Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[EricPH]

Did life evolve or was it created by a universal anthropomorphic spirit?

I truthfully cannot see how life could evolve without help from God.

We study the eye lens today, and program a computer to plot a path between single cell life and the eye today. The computer does as it is told, and we see the results we want to see, so no surprise. But can we truthfully say evolution worked in the same way the computer said it should? From your link on eye evolution.

We know from computer models,12 and deductive reasoning, that eyes can evolve quickly.
https://www.nature.com/articles/eye2017226#Sec10

Because the computer plotted the path, evidence is sifted and used to supports this. Rhodopsin and the Pax gene are complex, they serve a complex role needed for evolution. Again from your link. ‘Evolution did it’.

Certainly, rhodopsin is essential to the eventual evolution of eyes, but that is only a start. The Pax gene family joined the party although in a primitive form and gradually evolved.

Another snippet from your link. Nature grabs a few components from here and there and assembles them into a ‘Complex Structure’. And to show how confident we are that this happened, we shall reinforce it with words like, suggests, could be and probably.

These components, then, are acquired from other dinoflagellates or other single-celled organisms and assembled into a complex structure that is light-sensitive and probably permits some form of spatial vision as these creatures are predators hunting other protists.23, 24, 25 This suggests that these protists could be autotrophic (photosynthetic) when light is plentiful and switch to being heterotrophic (consume other organisms) if light is scarce.

The way evidence is presented, leaves room to argue for intelligent design.

[Belindi]

Did life evolve or was it created by a universal anthropomorphic spirit?

I truthfully cannot see how life could evolve without help from God.

We study the eye lens today, and program a computer to plot a path between single cell life and the eye today. The computer does as it is told, and we see the results we want to see, so no surprise. But can we truthfully say evolution worked in the same way the computer said it should? From your link on eye evolution.

We know from computer models,12 and deductive reasoning, that eyes can evolve quickly.
https://www.nature.com/articles/eye2017226#Sec10

Because the computer plotted the path, evidence is sifted and used to supports this. Rhodopsin and the Pax gene are complex, they serve a complex role needed for evolution. Again from your link. ‘Evolution did it’.

Certainly, rhodopsin is essential to the eventual evolution of eyes, but that is only a start. The Pax gene family joined the party although in a primitive form and gradually evolved.

Another snippet from your link. Nature grabs a few components from here and there and assembles them into a ‘Complex Structure’. And to show how confident we are that this happened, we shall reinforce it with words like, suggests, could be and probably.

These components, then, are acquired from other dinoflagellates or other single-celled organisms and assembled into a complex structure that is light-sensitive and probably permits some form of spatial vision as these creatures are predators hunting other protists.23, 24, 25 This suggests that these protists could be autotrophic (photosynthetic) when light is plentiful and switch to being heterotrophic (consume other organisms) if light is scarce.

The way evidence is presented, leaves room to argue for intelligent design.

Intelligent design happens when breeders design a new breed.

[Sy Borg]

Did life evolve or was it created by a universal anthropomorphic spirit?

I truthfully cannot see how life could evolve without help from God.

You might if you approached the issue with an open mind rather than a priori assumptions. Still, if your faith is important to you, what the heck. Believe what you like.

All attempts to argue that the human eye was designed ignores the fact that eyes have evolved multiple times.

When evolution skeptics want to attack Darwin's theory, they often point to the human eye. How could something so complex, they argue, have developed through random mutations and natural selection, even over millions of years?

If evolution occurs through gradations, the critics say, how could it have created the separate parts of the eye -- the lens, the retina, the pupil, and so forth -- since none of these structures by themselves would make vision possible? In other words, what good is five percent of an eye?

Darwin acknowledged from the start that the eye would be a difficult case for his new theory to explain. Difficult, but not impossible. Scientists have come up with scenarios through which the first eye-like structure, a light-sensitive pigmented spot on the skin, could have gone through changes and complexities to form the human eye, with its many parts and astounding abilities.

