The Bible: the word of God?

[copain]

I don’t even really know what RNA is, at least I know what DNA is made of . RNA seems to be very important though,...

RNA (ribonucleic acid) is a bit like DNA (Desoxyribonukleinsäure) but only with a single strand. RNA is needed to copy the Information hold in the DNA by the cell division.

And as my knowlege is - please correct me if they are not up to date anymore -
at the begining of life there is a litte problem with both of them.
Both depends on enzymes to be built. But enzymes need the information in the DNA to be build.
How on earth come enzymes as well as DNA/RNA into existence ?

[Emma_85]

I don’t even really know what RNA is, at least I know what DNA is made of . RNA seems to be very important though,...

RNA (ribonucleic acid) is a bit like DNA (Desoxyribonukleinsäure) but only with a single strand. RNA is needed to copy the Information hold in the DNA by the cell division.

And as my knowlege is - please correct me if they are not up to date anymore -
at the begining of life there is a litte problem with both of them.
Both depends on enzymes to be built. But enzymes need the information in the DNA to be build.
How on earth come enzymes as well as DNA/RNA into existence ?

ask Jenny (that's what I'll do), she's done evolution in class and she knows what RNA is and she probably knows what enzymes are too... I suck a biology.

[EmptyMan]

If animals didn't fit the environment perfectly, then they died out. If they did fit, then they lived. The perfect fit is a logical result, not a random coincidence.

You sound like a theist, "The perfect fit is a logical result, not a random coincidence." Logical result? What is a logical result in a nonlogical world. From what someone here said earlier on quantom theory, everything is governed by randomness, so why is evolution any different? It sounds good to say it is not random but if every action in the universe is a minldess act of chemistry and phsyics it could not be anything but random.

Nobody ever claims that evolution is random. I think you are trying very hard to misinterpret Evolution so that it is easier to deny.

I am not claiming evolution is random, specifically. I am stating naturalistic beleifs, which are, that everything is a result from mindless acts of physics. This applies for the star and a rock on the earth. The rock is governed by the same laws that the matter in my head are. Evolution can not be taken out of the "normal explination." If everything in nature is caused by random processes of physics then evolution is as well. To say evolution is an exception would help my view tremendously. Also I am looking at the whole picture. And the whole picture accoring to Naturalism and materialism is that all events have a physical cause that is nonpurposive and nonintentional. To put a purpose or an intention in the universe would have huge consequences on these worldviews.

If I went up and said to you that I have gained truth from falsity what would your rection be?

And why should my reaction to the beleif that intentionality forms from nonintentionality, rationality forms from nonrationality, and purpose froms from nonpurpose be any different?

[Pete]

What I mean by logical result is this: if a whale gave birth to a sparrow at the bottom of the ocean, the sparrow would die because it does not have lungs for breathing water. And then you would conveniently say, "look how there are no sparrows living at the bottom of the ocean--it's clearly proof of divine creation, since only the animals that can breathe water are living in the water. How perfectly fitting!"

[EmptyMan]

So by errors they look like a stick? Probablisticly how many errors does it take for somthing to look like a stick?

Many, but each mutation that brought them closer to stick brought them further away from the birds' plate.
These insects started to look stick like. At first they might have been bright green (only in my example not really), but then the climate changed and so they slowly moved south, as the winters further north were too cold. In their new wood though all the birds would easily see the bright green insects and ate them. One day an insect with a mutation was born. He was not quite as green as the rest, a bit dirty green, and the brids didn't eat him and he had many kids. Another had a mutation that made him very bright green - he eaten straight way. The chances that the brownish ones would be eaten by birds were reduced. Some day on of these now dirty green insects had another mutation with made him even more brown and a bit longer too. And hundred generations later these now brown, long insects had more mutations. Some of them started to grow fat and thin, the others long. The ones that were flat started mating only flat ones that looked like leaves and the other ones only ones that looked like sticks.

As for birds' feathers, each stage in the evolution of the feather, from no more than a bit of fluff to keep some cold dinos warm to something to keep out the rain, to something that helped them glide from tree to tree, to something that allowed them to fly a bit to at last a proper bird, each step had an advantage (or at the very very least not be harmful. It is imaginable that something with out an advantage was passed on, because a trait genetically linked to it did offer an advantage. E.g. the little stick insect that had a colour mutation actually had a mutation that affected his skin and made it wrinkly. Being wrinkly might not have helped him at first, but the browner colour the skin mutation brought with it, did. And later on as another mutation happened and his skin was even wrinklier so that it now really looked like bark, that was an advantage.)

