[Shaddim]

Originally posted by undotwa:
Good post.

Christians haven't always interpreted the Bible literally either. It's not a modern Christian concept to say that the Bible is figurative. There have been fundamentalists at all times who received the Bible as is written (including a lot of the uneducated classes who didn't know better) but most theologians had an understanding of the metaphorical language contained within the Genesis and other parts of the Bible.

Well put. An exploration of the writings of the early desert fathers is a prime example of this. Their understanding of scripture was even greater than that of most theologians in our day and age.

[budster101]

Originally posted by MacNStein:
Who said "sole purpose"? Though, the implied and mystical interpretations are considered the main purpose and central focus.

Again, I strongly recommend that you read Rabbi A. Kaplan's (most likely the greatest of all Hasidic Theologians) commentary on Torah, especially his volumes regarding the Creation myth, the Flood, and Exodus. Unfortunately, it is rather pricey, but most schools with a Theology or religious studies dept are likely to have them. Anyone planning an in-depth study on the subject would be wise to purchase them, they're one of the best references you can own and a great investment.

What volume are you speaking of? I did a quick search and found all of his books to be rather affordable. What title?

Quick Search Result Number One.

[Shaddim]

Originally posted by budster101:
What volume are you speaking of? I did a quick search and found all of his books to be rather affordable. What title?

Quick Search Result Number One.

A great start would be "The Living Torah", it's his translation complete with footnotes and some commentary.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...76824?v=glance

It's very affordable, and a great piece of work.

From there, you get into some $.

http://www.milechai.com/product2/ta.htm

Kaplan's translation of the Me'am Lo'ez is nothing short of brilliant, and his footnotes and commentaries are indispensible.

[BRussell]

Originally posted by undotwa:
Christians haven't always interpreted the Bible literally either. It's not a modern Christian concept to say that the Bible is figurative. There have been fundamentalists at all times who received the Bible as is written (including a lot of the uneducated classes who didn't know better) but most theologians had an understanding of the metaphorical language contained within the Genesis and other parts of the Bible.

Yeah, and I'd go a bit further and say that the kind of literalism so prominent today is almost unique in the history of Christianity. Sure they believed in inerrancy, but that's different. I think the important Christian theologians throughout history understood that literalism and inerrancy were incompatible.

Even go back to the very beginning - hardly a literal phrase out of Jesus' mouth is recorded in the gospels. It's mostly metaphor and parable. I don't know how you can take that tradition and turn it into this literalism we have today.

[undotwa]

Originally posted by BRussell:

Even go back to the very beginning - hardly a literal phrase out of Jesus' mouth is recorded in the gospels. It's mostly metaphor and parable. I don't know how you can take that tradition and turn it into this literalism we have today.

Very true. Parabolism is a very ancient and superior form of teaching. It allows for more than one message to be conveyed in a story which is easier to remember than a book of laws and in that simplistic narrative a whole layer of complexity and depth unrivaled.

[undotwa]

Originally posted by BRussell:
Yeah, and I'd go a bit further and say that the kind of literalism so prominent today is almost unique in the history of Christianity. Sure they believed in inerrancy, but that's different. I think the important Christian theologians throughout history understood that literalism and inerrancy were incompatible.

I wouldn't say so. Certainly around the time of the reformation, there were many groups who took 'sola scriptura' to even further extremes.

[BRussell]

Originally posted by undotwa:
I wouldn't say so. Certainly around the time of the reformation, there were many groups who took 'sola scriptura' to even further extremes.

Can you be more specific?

I had to look up "sola scriptura," but from what I gather, it's the basic Protestant idea that the Bible, rather than the Church, is the source of authority. It still seems to me, though, that even if you take a "sola scriptura" approach, you don't need to be a literalist. But I can see how that approach could be more likely to lead to literalism than a Church-based approach, because regular folk might be more literalistic in their reading of the Bible than Church scholars.

It kind of mirrors what we see today in the US re: evolution - as I always bring up in those discussions, when official Church scholars and committees look at the issue, they consistently reject the anti-evolution sentiments of many of their own Church members.

[gadster]

Originally posted by demograph68:
That's the problem. Existence is an absurdity. Their is no "justification" or reason for it. We live just because. Yet we cannot accept that as fact because we want to believe their is purpose and by that, we believe in god, or rather, a lie to comfort us.

You got it. Since we as humanoids always have a purpose, we project that onto the inanimate universe we inhabit. It's a kind of weird anthropomorphism.

But the really cool thing is: we (and other sentient beings) represent the cosmos becoming aware of itself, observing itself.

