What are we?

[Dicy mind]

Hey I don't know has this been discussed before and is this the right forum but have you ever thought that what are you?

Where does our thinking come from?

I don't understand where I come from and why do I feel.

This seems to be the question of all questions because it's far away from the questions "How we're we created" and "how should we be?". Instead its "What are we?".

 

[JohnJones]

Hey I don't know has this been discussed before and is this the right forum but have you ever thought that what are you?

Where does our thinking come from?

I don't understand where I come from and why do I feel.

This seems to be the question of all questions because it's far away from the questions "How we're we created" and "how should we be?". Instead its "What are we?".

I don't see how the questions "How were we created?" and "how should we be?" are so distant from the question "what are we?" as you suggest they are. In fact, you cannot answer "What are we?" without first answering the other two questions. Let's look at the two possibilities:

EVOLUTION FROM LOWER FORMS OF LIFE

If you subscribe to the view that you were "created" by a spontaneous generation of a single-celled organism in some sort of primordial-soup (or prebiotic-stew), which organism evolved into slightly more complex organisms like trilobites, and then into fish, then into small semi-amphibious tetrapods who evolved into lizards (who evolved into birds) and small mammals who evolved into hominids which evolved into apes and humans, what effect does such a view have on the question "how should I be?" Well, firstly, if you believe you were so "created" by random chance and mutation, how can you believe you were "created" in the image of God? It will be a hard thing to believe. What is there in evolution that can even come close to approximating and image of an image of an image of the image of God? So, firstly you will at least doubt that you were created in the image of God, and therefore will not answer the question "how should I be?" in any clear terms as far as your relationship to God or in terms of your duty to be a decent representation of His image. But now we get to the question "What am I?" Well, if you do not believe you were created in God's image, you no doubt also do not believe that you have fallen or failed to maintain a true representation of that image. You don't see yourself as fallen from a state of perfection, but as a mere link in a naturalistic process from imperfection to perfection. In evolution you started as an imperfect amoeba, and have moved to a more-perfect man, and in the future will eventually reach supreme perfection (on the species level, not as an individual). Thus, you cannot reconcile evolutionist thinking with the Biblical teaching that God created man perfect, but man fell from said perfection and become debase and sinful. Thus when you answer the question "what am I?" you will say "I am an insignificant bacterium that over millions of years became an intellectual being of a high order" rather than "I was created perfect, in the image of God Almighty Himself, but I fell from that state and became a lowly sinner in need of the cleansing of Christ's blood."

SPECIAL CREATION

On the otherhand, if you believe that God specially created man in His own image, then you will believe that you started perfect, but yet fell, and are in need of Christ's blood. The question of creation and evolution is then the MOST fundamental question of Christianity and the correct answer is necessary to salvation, because those who were not created in God's image certainly did not fall from such an image - how then can the image be renewed, seeing it was never there to begin with, and why would it even need to be renewed if it had never been there to start with? Athanasius said that the only one who could restore man to being in the image of God was the Image Himself (Jesus Christ). Just as when a painting is destroyed by time, he said, the painter recalls the person depicted in the painting and redraws them on the same canvas, so Christ came to this world and reimpressed His image on those who would be saved. But if we were not created in His image in the beginning, how could he restore the image that was not there at the first? According to evolution we will eventually reach perfection through mutation and chance, and therefore do not need Christ's blood, because we are continually progressing toward perfection. In Christianity (which is wholly antithetical to evolution) we find quite the opposite, that we began perfect, and are now continually degrading and becoming more imperfect, and will continue to do so, so long as we remain apart from Christ (which we will do so long as we do not believe in special creation). The law of increasing entropy (the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics) states that disorder is always increasing, the amount of usable energy is always decreasing, or in other words, everything is wearing down. To put it even simpler, entropy (inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society) is always increasing. This truth prohibits evolution in the natural world, since evolution proposes that order is increasing (simple bacteria becoming men) and the law of increasing entropy shows the opposite. More importantly, however, the law of increasing entropy is true with respect to the souls of the unregenerate - they continue to degrade and become more debase (or, as Paul puts it, wicked men and deceivers grow worse and worse). Only when the soul is joined to Christ Jesus can the entropy cease.

