Forbidden Knowledge (Already Widely Disseminated)

[Perd Hapley]

In evolutionary theory, death creates man.

In Genesis, man creates death.

An irresolvable conflict between the two narratives.

[TommyGunn]

ooops, Fistful, I'm sorry but I edited my earlier response and then found you had responded to the unedited version.

Huh?  Adam (and Eve) violated the one law God established. "The wages of sin are death."   As a result human beings lost their supposed "immortality" so I'd say they're both contemporaries....

My bad, Fistful. 

[Perd Hapley]

Yeah, I just mean that man came along before death entered the world. Or at least death in the animal kingdom.

[TommyGunn]

In evolutionary theory, death creates man.

In Genesis, man creates death.

An irresolvable conflict between the two narratives.

God creates death for man as punishment for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge.  
I won't even really agree that "death creates man" in evolutionary theory is truly correct.   Certain forces effecting genetics and physical form drive evolution.  "Mutation" is often thought of as one of these forces, and yes it is, but it isn't the most important.  Genetic drift, genetic isolation, and other similar drives account for much as well.  Mutation doesn't appear as a prime driver because the change has to be repeatable in subsequent generations, and most physical changes wrought by mutation are harmful to the survival of the creature.  A jaguar, for instance, with a mutation that cripples its legs will never hunt.  It will also likely be rejected by its mother.
True, death happens, but what really has to happen is procreation, and allowing the environment to select the winners and losers.

[Perd Hapley]

I'm making the point that the Genesis account is not compatible with evolutionary theory. I'm not trying to debate with you how natural selection works.

I will reiterate that mankind created death. God informed him of it, but it wasn't His doing. It wasn't something God just came up with out the clear blue. It was where man's decision naturally led.

I will also reiterate that, in evolutionary theory, death created man. I of course did not say that it was the only factor, but as I understand it, it is a most necessary one. Is it not? 

[cordex]

I will reiterate that mankind created death. God informed him of it, but it wasn't His doing. It wasn't something God just came up with out the clear blue. It was where man's decision naturally led.

Based on the Genesis account, was there ever much doubt that Adam and Eve would sin?
Two innocent and guileless new creations are allowed to be tempted by an ancient evil force who had already convinced a third of the angels to rebel against their creator?  Talk about playing with a stacked deck!

[Ron]

Based on the Genesis account, was there ever much doubt that Adam and Eve would sin?
Two innocent and guileless new creations are allowed to be tempted by an ancient evil force who had already convinced a third of the angels to rebel against their creator?  Talk about playing with a stacked deck!

2/3rds of the angels did not revolt. A (sizable) minority revolted.

The true exercise of free will requires the establishment of individual responsibility and the opportunity to actually have choices. 

Of course according to much of modern science free will is an anachronism; being considered nothing more than an illusion within the illusion of consciousnesses.

[KD5NRH]

"God" implies mind, purpose, teleology. Are not all those antithetical to a theory that relies on chance, guided only by the survival of the fittest? If God guided or helped evolution, how could it be natural selection?

Why would "don't piss God off" be any less a legitimate rule of natural selection than "don't piss the tiger off?"

[MechAg94]

Not really.  Tens is the only approved scientific game in town.  And it only qualifies due to some great big waivers on the empirical data front that most other hard sciences would not get away with.

Intelligent design makes the claim but falls short.  Intelligent design does do yeomans work in pointing out holes and or logical fallacies of tens.  That is a necessity for progress and the tens crowd is not asking the tough questions of their own folk.  Very much like the globular warmists.  There is SOMETHING there but i doubt folks working in the current paradigm will suss it out.

Thing is tens is not repeatable quantifiable or empirical either.  There is some data some reasoning and a whole lot of storytelling and hand waving.  Sprinkle on the magical pixie dust of time and viola you got what you see around you today.  But there is one problem with using time as magic...there aint enough of it to do what they claim it can do using their own numbers and assumptions.