[gadster]

Originally posted by MacNStein:
In many ways, God is. But I don't see that as a problem.

Interesting, and unexpected. Care to elaborate?

[ebuddy]

Originally posted by Stradlater:
Yes, and you explained it in a lovely enough manner. Speciation, indeed, involves the splitting of a single evolutionary lineage into two or more genetically independent ones. This has been observed and you even give an example. Your problem here is, that even if there was an example of a squirrel evolving into a bat, you'd still say: "But both are mammals, there's no proof that birds came from reptiles!"

No I wouldn't. First of all, it won't happen for me to say it either way. Second of all, there is a limit to how a species can adapt. It will adapt only to a certain point. Will the squirrel develop the complex circuitry involved for sonar at the same time as the wings and talons? If not, a "middle" or transitional species will be left highly vulnerable. If all or none of it's parts are wholly complete at one time, it will not survive for various reasons, up to and including it's inability to seek and take prey, and it's vulnerability to predators and terrain. It might be fun to imagine a squirbat hopping along it's wegs and such, but what I see is a mutated and vulnerable creature doomed to death. This is irreducible complexity.

We've only been around so long, wait a few hundred thousand years and you may just see a line of observation that satisfies you.

Suffice it to say, this will not do. For now, all we can continue to do is research, discover, and publish.

With the amount of time since evolution was first theorized, of course we could not have observed such evolution.

agreed.

The same reason that I believe a marble will, if placed on a very long slope, probably continue to descend, even if we've only observed a short time of this.

This is not a suitable comparison. If it seems evident that a force has been involved in inverting the slope every now and then with unpredictable frequency, we could not say for certain the marble is descending in any one direction for any specific period of time. All we could really know is what we see today. We theorize. This I understand. However, when popular media jumps in against the evidence that the slope has been inverted, and says the marble started at point A 15 million years ago and has been descending at a stable rate since, against any evidence to the contrary, it is misleading and dogmatic.

Because molecular evolution is much too flexible for IC to be an obstacle.

I disagree. You're presupposing one thing with a belief in another. IC is in fact what we observe in nature. Now, because you see all as having come from one common ancestor, you must believe molecular evolution is too flexible to be governed. I might be so bold as to point out that you are opposed to that which we observe in nature {IC}, and in favor of that which you admitted is impossible for us to observe. This is where I believe science for some falls flat.

Actually, I am quite interested in science.

I'm glad for this. We share some things.

"Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky (1971) reported a speciation event that occurred in a laboratory culture of Drosophila paulistorum sometime between 1958 and 1963. The culture was descended from a single inseminated female that was captured in the Llanos of Colombia. In 1958 this strain produced fertile hybrids when crossed with conspecifics of different strains from Orinocan. From 1963 onward crosses with Orinocan strains produced only sterile males. Initially no assortative mating or behavioral isolation was seen between the Llanos strain and the Orinocan strains. Later on Dobzhansky produced assortative mating (Dobzhansky 1972)."

Nature did not manipulate the above culture, and the above culture resulted in more of the above culture right? I mean, has it become something other than Drosophila paulistorum??? I'm being serious about this. It seems even in a laboratory, it's impossible to create an entirely new, more complex organism. If we can't deliberately produce this in a controlled lab environment, how can nature??? What you will find with continued hybridization, is a limit. No doubt if the above scientists continued manipulating this Drosophila paulistorum, they would never end up with anything other than Drosophila paulistorum. This is what I'm talking about. It's the same as the example I gave of the hybridization of the sugar beet in trying to produce more sugar content. Over 80 years they were able to successfully evolve the plant to 17% sugar and reached it's plateau where it remains today. It simply cannot produce more sugar than it's initial "blueprint" will allow. Matter will evolve contingent upon the matter it started with. It cannot produce nor can mutations happen upon nor lead to new matter for which to continue nor augment the initial organism's adaptability. Anyone in hybridization of animals and crops will tell you there is an observed limit to adaptation. I've heard, gee ebuddy where's the limit? At what point will something stop evolving??? I don't know, ask the farmers and researchers. What we know for certain is there is a boundary and a limit. This is what we observe no matter how we may try to continue arguing the point, to suppose otherwise is to believe what we want regardless of what observable evidence tells us. The unfettered adaptation and ungoverned evolution theory relies on more imagination than sound science. It's simply that cut and dry.

Pick away. There are many more observed instances in the natural world, though; would you rather have some of these?