Through natural selection, different types of eyes have emerged in evolutionary history -- and the human eye isn't even the best one, from some standpoints. Because blood vessels run across the surface of the retina instead of beneath it, it's easy for the vessels to proliferate or leak and impair vision. So, the evolution theorists say, the anti-evolution argument that life was created by an "intelligent designer" doesn't hold water: If God or some other omnipotent force was responsible for the human eye, it was something of a botched design.

Biologists use the range of less complex light sensitive structures that exist in living species today to hypothesize the various evolutionary stages eyes may have gone through.

Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/libr ... 11_01.html

[Charlemagne]

Here is Isaac Newton's reflection on intelligent design:

"One principle in Philosophy is the being of a God or spirit infinite eternal omniscient, omnipotent, & the best argument for such a being is the frame of nature & chiefly the contrivance of the bodies of living creatures. All the great land animals have two eyes, in the forehead a nose between them a mouth under the nose, two ears on the sides of the head, two arms or two fore leggs or two wings on the sholders & two leggs behind & this symmetry in the several species could not proceed from chance, there being an equal chance for one eye or for three or four eyes as for two, & so of the other members. Nothing is more curious & difficult then the frame of the eyes for seeing & of the ears for hearing & yet no sort of creatures has these members to no purpose. What more difficult then to fly? & yet was it by chance that all creatures can fly which have wings? Certainly he that framed the eyes of all creatures understood the nature of light & vision, he that framed their ears understood the nature of sounds & hearing, he that framed their noses understood the nature of odours & smelling, he that framed the wings of flying creatures & the fins of fishes understood the force of air & water & what members were requisite to enable creatures to fly & swim: & therefore the first formation of every species of creatures must be ascribed to an intelligent being. These & such like considerations are the most convincing arguments for such a being & have convinced mankind in all ages that the world & all the species of things therein were originally framed by his power & wisdom. And to lay aside this argument is unphilosophical."

[Sy Borg]

Newton was a product of his time and it is obviously misguided to claim him as a Christian icon, especially since he denied the tripartate deity. Meanwhile, some Evangelicals see Newton's ideas as ungodly, because they don't believe in gravity either.

In Newton's time, atheism was a capital offence and evolution was yet to be discovered. Hmm, why would all those animals have common features? Have you heard of genetics and natural selection? Have you ever heard the term "common ancestor" and know what it refers to? Did you know that environments have a profound effect on life forms, shaping them over time, weeding out the unsuited?

It's ironical that God itself evolved from Yahweh, borrowing aspects of the Canaanite deities, Baal and Bel, and it continues to evolve, even as many of its supporters deny that evolution is real (which is about as logical as claiming gestation isn't real).

[Charlemagne]

“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.” Albert Einstein

Seems to me Einstein and Newton are pretty much on the same page. Neither was a Trinitarian, but both believed in intelligent design.

[Sy Borg]

More Einstein:

... in 1939, speaking at Princeton Theological Seminary, Einstein famously decried conflicts arising “when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible.” The result of such an insistence, he explained, is “an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs.” It’s hard not to believe that the Scopes trial was in his thoughts then.

https://ncse.ngo/albert-einsteins-voice-evolution

[Belindi]

“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.” Albert Einstein

Seems to me Einstein and Newton are pretty much on the same page. Neither was a Trinitarian, but both believed in intelligent design.

Most people hope and many people trust that existence can be understood.

Is the above claim the same as your claim of "order in the arrangement of the books" ?

[Charlemagne]

So now it begins to look like Newton, Darwin, and Einstein were all pretty much on the same page, which is not atheistic.

According to Darwin:

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Origin of the Species, 1872 (from the Preface to the last edition before Darwin’s death).

“Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” from Autobiography of Charles Darwin

[Sy Borg]

Argument from authority only works with current experts who are discussing their own field of expertise. Otherwise it's a logical fallacy.

N, D and E were extraordinary scientists. They are the giants upon whose shoulders today's researchers stand. Scientists now know much more than these icons ever did about how the world worlds. It's not that they are smarter, but because they followed on from the pioneers' efforts.

That's how science works. It's not like religion, where the words of their first geniuses are set in stone. Science always develops, which is why it has proved to be a more effective approach than slow and dogmatic theism (which has had its time).