 

[Non-ape Jase]

Well said, JohnJones.

 

[Dicy mind]

I don't see how the questions "How were we created?" and "how should we be?" are so distant from the question "what are we?" as you suggest they are.

I do belive that God created man in His own image. But I men't that why do we think? Why do we remember? Where are we when sleeping?

Basically the question is, what are we mentally?

Like some one said; I think therefore I am.

 

[gluadys]

I don't see how the questions "How were we created?" and "how should we be?" are so distant from the question "what are we?" as you suggest they are. In fact, you cannot answer "What are we?" without first answering the other two questions. Let's look at the two possibilities:

EVOLUTION FROM LOWER FORMS OF LIFE

If you subscribe to the view that you were "created" by a spontaneous generation of a single-celled organism in some sort of primordial-soup (or prebiotic-stew), which organism evolved into slightly more complex organisms like trilobites, and then into fish, then into small semi-amphibious tetrapods who evolved into lizards (who evolved into birds) and small mammals who evolved into hominids which evolved into apes and humans, what effect does such a view have on the question "how should I be?" Well, firstly, if you believe you were so "created" by random chance and mutation, how can you believe you were "created" in the image of God?

Well, why not? I see no problem in believing that God created a process which we call evolution through which I came to be as a human being and that by God's will I am created in the image of God.

I don't see why one belief should exclude the other.

My question would be "why do you think its hard to believe both?" I don't find it difficult at all.

But now we get to the question "What am I?" Well, if you do not believe you were created in God's image, you no doubt also do not believe that you have fallen or failed to maintain a true representation of that image. You don't see yourself as fallen from a state of perfection, but as a mere link in a naturalistic process from imperfection to perfection. In evolution you started as an imperfect amoeba, and have moved to a more-perfect man, and in the future will eventually reach supreme perfection (on the species level, not as an individual).

I begin to see why you think it is difficult to believe in evolution/creation. You misconstrue what evolution is. Evolution is not a program to achieve some ideal perfection. It is a program to adapt to the current environment. An amoeba is not imperfect. It is well-adapted to its environment. It has existed for many millennia and continues to thrive.

A human is not more perfect than an amoeba. We are also a biologically successful species---at least for the time being. But we don't have the track record of the amoeba yet. And our interference with the environment is reducing its capacity to support us. We could yet do ourselves in.

Thus, you cannot reconcile evolutionist thinking with the Biblical teaching that God created man perfect, but man fell from said perfection and become debase and sinful.

Surely there is a difference between physical form and moral innocence. Are you not confounding the two here? What does one have to do with the other? The evolution of our bodies has nothing to do with the pristine innocence of our ancestors' souls. We still fell from moral perfection into sin.

SPECIAL CREATION

On the otherhand, if you believe that God specially created man in His own image, then you will believe that you started perfect, but yet fell, and are in need of Christ's blood. The question of creation and evolution is then the MOST fundamental question of Christianity and the correct answer is necessary to salvation, because those who were not created in God's image certainly did not fall from such an image - how then can the image be renewed, seeing it was never there to begin with, and why would it even need to be renewed if it had never been there to start with?

Emphasis added.

I just want to point out that you said this. That means, in effect, that you are disputing that any Christian who accepts evolution is in fact Christian. That is contrary to the rules of this forum.

Many creationists do not hold that a Christian's stance on evolution is a question pertaining to salvation. They may believe we TEs are wrong, but they do not say that we are unChristian or have forfeited our salvation.

According to evolution we will eventually reach perfection through mutation and chance, and therefore do not need Christ's blood, because we are continually progressing toward perfection.

Evolution says nothing of the kind. This is your misperception of evolution speaking, not science.