But the tens crowd will hold on to their beliefs because to do otherwise might cede ground to the fundies.  And holding on to it is a symbol that they themselves are not slack jawed yokels. 

My thoughts are that there is not enough data to back up the extravagant claims they make.  The particular mechanism can not be proved with the current data set.  I already have one religion so they are going to have to make the case empirically for me to sign on.

I always thought Intelligent Design was simply an attempt to show the weaknesses of Evolution as an origin theory.  IMO, the "belief" in evolution both inside and outside the scientific community pretty much prevents any alternative theory from developing.  Anyone who questions TENS is shouted down as a non-believer.  I am also concerned that archeological evidence that might provide better information is being overlooked or lost because it doesn't fit the TENS model and is ignored or destroyed.  

[MechAg94]

2/3rds of the angels did not revolt. A (sizable) minority revolted.

The true exercise of free will requires the establishment of individual responsibility and the opportunity to actually have choices. 

Of course according to much of modern science free will is an anachronism; being considered nothing more than an illusion within the illusion of consciousnesses.

Which brings to mind the idea that God's perfect plan for mankind could not work without allowing for the free will of mankind.  Otherwise, it wouldn't work.  At least, that is my answer to those saps who ask "why would God allow suffering?".  Because people are idiots.  The examples of people being idiots while being provided everything they need are common place in the Bible. 

As far as evolution apply to mankind, as soon as mankind figured out how to change his own environment to suit his needs, I have to wonder how natural selection really applies.  If you look at modern day America, natural selection seems to favor unemployed idiots on welfare and food stamps.  But I guess that won't last in the long view so it will work itself out. 

[RevDisk]

I always thought Intelligent Design was simply an attempt to show the weaknesses of Evolution as an origin theory.  IMO, the "belief" in evolution both inside and outside the scientific community pretty much prevents any alternative theory from developing.  Anyone who questions TENS is shouted down as a non-believer.  I am also concerned that archeological evidence that might provide better information is being overlooked or lost because it doesn't fit the TENS model and is ignored or destroyed.  

An alternative scientific theory, such as?

This is very different than the perception I got in college bio/paleo/etc and from the folks I know that work in those fields. They basically seem think TENS is essentially right because nothing else remotely fit the fossil records, but the details are ever changing as we get more data. Which seems to be widely encouraged. Every Paleontology major I knew wanted to dig for fossils, not burn the unbelievers. The link I posted earlier was a prime example. No one seemed to be shouting them down when they said previous models sucked, and they wanted to build a better model to provide more accuracy.

I've seen the climate stuff become ultra politicized, there's evidence of that everywhere. Regarding evolution, I was understanding that there were three camps. Those that believed in evolution (in a general sense, usually with the details changing as data is discovered), the Dawkin militant atheist camp and the religious camp that disbelieved in evolution for theological reasons. That said, I know of exactly zero folks in either the general evolution camp or Dawkin camp that say "Paleontology is perfect! We have all the answers, the science is settled, and dissenters will be shot!" We're talking FOUR BILLION YEARS of evolution. That's a hideously long period of time and there's sections we'll never completely understand because the data is unavailable. I wasn't aware that the evolution people were actively witch hunting folks that had specific issues with evolution. Because my textbooks were full of them. Could have been a clever ruse, but I doubt it.

I've heard of social archeological issues and politics. Dig up information that makes the current host country look bad, and you're going to have visa issues at a minimum. Not so much with say, Precambrian study.

[roo_ster]

I always thought Intelligent Design was simply an attempt to show the weaknesses of Evolution as an origin theory.  IMO, the "belief" in evolution both inside and outside the scientific community pretty much prevents any alternative theory from developing.  Anyone who questions TENS is shouted down as a non-believer.  I am also concerned that archeological evidence that might provide better information is being overlooked or lost because it doesn't fit the TENS model and is ignored or destroyed.  

