empiracle evidence

[camanintx]

If natural selection has the ability to predetermine favored characteristics then does that then not give it creative power and then are we not playing a game of semantics?

Natural selection's ability to predetermine favored characterists is no different than gravity's ability to predetermine which direction a boulder will roll. Why do you keep insisting that there is a choice involved here?

 

[Orias]

Natural selection's ability to predetermine favored characterists is no different than gravity's ability to predetermine which direction a boulder will roll. Why do you keep insisting that there is a choice involved here?

Sometimes something pushes these boulders, in certain directions. With the understanding, that it will fall where they push it.

 

[camanintx]

True God, if there is a God, would be unchanging (immutable). He/she would be the the originator of time. All would begin and end within him. Being finite we make decisions through a trial and era process. Gods , being infinite, makes decisions that are instantanious. God spoke eveything into existance in the Bible.

If something is unchanging, then how can it act? If God spoke everything into existance as the Bible says, then the God before it spoke would be different than the God after it spoke.

 

[camanintx]

Time is a construct which has been constructed within infinity. How or Who determined it?

I agree that time is a construct, a human construct that allows us to make sense of a changing world. The only thing that truly exists is the here and now. The past and the future have no existence therefore time itself has no existence, so nothing can be said to exist "outside of time".

 

[savagewind]

I agree that time is a construct, a human construct that allows us to make sense of a changing world. The only thing that truly exists is the here and now. The past and the future have no existence therefore time itself has no existence, so nothing can be said to exist "outside of time".

How can the past not exist?

 

[Heathen Hammer]

Sometimes something pushes these boulders, in certain directions. With the understanding, that it will fall where they push it.

Only using the per-understanding of the presence of gravity; pushing the boulder is not the same process as what causes the boulder to roll down hill.

 

[camanintx]

How can the past not exist?

Has anyone in the present ever experienced the past? Can you shake hands with Thomas Jefferson? Can you see the statue of Zeus at Olympia? Can you hear Socrates debating Plato? Can you smell the hanging gardens of Babylon? Can you taste the first thing you ever ate? While we have memories and recollections of the past, nothing in the past truly exists any more.

 

[waitasec]

Has anyone in the present ever experienced the past? Can you shake hands with Thomas Jefferson? Can you see the statue of Zeus at Olympia? Can you hear Socrates debating Plato? Can you smell the hanging gardens of Babylon? Can you taste the first thing you ever ate? While we have memories and recollections of the past, nothing in the past truly exists any more.

then the present doesn't truly exist either...as the present is contingent on the past

 

[camanintx]

then the present doesn't truly exist either...as the present is contingent on the past

Just because the present is contingent on the past does not mean that the past still exists, just that it existed at one time. When it did, it was the present. Once it ceased to exist it became the past.

 

[McBell]

Just because the present is contingent on the past does not mean that the past still exists, just that it existed at one time. When it did, it was the present. Once it ceased to exist it became the past.

Define past.

 

[waitasec]

Just because the present is contingent on the past does not mean that the past still exists, just that it existed at one time. When it did, it was the present. Once it ceased to exist it became the past.

how can something that is presently existing exist when where it came from no longer exists?


the present didn't just appear from no where. the past is just as pertinent as the present...the future, however, doesn't exist.

 

[camanintx]

Define past.

Events which have already happened.

 

[camanintx]

how can something that is presently existing exist when where it came from no longer exists?


the present didn't just appear from no where. the past is just as pertinent as the present...the future, however, doesn't exist.

Fill a glass with ice and let it sit in the sun. Before long, the ice will be gone and the glass will be filled with water. Does the ice still exist? No. Did the water just appear out of nowhere? No again. The ice becomes the water just as the past becomes the present, except when the past existed we called it the present.

 

[McBell]

Events which have already happened.

but that do not exist?

 

[camanintx]

but that do not exist?

By definition, yes. If they still existed, they would be the present.

 

[David M]

Speciation does not equate to macroevolution.

It does according to the person I was responding to.

 

[johnhanks]

Speciation does not equate to macroevolution.

OK, let's wheel them out again.

1. Where exactly does microevolution stop and macroevolution begin?
2. Speciation results from the sequence of A's, T's C's and G's in one population's genome changing over time into a sequence that can no longer match up with that of an ancestral population, so that they can no longer produce fertile offspring. What mechanism, exactly, limits how far that change in DNA base sequence can go?