Sure. The dachsund and the Great Dane. Both canines. Show me one organism that morphed into an entirely independant, separate, unique, and another "kind". Name an organism that through evolution has created new organisms, new "kinds", more complex species. Single cells to multiple cell organisms, etc...anything.

Can you elaborate your point here? I understand that most hybridization and mutation leads to infertility and other hindrances; there are, however, plenty of examples in which infertility and decay are not factors.

and in those cases they evolved to...more of the same no doubt.

Because there's the possibility of life out there, I see no problem continuing the project (so long as it isn't too expensive, and in this case it really isn't).

But how can we possibly discern a deliberate frequency reading from a random one??? How can we know that what we're hearing isn't the act of some natural phenomena??? Will we have to endure 1,000 years of debate regarding what it is we're really hearing? Will those who claim design can't be detected and can't be proven scientifically say the same when a compelling signal is witnessed?

There's the possibility of an intelligent designer, too, and I encourage you and your buddies to continue searching; in the mean time, your "evidence" is hardly compelling and certainly not evident of anything.

Pardon me for saying the same regarding the "evidence" upon which you rely.

[Shaddim]

Originally posted by gadster:
Interesting, and unexpected. Care to elaborate?

The symbolism, rites, and methods used in ritual worship are known to have powerful psychological effects that work in conjunction with (or even apart from) any divine contact*. Those techniques are designed to alter perception, which then gives the participant the opportunity to look at certain "truths" from a different perspective. As I've mentioned before, I help officiate a Golden Dawn temple and strangely enough, we have members who are agnostic and even a couple who are atheist. The dynamism of certain systems and belief practices is obvious beyond question.

If you've not read them already, I recommend Joseph Campbell's book "The Power of Myth" and "Mysterium Coniunctionis" by Carl Jung.




(*though personally, I don't believe a person can ever be truly beyond divine contact.)


-edit for footnote.

[ebuddy]

Originally posted by mikellanes:
Of course not. Such phenomena take tens of thousands of years to occur. So what? There's plenty of evidence that requires evolution to create an empirically adequate theory.
You're confusing positivism with empirical adequacy.

I've shown time and again that evolution is only an empirically adequate theory for those with a presupposition. You have to presuppose common ancestory for peices to fit regardless of information contrary to the plausibility of such occurrance.

Demonstrate one.

Darwin's exhaustive work with pigeons having produced...pigeons. Different kinds of pigeons, but when the work stopped the pigeons evolved...back to the original! Why? Because the original is the most complete, most fit. Galopagos finches; the longer beaked finches were successful during times of little sustainance. In times of plenty...the original shorter beak specimens thrived. Why? Because the original is the most fit. At the end of the day however, they're all finches. The sugar beet; no matter how we've tried to hybridize the sugar beet to produce more sugar, it reached a plateau. Why would it stop? What is governing it's ability to produce sugar that we can't manipulate it in a lab to produce more??? Irreducible complexity. The squirrels I mentioned...still unmistakeably squirrels. Faeroe Island house mouse, still a Faeroe Island house mouse. Estriella aerogene...still an estriella aerogene. Irreducible complexity is what we observe in nature. Ungoverned adaptation and mutation may be what we theorize, but to do so contradicts what we observe. Good science gone astray on wild imaginations in an attempt to do the same thing those in opposition suppose I've done with religion. Use it to explain how what we see, came to be.

Be my guest: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
We have been through this before and your 'picking apart' is less than compelling.

I guess I'm sorry you feel this way?

Phenotypes don't mutate, genes do. Almost all mutations are neutral. Is the heterozygote advantage that sickle-cell trait individuals have in an environment packed with malaria an example of "decreased reproductibility"? Please explain to me how it is. It sounds like you need to learn exactly what you're attacking before you attack it.