Ok, we know that in most parts of the worls there are bugs that look like sticks where there are sticks. There are birds in many parts of the world. And cats in many places on Earth. Why do so many parts of the world develop similar types of animals? Why a cat in almost every continent? If evolution is governed by randomness why are cats so similar and stick bugs so similar. Do places with sticks naturally create bugs that look like sticks?

But evolution does not contend that the Laws of Thermodynamics do not apply to biological material, they believe it has been temporarily reversed for the advantage of biological martial. But from what I understand the Law of thermodynamics applies to everything and it basically means the universe is dying, I think.

I don't think they say it has reversed, maybe they don't understand the laws of thermodynamics,

Here is the web-site I got that from. http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/home.shtml?tqskip1=1

[EmptyMan]

What I mean by logical result is this: if a whale gave birth to a sparrow at the bottom of the ocean, the sparrow would die because it does not have lungs for breathing water. And then you would conveniently say, "look how there are no sparrows living at the bottom of the ocean--it's clearly proof of divine creation, since only the animals that can breathe water are living in the water. How perfectly fitting!"

Well you did say it was "not a random coincidence." That sounds like somthing that would come from a theist rather than a naturalist.

[Emma_85]

Ok, we know that in most parts of the worls there are bugs that look like sticks where there are sticks. There are birds in many parts of the world. And cats in many places on Earth. Why do so many parts of the world develop similar types of animals? Why a cat in almost every continent? If evolution is governed by randomness why are cats so similar and stick bugs so similar. Do places with sticks naturally create bugs that look like sticks?

Here is the web-site I got that from. http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/home.shtml?tqskip1=1

Birds have wings, that is the wonderful thing about them, they can fly to knew lands and continents where there are as yet no birds and so good chances that they can survive there. Cats have feet too. America is not quite so isolated from the rest of the world that species could not cross and some where already there from millions of years ago when they were still one continent. Australia on the other hand did not have that much contact, that is why Australia's animals are so different (the native ones that is, not the ones humans introduced). http://www.aussie-info.com/identity/fauna/.

Some cats could for example wonder to china though and others to europe, there the environment was different, so these groups of cats evolved differently. In Africa you have Lions, in Europle Linx and who knows what in China? The house cat, which is everywhere is a domesticated form of a small wild cat probably from Egypt where they kept them to keep away mice from their corn sacks. The romans and Greeks just had to have them too, they were so good at keeping away mice you see, and so from early on cats and dogs (formerly wolves) were with the humans and so spread to where humans are.
And evoltution does make some sense. Look at us. Two eyes, why not 1 or 3? Because you need 2 to see 3D, if someone were born with 1 eye, they'd sooner be eaten by a lion, or with 3 eyes, well, no extra advantage, so the genes do not get passed on, but 3 is strange cause it's not symmetrical.

still looking at the site, where exactly does it say that, under which heading?

[classicalclarinet]

everything is governed by randomness, so why is evolution any different?

But the randomness is in the Quantum level, isn't it? And random patterns become more organised the farther you see them.

The Laws of Thermodynamics were covered on the article that Emma posted earlier.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articl ... 9EC588EEDF

And Emptyman, are you argueing about Naturalism or Evolution? From what I've heard each is different. Evolution doesn't set out to explain how life FORMED, just how life diversified.

[EmptyMan]

everything is governed by randomness, so why is evolution any different?

But the randomness is in the Quantum level, isn't it? And random patterns become more organised the farther you see them.

The Laws of Thermodynamics were covered on the article that Emma posted earlier.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articl ... 9EC588EEDF

And Emptyman, are you argueing about Naturalism or Evolution? From what I've heard each is different. Evolution doesn't set out to explain how life FORMED, just how life diversified.

I am arguing against the naturalistic assumption that evolution is guided soley by blind processes. I beleive that there is a Supernatural intervention in nature. Thanks for the the post on thermodynamics. I did not pay attention to that particular law in physics class, so I guess that I really don't have much room to talk about it in the first place.

[Democritus]

Ok, we know that in most parts of the worls there are bugs that look like sticks where there are sticks. There are birds in many parts of the world. And cats in many places on Earth. Why do so many parts of the world develop similar types of animals? Why a cat in almost every continent? If evolution is governed by randomness why are cats so similar and stick bugs so similar. Do places with sticks naturally create bugs that look like sticks?

Evolution is not governed by randomness... I wouldn't state it so simply.

Evolution depends on random variation. Not all individuals in a population are identical, there are always differences. And once in a while, there are mutations. Usually mutations are not helpful, but once in a while they turn out to be accidentally beneficial.

The variation and the mutations are random.

But the process of natural selection is not entirely random. Creatures which have some kind of advantage, when it comes to survival and reproduction, will be more successful. That's not random.

