More Fun with Andrew S.
Andrew's original is in green; my responses are in black.
Let's look at Alma 32.
OK.
Start with 17 & 18 to find out that faith isn't knowledge. Faith isn't to know something. Faith isn't having a sign.
Correct. "Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it."
But here's the deal in verse 22. 22 gives us two 'conclusions' that the proper LDS person should come to. 1) Believe in God. 2) Believe (or desire to believe) on his word.
Not exactly. It says that God wants us to believe and is merciful to those who do. But I'll go with it.
How do we get there?
verse 27...But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
So, faith is what you use from the beginning. When you have 0 successes. When you don't know.
How is this different from the scientific method? When you have a hypothesis, you have 0 successes - you're trying to prove something you don't know. Science is riddled with faulty hypotheses that have been disproven.
If we go to 28, he compares the word to a seed...a seed that you had to plant by faith to check if it is true. If it is a good seed, it should check out. You might say that if it is a bad seed, it should not check out (verse 32). BUT 28 (as well as 38-39) has the loophole...by simply not having faith, you can cast the seed out by your unbelief!. So faith (even if it is a mere desire to believe) ACHIEVES the conclusion that faith wants.
Nonsense. If you "cast out the seed with your unbelief," you cut off the experiment before you get any results. Verses 38-39 talk about people who "neglect the tree and take no thought for its nourishment." In scientific terms, you can't tell if something is a seed or a pebble if you don't bother to water it.
Let's check out 34. This is the clincher. When you gain KNOWLEDGE, your FAITH is dormant. But doesn't that make sense?
Yes, but look closer at verse 34. Your knowledge is perfect "in that thing." What thing? Do you have a perfect knowledge of God, his methods and purposes? Not at all. Your knowledge is perfect that, in verse 33, "the seed is good." As verse 36 says, "neither must ye lay aside your faith, for ye have only exercised your faith to plant the seed that ye might try the experiment to know if the seed was good." In other words, you have perfect knowledge that your faith is a good thing, so you have the necessary encouragement to continue to rely on it and help it to grow.
Again, I am not saying that religion is irrational. Rather, it is subjective. See, the about Alma 32 is that it is predicated on subjective response...what happens to *you*. Does *your* heart swell? Do *you* find the seed grows? Do *you* find your soul to enlarge? And this is why so many people believe. Because indeed, they do have such subjective responses.
I agree to the extent that it is impossible to measure subjective responses. I don't agree that this experiment only works for some and not for others because it's simply a reflection of your own personal preferences. Varied results, I believe, are the product of other elements being interjected into the experiment.
But the thing about subjectivity is that it differs by person...different people have different reactions. So, whereas one person might feel a swelling from the Alma 32 experiment, another might not. One might feel a "confirmation" from the Quran, or from completely different text. These spiritual confirmations are meaningful to the individual, but they do not say anything about the objective truth or falsity of the texts they espouse.
Subjectivity does not preclude truth, nor does it make it relative. Our criminal justice system goes to great lengths to ferret out the truth in the subjective, and they punish people accordingly. (Did he kill her in a frenzied moment of fury, or had he cold-bloodedly planned this out?) Subjectivity makes discerning truth difficult, because only God can perfectly know our hearts, but it doesn't mean that there's no truth to be found. The fact that I can't conclusively determine why you and I respond differently to one text or another doesn't make every text equally valid.
The issue is...where do these subjective experiences come from? Faith concludes that they are from God (whichever kind you believe in...) But we don't have evidence of this. We have evidence that mental experiences comes from the brain. Now, whether these brain patterns still come from God is certainly possible, but since most religious people insist that we have no way of *naturally* studying and "testing" God scientifically, they by default make God inaccessible.
No, they don't. If God were inaccessible, then no one would believe. God has set the parameters as to how access is granted, and they currently don't include brainwave analysis. We've determined in this discussion that you can't prove a negative, so the fact that you can't measure God by means of scientific instruments proves nothing and suggests nothing. You can't use any scientific instrument to prove how I feel about my cats unless I'm willing to tell you. (I don't like them, BTW.) And you can't prove anything about God unless He's willing to tell you. (Which, I subjectively submit, He is, if you follow Alma's experiment.)
