The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by mrmazda Nothing in the natural world evolves - it devolves. The gene pool looses information in the process of remixing whatever has remained. Entropy is natural law.

I recognize it can seem like that superficially but that's a common mistake when one does not use either "evolution" or "entropy" correctly as given by their definitions. Firstly, on a fundamental level de-evolution breaks entropy because the mutation, while it may be reduced in proportion is never gone as if it never occurred much like adding sugar to reduce saltiness may end up with a palatable alteration but the salt is still there, just reduced to some degree in influence.

However entropy is not absolute everywhere. It is subject to Locality. IOW entropy can be lowered in one location if it is proportionately increased in another.

Nature doesn't devolve and that applies to our genes as well. We don't have fewer genes than our ancestors did. In fact most modern humans carry some genes from Neanderthals. Much like the salt analogy, after so many generations it is quite diluted but is still there and responsible for both benefits and ills.

According to the Law of Conservation of Energy, which is akin to Information Theory which is precisely how the term "entropy" came to be, and all a part of Thermodynamics, once an event has occurred the effect of that event is irreversible. No information can be lost, only transformed. It can be hidden from or diluted to add difficulty to some lacking the means to extract it but just like CSI it is there, indelible.

If you are actually interested in learning more of cutting edge Physics and Philosophy, look up Lee Smolin, a post-doc at more than one respected University, to see his credentials and wade through any of his books. He has several on the subject of Quantum Gravity (I've read 4 of his books and feel fortunate to understand maybe 20% of his mathematics) but this one I'll quote which is speculative but not without some supporting evidence, is about Evolution, Entropy, and Thermodynamics.

Originally Posted by Lee Smolin My dangerous idea is that Darwinism can be expressed in terms of physics, in terms of patterns in entropy flow between systems and more specifically in terms of a new and relativistic look at thermodynamics. I suspect there may be a relativinstic view of thermodynamics and that a fourth law of thermodynamics may include an extended idea of natural selection, defined in terms of the physics of interactions between systems, where all linked systems tend to become either linked, or ‘iterative’ over time.

I think "everything evolves" is lazy thinking. That's why I don't like Daniel Dennett. Everything changes, and some of those changes benefit life, so we naturally think of them as improvements. We know that the universe was once very different, but that doesn't mean that some kind of "evolutionary process" turned the early universe into the present one.

Evolution is a property of living systems, perhaps even a property of DNA-based living systems. It's not any kind of universal principle.

Originally Posted by enorbet In fact and in human terms, that evolution is accelerating and that acceleration began with the invention of written language.

Socrates disagreed. I think it was in Plato's Phaedrus, in which Socrates accused written language of stealing our memories and making us stupider--and he may be right, as there are many folks who can't find their way home without a phone, even E.T.

Originally Posted by hazel I think "everything evolves" is lazy thinking. That's why I don't like Daniel Dennett. Everything changes, and some of those changes benefit life, so we naturally think of them as improvements. We know that the universe was once very different, but that doesn't mean that some kind of "evolutionary process" turned the early universe into the present one. Evolution is a property of living systems, perhaps even a property of DNA-based living systems. It's not any kind of universal principle.

I think you will find if you look into it that Lee Smolin is as close to the antithesis of "lazy thinker" learned people can get. I think his point is that over time and with study our definition of what it means to be alive has changed greatly. In the long view there are surprising similarities outlined by our perspective on Cause and Effect which brings up another important inquiry "Does Time really exist or is it just how our brains must organize input to make sense to us?" Another poignant question of serious import is "Does Free Will exist, or is that an illusion?" Sam Harris has some interesting analysis of that question.

So ask yourself since you already recognize "everything changes", what is the difference between the chemistry of mixing 2 poisons, Sodium and Chlorine and under certain conditions combining and morphing into table salt, or Hydrogen and Oxygen combination varieties and biological processes? including fertilization and birth? It gets far murkier when we start considering carbon compounds. Add to this the results of studying the nature of replicating viruses and many considering whether or not software viruses can be considered alive and we start to see how POV affects our understanding.

Lee Smolin's speculative logic ponders such action at he most fundamental, that change proceeds according to the interplay of rules and conditions, that even if we don't go so far as to imagine entities l;ike Gaia or ponder if stars are alive, the rules and conditions can be viewed in very similar ways and it can be extremely useful and even valuable to do so.

On the larger (or smaller, depending on your POV) issue confined even just to life as we know it on planet Earth, that is a Locality in both Space and Time, SpaceTime, in which entropy is by no means involved in devolving life forms by any metric. Evolution is random change that plays out in combination with myriad other changes. It is not goal oriented. Some changes are beneficial while others that might seem beneficial, even for a time, can result in extinction, and already have in huge numbers.

