Evolution and Mind/Body Dualism

[idav]

Right, and Christians believe that "given enough time, Jesus will return". You find that as absurd as I find evolution.

I don't find it absurd believing the earth is billions of years old. Jesus could take another million years, time will tell.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Open forum. People can respond to any post they want to, and in return people can respond to those posts. If you wish for a private conversation in which you do not wish others to interject, there is PM function on this forum.

You are completely missing the point...I could care less who responds to the post...my point was, I wanted my analogy responded to, and I don't care if your pet dog responded to it.

I agree, reading comprehension is vital. Which is why my objection was SOLELY to do with you dismissing someone else on the basis they they were somehow "butting in" on a conversation when this is an OPEN FORUM. It had absolutely nothing to do with the content of your posts or the conversation you were having. It was purely an objection to the attitude you displayed in your lack of understanding of how forums don't just function as your own private chat room, but a place were people can discuss their views OPENLY and have their views responded to OPENLY.

I said "i wasn't talking to you" because the person said that the analogy was poor, so my point was..

1. Ok, but I wasn't talking to you anyway
2. Then why did you quote me giving reference to the analogy, and yet, didn't respond to the analogy?

I also take issue with your extremely poor analogy, which only looks at time from a very limited, sequential view, and the fact that you don't understand the nature of infinity. To see exactly how your analogy is both inaccurate and irrelevant, for a start, please try and answer the following question:

How many sequential events can occur within the span of one second?

First off, I am not necessarily talking about time...I am talking about "events" in time. Take any view of time you want, but events happen in time...which is why I used the "birth" analogy...no matter what view of time you have, if one can imagine women giving birth in that specific view of time, then the analogy can be given

Second, I am not interested in answering any of your questions until you can answer my ORIGINAL question of how will your birth ever come to to past if there was an infinite amount of births which preceded it? Until you can adequately answer this question...there is no point in furthering the discussion.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

I don't find it absurd believing the earth is billions of years old. Jesus could take another million years, time will tell.

Neither do I, because my beliefs are not negated...so it doesn't matter whether the earth is billions of years old, or a few thousand years old. You are the one that keeps harping on this "YEC" business, not me.

 

[idav]

Neither do I, because my beliefs are not negated...so it doesn't matter whether the earth is billions of years old, or a few thousand years old. You are the one that keeps harping on this "YEC" business, not me.

Cause you keep talking like a YEC, not me.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

You once argued to me, that matter and energy can't being timeless cause then it would never move to become the big bang. Same question applies to god, in a timeless state, he would never move to make anything happpen.

Ahhh but the difference is, that unlike matter and energy, God had FREE WILL, and with free will, God can freely move any time he wants to...which is why the answer to the question of "Why did the big bang happen at that exact time" is, "because that is when God eternally decided that it would happen".

But if you take free will out of the equation, inanimate matter that has been resting for eternity with no pre-causal conditions would never begin to move, because it doesn't have the free will to move when it wants, so it would rest there for eternity.

See the difference?

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Cause you keep talking like a YEC, not me.

You think that just because I don't believe in evolution that I am a YEC, because on your evolutionist view, these macro changes takes so long to occur anyway.

But dig this; I don't believe in evolution regardless of whether the universe is billions of years old, or thousands of years old.

 

[Sha'irullah]

People still hold to dualistic concepts of the nature of the mind? This is sad.
Descartes himself could not find a loophole in such claims about the nature of the mind. I seriously question why anyone would bother to support Dualism when all known attributes of human consciousness find their place in the brain.
Even "spiritual moments" find their place in the brain.

Here is a little article explaining why people who claim to believe in god only propagate themselves through an alleged metaphysical intermediary

www .npr. org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101617951

 

[idav]

Ahhh but the difference is, that unlike matter and energy, God had FREE WILL, and with free will, God can freely move any time he wants to...which is why the answer to the question of "Why did the big bang happen at that exact time" is, "because that is when God eternally decided that it would happen".

But if you take free will out of the equation, inanimate matter that has been resting for eternity with no pre-causal conditions would never begin to move, because it doesn't have the free will to move when it wants, so it would rest there for eternity.

See the difference?

I know the difference I just don't see it getting around the issue. Matter was not inanimate to begin with? Matter was animate in a timeless state, so everything happened for all time.

God being in a timeless state has the same issue, when does he do anything, "when" does he deciede. In timelessness there is never a time god would do or decide anything. Same as the example above, everything done goes beyond time, everything done at once, doing everrything including doing nothing cause in a realm of timelessness nothing and everything is possible.

 

[Sha'irullah]

You think that just because I don't believe in evolution that I am a YEC, because on your evolutionist view, these macro changes takes so long to occur anyway.

But dig this; I don't believe in evolution regardless of whether the universe is billions of years old, or thousands of years old.

So you disbelieve in DNA?

 

[idav]

You think that just because I don't believe in evolution that I am a YEC, because on your evolutionist view, these macro changes takes so long to occur anyway.

But dig this; I don't believe in evolution regardless of whether the universe is billions of years old, or thousands of years old.

