Welcome to Gaia! ::

yeh, i have had passing encounters with Taoism/Daoism, and i have enjoined every bit of it. smile i intend to delve deeper at some point, but i am always delving into some religion or other in my endless pursuit of Knowledge both Practical and Metaphysical. xd

exactly. smile this goes right into my belief that Evolution isn't about randomness or intelligence. people tend to forget, that creatures actually adapt, without being aware of it on a personal level, to their surroundings and situations. this adaptation happens automatically on a molecular level, and ye is specific to each situation, and artistically a work of pure genious! somehow, mutations occur as if by intelligent design, but the creature itself that is mutating doesn't realize it.

my honest belief is that the cells themselves are aware enough to make conscious decisions like these, and to come up with creative solutions to problems that endanger the life of the structured and organized being that they collectively make up. each body is a machine, a system. it has a single consiousness, but there has to be a deeper consciousness, or maybe multiple synchronized consciousnesses, underlying the singular consciousness of a multicellular plant or animal.

this is just one example of evidence that something out there made a huge plan. that, and the simple fact something-from-nothing happened one way or another according to each side of the argument about the Creation of the Universe.

I could point to a lot of features of human biology that would argue against divine insight. To me the most obvious is the simple fact that we're bipedal. A tremendous disadvantage, however it does make sense in an evolutionary context, but this is entirely separate from what we might consider divine.
Some factors to consider about bipedalism that make it questionable if we're looking at this from a creationist perspective:
- All of our vital organs are exposed
- The points on our bodies most fit to take force (elbows and knees) are not faced toward anything we might collide with. They're actually pointing behind us and straight forward. We know that these areas in all other primates and many animals do function as a form of protection but this is not the case for us.
- Giving birth is more painful, given that the pelvis has to be of a different shape to function properly. In quadrupeds the birth canal is far wider. This combined with our enormous heads presents a pretty big challenge.
- Another feature of our anatomy is one that indicates that our evolutionary line has spent more time in the trees than we do. This would be indicated by the motion of our shoulder, which is similar to many species that can bracheate (swing from branches).

If we consider these traits not as static but developed over a long period of time it's far easier to understand.
It seems that our cranial capacity corresponded with bipedalism, and also brain lateralization seems to correspond with handedness. This is believed to be tremendously important to language and this generally stands true. Funnily enough ambidextrous people tend to have diminished linguistic capabilities, and also handedness corresponds roughly to the hemisphere of the brain in which language is perceived.
Our ability to carry objects was also increased with bipedalism (this also implies that the amount we used our hands for different tasks, given that they were not entirely necessary for movement alone). The number of advantages in an evolutionary context abound, but the system is not by any means perfect and in fact defies many other parts of our biology (like the pelvis and the elbows/knees, and also the motion of our shoulders and our ability to bracheate).

There's also the fact that our eyes are very complicated and are altogether silly structures. We actually see an inverted image that our brain has to assess and flip in order for us to see properly. The emergence of tailbones and also our genetic capacity (now what we would deem "junk" that would allow for such a defect). Also embryology is quite interesting in that human embryos different very little from other species (at an early stage there's little difference between an embryo of a human and that of a fish).



All in all there's too much to indicate that there is no design here. Now that doesn't mean that evolution is random. Very few ever said that it was (evolution as a theory does not claim to be random). Some amazing things have happened through evolution and some of those amazing things were likely more beneficial than others. The interplay of different organisms in a variety of ecological niches is truly an amazing thing, and while it doesn't appear to be in any way random it does seem to correspond with the environmental pressures that are exerted.
I really won't ever see a God as necessary for all of this. The idea is fine but as long as there is no necessity for such a being the actual likelihood of it existing is pretty slim, as there's no reason to assume that is the case.

Sorry for the rant(s).

Just because you can understand it doesn't mean it's not Divinely inspired. I believe that someone designed the world--and he didn't have to just POOF it into existence. He could have seeded and guided evolution to achieve the desired results. I was just trying to point out the the odds of that exact combination of proteins spontaneously coming together at the exact moment a blood-bearing-creature mutated into being seem just mind-blowingly remote. It doesn't have to be science OR faith. Both can coexist in the same mind. Science is so fundamentalists, black and white, with only one possible interpretation. Faith isn't.