Just as we have discussed the propensity of The Elite willfully misinterpreting Darwin for self-aggrandizement and a form of "Manifest Destiny", we don't enjoy imagining we might not be in control, that we are as subject to Chance as everything else is. You walk out your door intending to drive or ride to the grocery store when you realize you forgot something. Your choice whether to go back and get it or not can, and routinely does, have profound results beyond your ken of any relationship between the cause and the effect or even your knowledge of exactly what effects resulted.

Originally Posted by slac-in-the-box Socrates disagreed. I think it was in Plato's Phaedrus, in which Socrates accused written language of stealing our memories and making us stupider--and he may be right, as there are many folks who can't find their way home without a phone, even E.T.

Consider that both are true in degrees, that Socrates wasn't entirely wrong but he lacked the perspective of Time. Nothing is so simple as to be all good or all bad and depends completely on one's perspective for value judgment. A Psych professor of mine once noted "The worm does not perceive the Robin's song as 'Cheerup'". Many scholars, including Stephan Hawking have noted that once language could be preserved by writing, knowledge could be passed down over many generations in far more precision that Oral History provided, Before spoken language even that was not a potent factor in Evolution. Before that evolution was strictly biological.

Hawking, Sagan and many other advocates of peaceful collaboration and scholars of Science and History have noted that it is not yet clear whether or not this boost in evolving intellect and technology will turn out to be advantageous exactly because biological evolution is so slow that much of our instincts are tied to our very long stint as Hunter-Gatherers and may not only not be advantageous but could spell our eventual extinction. No wise person would ever hand a loaded gun to an infant yet we hand over control of weapons of unimaginable destructive power to some of the least learned and massively egotistical, short-sighted among us.

Originally Posted by enorbet Evolution is random change that plays out in combination with myriad other changes. It is not goal oriented. Some changes are beneficial while others that might seem beneficial, even for a time, can result in extinction, and already have in huge numbers.

No, it isn't. Mutations of DNA occur randomly, but most of them are damaging and are selected out. Some are selected for transmission to future generations because they are found to be useful, i.e. they cause a life form to live longer and have more offspring. There's nothing random about that. What is selected as useful depends causally on the environment and that depends partly on decisions that creatures themselves make about how to live. For example, if a species of bird engages in head-nodding as part of its mating ritual, it makes it more likely that its descendants will develop crests of feathers to impress their mates. If an animal hunts more and more at night (because it can't compete with more successful diurnal hunters), its descendants will probably develop a more sensitive retina and slit pupils to protect that retina by day.

Random change is the fuel for evolution, but biology creates the evolution machine.

From my POV, hazel, you seem to be forgetting the interaction with environment. A mutation that favored tree climbing may have been favorable for a time for our distant ancestors but it could have been a death sentence once the trees started to disappear due to the Rift. We may never know how many species did go extinct exactly because of the rift and either failure to adapt quickly enough or previous mutations that locked them into a disappearing environment.

At the end of the Cretaceous period, our more distant ancestors were at a seeming disadvantage in a world full of gigantic, powerful predators but that disadvantage flip-flopped when Chicxulub "mated" with Mother Earth. This is the random part. Biological mutation has little advantage if the environment is utterly static. Don't forget the "Boring Billion".

Originally Posted by business_kid Oh dear, I had unsubscribed I thought, but somehow found myself involved here. To say 'Christ redemmed himself' means that somehow the only direct Creation by God (Col 1:15-16)somehow needed redeeming. That theory blows up in your face for many reasons, and I'm sure you'll have many others point that out...

But you are quoting Saul/Paul, who, I have suggested, could have faked his blindness and miraculous recovery as a powerplay to get his own words that are contrary to the teachings of Christ into the good book--the very blasphemy of spirit that Jesus warns is unforgiveable.

Then, if Saul/Paul fooled all the folks having faith in the Bible, because his words are there, then the agenda of Satan is what gets Preached instead of faith in Christ... That's why I stick to Jesus' teachings, and not Pauls.

Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand: not far off after death--but here and now ready to be built by hand, by work. This is very theocratic. But the work is not telling everybody that Jesus already did the work (that is Pauls twisting of the truth).

The work involves poverty, mourning, meekness, peacemaking, and, yes teaching His teachings, not Pauls; being a light; building upon the rock; and he does say his blood is shed for many, for the remissions of sins: but that can still be that the motive for his volunteering is to show us how its done, so we too can volunteer--and when we do, we will have remission of sins.

I haven't found where Jesus says he is a perfect creation that doesn't need redeeming. He refers to himself as the son of man, and refers to God as our father in heaven.

Jesus was human first, and God, secondly, by volunteering to shed his blood because he saw that as the path to making peace--he is a peacemaker, and never compromised his pacifism.

The wars in our world could use more peacemakers--the kingdom of heaven is still at hand.

He says the son of man has the power to forgive sins. But he also charges his apostles to heal the sick and raise the dead, and, he says that it is not them preaching, but the spirit of the father preaching through them... so when we are aligned with the spirit of the father, we, too, can raise the dead, not just Jesus. Seems like he's claiming God in those who channel the father, and that we can do that, as long as we avoid the pitfalls of pride.