The law of increasing entropy (the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics) states that disorder is always increasing, the amount of usable energy is always decreasing, or in other words, everything is wearing down. To put it even simpler, entropy (inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society) is always increasing. This truth prohibits evolution in the natural world, since evolution proposes that order is increasing (simple bacteria becoming men) and the law of increasing entropy shows the opposite. More importantly, however, the law of increasing entropy is true with respect to the souls of the unregenerate - they continue to degrade and become more debase (or, as Paul puts it, wicked men and deceivers grow worse and worse). Only when the soul is joined to Christ Jesus can the entropy cease.

And this paragraph indicates that you do not understand what the 2nd law of thermodynamics actually says, nor how it applies in an open system like the planet earth.

And again, you are confounding physical and spiritual realities which operate on different levels and within different frames of reference. You cannot jump from material facts about our bodies to moral issues relating to the soul. These can at best be analogies. The causal relationship is questionable at best and certainly not straightforward.

 

[JohnJones]

Evolution is not a program to achieve some ideal perfection. It is a program to adapt to the current environment.

Are you a computer programmer? Imagine writing a program that will generate other programs. Let's call it "evolution.exe" Now, evolution.exe must generate these programs in INCREASING complexity. It cannot start by creating MS Windows and then go back and make DOS - it must start with creating DOS and then over time go on to MS Windows. The complexity of the programs must increase, not decrease and not fluctuate. Now, the design time on such a program will be immense. How will you write a program that itself can program? You will have to make the program almost as smart as yourself! That is a hard task. It would honestly be easier and quicker to write 100000000 complex programs your own self that to write 1 evolution.exe to generate these programs for you. Now, it is better to make them all yourself because you will have more satisfaction from direct programming and more connection to your programs and you won't have to wait a couple million years for evolution.exe to terminate. If you think I'm wrong, GO WRITE THE PROGRAM.

 

[herev]

John, you miss the point. A computer programmer probably could not do such a thing, but that's what makes this all so amazing to us TE's. No one is claiming a mere mortal could do such a thing on this board--God is awesome!!!

 

[gluadys]

Are you a computer programmer? Imagine writing a program that will generate other programs. Let's call it "evolution.exe" Now, evolution.exe must generate these programs in INCREASING complexity. It cannot start by creating MS Windows and then go back and make DOS - it must start with creating DOS and then over time go on to MS Windows. The complexity of the programs must increase, not decrease and not fluctuate. Now, the design time on such a program will be immense. How will you write a program that itself can program? You will have to make the program almost as smart as yourself! That is a hard task. It would honestly be easier and quicker to write 100000000 complex programs your own self that to write 1 evolution.exe to generate these programs for you. Now, it is better to make them all yourself because you will have more satisfaction from direct programming and more connection to your programs and you won't have to wait a couple million years for evolution.exe to terminate. If you think I'm wrong, GO WRITE THE PROGRAM.

I don't know the first thing about computer programs. But I do have a reasonable grasp of natural selection. It's a rather simple idea really.

 

[seebs]

Are you a computer programmer?

Yes.

Imagine writing a program that will generate other programs. Let's call it "evolution.exe" Now, evolution.exe must generate these programs in INCREASING complexity.

Right.

And that's just what genetic algorithms do.

Now, the design time on such a program will be immense. How will you write a program that itself can program? You will have to make the program almost as smart as yourself! That is a hard task. It would honestly be easier and quicker to write 100000000 complex programs your own self that to write 1 evolution.exe to generate these programs for you.

Actually, this is demonstrably false. I mean, this isn't theoretical. WE HAVE THIS PROGRAM RIGHT NOW. Well, dozens of them. Hundreds.

People are using genetic algorithms to solve problems that programmers can't solve directly. A fairly simple algorithm for evolving programs can generate programs that are much too complicated for human programmers to develop.

If you think I'm wrong, GO WRITE THE PROGRAM.

