Theory of Evolution and Mormons

[The Dude]

Mine was a question of relevance. A question raised that still has not been answered.

Only an idiot wouldn't see that, so I can't understand why...., oh wait, I almost forgot who was posting...

So I'm an idiot? Didn't you just get suspended recently?

Your oatmeal insight has been addressed by Tchild2 and Tarski and you gave only mocking and "neener neener" in reply. So, I don't think you are [behaving like] a poster of substance or merit.

[Tarski]

Mine was a question of relevance. A question raised that still has not been answered.

Tchild2 answered it in the very next post.

Yep, your bad as you say.

[littlechild]

Now lets see you make it consistent with your assumptions. How come humans and apes have this similarity (yet a difference too)?

Still waiting.

The thing is, it's not just a single datum. There are thousands of evidences like this that evolution and common descent can explain, but special creation cannot. It means something IP.

Still waiting for you to make it consistent with your assumptions. Give it a try. Be "creative".

Yes, your claim is that there are thousands of 'evidences'. It doesn't seem to occur to you that your evidence is only such in your own mind, and in the minds of those who believe as you do. There is nothing in the objective, tangible, REAL world that either demonstrates or necessitates that you come to the conclusions that you do. The mere fact that your so - called evidence merely DOVETAILS with your hypothesis, but doesn't conclusively PROVE your hypothesis should be sufficient cause to exercise caution. Yet you and your Darwinist buddies go your merry unscientific way, and insist that the evidence is overwhelming when in fact it is not.

Until you and your Darwinist buddies start acting in a Scientific rather than a dogmatic fashion, I will continue to point out the error in your logic and in your proof.

I know, you are now going to come back and insist that because everyone you know agrees with your, and because you have great faith in the word of evolutionary biologists, why, there couldn't possibly be any other explanation. I've heard it before.

And I still disagree, and I believe my reasons are more substantive than yours. Because they truly are.

[littlechild]

I guess I am not suprised that you don't catch the point. There is an "ah ha" moment waiting to happen.

start with this old post (slightly modified):

The human form is temporary. It took time to appear and it will change and then probably disappear like most forms produced by evolution.

There is no basis to believe this. There are a bunch of made up speculations about possibilities, but that's it. And they are all absurdly improbable events. If you believe in mathematics, that is.

[spinner]

Yes, your claim is that there are thousands of 'evidences'. It doesn't seem to occur to you that your evidence is only such in your own mind, and in the minds of those who believe as you do. There is nothing in the objective, tangible, REAL world that either demonstrates or necessitates that you come to the conclusions that you do. The mere fact that your so - called evidence merely DOVETAILS with your hypothesis, but doesn't conclusively PROVE your hypothesis should be sufficient cause to exercise caution. Yet you and your Darwinist buddies go your merry unscientific way, and insist that the evidence is overwhelming when in fact it is not.

Until you and your Darwinist buddies start acting in a Scientific rather than a dogmatic fashion, I will continue to point out the error in your logic and in your proof.

I know, you are now going to come back and insist that because everyone you know agrees with your, and because you have great faith in the word of evolutionary biologists, why, there couldn't possibly be any other explanation. I've heard it before.

And I still disagree, and I believe my reasons are more substantive than yours. Because they truly are.

And yet, despite all of the posturing about how great your evidences are and how insufficient science's are, you still haven't attempted an explanation for the DNA evidence that the Dude offered in post #235. Instead we just get more puffery saying 'My evidences are good and yours are bad'. If the evidences like The Dude gave are so inadequate, why don't you and others just address them head on? Can you?

[Jeff K.]

Tchild2 answered it in the very next post.

Yep, your bad as you say.

This has "not" been answered.

Very relevelant. If humans are made in God's image, why does the image we are made in have so many characteristics that are not needed for a God, but that exist for humans evolving in symbiosis with the natural world around us; gut bacteria, tiny hairs, toenails, etc etc.

Define the limits of image? Does that mean all characteristics must correlate? How much and to what level? Otherwise, enjoy your oatmeal.

It should only take a rational persona half of a second to realize that it isn't us that are made in God's image, but rather God, made in ours.

A half a second's thought makes even a rational person sound dumb.

Try and keep up....

[Tarski]

There is no basis to believe this. There are a bunch of made up speculations about possibilities, but that's it. And they are all absurdly improbable events. If you believe in mathematics, that is.

Take an array of billions of randomly moving bits of matter. Now introduce more thermal energy into the system. Thermal energy so that the bits are knocked around randomly. What are the chances mathematically that the bits will start to move in repeating patterns like a beautiful hexagonal array of vortices? Just do the math as if each possible combination was equally likely (this is the error!). Assume Avogadro's number of bits (molecules) and divide the space of possible locations and velocities into many possible boxes (partition phase space to an appropriate level of fineness-you choose!). You know the drill. How many of the possible configurations correspond to a beautiful pattern and how many do not? What numbers do you get?