Criticism of TENS is where the ID crowd is strongest.  ID proponents (generally) also propose that life as we know it requires a designer and have taken the same data as the TENS crowd and fit it to the ID model.  IMO, it suffers from defects similar to the TENS story-making.

Yes, I also worry that the insistence on conformity by the TENS crowd will blind it to data and mechanisms that do not support TENS, but may support other theories more in line with the data. 

Thing is, creationism/ID (and what one thinks of it/them) has an infinitesimal (close to zero) impact on STEM pursuits and exactly zero policy implications.  If we follow the COTUS, there is quite simply no sphere that gov't touches where it matters one way or the other.  Even if we bugger the COTUS, shoot it in the head, and dump it out back; one has to struggle to find a policy implication more significant than, "We give THIS guy, not THAT guy, more taxpayer dollars to waste(1)."

It is almost completely a struggle for cultural dominance/status.  It is part of the culture war and the progressive aggressors insist their dogma be uncontested and gov't sanctioned, at every level of gov't.  TENS proponents will claim SCIENCE! as their justification.  For this cultural skirmish.  When SCIENCE! blows in a direction opposite to their objectives, they will attempt to make it Forbidden Knowledge.

    Whenever a partisan says, “We should trust science” as a guide to how politicians should vote, I want to say: “Oh? Should we have trusted science 100 years ago, when the scientific consensus favored eugenics?” As I’ve written here in the past, one of the best lectures I ever heard was Dame Gillian Beer’s presentation at Cambridge University several years ago in which she discussed how various factions in Victorian England took up Darwin’s findings as support for their political cause. Abolitionists said that science clearly showed that we were all brothers under the skin, and slavery should end. Imperialists said that science made obvious that some races were fit to dominate others. And so forth. Science holds authority today that the Church did in ages past, and can be invoked to support good causes and bad.

    I am quite certain that if Science were able to demonstrate conclusively that there are measurable differences in cognitive abilities between the races, that no liberal would support making public policy on the basis of this research. And you know what? Neither would I. Science cannot be the final arbiter in deciding what is right and what is wrong. It is an important source of knowledge, but to say that it is the exclusive source of knowledge in all things is scientism, which is a form of idolatry.

(1) Very important to the grant-seekers unable to be hired in the private sector, though.

[Tallpine]

We're talking FOUR BILLION YEARS of evolution. That's a hideously long period of time

It's also such a long period of time that it is far more likely than not that some/several cataclysmic event/s would have occurred that would have wiped out all developing life. 

It's a mystery and I really don't have a clue, but I don't accept either Evolution or Creation.

[roo_ster]

An alternative scientific theory, such as?

This is very different than the perception I got in college bio/paleo/etc and from the folks I know that work in those fields. They basically seem think TENS is essentially right because nothing else remotely fit the fossil records, but the details are ever changing as we get more data. Which seems to be widely encouraged. Every Paleontology major I knew wanted to dig for fossils, not burn the unbelievers. The link I posted earlier was a prime example. No one seemed to be shouting them down when they said previous models sucked, and they wanted to build a better model to provide more accuracy.

I've seen the climate stuff become ultra politicized, there's evidence of that everywhere. Regarding evolution, I was understanding that there were three camps. Those that believed in evolution (in a general sense, usually with the details changing as data is discovered), the Dawkin militant atheist camp and the religious camp that disbelieved in evolution for theological reasons. That said, I know of exactly zero folks in either the general evolution camp or Dawkin camp that say "Paleontology is perfect! We have all the answers, the science is settled, and dissenters will be shot!" We're talking FOUR BILLION YEARS of evolution. That's a hideously long period of time and there's sections we'll never completely understand because the data is unavailable. I wasn't aware that the evolution people were actively witch hunting folks that had specific issues with evolution. Because my textbooks were full of them. Could have been a clever ruse, but I doubt it.