I don't believe that evolution can be used to prove the absense of divine will or divine purposes. Remember that most scientists believe in God. IMHO evolution cannot tell you, one way or the other, whether there is a God or whether life exists to some purpose.

Even if evolution is "mindless," as you say, that doesn't prove that there is no God. Scientists are not in the business of answering this kind of question.

But evolution does not contend that the Laws of Thermodynamics do not apply to biological material, they believe it has been temporarily reversed for the advantage of biological martial. But from what I understand the Law of thermodynamics applies to everything and it basically means the universe is dying, I think.

It applies to everything, but it does not apply equally everywhere. In general entropy increases in the world, but that does not mean that entropy cannot decrease in some particular places, for various reasons.

Also, remember that the Earth is continually bathed in energy from the sun. This is what powers the engine of life. (At least, in a physical sense.) I'm not an expert in physics but I believe that that energy from the sun must be factored in, when you are considering the entropy of the Earth and us inhabitants.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/bioentropy.html

[Democritus]

I am arguing against the naturalistic assumption that evolution is guided soley by blind processes. I beleive that there is a Supernatural intervention in nature. Thanks for the the post on thermodynamics. I did not pay attention to that particular law in physics class, so I guess that I really don't have much room to talk about it in the first place.

You said super-natural. That means, by definition, it is outside the bounds of what scientists investigate.

Think like a fire chief: The mayor asks you to investigate why a building has burned down. What if you reply, "Because God wanted it to burn" ? That's not an answer at all.

As a fire chief, your job is to find the cause of the fire -- perhaps arson, perhaps bad wiring, perhaps lightning struck the building. To find the cause, you will have to examine the evidence. You will have to dig through the rubble and see how the fire happened.

As a human being, the fire chief may be very aware of the power of God and may believe that God is the ultimate cause of everything, but that conviction won't help find what caused the fire. Scripture won't help, either.

When investigating evolution, biologists have a job similar to the fire chief's. We may very well believe that God intended for life to evolve as it did, but that does not mean that events don't have identifiable physical causes. Why do zebras have stripes? "Because God wanted it" is not an answer. It may be true, but it's not an answer for a scientist.

Think of it this way: God gave us hands and feet, and intends for us to use them. But God also gave us the powerful ability to figure out how the world works. We have inferred that the world is made of atoms, we construct telescopes, and we have even figured out how life has evolved. We are not honoring God by ignoring this ability. If we believe in divine purpose, then perhaps we can believe that God has some reason why we are able to understand the world as keenly as we can.

Perhaps we were meant to discover evolution. Why not? If God put those stripes onto the zebra, then He put that curiosity into the scientist, too.

[lau_kai]

evolution... u make it sound tooooo...ummm complex... i am getting lost with it now and i am just starting to learn it at school..

[Phylax]

The Bible contians 66 books which were written over a vast period of time but there has been agreement on the books contained in the Bible since around 397A.D.

Alas, it is not so clear cut as that. See, for example
http://www.probe.org/docs/xn-canon.html
where it says, amongst other things,

"As late as the seventh and eighth centuries there were church leaders who added to or subtracted from the list of texts. Gregory the Great added Tobias and Wisdom and mentioned 15 Pauline epistles, not 14. John of Damascus, the first Christian theologian who attempted a complete systematic theology, rejected the O.T. apocrypha, but added the Apostolic Constitution and 1 and 2 Clement to the N.T. One historian notes that "things were no further advanced at the end of the fourteenth century than they had been at the end of the fourth" (Hannah, Notes, 3.3)."

I am not sure who else disputes the books of the Bible.

Quite a few, in fact. Although the Greek Orthodox Church now accepts the Book of Revelation, it did not do so until the Council of Jerusalem in 1672. The Ethiopic Orthodox Church has the largest Bible, with 81 books. The Nestorian Church omits 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation from its NT canon. These are just a few examples.

It continues to seem odd to me that God, having taken so much care in passing His word on through the Biblical writings, was not equally concerned to make it evident to all Christian traditions which books actually contained it.

[Pete]

gott ist tot.

[Geoff]

I haven't read the entire thread, but I thought some of you may be interested in a debate between Thomas B. Warren PhD. and Anthony G.N. Flew. Both men are master Logicians and professors of Philosophy. This is a debate on the existence of God. The rhetoric is easy to understand for people of every level, and still spares no precision.

Flew was a signer of the Humanist Manifesto and head of the philosophy dept. at Reading University. Warren was a professor of Philosophy at Harding University at the time in addition to several other endeavors not directly related to apologetics.

enjoy

[Pete]

gott ist tot.

