Do you have Blind Faith?

Rod, 

You have not explained why you think Goswami is wrong (I did not think you would) you just tried to deflect attention away from the quote I provided by attacking the man. 

Here is another scientist:

James A. Shapiro, professor of Microbiology at the University of Chicago,  Evolution: A View from the 21st Century.

'As many professional and popular press articles attest, the accidental, stochastic nature of mutations is still the prevailing and widely accepted wisdom … In the context of earlier ideological debates about evolution, this insistence on randomness and accident is not surprising. It springs from a determination in the 19th and 20th Centuries by biologists to reject the role of a supernatural agent in religious accounts of how diverse living organisms originated. … the continued insistence on the random nature of genetic change by evolutionists should be surprising for one simple reason: empirical studies of the mutational process have inevitably discovered patterns, environmental influences, and specific biological activities at the roots of novel genetic structures and altered DNA sequences. The perceived need to reject supernatural intervention unfortunately led the pioneers of evolutionary theory to erect an a priori philosophical distinction between “blind” processes of hereditary variation and all other processes.

Evolutionary-developmental biology, epigenetics and other recent discoveries (such as quantum theory) indicate that materialist Darwinian dogma is nonsense. The fact that no one has ever seen a species transform into another species should have been a warning. The interpretation put on the fossil record is completely concocted and worthless'.

Worthless.

Dr. Jerry Coyne, author of "Why Evolution is True", points out that Shapiro, his peer at U of Chicago, does not publish his "wacko views on evolution" in peer-reviewed journals.  Hmmm, wonder why?  

Hook

Hi Sniper

just taking a step back from all the discussion above, I am puzzled as to why certain religious groups are so wedded to scriptural literalism. Why are creationists attached to the world and universe being created in 7 days?. Other religions or branches of religions are quite relaxed about evolution as they are comfortable with God setting the whole process in motion at the beginning. A creationist world view requires a huge amount of mental gymnastics to justify and flys in the face of  the vast majority of scientific  thinking. It can make the creationists look like a bunch of rabid nongs(kiwi expression) and discredits Christianity in its simplistic and anti- intellectual approach .

A very good point, kiwi cat. Many people who have seen the sort of debate going on here many times are surprised to learn that Biblical literalism is a very recent phenomenon - less than about 150 years old, and a creation (pun intended) of fundamentalists in the US. It has practically no history before then.

At the other end of the spectrum, St Augustine - not a spineless lefty in politico-theological terms by any means - made his position quite clear more than 1500 years ago: if your senses/intuition/intelligence tells you that something is true, but your scripture tells you it isn't, go with the former.

Many intelligent people have absolutely no problem reconciling their religious faith with scientific knowledge. Such people, however, tend to be moderates, and extremist viewpoints make for more entertaining viewing in the media so sadly tend to get all the coverage.

Mark

There are young earth creationists and old earth creationists; both Christian.

I would add that the scientific community has adopted evolution theory without any concrete proof of how "first life" originated. So they engage in pure speculation, and not good science.

All Darwin did was open the Bible to Genesis 1:11-27, and scribble out "and God said" wherever it appeared. His next big idea was to say that it all just happened by chance.

It has been calculated by British Cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle, that the likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is 1 out of 10^40,000. That's just another way of saying impossible...

I guess the next thing for many of you is to commence with ad hominem attacks on Hoyle.  

BBM

How it happen does not matter.

Life is a brute fact [to quote Bertrand Russell on the existence of the Universe] that needs no explanation. As the explanation is not clear examining the evidence or the Scripture, then there are bigger things to worry about, such as the size of the human population on Earth compared to the supporting natural system. As things stand this size appears unsustainable ...

ATB from George

10^40,000 is a 1 followed by forty thousand zeros.

BBM

A statistic that is meaningless. Let us get away from believing what is said by others and get back to the crucial thing - that is personal relationships ...

Don't worry George, the human population will be drastically reduced by resource limits, or financial crises caused by resource limits, or nuclear war over resources. It won't be pretty, though.

BBM

It will not comply with Scripture, but will comply with a sort of evolution that not even Darwin might have thought of - though Malthus had it right ...

