As an explanation of the existence of man, creation is superior to evolution

[o_mlly]

Specialization is not the problem you imagine it is.
What Makes a Species?
Today, technology has enabled both new ways to settle the species question and ways to further the lumper/splitter debate. DNA sequencing has brought us the genetic species concept. In this model, species are defined by genetic isolation rather than reproductive isolation. Species may be more or less identical morphologically but differences in DNA determine if a population is a separate species or not.
On the other hand defining consciousness is a real problem.

I've already agreed that the movement to molecular biology will improve the credibility of evolution theory.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You keep saying "hard definition," like it's supposed to mean something.

Kind = Genus = Kind = case closed

You cannot define the terms that you try to use whether it is "kind" or "genus". Since you can't you lost your argument. Case closed.

 

[o_mlly]

Do you seriously think that the fact that "species" is a slippery term to define hurts the concept of evolution? You have it backwards. Species is hard to define because of the fact that life evolved. If life was the product of creationism it would be easy to define species since there would be well defined "kinds". Any time that creationists try to define "kind" they end up shooting themselves in the foot. Their beliefs say that it should be a term that can be well defined but they always fail to do so. Evolution on the other hand predicts that there will be points where what particular species a population belongs to would be hard to decide. That is why today's biologists rely on cladistics. Cladistics is rather clear. There can be doubts if a particular example is ancestral or an "uncle" but there is little doubt about the overall clade of the example. For example there was a fair amount of variation in Homo erectus since it was very successful species. Whether one specific fossil was ancestral or a closely related sub-population that went extinct can be hard to determine, but that they are related is not in doubt.

Okay, sorry to take off on a longish spiel. But the fact that there are multiple definitions of species supports the fact of evolution. It does not harm it.

The OP limits the debate to the evolution of man. For discussion purposes, I allow that evolution is possible for bugs (colloquial sense) to primates.

I am 100% certain of the truth of my claim that God directly creates each and every human soul.

What probability (%) do you assign to the evolution's explanation of man?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Thanks, and I'll go read the article. I gathered much of what you wrote from the references I've seen to Flew, but (not having read that article yet) I'm not sure why I should be bothered by him at all. I don't recall anyone ever recommending his writings on non-belief as must reads. Maybe that just because the arguments are basically the same and all each generation needs is a version with updated cultural references.

Perhaps if I'd left religion at the end of high school and joined the campus atheist club I'd have heard about Flew. As it was, by the time I cared even in the slightest about atheism beyond the "I don't believe in God and find religion to be false" aspect of being an atheist, Flew was dead and the "New Atheism" was passing its peak.

The only reason that I know of Anthony Flew is because his supposed case is one of the straws that theists latch onto. Their argument is "Flew, when he was old and senile, became a theist. Therefore atheism is wrong." Not very convincing to say the least.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The OP limits the debate to the evolution of man. For discussion purposes, I allow that evolution is possible for bugs (colloquial sense) to primates.

I am 100% certain of the truth of my claim that God directly creates each and every human soul.

What probability (%) do you assign to the evolution's explanation of man?

It does not matter how sure you are of anything. In fact when people have the kind of sureness that you have without a valid way to confirm that belief it is quite often because they are wrong and their only 'evidence" is because they are sure.

What you should be trying to learn is how we know that we are the product of evolution. That we are related to other apes. That is a testable idea.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Well, seeing as you got the ratio wrong, it seems like a good idea for you to look it up.

How did I get the ratio wrong?

Christians are less than half of the world's population.
[Insert religion here] are less than half the world's population.

All are out numbered by non-believers in their religion.

Would you care to quote this "error" in ratio I made?

 

[o_mlly]

Maybe you'd better let the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy know they've got it wrong - I was using their 'simple formulation of the principle', which contradicts your claim for it.

Stanford's definitions are fine. Your interpretation of PSR was not.

I'm happy to continue any debate I initiate if it is conducted in a reasonable manner.

Define "reasonable". Do you disagree with any of the First Principles as reasonable?

If you have in mind a different debate that I initiated, give me a link to it and we can debate that too.

I've already posted long ago exactly how to destroy my claim:
Demonstrate that the creation is irrational or has internal inconsistencies.
Go for it.

What probability as a percentage do you have now that whatever evolution theory you hold is true?

 

[pitabread]

For discussion purposes, I allow that evolution is possible for bugs (colloquial sense) to primates.

Just curious, but why are you even using the term "bugs" in this context? It seems a strange choice of word.

 

[Hans Blaster]

The OP limits the debate to the evolution of man. For discussion purposes, I allow that evolution is possible for bugs (colloquial sense) to primates.