I've heard of social archeological issues and politics. Dig up information that makes the current host country look bad, and you're going to have visa issues at a minimum. Not so much with say, Precambrian study.

Rev, you describe an ideal standard of scientific practice.  Practice in the wild does not come close to that ideal. 

Tell me, why was Mitt Romney asked by George Stephanopolus about birth control during the presidential election?  For the same reason local journalists ask candidates for Texas governor about evolution: as a cultural marker and a hammer to beat on them for being outside to cool club. 

“Some beliefs are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them”
Sam Harris, The End of Faith, pp.52-53.

There are more similarly tolerant utterances to be found by the extravagantly atheist folk.

I would suggest that the skepticism applied by the extravagantly atheist crop of authors seems attenuated when applied to their side of the debate.  And they are much less open to debate.  When we look at just one religion, Christianity, we see a multitude of competing ways to read the evidence and continual interchange between the camps.  Not so with TENS, for which there is but one acceptable reading of the data.  Heck, there is more debate in math & physics circles, where there are fewer unknowns per issue than there is in the TENS camp.  But, then, cutting edge physics issues have much less cultural baggage than does TENS.   

[Pb]

I'm making the point that the Genesis account is not compatible with evolutionary theory. I'm not trying to debate with you how natural selection works.

I will reiterate that mankind created death. God informed him of it, but it wasn't His doing. It wasn't something God just came up with out the clear blue. It was where man's decision naturally led.

I will also reiterate that, in evolutionary theory, death created man. I of course did not say that it was the only factor, but as I understand it, it is a most necessary one. Is it not? 

I am Christian who is also an evolutionist.  IMHO the idea that the fall of fall created physcial death is an incorrect interpretation of the Bible.  Animals and plants died billions of years before the appearance of man.  I believe death referred to in the bible here is spiritual death, that is, loss of communion with God.

[Balog]

I am Christian who is also an evolutionist.  IMHO the idea that the fall of fall created physcial death is an incorrect interpretation of the Bible.  Animals and plants died billions of years before the appearance of man.  I believe death referred to in the bible here is spiritual death, that is, loss of communion with God.

If humans are upjumped apes created by random environmental pressures, how does that square with the whole "made in the image of God" thing? If we're over developed animals, either meat really is genocide of creatures with souls, or man has no eternal presence. Belief in evolution and the Bible is entirely predicated on changing the Bible to try to fit an atheistic worldview. It's much like the mainline Protestant denominations who claim the Bible has no moral stance on homosexuality. That's pretty obviously false on even a casual reading of the Scripture, and yet they insist that their feelings and desire to fit in with the cultural zeitgeist is more important than the Scripture. It's silly.





And I'll merely echo Roo_ster in pointing out that science is a process involving empirical verifiable testing and results. Neither life arising from inanimate chemicals nor species changing into different species via natural selection has been demonstrated in a verifiable or empirical way. It's only said to best "fit the evidence" because any explanation that is not explicitly atheistic in nature is rejected without consideration.

I have a couple friends who are research molecular biologists. A surprisingly large number of folks in their field view the insane complexity of unicellular organisms as only explainable by some type of theism. But almost no one voices that opinion publicly as it is viewed as heretical and a career killer (as one friend who was forced out of <large European university> can attest).

[RevDisk]

Neither life arising from inanimate chemicals nor species changing into different species via natural selection has been demonstrated in a verifiable or empirical way.

Depends on definition of life, but we're working on it.

Miller–Urey experiment
Miller Volcanic Spark Discharge Experiment
"Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions" - Matthew W. Powner, Beatrice Gerland & John D. Sutherland. Nature, Vol. 460, May 13, 2009.

Be very useful info when/if we start terraforming other planets. I concur with Birdman that we should relativistically sterilize planets before colonization. If we could seed it with earth friendly microlife after it cool down, definitely a plus. It'd be cheaper to use the process to make said microlife, rather than carrying it across the stars.