I can guarantee you that no one seriously says, "transition species don't fossilize."
I don't know whether they're serious or not, but it's a relatively common excuse, particularly with reference to the Cambrian explosion. See here -"Perhaps there was no real 'explosion,' and the answer is simple that most of the Precambrian ancestors didn’t fossilize" - for starters. I could dig up more, I suppose, but I'm lazy.
No, the real problem is the environmental conditions for fossilization -- it's not the species, but where (in time and in location) they have lived that determines things. And even that isn't said with no evidence. That is said with clear evidence of the chemical composition of various substrata of soil and the effects on fossilization.
I don't really know what this means or how it's relevant.
Why does the fossil record feature quick disappearances and appearances? That's because evolution does NOT work via phyletic gradualism, which you seem to believe in and seem to think is what is "expected" of natural selection. This gradualism has been falsified. Natural selection and evolution works in a punctuated equilibrium. You can read more here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC201.html
I read that, and I'm familiar with "punctuated equilibrium." All it does is acknowledge the fact that the fossil record has been brutal to Darwin's initial concept of phyletic gradualism. The fossil record shows complex species appearing and disappearing suddenly with little to no variation. "Punctuated equilibrium" acknowledges this but provides no explanation for it, other than, "it must happen more quickly than we thought."
Belief in "punctuated equilibrium" is an exercise in faith.
Remember that some photoreceptivity is better than none in most environments (even if rudimentary)...that is why we *do* have evidence of rudimentary photocells in more primitive species (e.g., euglenas, which you can study in HS biology). From photoreceptivity, there are plenty of places to go that provide natural advantage...for example, ability to tell direction of light. One *cannot* assume that an eye is only 1:0 in usefulness...either is or is not. That is not the case.
Even basic photoreceptivity requires a massive amount of microbiological complexity. A single cell is irreducibly complex, and natural selection and/or punctuated equilibrium provides no explanation as to how these moving parts could come together as a result of a series of accidents.
Similarly, one cannot assume that during an evolutionary process, something must be useful for the *same* thing and just progress more of the same.
Granted.
The question really is...how do we put the pieces together.
Yes. How you do it is determined by where you place your faith.
Here's how you falsify evolution. Show a modern human in the same strata as the earliest bacteria. Find the fossil. Go.
What would that prove? What would that disprove? You can't find a fossil with both a gopher and a toilet, either. So what? How does the absence of anything prove anything?
Falsification is showing how the explanation goes *against* the evidence. So, we know that transition species *do* fossilize (because every species is a transition species...any fossils we have are of transition species!) So, we know this is false. However, what we can say is that under certain environments, chemical composition will reduce chance to fossilize. The way to falsify this is show how these environments actually *don't* reduce chance to fossilize (e.g., find as many fossils here as elsewhere).
This is backpedalling. You dismiss earlier the idea that anyone could seriously claim that transitional species don't fossilize, and now you're offering an explanation as to why transitional species don't fossilize.
But you really have to do reading on what the theories actually say, instead of what you just think they say. A lot of this message was just correcting for the inaccuracy of your understanding of evolution.
Neat.
Let's look at Alma 32.
OK.
Start with 17 & 18 to find out that faith isn't knowledge. Faith isn't to know something. Faith isn't having a sign.
Correct. "Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it."
But here's the deal in verse 22. 22 gives us two 'conclusions' that the proper LDS person should come to. 1) Believe in God. 2) Believe (or desire to believe) on his word.
Not exactly. It says that God wants us to believe and is merciful to those who do. But I'll go with it.
How do we get there?
verse 27...But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
So, faith is what you use from the beginning. When you have 0 successes. When you don't know.
How is this different from the scientific method? When you have a hypothesis, you have 0 successes - you're trying to prove something you don't know. Science is riddled with faulty hypotheses that have been disproven.