LOL. C'mon Mik, you've got to do better than this if you're going to indict me for ignorance. Let's examine sickle cell anemia for a second;
Sickle cell anemia is a common reason patients of African descent seek emergency medical care. Although knowledge of the pathophysiological basis for sickle cell anemia has led to advances in its treatment, emergency physicians remain challenged by its varied clinical presentations, including vasoocclusive, hematologic, and infectious crises.
- A vasoocclusive crisis occurs when the microcirculation is obstructed by sickled RBCs, causing ischemic injury to the organ supplied. Pain is the most frequent complaint during these episodes, and it is ischemic in origin. Recurrent episodes may cause irreversible organ damage.
Bones (eg, femur, tibia, humerus, lower vertebrae) frequently are involved. Bone involvement causes pain. Involvement with the femoral head results in avascular necrosis.
Vasoocclusive crisis can involve the joints and soft tissue, and it may present as dactylitis or as hand and foot syndrome (painful and swollen hands and/or feet in children). When it involves abdominal organs, vasoocclusive crisis can mimic an acute abdomen. With repeated episodes, the spleen autoinfarcts, rendering it fibrotic and functionless in most adults with sickle cell anemia. The liver also may infarct and progress to failure with time. Papillary necrosis is a common renal manifestation of vasoocclusion, leading to isosthenuria (ie, inability to concentrate urine). Vasoocclusive crises can involve the lungs (eg, acute chest syndrome).
Central nervous system manifestations of vasoocclusive crises are myriad, including cerebral infarction (children), hemorrhage (adults), seizures, transient ischemic attacks, cranial nerve palsies, meningitis, sensory deficits, and acute coma. Cerebrovascular accidents are not uncommon in children, and they tend to be recurrent. These patients are often maintained on hypertransfusion programs to suppress HbS.
Skin ulceration, especially over bony prominences (malleoli), and retinal hemorrhages are frequent complications of sickle cell vasoocclusive crises. Finally, vasoocclusion may involve the corpus cavernosum, preventing blood return from the penis and leading to priapism.
Hematologic crises are manifested by a sudden exacerbation of anemia, with a corresponding drop in the hemoglobin level. This can be due to acute splenic sequestration in which sickled cells block splenic outflow, leading to the pooling of peripheral blood in the engorged spleen (seen in young patients with functioning spleens). Less commonly, it is due to hepatic sequestration.
Hematologic crises can also be caused by aplasia, in which the bone marrow stops producing new RBCs (aplastic crisis). This is most commonly seen in patients with Parvovirus B 19 infection or folic acid deficiency.
Infectious crises are due to underlying functional asplenia in most adults with sickle cell anemia, leading to defective immunity against encapsulated organisms (eg, Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae).
Individuals with infectious crisis also have lower serum immunoglobulin M (IgM) levels, impaired opsonization, and sluggish alternative complement pathway activation. Accordingly, persons with sickle cell anemia also exhibit increased susceptibility to other common infectious agents, including Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Salmonella typhimurium, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli.
In the US: Incidence of the homozygous state among black newborns is about 0.8%. Approximately 8% of blacks carry the mutated gene. This is actually an interesting statistic that shows the rate of this disease is dwindling, not growing.

Here's the important fact my friend;
Among patients with sickle cell disease, approximately 50% do not survive beyond age 20 years, and most do not survive to age 50 years.
Now, all that said; Is this evidence of any type of evolution? A mutation that leads to a fatal disease??? What is needed is not mutations that distort the shape of red blood cells, making them less efficient at carrying oxygen, but mutations that produce new organs. All those in favor of an injection of this BENEFICIAL MUTATION SAY AYE!!!!
no takers???

You do not seem to understand the "laws of probability". The laws of probability explicitly do not state that improbable events never happen. They specifically state how long you should have to wait to have an arbitrarily high chance of any event occurring, regardless of how improbable that event is. Probability is mathematically well-defined and empirically confirmed.

Actuarial studies disagree with you. Remember, Getting 'heads' on the flip of a quarter 333 times in a row- no matter how long you try-still have to occur in succession. That is to say, they still have to occur consecutively. Statistically impossible.

You would be of tremendous assistance to the scientific community in general if you would demonstrate specifically what evidence you are referring to.

To use a statement made by Stradlater; All that we see? I don't know.

[von Wrangell]

Originally posted by ebuddy:
Here's the important fact my friend;
Among patients with sickle cell disease, approximately 50% do not survive beyond age 20 years, and most do not survive to age 50 years.
Now, all that said; Is this evidence of any type of evolution? A mutation that leads to a fatal disease??? What is needed is not mutations that distort the shape of red blood cells, making them less efficient at carrying oxygen, but mutations that produce new organs. All those in favor of an injection of this BENEFICIAL MUTATION SAY AYE!!!!
no takers???

I would take it if I lived in an area infested with Malaria. Those odds would be much better than an untreated malaria infection.

[ebuddy]

Originally posted by von Wrangell:
I would take it if I lived in an area infested with Malaria. Those odds would be much better than an untreated malaria infection.

Unfortunately, you're wrong. In fact malaria is responsible for approximately a quarter of the deaths of children in Africa. 25 percent of the children of carriers will probably die of the anemia, and another 25 percent are still subject to malaria.
The gene will automatically be selected when the death rate from malaria is high, but you should note that this will still hinder it as a "fit" organism. It will succumb to death. Sickle cell anemia is not beneficial. If it were, trust me we'd be injecting Africans with it.