[Balog]

Creationist: "We don't understand how all of this works at this time" = obviously some rube who's blinded by his faith.

Evolutionist: "We don't understand how all of this works at this time, but we do know that anyone doubting us is stupid and irrational" = the pinnacle of reason and objectivity.

[Perd Hapley]

Why would "don't piss God off" be any less a legitimate rule of natural selection than "don't piss the tiger off?"

Because God is not a tiger.

If you're talking about a god that is just one of the beings involved in the process, then I wouldn't object to your theory, except to point out that that's not the sort of God that I'm talking about, or that most people are talking about in this sort of discussion.

A tiger is not a creator god, who is intentionally bending evolution to serve his larger purpose. Or if it is, we might need to rethink both our religions, and our scientific theories! 

To put that same objection in a different form, we're usually talking about a God outside of nature, who intends a long-term strategy. I don't think the activities of such a being, purposely guiding or changing the process, would be considered natural selection.

[Perd Hapley]

Based on the Genesis account, was there ever much doubt that Adam and Eve would sin?
Two innocent and guileless new creations are allowed to be tempted by an ancient evil force who had already convinced a third of the angels to rebel against their creator?  Talk about playing with a stacked deck!

I don't know of any evidence that Satan was much older than Adam. Or any more clever or intelligent.

Well, maybe better-informed.

[cordex]

I don't know of any evidence that Satan was much older than Adam. Or any more clever or intelligent.

Well, maybe better-informed.

Interesting point.  Just so I understand, do you then believe that Satan was brought into being during the physical creation and that Adam and Eve may have spent many millenia hanging out in Eden until Lucifer went rogue?  My religious upbringing assumed that the spiritual realm and its denizens existed prior to the physical creation, but that may not be accepted elsewhere or have solid basis.

[Perd Hapley]

Interesting point.  Just so I understand, do you then believe that Satan was brought into being during the physical creation and that Adam and Eve may have spent many millenia hanging out in Eden until Lucifer went rogue?  My religious upbringing assumed that the spiritual realm and its denizens existed prior to the physical creation, but that may not be accepted elsewhere or have solid basis.

For the longest time, I also thought of the angels as having been around much longer than humans. And I guess I can't say for certain they did not. But I think it stands to reason that the angels were created at some point during the six days, right along with everything else. As far as I know the Bible is silent about that.

Also, was there some reason you think that Lucifer existed thousands of years before he went rogue? I don't recall anything about that. Sooner makes more sense to me than later, but maybe I'm missing something.

[cordex]

For the longest time, I also thought of the angels as having been around much longer than humans. And I guess I can't say for certain they did not. But I think it stands to reason that the angels were created at some point during the six days, right along with everything else.

Just for my own clarification, do you ascribe to both the young earth theory and that the creation happened in six literal days?  I don't believe either one, but it helps to discuss things using the same assumptions.

As far as I know the Bible is silent about that.

True, as with most religious tradition.

Also, was there some reason you think that Lucifer existed thousands of years before he went rogue? I don't recall anything about that. Sooner makes more sense to me than later, but maybe I'm missing something.

I suppose that is just presumption on my part.  Assuming for a moment that a variety of things are true (that the Bible contains an accurate description of creation, that said creation happened in 144 hours, that Lucifer was created at some point in that time period, that he went rogue at some point prior to playing snake in Eden), it doesn't make sense to me that an angel of some special position would be so poorly designed by a perfect creator as to spontaneously become evil in a matter of a few days.

[KD5NRH]

All of this dodges the real pressing question:  WTF did snakes look like before they were sentenced to go "upon thy belly?"  Giant reptilian caterpillars? 

[makattak]

All of this dodges the real pressing question:  WTF did snakes look like before they were sentenced to go "upon thy belly?"  Giant reptilian caterpillars?  

Dragons. Wings and all. That's why they're always the bad guy in our myths.






(Because I will be, inevitably, taken seriously, that's a joke.)