Glad that I am old enough to probably live my natural span [Biblically 70 years] out. 

I have long since had my doubts [since 1973 when I was eleven years old and had a discussion with my excellent Biology teacher, Dr. Arnold Darlington, which is name worth a Google search though his doom laden predictions are not apparent in the biographies]  over the future of those who are twenty or thirty years younger than me though. I hope they survive  well enough. But that is not a position of Faith or Scientific either. Just gut-instinct.

I mentioned to Dr. Darlington that with finite resources that the then [1973] population could not carry on and he agreed, while telling me that that I was a natural Malthusian ... A life changing moment for sure ...

ATB from George

If you are such a strong advocate of Malthusian theory, then why do you seem confused about the topic of population reduction? Why even bring it up?

BBM

I don't think that I am confused about the human population. Please explain what I have posted that leads you to think I have confusion about this?

Then I can clarify, if you are confused.

ATB from George

You did post this didn't you? There isn't another "George J" on this forum is there? Why would you claim to be worried about the size of the human population while claiming to know how it will be dealt with? Just wondering.

BBM

You are making a big leap there.

The size of the human population is a massive and sustainable problem, but I have no idea how it can be dealt with other than an unplanned disaster.

I do not know where you got the idea that I have a solution that could avert disaster!

ATB from George

You professed to be aware of Malthusian theory. That means that you know the solution to the world overpopulation problem won't be equitable or humane. All I said was that you knew how the problem would be dealt with. Nowhere did I say that you had a better solution.

Sorry for not being more clear...

BBM

To GreameH and BBM,

Dear Graeme,

I have seen this film before, and I found it credible then, and so have not reviewed it.

Of course as the human population - as whole - gets better educated and more comfortable consuming more and more finite resources the evidence suggests that the birthrate will fall. I just don't think that is going to happen soon enough. The population was unsustainable without an ever growing destruction of the environment and consumption of finite resources even in the 1970s, even if population growth had stopped then. 

And we in the old world have no position to tell those in the developing world that they cannot clear their rain forests and consume their finite resources at the rate and in the fashion that have been doing for centuries and decades in the developed West. Why should Brazilians not do to their forests what we did over the last two millennia to our own?

Why should the Chinese and Indians [among others, but these are massive populations already] not have a protein rich diet such as the West has adopted in the last hundred years?

But when several billions of people start to live like a few hundred millions have so far then consumption is going to sky-rocket even compared to today, even if population growth stopped next week.

Dear BBM,

I have not read much from Malthus. I was described as perfect Malthusian by David Dever on this Forum some years ago. and so I did not immediately get your point about his conclusions, which happened to be mine forty one years ago, by direct thinking rather than pessimistic reading!

I know the Gaya principle has so far rescued us from two or three centuries of industrialisation, but the amount of Carbon - stored up by nature over millions of years - as oil, coal and gas are being consumed at a rate that will see perhaps two thirds of the resource depleted by mid country. Of itself that leaves perhaps a third for the period where we may develop Nuclear Fusion or some other magic bullet for the energy crisis that looms over the next hundred years. BUT and it is a big but, what about the greenhouse effect? I doubt many climate change deniers are taken that seriously these days, and we are continuing to grow our greenhouse gas emissions rapidly. There are those who say we have already reach and passed the tipping point, and absolutely nothing would reverse the effect of global warming which will continue for hundreds of years even if ceased burning carbon fuels today. 

There are those who say we have thirty years to reduce these emissions ...

I am not a man of Faith in these issues, and will say that I have no seer's ability to predict where it will go.

But the evidence is absolutely clear that human consumption of Carbon fuels is actually increasing sharply. Can this go on?

I do not know, but evidence suggest that extinctions are also accelerating, and the ice-caps and glaciers are diminishing at an accelerating rate. In my view, it is not a promising outlook for the future of mankind. It will not destroy the Earth [as a rock in Space] any sooner, but it may extinguish human life along with many or most current life-forms, and may even hasten the end of life on Earth. 

I see no sign that the leaders of the World are really taking this seriously, even if they mouth platitudes on the topic. 