One interesting thing about the Lord's prayer, is right before sharing it, Jesus condones folks who pray using vain repititions, and instead should pray in this manner, and then gives that prayer as an example... yet church after church, I hear the congregation repeating these words repetively the same way every time: its like they missed the intro.

But I am by no means a biblical scholar and it is totally possible that I missed some vital red letter where he claims to be perfect.

The trouble with dismissing parts of the Bible that you don't agree with, while still accepting others, is that you will never learn anything that way. You have already edited your input so the output is predetermined.

Originally Posted by hazel The trouble with dismissing parts of the Bible that you don't agree with, while still accepting others, is that you will never learn anything that way. You have already edited your input so the output is predetermined.

I'm actually surprised to see you say this, hazel. It might be one thing if the author of some book was just one person, but even then, the best of us is never correct all the time on everything. For example, Carl Sagan was a particularly bright, educated and experienced thinker and decidedly also a highly good and moral man yet although it is admirable that decades later his conclusions are so commonly still valid, he did have conclusions and assertions that are mistaken in several areas, some easily dismissed as only later refined and others just historically inaccurate like the "unnatural selection" of the Heikegani or "Samurai" crab. Grasping these faults by no means dismisses his entire body of work nor is in any way "predetermined".

Now consider a book, not written by just one man and not just a few decades ago, but one written by actually uncountable men (considering the environment of the time so heavily dependent on Oral History perhaps thousands is too small a number) and so long ago (more than 200 decades), copied, edited and translated so many times, not to mention so broad and large, on so many subjects, and the need for critical examination should be obvious (fully evidenced right here in microcosm) it seems to me "predetermined" is highly unlikely. A large part of it's universality and continued popularity and even value, is that it is so malleable, so open to continued interpretations. I don't see predetermined there at all, in fact, quite the opposite.

Originally Posted by enorbet Now consider a book, not written by just one man and not just a few decades ago, but one written by actually uncountable men (considering the environment of the time so heavily dependent on Oral History perhaps thousands is too small a number) and so long ago (more than 200 decades), copied, edited and translated so many times, not to mention so broad and large, on so many subjects, and the need for critical examination should be obvious (fully evidenced right here in microcosm) it seems to me "predetermined" is highly unlikely. A large part of it's universality and continued popularity and even value, is that it is so malleable, so open to continued interpretations. I don't see predetermined there at all, in fact, quite the opposite.

Actually that's a pretty good description of the process that God used to give us our bible. But critical engagement with the text is one thing; rejecting a large tranche of scripture such as Paul's letters simply because you do not like their theology is quite another. That seems to me more like a deliberate closing of the mind. Saying "Oh, that bit's not the word of God" is simply too easy.

Originally Posted by hazel The trouble with dismissing parts of the Bible that you don't agree with, while still accepting others, is that you will never learn anything that way. You have already edited your input so the output is predetermined.

I'm with enorbet on this one: I don't believe in "blind faith" -- I have heard, in the protestant churches of my youth, and from mr.mazda here in this thread, this notion, that God blessed every translator and every word, such that the entire Bible is the word of God and we should believe it. This notion thwarts critical thought.

Business_kid has pointed out that there are multiple varying accounts of the same event, and so both variances can't be right.

But I do believe in faith... almost faith in faith is enough for me.

What about St.Matthew 9:17?

Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God

Perhaps the "non-good" part of Jesus is what he redeemed by volunteering.

Originally Posted by enorbet copied, edited and translated so many times

We have many hundreds or thousands of copies from antiquity such that it is clear from the many that match what the originals said, and the deviations to discard readily determined. The oldies in their original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic languages still mean what they meant when written. Translation can alter meaning regardless of source or age.

Originally Posted by slac-in-the-box Business_kid has pointed out that there are multiple varying accounts of the same event, and so both variances can't be right.

Apparent differences in Biblical accounts can always be rationally reconciled. e.g. https://answersingenesis.org/jesus/r...s-one-reality/

There is also a significant point being missed here. If we believe in a powerful God who did significant things, it follows that he is big enough to look after himself.

So if his word is mistranslated or not translated as it was for centuries, he can have that work done when he wants it done. Men risked their lives translating God's words into modern languages within a century of printing. If there were alterations made (which there were) he will see to it that enough information is there to isolate them and remove them, which all respectable translations do. Scholars can today say where a scriptural text is from by examining the variations it contains.

Originally Posted by slac-in-the-box Business_kid has pointed out that there are multiple varying accounts of the same event, and so both variances can't be right.

Agreed. I did say that, but you added the interpretation that one must be wrong. Witnesses to a murder will give different accounts, but they both will tell you about the murder. The accounts can differ without being wrong. You're unlikely to find any account where one contradicts the other in any except the worst translations.