The phrase you're looking for is "genetic algorithms", and it's a field of research in which we've already gotten well past the point where the results are useful enough to justify the research.

In short, this is an excellent argument, which proves conclusively that evolution will let a simple set of rules generate much more interesting and complicated things than direct design normally would.

We could make a case for God being able to do it all by fiat; I mean, hey, He's God. But what we actually get is the kind of stuff you'd expect from genetic algorithms; lots of bits of stuff readapted from one purpose to another, half-finished bits, things that aren't really working anymore, and so on.

 

[Dicy mind]

Well I don't want to argue whit any one but why I think it's irrelevant to think about evolution and how we we're created is because it doesn't answer what a soul or mind is.

Well science could give some answer on how our brain works but in order to understand that we must know what part of our mind is not grown in our brains...

Maybe we are like an software and brain is the memory storage and the driving wheel of our body. That would make sense, only that I don't belive memory is stored to our brain permanently.

*sigh*
I think only God can explain life and God is only one who can understand it.

 

[gluadys]

Well I don't want to argue whit any one but why I think it's irrelevant to think about evolution and how we we're created is because it doesn't answer what a soul or mind is.

Well science could give some answer on how our brain works but in order to understand that we must know what part of our mind is not grown in our brains...

Maybe we are like an software and brain is the memory storage and the driving wheel of our body. That would make sense, only that I don't belive memory is stored to our brain permanently.

*sigh*
I think only God can explain life and God is only one who can understand it.

Well, why are you even asking evolution to do what it is manifestly not equipped to do? Evolution tells us how we are related to other animals. It tells us why our body has the shape and organs that it does, and to some extent why we behave as we do.

Because of the mind/brain connection, we are learning something about the mind by studying our animal relatives.

But soul? We can't even define it scientifically or prove it exists. Why would you expect evolution to deal with it. The soul may fall totally outside the evolutionary process. That doesn't make evolution invalid.

 

[Snow Angel]

We are Gods Children! God Bless

 

[seebs]

By the way, it's not true that the output cannot fluctuate in complexity; all that's necessary is that we end up with more functional systems over time. Arguably, whales are "less" complex in some ways than their ancestors; flippers are probably simpler than hands with separate fingers. But they're very well suited.

Complexity is a side-effect, not a goal.

 

[Dicy mind]

Well, why are you even asking evolution to do what it is manifestly not equipped to do?

I didn't know this forum was all about evolution. So I should have posted this to some place else.

Sorry.

 

[JohnJones]

Yes.



Right.

And that's just what genetic algorithms do.

No it isn't.

Actually, this is demonstrably false. I mean, this isn't theoretical. WE HAVE THIS PROGRAM RIGHT NOW. Well, dozens of them. Hundreds.

No we don't.

Genetic algorithms merely randomly split arrays or structures. Say I have a bunch of instances of a structure that consists of int s, x, y, z. I write a genetic algorithm that randomly takes 2 of these instances and mixes them, perhaps at x, perhaps at y. Big stinking deal! That is not guaranteed to increase complexity. It changes the data, but that does not always translate into increased complexity. and there certainly is not program that evolves other programs! A program that randomly makes a bunch of music files, maybe, but not in ever increasing complexity.

 

[seebs]

NGenetic algorithms merely randomly split arrays or structures. Say I have a bunch of instances of a structure that consists of int s, x, y, z. I write a genetic algorithm that randomly takes 2 of these instances and mixes them, perhaps at x, perhaps at y. Big stinking deal! That is not guaranteed to increase complexity. It changes the data, but that does not always translate into increased complexity. and there certainly is not program that evolves other programs! A program that randomly makes a bunch of music files, maybe, but not in ever increasing complexity.

No.

Modern genetic algorithms really do make new programs of arbitrary complexity. We've been doing it for ages.

More importantly, it doesn't matter whether it's guaranteed to increase complexity; in fact, what's interesting is that with no formal guarantee of that anywhere, you end up with increased complexity!