As I say, in Biblical terms I have about two decades to live, so probably I shall not live to see the cataclysm. But without the certainty of blind faith, I am rather pessimistic about the ability of human kind to head off this challenge sufficiently soon.

It is not to be forgotten that the main fertiliser for industrial agricultural production is Nitrogen based artificial fertiliser. This is mainly oil-based currently, and in fact could not be synthesised [in sufficient qualities for current usage levels] from any other finite resource. So that when the Hydro-carbons get scarcer [toward depletion], regardless of global warming and the implications for the main food producing areas, the costs will rise to a point where only the richest nations will be able to afford to grow enough food for themselves let alone poorer territories.

That is a recipe for World conflict that will make all previous ones look like a picnic. And fresh water is going to be another terrible issue in time in some highly populated parts of the World ...

ATB from George

George,

I completely agree with the essence of what you wrote. Just one small correction...

Nitrogen based fertilizers are generated from ammonia. The ammonia is produced through the Haber-Bosch process, which reacts nitrogen gas with hydrogen gas. The main source for hydrogen gas is methane, commonly known as natural gas. Crude oil is not a feedstock. Sorry if I am being overly pedantic, but here is a nice article detailing the process...

Haber process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BBM

Dear BBM,

I learn something new every day. I have no problem being pointed in the direction of correct facts. 

However ammonium nitrate is highly energy intensive product that is already very much more expensive in relative terms than it was when I grew up on a farm in the 1960s/70s.

For my pains even as a thirteen year old [as soon as a child could then legally drive a tractor on the land], I was handling 50 kg bags of ICI Nitram 32.5 N [ammonium nitrate] when I weighed little more than the bags full themselves! Hard to imagine how it was managed in reality!

Best wishes from George

And any off us could individually be dead before tomorrow!

Life is transitory and fleeting by nature!

ATB from George

Thanks George for pointing that out the night before I have a surgery in the morning!

Dear Dr. Mark,

And currently my left eye is still not in remission from a pre-cancerous condition! I was in the hospital on Wednesday for further tests, from which the results have not come back to me yet. Patience is crucial, and not panicking ...

I would not have mentioned that apart from your post!

But all a person can do is hope for the best and accept what comes along in any case as serenely as possible, because this distresses our nearest and dearest the least.

Good luck tomorrow.

ATB from George

I was just pulling your leg George - obviously I have confidence in the surgeon, and hope for the best outcome. 

I am actually more concerned about the post operative time since like you, I live alone, and may have to "push" things more than I should just in terms of basic life activities in the first day  or two or three.  And I don't do "nothing" very well; that and my disdain for pain medications which I will only take if/when it becomes unbearable.

But we are all finding out with increasing awareness each passing day/week/month/year that we are not as indestructible as we perhaps once thought we were in our younger years.  Such is the nature of things...as you said. "life is fleeting" - hence my little joke; seems a bit more fleeting when someone is about to cut you open with extremely sharp objects.

I also sincerely wish your situation to the most favorable outcome.

George,

I received a diagnosis of aggressive Stage 4 non-Hodgkins Lymphoma a number of years ago. My wife and I were informed from the "get go" that the chances of long term survival were basically zero. I underwent 2 courses of standard dose chemotherapy, but they were catastrophically insufficient to deal with my illness. I was transferred to the care of an Oncologist/Hematologist who specialized in high dose chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation.

I underwent 2 stem cell transplants under this amazing physician, as well as 60 treatments of Radiation therapy to my torso. These treatments very nearly killed me. The treatments took 7.5 months to complete, and after all was said and done, the doctors (consensus opinion of the Oncologists involved with Lymphoma patients) estimated my remission would only last for 2-6 months. They said all they could offer me when the cancer reappeared was palliative care, and that I wouldn't last long. I've been in remission for 16 years.

My doctor recently said "Sometimes I'm very happy when I'm wrong".

Me too...

BBM

PS: I was a Christian before all of this happened.  

Wonderful for you BBM; non-Hodgkins is almost always far worse than Hodgkins, so I am glad to hear you were able to beat the odds. 

Continued best wishes going forward!