If we go to 28, he compares the word to a seed...a seed that you had to plant by faith to check if it is true. If it is a good seed, it should check out. You might say that if it is a bad seed, it should not check out (verse 32). BUT 28 (as well as 38-39) has the loophole...by simply not having faith, you can cast the seed out by your unbelief!. So faith (even if it is a mere desire to believe) ACHIEVES the conclusion that faith wants.
Nonsense. If you "cast out the seed with your unbelief," you cut off the experiment before you get any results. Verses 38-39 talk about people who "neglect the tree and take no thought for its nourishment." In scientific terms, you can't tell if something is a seed or a pebble if you don't bother to water it.
Let's check out 34. This is the clincher. When you gain KNOWLEDGE, your FAITH is dormant. But doesn't that make sense?
Yes, but look closer at verse 34. Your knowledge is perfect "in that thing." What thing? Do you have a perfect knowledge of God, his methods and purposes? Not at all. Your knowledge is perfect that, in verse 33, "the seed is good." As verse 36 says, "neither must ye lay aside your faith, for ye have only exercised your faith to plant the seed that ye might try the experiment to know if the seed was good." In other words, you have perfect knowledge that your faith is a good thing, so you have the necessary encouragement to continue to rely on it and help it to grow.
Again, I am not saying that religion is irrational. Rather, it is subjective. See, the about Alma 32 is that it is predicated on subjective response...what happens to *you*. Does *your* heart swell? Do *you* find the seed grows? Do *you* find your soul to enlarge? And this is why so many people believe. Because indeed, they do have such subjective responses.
I agree to the extent that it is impossible to measure subjective responses. I don't agree that this experiment only works for some and not for others because it's simply a reflection of your own personal preferences. Varied results, I believe, are the product of other elements being interjected into the experiment.
But the thing about subjectivity is that it differs by person...different people have different reactions. So, whereas one person might feel a swelling from the Alma 32 experiment, another might not. One might feel a "confirmation" from the Quran, or from completely different text. These spiritual confirmations are meaningful to the individual, but they do not say anything about the objective truth or falsity of the texts they espouse.
Subjectivity does not preclude truth, nor does it make it relative. Our criminal justice system goes to great lengths to ferret out the truth in the subjective, and they punish people accordingly. (Did he kill her in a frenzied moment of fury, or had he cold-bloodedly planned this out?) Subjectivity makes discerning truth difficult, because only God can perfectly know our hearts, but it doesn't mean that there's no truth to be found. The fact that I can't conclusively determine why you and I respond differently to one text or another doesn't make every text equally valid.
The issue is...where do these subjective experiences come from? Faith concludes that they are from God (whichever kind you believe in...) But we don't have evidence of this. We have evidence that mental experiences comes from the brain. Now, whether these brain patterns still come from God is certainly possible, but since most religious people insist that we have no way of *naturally* studying and "testing" God scientifically, they by default make God inaccessible.
No, they don't. If God were inaccessible, then no one would believe. God has set the parameters as to how access is granted, and they currently don't include brainwave analysis. We've determined in this discussion that you can't prove a negative, so the fact that you can't measure God by means of scientific instruments proves nothing and suggests nothing. You can't use any scientific instrument to prove how I feel about my cats unless I'm willing to tell you. (I don't like them, BTW.) And you can't prove anything about God unless He's willing to tell you. (Which, I subjectively submit, He is, if you follow Alma's experiment.)
I can guarantee you that no one seriously says, "transition species don't fossilize."
I don't know whether they're serious or not, but it's a relatively common excuse, particularly with reference to the Cambrian explosion. See here -"Perhaps there was no real 'explosion,' and the answer is simple that most of the Precambrian ancestors didn’t fossilize" - for starters. I could dig up more, I suppose, but I'm lazy.
No, the real problem is the environmental conditions for fossilization -- it's not the species, but where (in time and in location) they have lived that determines things. And even that isn't said with no evidence. That is said with clear evidence of the chemical composition of various substrata of soil and the effects on fossilization.
I don't really know what this means or how it's relevant.