Just to make sure, I sanity-checked by running your claims past all the programmers I know. We all think this is a fairly commonplace thing which is actively researched and currently in use in computer science, and has been for decades.

Do you wanna play at waving credentials around so we can see who's got better credentials as an expert on programming, or can we skip straight to some other topic?

Fact is, we've got programs to write other programs, and evolve them. And they are very useful for some kinds of tasks, and not so useful for others, and they haven't been just "splitting arrays" for a long time. Even casual research will show some of the results coming from this field.

 

[Gold Dragon]

Hey seebs. As a programmer, these genetic algorithms sound quite interesting. Could you post some links about the theory and examples?

 

[seebs]

Hey seebs. As a programmer, these genetic algorithms sound quite interesting. Could you post some links about the theory and examples?

http://www.aic.nrl.navy.mil/galist/
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/faqs/ai/genetic/top.html
http://lancet.mit.edu/ga/

That's a starting point. Note that the simple case of "just modifying values in a structure" is indeed one kind of genetic programming.

But... Consider. Imagine that I define as my "array" an array of a million bytes, and the way I evaluate the fitness of an array is to hand it to a C compiler.

It turns out that you can make programs that work on this "data" structure... But it's really a program.

That's the thing. Programs are a kind of data. Our genome is just a bunch of bits represented by combinations of base pairs. It's "just data". Except that, if you have the right tools for reading the data, it's code for building humans... And the code is changing over time.

If you look at the code, it's very much like the kind of code you get from evolutionary algorithms; lots of "unused" bits that might actually do something, or might just need to be "any sequence of code long enough to separate these two other bits". We have nearly-identical pieces of code, one of which is being used and one of which isn't, and the one which isn't has been gradually getting corrupted since it's not being used so mutations in it don't get selected for or against.

Oh, and here's a fun one:

ftp://ftp.cerias.purdue.edu/pub/doc/EC/Welcome.html

Seriously, this is a very large field, and it would take years to become an expert in more than a tiny fragment of it.

 

[JohnJones]

If genetic algorithms could really do what you claim and have been able to do so for as long as you claim they have, then we ought to rogue programs by now. Programs ought to be taking a knowledge of their own existance. Yet, they are not. People leaching money for GA research love to talk about "emergent computation" but nothing is actually emerging. If you want a program to approximate a sinusoidal function you can train it to do so with a genetic algorithm or a neural net, but you can't just start running a program that will evolve other programs to do lots of tasks - you have to tell each individual program what task to learn. So, you are "teaching" programs how to do a task, and they are "learning" by "evolution," but they are not evolving to learn nor are they evolving to perform these tasks - you are teaching them the tasks. But although you are teaching them the tasks, you are doing so lazily, allowing randomness to do some work for you. This does not parallel biological evolution as generally understood.

 

[seebs]

If genetic algorithms could really do what you claim and have been able to do so for as long as you claim they have, then we ought to rogue programs by now. Programs ought to be taking a knowledge of their own existance. Yet, they are not.

Several objections:
1. Actually, we've had our first "wild" virus already; a virus that resulted from two other viral programs crashing and producing an offshoot.
2. You need to read more computer science and less science fiction.

Seriously, the notion of "rogue" programs doesn't even make sense in this context. Evolutionary programming happens in fairly controlled environments. Programs can't just jump magically from one computer to another. They run in their little sandboxes.

No one is leaving unsupervised programs reproducing themselves wandering over networks. That'd be silly, and not useful.

So, we have no reason to expect "rogue" programs. What we do have reason to expect is, for instance, programs which "cheat" at assigned projects. For instance, someone was using evolutionary programming to engineer circuits to produce tones. One of the resulting designs that worked very well was cheating; it wasn't producing a tone, it was building an antenna to pick up a signal that was already present in the environment they were testing in.

But there was nothing anywhere in the code about antennae, or anything else. Just random shuffles of components looking for ones that did well.