The old exemplars of science are not like prophets, whose work was immutable. Researchers have found limitations in Newton's and Einstein's models, and expanded them with quantum mechanics to fill the gaps.

It's absurd to worship imaginary anthropomorphic spirits when the real creators - the Sun, the Earth and the Moon - are right in front of our eyes. Consider what an incredible entity the Earth is, how life bubbles up from its surface and bubbles back down into the stew. We like to think we live on the planet, but we are just as much a part of it as rocks, plants or insects. Humanity is a subset of the Earth, which means the Earth > humanity.

If you are going to worship anything, it should be the Sun and/or the Earth. Give credit where it belongs rather than giving it to an imaginary spirit that is nothing more than a narcissistic extrapolated reflection of humanity itself.

[Charlemagne]

Newton, Darwin, and Einstein all believed in some designing principle behind the universe, as the above quotes indicate. None of those three can be called atheists, so naturally atheists want to diminish their credibility by calling them old hat. But they are not old hat. My article below shows that science and religion are very much compatible today, and that worshipping the Sun or Earth, which are themselves doomed in the course of natural time, will get us no explanation at all of why the universe even exists.

https://catholicinsight.com/science-and ... s-forever/

[EricPH]

When evolution skeptics want to attack Darwin's theory, they often point to the human eye. How could something so complex, they argue, have developed through random mutations and natural selection, even over millions of years?

The link you gave is a list of arguments, rather than evidence for the evolution of the eye.

Scientists have come up with scenarios through which the first eye-like structure, a light-sensitive pigmented spot on the skin, could have gone through changes and complexities to form the human eye, with its many parts and astounding abilities.

Biologists use the range of less complex light sensitive structures that exist in living species today to hypothesize the various evolutionary stages eyes may have gone through.

Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved:

Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina,

Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/libr ... 11_01.html

I have edited your quote to leave all the doubtful comments about how the eye could have evolved. It would be like me saying, if I knew all the right numbers I could win the lottery.

All attempts to argue that the human eye was designed ignores the fact that eyes have evolved multiple times.

We know a vast variety of eyes exist today, so you would expect to find fossils of their ancestors. At some point billions of years ago, there were no eyes, and no genes that had the eye DNA.

Mutation are a change in genetic material that results from an error in replication of DNA. What is not clear, is how single cell life from billions of years ago, had pre existing DNA, from which eyes genes could mutate.

[3017Metaphysician]

This thread should be called the MEGA God of the Gaps Fallacy thread. If there's something missing, then God. Ironically, a mystery in itself, open to all kinds of speculations.

But that's no different than Multiverse speculation. Otherwise, the Darwin of gaps rears its ugly head there, again! Unless of course, one can hypothesize the first species ex nihilo; reconcile say, the appreciation of both music and scientific theories themselves, along with a whole host of other quality-of-life human phenomena that confers no biological survival advantage!

[Sy Borg]

I'm sorry, Eric, but you don't understand enough about evolution to discuss this with you. I could teach you much in this area, but you only want to argue, not to learn.

You failed to argue any kind of case. This is because you have almost zero knowledge or understanding about life on Earth. Your uneducated posts make clear that you have spent your life focused on humans and their metaphysical creations, and largely ignored your fellow travellers on this planet. That's pretty typical, sadly. Human arrogance knows few bounds. Thus, you cannot believe that the biosphere changes profoundly over deep time, but you cling to superstitious creationism. No, a magical deity did it.

Billions of years ago, there were only prokaryotes. That you expect them to have organs makes clear how unqualified you are to speak on this topic. There's no point trying to educate you about microbes and their organelles because you wouldn't understand, nor even try to understand.

[Charlemagne]

“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.” Albert Einstein

Seems to me Einstein and Newton are pretty much on the same page. Neither was a Trinitarian, but both believed in intelligent design.

Most people hope and many people trust that existence can be understood.

Is the above claim the same as your claim of "order in the arrangement of the books" ?

To complete Einstein's metaphor, the order of the books suggests not only an author, but a librarian!