Evolutionist: “In a Very Real Sense, Our Species Invented Itself”

I liked the designation of them as 'animists', by a writer for that prestigious US science magazine. Is it, New Scientist'? Their inadvertent pantheism could double for Mother Nature, couldn't it? Axel

Coupled with Materialism, evolution, as a theory of everything, has more in common with Pantheism than science. From pantheism.net:

At the heart of pantheism is reverence of the universe as the ultimate focus of reverence, and for the natural earth as sacred. Scientific or Natural Pantheism - Pan for short - has a naturalistic approach which simply accepts and reveres the universe and nature just as they are, and promotes an ethic of respect for human and animal rights and for lifestyles that sustain rather than destroy the environment. When scientific pantheists say WE REVERE THE UNIVERSE we are not talking about a supernatural being. We are talking about the way our senses and our emotions force us to respond to the overwhelming mystery and power that surrounds us. We are part of the universe. Our earth was created from the universe and will one day be reabsorbed into the universe. We are made of the same matter and energy as the universe. We are not in exile here: we are at home. It is only here that we will ever get the chance to see paradise face to face. If we believe our real home is not here but in a land that lies beyond death - if we believe that the numinous is found only in old books, or old buildings, or inside our head, or outside this reality - then we will see this real, vibrant, luminous world as if through a glass darkly. The universe creates us, preserves us, destroys us. It is deep and old beyond our ability to reach with our senses. It is beautiful beyond our ability to describe in words. It is complex beyond our ability to fully grasp in science. We must relate to the universe with humility, awe, reverence, celebration and the search for deeper understanding - in many of the ways that believers relate to their God, minus the grovelling worship or the expectation that there is some being out there who can answer our prayers.

This writer makes me think of Carl Sagan in the original Cosmos. I'm reminded of what Paul wrote in Romans 1:

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Emphasis mine. bb

Night says:

Why not? After all, any program can be written by another program. Which in turn can also be written by another program, etc.

Not without intelligent input! Or do you have experimental evidence that unintelligent natural processes can write programs? tjguy

Box #5: For instance the lawful behavior of a chess program cannot be explained by chance and necessity alone.

NL #6: Why not? After all, any program can be written by another program. Which in turn can also be written by another program, etc.

So an infinite regress is not absurd in your opinion. Would you like me to present arguments that it is?

Even when you (a human) write a program, it was written by another program running in the network of neurons (which is a distributed computer) forming your brain.

Do you hold that writing a program – and intelligent agency – is reducible to brain chemistry? Box

#5 " For instance the lawful behavior of a chess program cannot be explained by chance and necessity alone. " Why not? After all, any program can be written by another program. Which in turn can also be written by another program, etc. Even when you (a human) write a program, it was written by another program running in the network of neurons (which is a distributed computer) forming your brain. Hence not only any program can be written by another program, but as far anyone can scientifically establish, every program is written by some other program i.e. programming is a rewriting process (a form of lossless data compression, just as science is). Universe itself with all its 'laws & chance' is perfectly consistent with a pattern formed by some computation, like those gliders and oscillators in the Conway's Game of Life. nightlight

NL #3: There is no contradiction between goal driven behavior and lawful behavior.

"Chance and necessity" is not equal to "lawful behavior". For instance the lawful behavior of a chess program cannot be explained by chance and necessity alone. The core of its lawful behavior can only be explained by intelligent design. Box

Errata for #2 "you are given access to the inner workings of the generator" should be: "you are not given access to the inner workings of the generator" nightlight

In other words, evolution just happened to create incredibly complex biological agents with incredibly complex behaviors which then just happened to be crucial influences on the evolutionary process.

... and evolution just happened to have goals and directions in its mind to enable the process to 'culminate in human beings'. Organisms evolve themselves in order to become better organisms, of course! Evolution wanted it that way because evolution evolved itself to make all these good things happen on earth. Forget all the random mutation and selection stuff all that blind, purposelessness with no direction ... we never really said any of that! It's all just quote-mining by creationists. What we really said was that evolution is teleological. Evolution has very good reasons to do what it does. Can't you see the great results in nature that evolution created? Case closed. Evolution is more certain than gravity. Nothing makes sense except in the light of evolution.

At least evolution is entertaining.

Absolutely. Forget Saturday Night Live -- just put a bunch of evolutionists on stage and interview them for an hour. Ok, that's a bit too classy. Contact Ringling Bros. We've got some good substitutes for Bozo the Clown on his days off. Silver Asiatic

"Indeed. Gone is the evolutionary notion of random variation subject to natural selection, otherwise known as “chance and necessity.” Instead, organisms, whose behavior is driven by goals, play an active and major role in evolution. " There is no contradiction between goal driven behavior and lawful behavior. For example, a program playing chess operates/thinks by creating and working toward goals (looking ahead, seeking to achieve some position it evaluated favorably in its look-ahead procedure). Yet it is simultaneously a system doing all that goal seeking completely lawfully. Teleology/goal seeking and lawfulness are perfectly fine with each other, just as lawfulness and chance are. In the latter case for example, you cannot tell apart a 'pseudo-random' from 'random' number generator or sequence when both pass all 'randomness' tests you can try and you are given access to the inner workings of the generator. Hence lawfulness and chance are merely attributes of one's level of knowledge about the system, not attributes of the system itself. The Darwinism and religious/Discovery Institute ID are actually twins in disguise, with their fuzzy-wuzzy low-res concepts (routinely blurring epistemology and ontology, or confusing map with territory, among others), appeal to emotion and empathy instead of to reason and logic. nightlight

As to:

Evolutionist: “In a Very Real Sense, Our Species Invented Itself”

That claim reminds me of the claim, by two atheists, that our species 'reached back in time to create the universe',,,

"So what are the theological implications of all this? Well Barrow and Tipler wrote this book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, and they saw the design of the universe. But they're atheists basically, there's no God. And they go through some long arguments to describe why humans are the only intelligent life in the universe. That's what they believe. So they got a problem. If the universe is clearly the product of design, but humans are the only intelligent life in the universe, who creates the universe? So you know what Barrow and Tipler's solution is? It makes perfect sense. Humans evolve to a point some day where they reach back in time and create the universe for themselves., (Audience laughs), Hey these guys are respected scientists. So what brings them to that conclusion? It is because the evidence for design is so overwhelming that if you don't have God you have humans creating the universe back in time for themselves." – Michael Strauss PhD. - Particle Physics - Anthropic Principle - God Created The Universe – video 6:49 mark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvr9q_2sSxs

So apparently the fact that humans are purely material beings with no 'mind', as is held in neo-Darwinism, i.e. atheistic materialism, does not prevent humans from 'inventing themselves', nor does it prevent them from 'reaching back in time' and creating all of material reality in the Big Bang! :) As they use to say on Sesame Street when I was a kid, 'OK children, what picture does not belong with the others?' :) Verse:

Romans 1:19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.

bornagain77