What prevents evolution? - Page 3

siegfriedandroy · #21 01-02-2006, 09:57 AM

borodog you are not half as bright as you think you are . i challenge you to a duel

Darryl_P · #22 01-02-2006, 10:41 AM

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If God is omnipotent chance doesn't exist. If chance exists, God doesn't.

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I beg to differ on this one. Chance can exist without being ultimate. What if it's defined as something beyond current human understanding, without any speculation as to what lies beyond that, or what is ultimate? Surely you can say something is beyond our understanding, yet make models about what kinds of patterns we can recognize, without implying anything about what is primal or ultimate, can you not? I'd say the field of probability and statistics does just that.

NotReady · #23 01-02-2006, 11:35 AM

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I think of chance as saying "we just don't know".

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I agree with this and have taken the same position in other posts.

If that's all someone means by random variation then they cannot maintain that evolution has made God unnecessary.

Chance in this sense isn't ultimate and doesn't produce an infinite number of possibilities.

And chance in this sense provides no explanation at all - as you said, it means "I don't know" which is the opposite of explanation.

NotReady · #24 01-02-2006, 11:39 AM

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Chance can exist without being ultimate.

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I agree with this and have said the same in other posts. What I mean here is that God is sovereign and there is no ultimate chance for Him. If there was, He wouldn't be God.

Borodog · #25 01-02-2006, 11:46 AM

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borodog you are not half as bright as you think you are . i challenge you to a duel

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Luckily not half as bright as I think I am seems to be sufficient.

By the way, I'm 91% on head shots from 65 feet. Still want to duel?

hmkpoker · #26 01-02-2006, 07:31 PM

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I don't think your premises establish this. You would need another one, somthing like - Some genetic differences produce advantageous survival characteristics in the phenotype.

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d) The differential reproductive success of individuals replicators within the population depends to any extent on phenotype,

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chezlaw · #27 01-02-2006, 07:56 PM

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If God is omnipotent chance doesn't exist. If chance exists, God doesn't.

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I beg to differ on this one. Chance can exist without being ultimate. What if it's defined as something beyond current human understanding, without any speculation as to what lies beyond that, or what is ultimate? Surely you can say something is beyond our understanding, yet make models about what kinds of patterns we can recognize, without implying anything about what is primal or ultimate, can you not? I'd say the field of probability and statistics does just that.

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I struggle with this. If god is omnipotent then he can create a world in which things happen at random if he wants to (real random not just unknown). If he wants to decree that some particles will decay randomly with probability p in such a way that there is no way of knowing when it will decay then he can, cant he?

Of course he may not want to but thats a different matter.

chez

Borodog · #28 01-02-2006, 08:02 PM

I agree. It always seems that theists get hung up on "chance" for reasons that I don't understand. If God wants to create a mechanism that works by chance, are the theists claiming he can't? I thought he was omnipotent?

Furthermore, I don't understand at all how a mechanism that works by chance violates God's omniscience, the other thing they get hung up on. Just because God knows the outcome beforehand, doesn't mean the outcome wasn't determined by chance, according to rules He created.

It seems to me that NotReady doesn't give his God very much credit.

tolbiny · #29 01-02-2006, 09:01 PM

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If God created the Universe, there is no Universe?

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It should be obvious that if God created the universe then it's meaningless to talk about the universe without God.

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So what, the opposite is also true. If God didn't create the universe, then its meaningless to talk about the universe WITH god.

The statement "evolution makes god unessecary" says noting about his actual existance, it only makes option B - that is there is no god - just as valid as option A.

"Why not just say variation occurs, heck if I know why, instead of saying variation occurs by chance?"

chance is used in this sense to describe what effects the environment had. That is based upon a law that says every action has a reaction, one thing leads to another.

What must be taken on faith in both option A and option B is existance. Either the existance of the universe, or the existance of God. Since i have ample evidence that the universe exists, i will stick with that one.

NotReady · #30 01-02-2006, 09:47 PM

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If he wants to decree that some particles will decay randomly with probability p in such a way that there is no way of knowing when it will decay then he can, cant he?

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I think so. I've posted this before but the real issue is God's sovereignty. He can do anything that isn't inconsistent with His nature, so to the extent that some element of chance doesn't encroach on His sovereignty it isn't theoretically objectionable. Whether He does or not is unknown.