Now observe that the application of math ignored the physics!

Slowly and evenly heat up a thin layer of oil in a pan, at a low temperatures you see random motions in the molecules transfer the heat (average kinetic energy of molecules) from the high temperature bottom to the low temperature top surface. On the macroscopic scale, you start to see a layer directly above the pan expand and get correspondingly less dense than the layer above it. It rises. This rising sheet breaks up into blobs. The fact that the featureless uniform layers form into blobs is interesting mathematically and already represents a forming order of some sort.

Then as one raises the temperature of the bottom of the pan in relation to the top, at a certain temperature, the falling and rising blobs organize themselves into a definite and strikingly ordered hexagonal matrix of cells. Convection cells. We have ORDER!! Only random thermal motions as input! These are called Benard convection cells and the order they represent is predicted to be an impossibly unlikely configuration if one uses the naive combinatorial calculations that ignore the laws of molecular interaction and other aspect of this thermally open system. But this is exactly the kind of misapplied math that the creationists use to make the kind of arguments you are parroting.

see http://blackskimmer.blogspot.com/2007/07/b...on-of-wher.html the above is a paraphrasing of the description found on this site but is a well known effect--one of many instances of spontaneous emergence of complexity without supernatural magic.

[The Dude]

littlechild and Ipso Facto,

Just as an example of what the differences in genomes signify: We have the genome sequence of rats and the sequence of mice. There are a finite number of differences between the two sets of DNA. If we took the rat genome and used biotechnology to make all the necessary substitutions, insertions, deletions, and rearrangements to make it look like mouse DNA, then we would get a mouse organism if the DNA was stuck into a cell and made to undergo embryonic development. Do you agree with this scenario? The genome functions through embryo development to produce the organism, and a rat genome with a finite number of changes to make it look sufficiently like a mouse genome would produce a mouse.

Now back to the problem of chromosome 2. The second longest human chromosome is made of two primate chromosomes (12 and 13) fused-together. Nobody is denying the physical facts, just disagreeing about what it means. The fusion could have happened by natural means, or if you like sci-fi, lets say it could have happened by cosmic beings coming down and reprogramming the DNA of some primitive primate who was our last common ancestor with apes. Whatever you prefer, it is evidence that we shared a common ancestor.

"No it's not" you strenuously assert. Then what is it? A coincidence, you say, that just happens to DOVETAIL with exactly the type of thing you would expect if we had a common ancestor.

A coincidence? Remember, we aren't talking about a happenstance conservation of bone or organ morphology, we are talking about the material that propagates through the generations to create us and define us as a species. This DNA is the template for evolution and the program that creates us, and here is a precise difference between human and ape genomes giving evidence that our DNA's history of constant change has passed by the apes (through a common ancestor) to get to us. It is exactly the thing you must expect if common ancestry is real.

But no, it's just a coincidence -- one that must be absurdly improbable, yet no other explanation has been offered.

The precise difference is not evidence of a history, it is just there for no reason at all. Is that still what you say?

[Tchild2]

Mine was a question of relevance. A question raised that still has not been answered.

you mean this?

Define the limits of image? Does that mean all characteristics must correlate? How much and to what level? Otherwise, enjoy your oatmeal.

1) D&C 130: When the Savior shall appear we shall see him as he is. We shall see that he is a man like ourselves.

2) D&C 130: The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as manâ??s;

3) Alma 11:43 The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time;

Do you not think that the characteristics correlate? Shall we resurrect differently than God, even though Alma states that the "body shall be reunited again in its perfect form"? How much and to what level are both answered clearly by LDS canonized scripture. Why will we need eye lashes, livers, eyebrows, hair, sweat glands, hormonal glands, and all the body parts suited for this terrestial world in a perfect heaven? Why would God need them, and why would we resurrect to a form different than God? why do you think that somehow God is different than us, given that other scriptures state that "we are made in his image"?

According to LDS scripture we are made in God's image, and our bodies shall resurrect perfectly. So what have you got to show otherwise?

[Tarski]

you mean this?

1) D&C 130: When the Savior shall appear we shall see him as he is. We shall see that he is a man like ourselves.

2) D&C 130: The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as manâ??s;

3) Alma 11:43 The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time;

Do you not think that the characteristics correlate? Shall we resurrect differently than God, even though Alma states that the "body shall be reunited again in its perfect form"? How much and to what level are both answered both by LDS canonized scripture. Why will we need eye lashes, livers, eyebrows, hair, sweat glands, hormonal glands, and all the body parts suited for this terrestial world in a perfect heaven? Why would God need them, and why would we resurrect to a form different than what God has to think that somehow God is different than us given that other scriptures state that "we are made in his image".