Why does the fossil record feature quick disappearances and appearances? That's because evolution does NOT work via phyletic gradualism, which you seem to believe in and seem to think is what is "expected" of natural selection. This gradualism has been falsified. Natural selection and evolution works in a punctuated equilibrium. You can read more here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC201.html
I read that, and I'm familiar with "punctuated equilibrium." All it does is acknowledge the fact that the fossil record has been brutal to Darwin's initial concept of phyletic gradualism. The fossil record shows complex species appearing and disappearing suddenly with little to no variation. "Punctuated equilibrium" acknowledges this but provides no explanation for it, other than, "it must happen more quickly than we thought."
Belief in "punctuated equilibrium" is an exercise in faith.
Remember that some photoreceptivity is better than none in most environments (even if rudimentary)...that is why we *do* have evidence of rudimentary photocells in more primitive species (e.g., euglenas, which you can study in HS biology). From photoreceptivity, there are plenty of places to go that provide natural advantage...for example, ability to tell direction of light. One *cannot* assume that an eye is only 1:0 in usefulness...either is or is not. That is not the case.
Even basic photoreceptivity requires a massive amount of microbiological complexity. A single cell is irreducibly complex, and natural selection and/or punctuated equilibrium provides no explanation as to how these moving parts could come together as a result of a series of accidents.
Similarly, one cannot assume that during an evolutionary process, something must be useful for the *same* thing and just progress more of the same.
Granted.
The question really is...how do we put the pieces together.
Yes. How you do it is determined by where you place your faith.
Here's how you falsify evolution. Show a modern human in the same strata as the earliest bacteria. Find the fossil. Go.
What would that prove? What would that disprove? You can't find a fossil with both a gopher and a toilet, either. So what? How does the absence of anything prove anything?
Falsification is showing how the explanation goes *against* the evidence. So, we know that transition species *do* fossilize (because every species is a transition species...any fossils we have are of transition species!) So, we know this is false. However, what we can say is that under certain environments, chemical composition will reduce chance to fossilize. The way to falsify this is show how these environments actually *don't* reduce chance to fossilize (e.g., find as many fossils here as elsewhere).
This is backpedalling. You dismiss earlier the idea that anyone could seriously claim that transitional species don't fossilize, and now you're offering an explanation as to why transitional species don't fossilize.
But you really have to do reading on what the theories actually say, instead of what you just think they say. A lot of this message was just correcting for the inaccuracy of your understanding of evolution.
Neat.
posted by Elder Samuel Bennett | 11:07 AM
8 Comments:
Not exactly. It says that God wants us to believe and is merciful to those who do.
What is the conclusion that a proper LDS person should come to? Obvious, what God wants then to believe. But as you said, you're going with this.
How is this different from the scientific method? When you have a hypothesis, you have 0 successes - you're trying to prove something you don't know. Science is riddled with faulty hypotheses that have been disproven.
With the scientific method, you don't have to "desire to believe." You don't "exercise a particle of faith." (This will become important later with respect to Alma 32's differences with the scientific method). The only similarity is that you do "arouse the faculties and experiment" in both and you do not know the conclusion in both.
Nonsense. If you "cast out the seed with your unbelief," you cut off the experiment before you get any results. Verses 38-39 talk about people who "neglect the tree and take no thought for its nourishment." In scientific terms, you can't tell if something is a seed or a pebble if you don't bother to water it.
This is where Alma 32 differs from the scientific method.
If you conduct a scientific experiment, regardless of if you believe your hypothesis is correct or do not, if you conduct the experiment, you should get reliable, repeatable results. These results should be reasonably consistent.
Alma 32 theoretically allows for the chance for us to discern whether something (that something is the word of God, by the way), is a pebble or seed (or to keep the analogy with seeds, whether the seed is good and living or the seed is boiled), but the church and scripture establish two things that make it differ severely.
1) The NEED to believe for the "right" conclusion to come out. If you don't have faith, then you won't get that answer to your prayer. If you don't have faith, then you won't get that confirmation. Then, the church would say it wasn't the prayer's fault, but your fault.
