Science vs. Religion: (Chapter 4) (Humans)

by David Turell , Monday, July 04, 2011, 18:20 (4686 days ago) @ xeno6696

On page 93... you write "I have presented this digression on evolution to clearly indicate to you that evolution is a theory, not fact, and there are all sorts of holes and inconsistencies in what is generally presented in schools and to the public."
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> However, in the next paragraph you write "... I believe the process of evolution actually happened,[emphasis added] while proposing that the mechanisms theorized by Darwin are not the way evolution has occurred."
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> So...
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> Which is it? To me, it seems like you stopped at the end of the paragraph where the first quote lives, probably after reading a nasty comment about religious people being stupid by Dawkins, then took a day or two off and then sat down to write the second. 
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> Evolution IS a fact; we started with simple bacteria and ended up to where we're at today. In your own book you have already stated several times an implicit belief that evolution happened... simple to more complex.
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> So its a fact. 
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> Later in paragraph 2, "It is the interpretation of the causes of events that should be under debate." 
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> So its an open and shut case for you. Evolution happened. In your own words, evolution is a fact.
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> However, that first quote... is careless. It IS Behe and Dembski and even Hovind all over again...
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> You seem caught in two worlds with these quotes (on the same page.) -
I have re-read the section yhou are discussing, and we are not of the same interpretive mind. Your math/programmer background makes you extremely precise in your thought patterns. If you had been my editor, we could have made the area of writing a little more precise. To my mind, even currently, evolution is a theory, which I accept as fact. But I don't know of any studies that absolutely prove that we evolved as we think we did from the fossil evidence, etc. Punctuated equilibrium casts some doubts, as does the Cambrian Explosion, even more so with all of the Australian and Chinese findings. These large sudden enormous changes do cast doubt that something or some one may be monkeying with the mechanisms, to paraphrase Fred Hoyle. And Hoyle, an atheist, became a believer when he saw how the monkey-works worked.-So in a sense, I am caught between two worlds. Remember, I have stated many times, I think complexification is part of the genome code, and God may have directed evolution to produce us, either by initial coding or fiddling along the way. Gerald Schroeder believes in the fiddling (he is orthodox)as with the Chicxulub asteroid, which he mentions. -Further, early on, I tried to approach my agnosticism with an open slate of a mind. I was convinced from cosmology alone, along with particle physics that there was a superior intelligence at work, John Leslie having convinced me early on. When my first book editor suggested Adler and to study Darwin for a second book, I did just that, and was amazed at how poor Darwism was in explaining evolution. I never doubted evolution from the beginning. In my mind it was always mechanism. That is why I have pounced on epigenetics. Reznick's guppies are discussed right close to the page we are debating. I could sense Lemarkism returning in full glory.-And so my blank slate is not so blank anymore, and I keep on reading, currently a Jesuit's book. And he is aiming for a classical God of pure simplicity, and that is not going to work for my own theories, if that is the way his 'proof' turns out to be.-So Matt, read on. Let's continue to debate, even though our min-sets differ.