According to LDS scripture we are made in God's image, and our bodies shall resurrect perfectly. So what have you got to show otherwise?

And on top of that, our form is what it is because of our makeup; skin, bones, organs, interstitial fluid, hair, etc.

Biological form follows biological function (God is not a man-looking blowup doll whose opposable thumbs only look evolved from earlier primate morphologies and whose teeth only look good for tearing flesh, and assuming God isn't deathly white, his rosy cheeks only look filled with red blood, his ears only look like they only work in a terrestrial atmosphere etc )

[Tchild2]

And on top of that, our form is what it is because of our makeup; skin, bones, organs, interstitial fluid, hair, etc.

Biological form follows biological function (God is not a man-looking blowup doll whose opposable thumbs only look evolved from earlier primate morphologies and whose teeth only look good for tearing flesh, and assuming God isn't deathly white, his rosy cheeks only look filled with red blood, his ears only look like they only work in a terrestrial atmosphere etc )

And cells, our body is made up of trillions of cells, every last part. Cells can take in nutrients, convert these nutrients into energy, carry out specialized functions, and reproduce as necessary. More amazing is that each cell stores its own set of instructions for carrying out each of these activities.

God could be said to be nothing more than a collection of trillions of resurrected cells. Will our cells still do all the work for us performing the same functions on earth when we resurrect or do they get to rest also?

[Hoops22]

So I'm an idiot?

Is this another board poll?

(I'd vote no)

[semlogo]

Very relevelant. If humans are made in God's image, why does the image we are made in have so many characteristics that are not needed for a God, but that exist for humans evolving in symbiosis with the natural world around us; gut bacteria, tiny hairs, toenails, etc etc.

It should only take a rational person half of a second to realize that it isn't us that are made in God's image, but rather God, made in ours.

Joseph Smith taught that God was once a man. That being the case, a man whose ancestors had evolved from lower forms, just like we did.

[Ipso Facto]

The Dude:

Nobody is denying the physical facts, just disagreeing about what it means.

So true.

And when it comes to the genomes of life, I think the question is actually quite simple: Do these variant programs that direct variant life forms result from the accumulation of random beneficial mutations over the course of eons of time, or are they consciously and intelligently manipulated via mechanisms that are presently unrecognized or misunderstood?

And yet it goes far beyond that simple question. Because it is not sufficient to explain how the genome came about and how it is manipulated to produce variant life forms. Before you can ever have life forms, you must have a hospitable environment in which those life forms can exist and propagate. You must have a system whose constituent parts work in absolutely perfect harmony in order to provide that environment. In our case, we have a planet containing all the necessary elements of life, with precisely functioning ecosystems, that is positioned precisely in the only place it could be in our solar system in order for life to survive and thrive.

We could go on and on about the precise relationships between the earth, the sun, and the moon, and lifeâ??s dependence on those precision tolerances, but it is sufficient to note that the programming of the genome is only one small and relatively minor part of the equation of life.

Darwinists would have us believe that life is the consequence of the random possibilities contained in the vastness of eons. Given enough time, they tell us, literally anything can â?? and does â?? happen.

I find that viewpoint shockingly illogical and arrogant on many levels. In the first place, it reduces the probabilities of life to the infinitesimal. Even in a system as large as our galaxy, the chances for life are reduced to the point that almost all the space and matter present is wasted and inert. I find this view both intellectually illogical and philosophically objectionable.

I submit that all matter and life in this galaxy (and all others) is intelligently directed. I submit that the evidence for this intelligent direction is all around us. Something as simple as the relative sizes and positions of the sun, earth, and moon in order to produce a solar eclipse is, to me, compelling evidence of intelligent design at work in our system.

I submit that the firmware in your programmable remote that permits it to adapt itself to any TV you purchase, and to control its various functions, did not evolve its capabilities via the random combination of elements over the course of eons of time, but that it was designed and programmed by an intelligent entity whom you have never seen. That you cannot see the obvious similarities between that firmware and a genome, is, to me, inexplicable.

[thesometimesaint]

Ipso Facto:

Evolution is simply the method with which God used to create everything.

[Jeff K.]

Very plausible... But of course those who disdain Mormons will say "You don't really believe that".

[Ipso Facto]

Ipso Facto:

Evolution is simply the method with which God used to create everything.

Is it?

What is meant by "evolution"? Does it mean the same thing to you that it means to others? Are you sure?

When God uses this method (that remains to be defined), does He intercede in the process? Often? Seldom? Never?

Or does He, perhaps, manipulate multiple mechanisms in order to effect the "evolution" necessary to produce something like a programmable TV remote control?