That was an example sentence today in my class on predicate adjectives in German.

Edited by Emma: stop it, I'm warning you.

[Pete]

My last post was just as meaningful and original as all your repetitive whining posts.

[Pete]

In fact, the reason that these discussions develop laterally is that the people with the weak argument are always backtracking and evasively bringing up other theories and other argument. Very clever lawyers we would all be... when we begin to lose ground in one argument, we shall bring up a related issue and try to bog down discussion until everyone gives up, not realizing that they almost beat us.

[Pete]

Plus, I know some German

[Kasper]

irrumatissimus es.

[Pete]

irrumatissimus es.

Nonne putas me esse matrem tuam? O magnum erratum!

[Kasper]

Certe, o Petule, esne quoque stultissimus? linguane latina fugit te, inepte? Lege, si tibi placeat, irrumatissumus neque irrumatissima.

(et matris natura non licet)

[Pete]

Certe, o Petule, esne quoque stultissimus? linguane latina fugit te, inepte? Lege, si tibi placeat, irrumatissumus neque irrumatissima.

(et matris natura non licet)

Sic est! iam cognoveram te legisse declinationem falsum. Sed ratio verborum significat matrem tuam.

[Emma_85]

Pete, if you post another thing in this thread that does not have anything what so ever to do with the original topic then I will delete it.

[Pete]

Pete, if you post another thing in this thread that does not have anything what so ever to do with the original topic then I will delete it.

That off-topic posting is exactly what I was complaining about! --before Kasper here started swearing at me in Latin. Am I to endure profane insults without giving back the like?

Clearly you are as arbitrary as fate and as harsh as Drakon, and if you really want to play god of your little message board and delete my posts when you don't like my opinions, then by all means, who can stop you except the powers above you? Not I, my friend.

[Bert]

Pete, if you post another thing in this thread that does not have anything what so ever to do with the original topic then I will delete it.

That off-topic posting is exactly what I was complaining about! --before Kasper here started swearing at me in Latin. Am I to endure profane insults without giving back the like?

Clearly you are as arbitrary as fate and as harsh as Drakon, and if you really want to play god of your little message board and delete my posts when you don't like my opinions, then by all means, who can stop you except the powers above you? Not I, my friend.

I sure hope you are joking.
The trouble with having discussions with people we don't know, using a forum that is not face to face, is that at times it is hard to tell if someone is serious, sarcastic, out to hurt someone or just kidding around.
Sometimes I wish that the moderators would interupt a bit more.
Of course they don't want to play police-man, so I can understand that they want to use their authority as little as possible. As a rule the discussions are polite so don't get me wrong, I am not complaining.
Just play by the rules.
I'll stop now before I get rebuked for being off-topic

[Rhuiden]

It appears that this thread has run it's course. I have enjoyed it. It seems most people here, including myself, had already made up their minds but there were a couple who seemed not so sure. If anyone has any additional questions, I would be happy to try to answer them privately.

Chiggles, I answered your PM a couple days ago, but I noticed tonight that it was still in my outbox (not sure what I did wrong). I am guessing that you never got it, I will try to resend it. Let me know if you don't get it soon.

Looking forward to the next discussion.

Rhuiden

[Emma_85]

I sure hope you are joking.
The trouble with having discussions with people we don't know, using a forum that is not face to face, is that at times it is hard to tell if someone is serious, sarcastic, out to hurt someone or just kidding around.
Sometimes I wish that the moderators would interupt a bit more.
Of course they don't want to play police-man, so I can understand that they want to use their authority as little as possible. As a rule the discussions are polite so don't get me wrong, I am not complaining.
Just play by the rules.
I'll stop now before I get rebuked for being off-topic

No, don't worry, you're not a spammer. Don't bother to reply to Pete anymore, Jeff has banned him.

[Turpissimus]

Looking forward to the next discussion.

Excellent. Always nice to hold a pleasant discussion with intelligent correspondents. I shall look forward it also.

[Kasper]

Don't bother to reply to Pete anymore, Jeff has banned him.

Although I appreciate the classical nature of his punishment (I will be expecting his tristia), isn't that bit harsh? Although he may have been somewhat inconsiderate and outspoken, jsut like most of us he is trying to learn these languages and (probably) needs all the help he can get.
Will you not reconsider? Perhaps put him on parole or some sort of good behaviour bond?

[annis]

Although I appreciate the classical nature of his punishment (I will be expecting his tristia), isn't that bit harsh? Although he may have been somewhat inconsiderate and outspoken,

He was doing more than simply being rude in this discussion.

[klewlis]

wow I got busy for a couple of days and suddenly this discussion is 8 pages! crazy... I'm lost now. :)