[von Wrangell]

Originally posted by ebuddy:
Unfortunately, you're wrong. In fact malaria is responsible for approximately a quarter of the deaths of children in Africa. 25 percent of the children of carriers will probably die of the anemia, and another 25 percent are still subject to malaria.
The gene will automatically be selected when the death rate from malaria is high, but you should note that this will still hinder it as a "fit" organism. It will succumb to death. Sickle cell anemia is not beneficial. If it were, trust me we'd be injecting Africans with it.

You can't inject thallasemia nor sickle cells into human beings. The causes are genetic. So unless you have found out a way to change the DNA in living human beings you don't seem to know what you are talking about.

[ebuddy]

Originally posted by von Wrangell:
You can't inject thallasemia nor sickle cells into human beings. The causes are genetic. So unless you have found out a way to change the DNA in living human beings you don't seem to know what you are talking about.

This is tongue and cheek to be clear, I apologize. Do you have anything to offer to the discussion or are you just in the mood to pop in and try to let someone have it? "Change the DNA in living human beings"? Am I supposed to understand that aside from an unevolved sense of humor, you also have no idea what you're talking about??? BTW; do have anything else to offer?

[von Wrangell]

Originally posted by ebuddy:
This is tongue and cheek to be clear, I apologize. Do you have anything to offer to the discussion or are you just in the mood to pop in and try to let someone have it? "Change the DNA in living human beings"? Am I supposed to understand that aside from an unevolved sense of humor, you also have no idea what you're talking about??? BTW; do have anything else to offer?

Well having a B.Sc in Molecular Biology, a Masters Degree in Oncology and a Ph.D in Immunology I'd think I have enough knowledge to take part in this discussion.

Although much of what has been written here(not mentioning any names) are way below par when it comes to the science of evolution and related issues.

[undotwa]

Originally posted by BRussell:
Can you be more specific?

I had to look up "sola scriptura," but from what I gather, it's the basic Protestant idea that the Bible, rather than the Church, is the source of authority. It still seems to me, though, that even if you take a "sola scriptura" approach, you don't need to be a literalist. But I can see how that approach could be more likely to lead to literalism than a Church-based approach, because regular folk might be more literalistic in their reading of the Bible than Church scholars.

It kind of mirrors what we see today in the US re: evolution - as I always bring up in those discussions, when official Church scholars and committees look at the issue, they consistently reject the anti-evolution sentiments of many of their own Church members.

To have the doctrine of sola scriptura doesn't necessarily mean that you are a biblical literalist, after all the vast majority of Protestants aren't. However, when one rejects millenia of Orthodox tradition of interpretation and treats scripture as how they see it themself, there is a tendency to move towards biblical literalism.

Fundamentalism has never before been as widespread as it was, but there were some fundamentalist groups prior to the Modern Era - one has to look no further than the Puritans of England, the Calvinists or the Anabaptists. One of the main developments of the reformation was a complete rejection of the rationalism of the scholastics in favour of the idea that no part of faith can be 'proven' as such. Catholics prior to the reformation (for example St. Thomas Aquinas) had developed elaborate theories to 'prove' the existence of God (by which he meant that the assumption of the existence of God is reasonable).

[undotwa]

Originally posted by MacNStein:
The symbolism, rites, and methods used in ritual worship are known to have powerful psychological effects that work in conjunction with (or even apart from) any divine contact*. Those techniques are designed to alter perception, which then gives the participant the opportunity to look at certain "truths" from a different perspective. As I've mentioned before, I help officiate a Golden Dawn temple and strangely enough, we have members who are agnostic and even a couple who are atheist. The dynamism of certain systems and belief practices is obvious beyond question.

If you've not read them already, I recommend Joseph Campbell's book "The Power of Myth" and "Mysterium Coniunctionis" by Carl Jung.




(*though personally, I don't believe a person can ever be truly beyond divine contact.)


-edit for footnote.

If ever I want meditative experience, I just go to a 'High Mass' with all the incense and the chanting. It is the most beautiful form of worship.

Even though I'm an organist, I'm one who advocates unaccompanied chant sung by males. There is something about the male voice which makes it most fitting to sing chant. Female voices are fitting for an opera, but not for a church service. The organ is good when playing Protestant hymns, voluntaries or processionals, but I reckon chant sounds best without it. Organs often spoil the meditative qualities of chant.