Cells are such amazing things. Just a single amoeba living on the edge of a deep-sea volcano can do remarkable things to ensure the survival of its chromosomes. I mean living in liquid toxins on the razor's edge between "boiled alive" and "frozen to death." Fascinating!

My true love is veterinary bio-chemistry. Talk about fun--all the things that go on in a horses digestive tract when overloaded with carbs is just cool, in a terrifying might-kill-the-horse-in-a-horrible-and-painful-way kind of thing.

I guess one of my "blocks" with understanding Darwinian evolution, or the idea that all life originated from a singe cell spontaneously existing in a primordial ooze without any help, is that there is such intricacy in the structure of the universe, such scope for mental, emotional and spiritual development that I refuse to believe there is NOT a greater plan at work. What that "greater plan" is, is a totally different topic, I think. But still, it's almost depressing to look at everything and say "Huh, it all happened by accident." That could just be my idealistic nature anthropomorphizing above-and-beyond normal levels, tho.

I guess the first of us to die will be the first one to really know the meaning of life. mrgreen

Well it is indeed remote. The actual existence of DNA is profoundly unlikely (and seems pretty much limited to our lovely little planet). I don't see any of these things as evidence of a divine being though. That's all I'm really saying. You're free to attach values to whatever explanations but they will only be the values you attach to them, nothing more. There's nothing wrong with this, but I see a problem with interpreting rather arbitrary facts as evidence of something entirely more abstract.

Faith can indeed be very fundamentalist. This is very common. Science provides an alternate explanation (and as a default a more viable outlook), and doesn't require any further specificity about motives. Faith in any particular religion requires rejecting many other outlooks (spiritual and otherwise), as the claiming of a religion implies some level exclusivity.
What I like about science is that it is totally contingent on reality. It is based on observable facts. Whether your outlook is limited to supported theories is actually not relevant. Science doesn't attempt to subvert faith (in any and all its forms), but it has a way of pointing out that faith is not necessarily based on anything real.

I'll always be much less inclined toward a specific belief or explanation if there isn't anything to support it. I'll go to science for explanations. What values one attaches to these particular explanations is entirely up to the person. Because science is not a belief system but merely a means for explanation it cannot be considered in the same realm as faith.
The belief in a specific deity or a creator being is just one kind of faith amongst many. I am not a theist; this does not mean I am not spiritual.

Science is by nature fundamentalist. Things are either right or wrong. Scientists deal with absolutes. Faith often contradicts that pattern of thinking because there are gaps in almost every theology--depending on whom you speak to.

I still don't know why so many people think it has to be science OR god. Sure, some things that some experts in some fields claim as FACT don't fit in with a biblical time-line, but just because you accept the science behind modern microbiology doesn't mean you have to accept that life was a random fluke. Just because you believe in a higher power doesn't mean you can't understand molecular bonds.

Science isn't an ideology and nor is any theory completely static. Theories emerge as evidence is compiled. Those that stand well (for example the theory of gravity and evolution) are written as truths, though the explanation of the mechanisms at work can change. Scientists deal with real things, observable phenomena, but it exists independently of any one belief. You can have any number of beliefs on an accepted theory because the theories themselves do not tell you what to make of them. The ideal researcher is one that gets rid of personal values in their explanation. God doesn't play into it because it is a personal and unverifiable belief -- not saying it's wrong or right, but because it isn't verifiable it can't be part of the research.

I don't think anyone's saying that it was a fluke though (however if we're looking at a designer you are implying everything emerged from nothing). It's just that science doesn't really deal with the supernatural. There would be a huge problem with researching from that perspective because you'd already have arrived at the conclusion before the evidence emerges.

No one will ever say that religious or spiritual people have no place in science, but their beliefs do not. It's not about the people specifically. You're completely free to believe whatever you like, but it should not be part of your research because that would be quite fallacious.

I took a looooong time to respond to this.