Then what's the debate about? Humans are very clearly one of the primates. If evolution went from single celled animals to primates, that would include us as well.

I am 100% certain of the truth of my claim that God directly creates each and every human soul.

It is a factual claim with in the Christian worldview (that is Christians believe God creates souls), but since neither souls nor God have been shown to exist it's not relevant elsewhere.

 

[o_mlly]

It does not matter how sure you are of anything.

Really? I hope your day job is not piloting commercial aircraft, or driving a bus, or parking cars, or ...

In fact when people have the kind of sureness that you have without a valid way to confirm that belief it is quite often because they are wrong and their only 'evidence" is because they are sure.

Science knowledge does not circumscribe even a blade of grass and yet claims to know how man came into existence.

 

[o_mlly]

How did I get the ratio wrong?

Numerator was wrong.

 

[Frank Robert]

I've already agreed that the movement to molecular biology will improve the credibility of evolution theory.

Science progresses along with knowledge but I doubt if there were many people with a basic understanding of evolution that doubted its credibility over speciation definitions.

 

[o_mlly]

Just curious, but why are you even using the term "bugs" in this context? It seems a strange choice of word.

Hyperbole: it's to emphasize the magnitude of something through exaggerated comparison.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Numerator was wrong.

In what way? I'm not sure of which post you're complaining about at this point.

 

[Frank Robert]

Science knowledge does not circumscribe even a blade of grass and yet claims to know how man came into existence.

If you come up with better evidence for human existence science will affirm your evidence, but hypotheses/theories without scientific evidence are routinely dismissed.

 

[pitabread]

Hyperbole: it's to emphasize the magnitude of something through exaggerated comparison.

It doesn't come across as hyperbolic though. It just comes across as uninformed.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You appear to be mocking my faith. That would be just another indicator that you have no further arguments.

No; if you simply believe what people have told you and what is written in an old book, without any means to verify it, that would imply a level of gullibility. OTOH, if you had a personal epiphany, such as hearing the voice of God, you would have reasonable grounds for belief - assuming you were unaware of how often people hear voices and have life-changing experiences & realisations of various kinds.

Citation to support your claim "biology has shown" that idea of the soul is false. (If a thing is "at best metaphorical" then it must be untrue.)

What I said was that it has shown the idea of a soul as an animating force to be unnecessary. We've known for some time that life is a process of complex organic chemistry. Animating principles beyond that are redundant. There are other formulations of the soul concept that are not quite so simply refuted.

... your point is simply that the death of the body is a process?

That's right.

The soul continues to animate the body but non-functioning body parts cannot respond. Death occurs when no body part can be animated. At that point, the soul vacates the body.

It was an understandable and plausible idea for its time, but the evidence was extremely weak, and even before scientific advances made it redundant, it had the problem of interaction. But now we have a better explanation (see my post on what makes a good explanation) from physiology and molecular biology, and evidence from thermodynamics and particle/quantum physics that claims for the soul are not tenable.

The soul has always been postulated as immaterial. Your claim that an immaterial substance is merely a redundant material substance is nonsense. All of science's attempts to disclose the supposed and imagined life force as a material substance have failed.

That wasn't my claim. I said that the soul as an animating force was redundant. We know in considerable detail what living things are made of and how they work - the animating pronciple of life is fundamentally no different to that of fire; the release of energy via redox (oxidation-reduction) reactions.

Immateriality is the major problem - the problem of interaction; how can the immaterial affect the material? if there was some animating principle, material or immaterial, that could influence the body, that influence would have been detected. As it is, we have an explanation that requires no undetected influences, material or immaterial.

How can a thing be called "redundant" when the referent that makes it so has never been demonstrated.

When there is an explanation that doesn't require it. That it is undetectable simply reinforces its redundancy.

Wishful thinking, I suppose.

I suggest the wishful thinking is on the part of the believers in immaterial animating principles. YMMV.

What other Christian concepts of "soul" do you think differ from mine? Citations, of course required.

Here you go:
Soul: Christian Concepts

Another sign of an exhaustion of arguments.

No, just losing patience.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

They are made of their own unique corporeal substance.

In what way is it unique, how does it differ from human corporeal substance?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Until you agree with those non-deducible and rational First Principles of philosophy, I would have nothing to appeal my criticism to that I could expect you to respect.

Give me a reference for the particular First Principles of philosophy you have in mind, and I'll have a look.

But as I said, reasonable discussions can be had without such demands.

 

[Hans Blaster]

In what way is it unique, how does it differ from human corporeal substance?

It has the language of an idea about object composition that pre-dates the discovery of chemical elements and sub-atomic particles.