2) The need to "endure to the end." So, even if you think your prayer has not been answered...even if you're being diligent and faithful, you are expected to "endure to the end" of the trial of your faith, because the reward only comes at the end. Where is the end? No one knows. It could be tomorrow. Could be next month. Could be in the afterlife.
With the scientific method, we do not have either of these two things. Your belief or nonbelief status has no impact on what the data will turn out to be if you conduct the experiment properly. And if you don't get the results you desired, you don't just "endure to the end" hoping that one day you will. You adjust your hypothesis.
Yes, but look closer at verse 34. Your knowledge is perfect "in that thing." What thing? Do you have a perfect knowledge of God, his methods and purposes? Not at all. Your knowledge is perfect that, in verse 33, "the seed is good."
Your response here misses the point and is summarily irrelevant because I did not assume that "that thing" refers to "God, his methods, and purpose." Regardless, the general principle is set that faith isn't knowledge and isn't of the same stuff knowledge is. Having the latter for something does make the former dormant.
In other words, you have perfect knowledge that your faith is a good thing, so you have the necessary encouragement to continue to rely on it and help it to grow.
No. You have perfect knowledge (albeit, subjective) that "the seed" is a good thing. The seed is not faith, but is compared to "the Word" (verse 28).
(to be continued)
The fact that I can't conclusively determine why you and I respond differently to one text or another doesn't make every text equally valid.
I wanted to point out this sentence, because if you truly believe this, you have essentially discounted the argument for Alma 32.
If Alma 32 could be applied using *any* text (or philosophy, etc.,) as "the seed," and different people could come up with different seeds that "sprout" for them (because of subjectivity...), yet we don't conclude that "the seeds are good" (e.g., that they are valid)...then we have UNDERCUT Alma 32's argument for finding out and KNOWING that the seed (the word of God) is good.
This points out a divergence point with the objective and the subjective. planting a physical seed is an objective thing with objective variables. If we were doing this scientifically, we'd control for the variables...so the soil would be the same, moisture the same, lighting as close to same as possible, etc., The only thing we are testing is the *seed*. If we have controlled all the other variables, then the environment should be the same for each seed. The only thing that should matter is the seed.
But with humans and scripture, we do have something different in play. Humans aren't the same. They differ subjectively in their reactions. The scriptures even take note of this, because they encourage people to "desire to believe" and "have faith." Nevertheless though, people will have different reactions to different texts. It says nothing objective about the text...only about the subjective biases of the individual.
No, they don't. If God were inaccessible, then no one would believe.
If you want to assert this, then you must accept that everyone who believes in anything does so because what they believe in is accessible. People believe in fairies because they were accessible. People believe in Santa Claus because he is accessible. Gremlins, Shiva, Allah, the Greek gods and goddesses, the Norse ones, the Illuminati.
Do people believe in these things because they are accessible? No. I don't think you want to assert that.
Rather, people are clearly capable of believing in things though they cannot access them.
God has set the parameters as to how access is granted, and they currently don't include brainwave analysis. We've determined in this discussion that you can't prove a negative, so the fact that you can't measure God by means of scientific instruments proves nothing and suggests nothing. You can't use any scientific instrument to prove how I feel about my cats unless I'm willing to tell you. (I don't like them, BTW.) And you can't prove anything about God unless He's willing to tell you. (Which, I subjectively submit, He is, if you follow Alma's experiment.)
Actually, whenever you think about cats, it does produce brainwaves. We can note those brainwaves about how you feel about cats...we just don't have the tools to translate them into, "I don't like cats." Furthermore, you're not a radio, so we can't just "intercept" these brainwaves from the sky like we can when you send radio waves or an email wireless. So, the question really is a matter of progressing to have the tools to do more with data. Kinda like before we had infrared goggles, our tools could not detect infrared, but no one would say that infrared was "inaccessible." It was accessible; we just didn't have the tools developed enough to do so.
So, at the very least, you should be saying, "Science does not have the tools yet to access God." That is, if he were objectively accessible.
