it.

[yingqiee]

Apparently, according to Schroeder, Genesis was meant to be read like a poem. Hence, 7 days might not be literally seven days and the world from my point of view as a Christian(which might not reflect that of other Christians) may not have been created in "7 days". (IMHO)

[Redzeppelin]

Apparently, according to Schroeder, Genesis was meant to be read like a poem. Hence, 7 days might not be literally seven days and the world from my point of view as a Christian(which might not reflect that of other Christians) may not have been created in "7 days". (IMHO)

Well, perhaps. But who is Schroeder, and what makes his/her claim authoritative? How did s/he establish how Genesis was "meant" to be read?

Granted: there are things in the Bible that are meant figuratively, but one would assume that God would (knowing the human brain and language as He does) make it fairly clear where we should take Him figuratively and literally. Schroeder (and other like-minded critics) strike me as individuals who wish to harmonize the Genesis account with science. Why? Why must the actions of God (who exists outside nature) harmonize with nature? Why is it so hard to believe that any Being capable of bringing the world into existence could do it in a week?

[yingqiee]

Dr Gerald Schroeder used to be a professor of nuclear physics at MIT. The information I posted was taken from his book, "The Science of God". I guess that ultimately I can't prove my position, because accoprding to current scientific theory, nothing can be proven; it can only be disproven. However, I am inclined to think that Genesis possesses certain figurative elements due to other sources, like this: http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/day.html While I agree with you that God is most certainly omnipotent, and need not harmonize with nature, I believe that God decided to act (at least mostly) according to the laws of nature, due to the large emphasis on obtaining knowledge in the Bible(my interpretation)

e.g.
Proverbs 8:1
Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?

and also due to the verses in Job e.g.

Job 39:1 Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve?

which I interpret as God laying out certain rules for the way the Earth works, and hence (this is my inference) how it was created.

I personally feel that although science is not crucial to understanding God, God does not mind if we discover more about the world around us and how it works and was created. However, we do not need to place excessive faith in Science, because as seen in history, many scientific theories get refuted after a while. However, the Bible has been around for ages and I personally feel that nothing can refute it. I tried myself to look for contradictions in it, and I examined those on the many web pages on the net. Their "contradictions" are simply interpretations out of context, for example, : http://www.tektonics.org/qt/tellalie.html ("contradiction" and refutation are both there. I'm too lazy to answer some on this forum )

In the end, I think that ultimate knowledge is not about the physical world around us and how it works(scientific knowledge) but about God and how He works(that I feel can only be obtained from a very personal relationship with Him and not through science, because while the Bible did not really say anything about how we should gain knowledge about how the world works, it does say that we ought to learn more about God through a relationship with God sustained through prayer, etc.)