Well that’s pretty much what Leibniz postulated, a kind of combination. That God set everything in motion, the Prima Causa, but at the same time was constantly active, the perfect synchronization. That’s not what I understand Ierrellus as saying.
That suddenly tossed me back into the physics of psychology - so maybe I should just drop it. 
Ok.
Yes, and because of the antisemitism of the Germans, because they wanted an all-controlling being that did generate the world, they were very happy when they discovered Hinduism.
Hinduism, of course, lacking all the nobility of Judaism. But they were able to convolutedly postulate that they were the same ‘race’ as the Hindus, so their racist instinct was satisfied.
My opinion on creation is that God was the prime mover prior to the advent of humans with brains, but is totally involved in the physical to mental evolution that characterizes humans, that within this evolution the idea of what God is emerged. This idea is a recognition of the God within us–God’s handiwork and being. Evidence of a creative and caring God can be found in ecological biosystems–the fact that we are in and of a Nature that can sustain life.
I do agree that the basic random and fortuitous concept of natural development frees one from guilt of what we owe to others or to nature itself. Beliefs from this idea excuse exploitation of nature, since they free one from guilt. The planet currently suffers from such exploitation. This is the only living planet we know of, yet we are wasting its resources as if there will not be a reckoning. We are in and of Nature–in and of God. We are responsible for the care of the planet and for each other. Without God the Ego is God.
An interesting question arose. Stems cells and genes are deterministic, --If evolution and its product Nature are deterministic, can this coincide with free will? It seems to me that free will is confined within the parameters of Determinism. My cat is programmed in cat=ness. Are humans programmed in humanness? Does not creativity suggest free will? Just thinking.
Unless you think of them as reflecting the action of evolution. Then the debate of whether it is deterministic or not ceases to matter. Regardless of the actions of genes and stem cells, evolution happens, and it is traceable.
One could easily flip it around:
If one notices that evolution happens, and it really does happen, then we would expect to find it in a study of the physical elements involved. Genes are explained by evolution as much as evolution is explained by genes.
It does not matter if it is “determined” or “free” because, as has been noted to death in these boards (to our credit), both lead to the same. You are still you. Neither illuminates much.
Rather, what I believe, if anything, “frees” the atheist from attachment to the living world is the exclusion of experience from the only known and eminently powerful tool that studies the entire transcourse of nature. They “pretend” experience isn’t real, so they are “free” from revering what it unveils, “free” to hate it, “free” to deny and hate themselves.
Waiting for Godot, as it were.
The beauty of evolution is that nothing else is required to account for existence. It accounts for all that is or can be.
Why that would discount God, or any God, to use a very loose term (ht to Vittorio), is something that the atheist can only answer with hysteria, because reason, obviously, would not explain it.
Now, what is interesting here is not that evolution can ostensibly explain, prove or disprove, their existence, but that it can ostensibly trace it.
Ostensibly.
Modern evolutionary theory is very far from it.
If you look at modernist evolutionary explanations for any religion, it is always simply the very fact of the very loosely defined "phenomenon’ of religion.
If it is so powerful a tool, why can it not trace specific instances? Why is this implicit question invariably met with recoiling hysteria? Obviously, it is a different agenda involved.
According to certain mystics there is a hunger within humans to reunite the part (human) with the Whole (God).
I believe this hunger for completeness explains the need for a religious overview of creation and evolution.
Although God is inexplicable, the hunger for God is not. It’s an actual experience, available to all.
Stem cells and genes display this experience in a physical way.
The physical is mirrored by the mental. as far as the mental can fathom reality.
Evolution is divine. It remains the search for completeness.
As Felix noted completeness is a goal. If you achieved it you would be dead.
So the hunger of the part is incentive and aspiration.
Believing this frees one from belief in the supernatural.
It certainly is one perspective.
But I certainly agree with this:
If any iteration of the theory of evolution is true, this must obviously be true.
I don’t think it’s even so much fathoming reality, in the sense of creating an accurate copy or map, but itself being shaped by and forming part of reality. Because there is nothing else it can be, no where else anything comes from. So, whether it fathoms it or not, it reflects it, to minute detail.
The only complaint against Darwin is not that he proposes pressures that shape evolution, but that he doesn’t pose enough pressures, and that the pressure he poses is not enough.
And in any case its an idea, an interpretation, not a fact. The change is the fact. The pressure is an interpretation, a tool to make sense of the fact. It is an idea that, once conceived, is read into evolution.
I agree with the above. I am not against Darwin, but I think he oversimplified in search of a physical mechanism that propels change.
Have you ever read Origin of Species?
His task was to overcome thousands of years of ignorance and stupidity.
He was not “oversimplifying” any thing. He was building up from the groundfloor.
All mystics are simply fantasists.
There are honest fantasists. Examples would include Tolkien, GRR Martin, and Edmund Spencer, and dishonest ones called priests, and “seers”.
The hunger is manufactured by manipulation of false hope.
You know this is true, yet you fool yourself.
Can we get over Darwin and discuss possible reasons for evolutionary change.? We will not persuade naysayers that Darwinism contains revisions. Does no one here believe God did it from inside and outside us?
What do we owe to our environment and why?
Is devolution a possibility?
Are we our brother’s keeper?
Have we evolved enough to know the answers to these important questions?
The Auden quote from “Sept. 1939” has never been more appropriate than it is in 2021.
Try !
That’s because evolutionary theory preserves what Darwin said, because it is right. What ET does is refine Darwin,
Absurd
Nature does not have debts.
All change is evolution. It can be from the complex to the more simple or vice versa. Bacteria and viruses are continually evolving. They represent the most common of all organisms.
Evolution is not necessary progess. It is all about fitness. Selection does not always mandate more intelligence.
You really do not understand what is going on.
IYO
If each organism is an integral part of an ecological biosphere, it behooves those organisms with brains to be actively concerned with climate change, over-human population and toxic waste. Of course not all creatures with brains are responsible for our present condition. Humans are because “To whom much is given, much is required.” We must see the planet as our home, not as raw materials for exploitation. Our destiny is certainly not to evolve into our own cause of death and destruction. Belief in God holds us responsible for what we do to each other and the planet. The selfishness of me-ism must be overcome.
I guess he missed a spot with you, then.
Hey Dan~, where are you now?