But instead, you slip around this. You say, "God cannot be accessed unless you have the right parameters, which he sets" These parameters make God weirder and weirder in the scheme of things (as we found out from the deficiencies of Alma 32, that even you noted.)
to be continued...
I don't know whether they're serious or not, but it's a relatively common excuse, particularly with reference to the Cambrian explosion. See here -"Perhaps there was no real 'explosion,' and the answer is simple that most of the Precambrian ancestors didn’t fossilize" - for starters. I could dig up more, I suppose, but I'm lazy.
Please read the line you quoted very carefully.
They are saying "Precambrian ancestors didn't fossilize." They are not saying, "Precambrian ancestors don't fossilize."
What's the difference in the verb? Is it just the tense? It's what the tense represents.
When someone is saying, "Precambrian ancestors didn't fossilize," it is because something about their environment hindered the fossilization. If someone were to say that they don't fossilize, then that means it's not the outside environment...it's something endemic to the specimens themselves that does not fossilize.
So again, I am pretty sure that people simply don't say, "Transition species don't fossilize." At best, they will say, "Under x, y, and z condition, then transition species won't." or "these ones didn't because of x, y, z.) But it's a much different statement.
I don't really know what this means or how it's relevant.
hmm...if you don't know what this means or how it's relevant, then you probably should be reading up more before calling out problems that aren't really what you say they are...
Let me try to explain roughly.
We have these millions and millions of living things that have been around for a long long time. But the thing is, they have this habit of dying on us. And when they die (in fact, even *before* they die), they start decaying and rotting. Sometimes, other living things even eat them all up. The environment normally cleans up the remains of MOST living things. So, under most circumstances, we don't have a record of what came before because it has rotted/decayed/gotten eaten then pooped out again
BUT...what if these things, when they died, died in something that would slow their decay? Something that would slow their rotting? Something that would prevent them from getting eaten and pooped out?
If this thing were in an environment, then things that died in that environment would be preserved. We call these fossils.
So, it depends on the environment (and environments change over time) on whether these factors that could promote or dispel fossilization would be present. The problem is we don't have a steady stream of things dying ONLY in the places where fossilization is most apt to occur. So, we have to deal with what we have.
I read that, and I'm familiar with "punctuated equilibrium." All it does is acknowledge the fact that the fossil record has been brutal to Darwin's initial concept of phyletic gradualism. The fossil record shows complex species appearing and disappearing suddenly with little to no variation. "Punctuated equilibrium" acknowledges this but provides no explanation for it, other than, "it must happen more quickly than we thought."
Belief in "punctuated equilibrium" is an exercise in faith.
I don't think you're quite getting how things are...
We have these animals that change over time. Over millions of years, they change drastically. We are simply trying to put this factual occurrence into words.
Darwin and phyletic gradualism got a good start, but his ideas were (of course, of course) incomplete. But they were based on looking at the evidence. It's not faith.
Now, with MORE evidence, we can falsify phyletic gradualism and point out a better explanation for this occurrence. Again, it's not faith because we already have the data. We're just explaining it better
so I think you're making faith have an even stranger definition here...
to be continued...
Even basic photoreceptivity requires a massive amount of microbiological complexity. A single cell is irreducibly complex, and natural selection and/or punctuated equilibrium provides no explanation as to how these moving parts could come together as a result of a series of accidents.
photoreceptivity doesn't require a massive amount of microbiological complexity. It just needs something -- any chemical -- that reacts to light stimulus.
A single cell is not irreducibly complex...and the first single cells most certainly were not. Remember: even the single-cell bacteria of today are evolutions of those from before. You cannot continue to be biased with a faulty understanding of how things are...for example, it's not as if we need to move in one step to "single cell of today." The earliest cells quite simply did not do as much...but mutations for improved capacities most certainly would be naturally selected for then. Single cells now are simply the result of billions of years of improvement from earlier models.
The question really is...how do we put the pieces together.
Yes. How you do it is determined by where you place your faith.