Did He, prior to the advent of the programmable TV remote control, manipulate multiple mechanisms in order to effect the "evolution" necessary to produce the electronic television? And when you consider your answer to that question, please recall that Philo T. Farnsworth reports that his inspiration for the invention of the electronic television was a "vision" prompted while he, as a young adolescent, was plowing a field.

In other words, if "evolution" is the method God uses to create everything, are you competent to tell us how He goes about it? How long it takes? How and to what extent He wields the power necessary to effect the evolutionary changes pursuant to His ends?

Frankly, I think that when we are able to travel to other inhabitable planets in our galaxy, we will be very pleasantly surprised to find remarkable similarities between life on those planets and that found on our own. Life as we know it is rooted in basic templates. Revelation informs us that those templates were placed on this planet by those who had previously prepared it to receive those life templates. I believe this is exactly how it happened. I believe it happened according to a long-established pattern that we will eventually find replicated throughout the universe.

I also believe there are forms of life with which we are entirely unfamiliar at present. For example, although the form of God's person is similar to our own - He is, after all, our Father and we are His offspring - His actual constituent elements and capabilities conform to a life template we have never yet encountered and about which we know next to nothing. And if we manage to prove ourselves competent of managing life in our present form, we will ultimately be "exalted" to an eternal life more akin to the one in which He currently exists. We will probably no longer be carbon-based. Perhaps we will exist in a form hovering on the boundary between matter and energy? Who knows? All I know is that God is at the helm of this ship. And I am willing to wait patiently as He guides it wheresoever He will.

[semlogo]

My personal opinion is that God started everything off with the Big Bang, and let nature take its course from there.

[Ipso Facto]

My personal opinion is that God started everything off with the Big Bang, and let nature take its course from there.

My personal opinion is that your personal opinion is spectacularly deficient in explanatory power.

[The Dude]

t comes to the genomes of life, I think the question is actually quite simple: Do these variant programs that direct variant life forms result from the accumulation of random beneficial mutations over the course of eons of time, or are they consciously and intelligently manipulated via mechanisms that are presently unrecognized or misunderstood?

Now you are going off at talking about random vs directed mechanisms instead of addressing the evidence before you, which I say proves that humans and apes share a common ancestor. No matter whether it was random or directed, it proves common origin! First admit this, then we can talk about mechanism, and in that discussion I will probably be more forgiving.

I submit that all matter and life in this galaxy (and all others) is intelligently directed.

I already realize you believe this. You know, a lot of the more sophisticated ID-believers readily admit that humans and apes share common ancestry, and are even convinced of common descent for all life on earth, because of the kind of evidence I am showing you. (I'm not saying you should believe because they do. I am saying that skeptics of Darwinism can still be impressed by the abundant evidence for common descent.) They just want to reserve a place for intelligent direction. It seems to me that you aren't there yet. Instead of arguing for ID within the framework of common descent, you are arguing for ID plus special creation, and SC can only be maintained through a mixture of scientific confusion and religious stubborness. So, lets first finish with the evidence for common descent and then we can talk about where you are trying to push the argument in terms of mechanism and intelligent direction. Yes?

[thesometimesaint]

Ipso Facto:

I simply rely on the dictionary definition of the word.

Unknown at this time. He very well could make whatever adjustments He deems necessary to arrive at the goal.

Given the complexity of life I would assume that it would be the most technologically advanced TV remote possible.

Yes. He gave us a big brain, and the various body parts to make use of our big brains.

The scope of my abilities to explain how God used evolution really is beyond the purposes of this MB, or my desire to type that much.

We very well could find life similar to what is on earth. By the same token it is entirely possible that that life would be unrecognizable to us. For instance what would silicon based life form look like?

Whatever God has in store for me in the next life. I'm sure that beyond a few basic ideas. Like I'll be happy, I'll be with my family. I have really no ideas as to what it will be like.

[The Dude]

Life as we know it is rooted in basic templates. Revelation informs us that those templates were placed on this planet by those who had previously prepared it to receive those life templates.

So, from the evidence I have shown you, you would have to say the template (genome) for humans and apes was created by manipulating a common pre-existing template.

[thesometimesaint]

The Dude:

Not really. Humans and Apes have a common ancestor. Humans are not descended from the apes.

[Jeff K.]

Interesting opinion. But I would wonder about randomness versus planned development. What evidence can you point to that specifically show randomness or detract from a planned development?

Can a greater being, in order to develop a progeny use a set template in order to create both the environment and the basic building units for all life? Or if everything is random, why don't we see non organic life developing upon the earth simultaneously? What would stop such randomness from occurring?

[The Dude]

The Dude:

Not really. Humans and Apes have a common ancestor. Humans are not descended from the apes.

I corrected my statement.