You could place faith *or* you could look for evidence and then test hypotheses against how well they can explain, describe, and predict the evidence.
Here's how you falsify evolution. Show a modern human in the same strata as the earliest bacteria. Find the fossil. Go.
What would that prove? What would that disprove? You can't find a fossil with both a gopher and a toilet, either. So what? How does the absence of anything prove anything?
You have not addressed any of my points here. Read what I wrote about falsification and then read what you wrote. If you didn't understand what I wrote, feel free to say so.
This is backpedalling. You dismiss earlier the idea that anyone could seriously claim that transitional species don't fossilize, and now you're offering an explanation as to why transitional species don't fossilize.
Not backpedaling. You simply misunderstood what I wrote earlier. In fact, you ADMITTED that you didn't know what I was saying or the relevance of what I was saying. I have consistently said, and this is key:
However, what we can say is that under certain environments, chemical composition will reduce chance to fossilize.
This isn't saying, "Certain species, in fact, the transition ones, do not fossilize."
No, this is saying, what I've said all along, "Certain environments are unconducive to fossilization. We simply are at the mercy of that."
But you really have to do reading on what the theories actually say, instead of what you just think they say. A lot of this message was just correcting for the inaccuracy of your understanding of evolution.
Dear Blogboy:
Please please PLEASE let this drop. I come here to be mildly amused, not to read a long- winded rant by some self important douchebag who loves to hear himself fart in the pre Cambrian wind.
It's true. You probably should let it drop, and I am a self-important douchebag.
It really is in poor taste to have 2 topics centered around 1 douchebag.
You're bright, respectful, and self-effacing, Andrew - hardly the signs of a douchebag. I think a real douchebag is someone who hides behind anonymity to say nasty things. Plus I think I may well be the one who "who loves to hear himself fart in the pre Cambrian wind."
We probably ought to wind this down, and I'm too lazy to respond point by point again. You raise many, many valid issues. Although I did find it interesting that you clarify that it's not that transitional species are intrinsically incapable of fossilizing but rather that they lived in an intrinsically unfossilizing environment. That's a bit of a feint - it doesn't matter why they didn't fossilize. The point is you refuse to actively consider the possibility that the reason they didn't fossilize is that they didn't exist and that natural selection is inadequate to explain why. That shows your faith in natural selection, despite a noted lack of evidence.
I don't think there's any difference between the scientific method in its application to spiritual or physical principles - an experiment on the word vs. an experiment in a chemistry lab. In the end, though, I'm backed up to the wall of faith and have to rely on my own personal experience with God. I can say that I followed God's promise and he fulfilled it to the letter. Why didn't he do the same for you or for someone else? Well, I can't judge your heart. All I can say is it's His promise, not mine, and if he's not keeping up His end of the bargain, you'll have to take it up with Him.
I appreciate you stopping by here, Andrew, and hope you'll continue to do so. It's great to have someone bright to act as a foil and allow me to clarify my thinking.
If you want it, I'll let you have the last word.
The point is you refuse to actively consider the possibility that the reason they didn't fossilize is that they didn't exist and that natural selection is inadequate to explain why. That shows your faith in natural selection, despite a noted lack of evidence.
It's not that I (or anyone else) is refusing to actively consider the possibility that they didn't fossilize is because they didn't exist. It's that this possibility doesn't fit the data. I feel you're really grasping for straws here...After all, fossils are just one kind of remain of life forms. Even if we don't have fossils, we most certainly do have plenty of other remnants of living creatures. Who needs faith when you have evidence?
We had really gotten around and around, and I'm no scientist. My original message was simple. To say that atheists have faith and that you "don't have the faith to be an atheist" doesn't really address atheism or atheists...so atheists think, "Does this guy even know..?"
Imagine when people get Mormonism wrong. Like, really wrong. I don't know about you, but I always think about these people, "Whoa, perhaps you should check your facts first..." And I know that there's a lot of room for legitimate disagreements, but some people haven't even done the basic research and are just going by things they have heard.
My posting is to try to help people avoid that elsewhere. Knowledge is power, etc.,
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