You talk like a YEC with your literal genesis and macro business.

Change happens whether you believe it or not. More time allows for more change.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

You gave examples of "God of the gaps". Now I will give examples of "Time of the gaps".

"Why can't we see this large scale changes in evolution?" "Because it takes millions and millions of years for these changes to occur".

That's not a "gap". That's an honest answer to the question. How is it filling a "gap" when the statement actually answers the question you are asking? It's not being used in lieu of actual facts, it's an explanation for a given situation which is exactly what you asked for.

Answering "God did it" to a question such as "How does life exist", conversely, doesn't propose any actual mechanism or increase anyone's understanding of the subject. It evokes something that cannot be detected, understood or observed in order to explain a material consequence. No knowledge is increased, it's just a placeholder for a particular gap in our knowledge. Hence, "God of the gaps".

That's not even remotely similar to saying "Evolution takes a long time to occur".

 

[AndromedaRXJ]

So if the past is eternal, to reach the moment of your birth, infinity would have to have been traversed..but infinity cannot be traversed in that manner, just like it can't be traversed if I asked you to count to infinity...you would never reach "infinity" as a final destination, any more than your birth could be "reached" as a destination if there were an infinite number of births which preceded yours.

Oh this? You think I was dodging this? I can give multiple answer to this.

Probabilistically with infinite time, any event no matter how unlikely, is guaranteed to happen. So my birth would be guaranteed. Not only that, it would mean my birth is guaranteed to have happened in infinite amount of times in the past. If my birth happened an infinite amount of times in the past, then it didn't take an infinite amount of time to happen.

Also, occupying a position in time doesn't necessarily mean you have to traverse infinity. Likewise with space, a rock occupying a position in space where space around it is infinite, doesn't mean the rock had to traverse infinite space to occupy that position.

So there's your answer. What kind of animal is this? Without Googling it, because you said you can tell the kind of an animal based soley on looks, and hold looks as the end-all be-all way of analysis. Googling it wouldn't count as an analysis based on looks.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

You are completely missing the point...I could care less who responds to the post.

Then why did you even bring up the point that you were in conversation with someone else?

If it's irrelevant, then you shouldn't have mentioned it.

..my point was, I wanted my analogy responded to, and I don't care if your pet dog responded to it.

Actually, I'm fairly sure you would care if that were the case. A dog using a computer - let alone a dog utilizing a keyboard or constructing any kind of argument - would be a fairly remarkable thing.

I said "i wasn't talking to you" because the person said that the analogy was poor, so my point was..

1. Ok, but I wasn't talking to you anyway

Which is irrelevant. So why did you bring it up? Why does it matter who you were addressing initially?

First off, I am not necessarily talking about time...I am talking about "events" in time. Take any view of time you want, but events happen in time...which is why I used the "birth" analogy...no matter what view of time you have, if one can imagine women giving birth in that specific view of time, then the analogy can be given

Second, I am not interested in answering any of your questions until you can answer my ORIGINAL question of how will your birth ever come to to past if there was an infinite amount of births which preceded it? Until you can adequately answer this question...there is no point in furthering the discussion.

I did answer your analogy, and I am continuing to answer your analogy by making an analogy of my own that illustrate what is wrong with your analogy. If you can just answer my simple question, you will see what is wrong with your analogy and why I object to it. So, answer my question:

How many sequential events can occur within a second?

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

I know the difference I just don't see it getting around the issue. Matter was not inanimate to begin with? Matter was animate in a timeless state, so everything happened for all time.

Something cannot be timeless and changing, idav.

God being in a timeless state has the same issue, when does he do anything, "when" does he deciede.

He did it at t0 and his decision to create the universe was a timeless decision, because the will was eternal...so the creation account was a decision of God that existed as part of his eternal desire...so the decision wasn't a "temporal" becoming as if there was a point at which he WASN'T going to create, and then decided to create.

In timelessness there is never a time god would do or decide anything. Same as the example above, everything done goes beyond time, everything done at once, doing everrything including doing nothing cause in a realm of timelessness nothing and everything is possible.

Right, there was never a time that God WOULD do it, but there was a time that he DID do it...which was t0.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

So you disbelieve in DNA?

No, I don't.

 

[Sha'irullah]

No, I don't.

Then why do you disbelieve in evolution considering that the confirmation of it is thanks to DNA? Keep in mind by the way that you do not need believe to accept evolution

 

[idav]

Right, there was never a time that God WOULD do it, but there was a time that he DID do it...which was t0.

t0 is a timeless state in which no change can occur. God can't "do" anything anymore than an active particle. There is the thing though, an active particle in an timeless state will still do things, just not in any realm of time. It isn't that something outside spacetime doesn't do anything, it is that spacetime are not a factor so anything it does doesn't effect itself relative to spacetime.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Oh this? You think I was dodging this? I can give multiple answer to this.

Probabilistically with infinite time, any event no matter how unlikely, is guaranteed to happen. So my birth would be guaranteed. Not only that, it would mean my birth is guaranteed to have happened in infinite amount of times in the past. If my birth happened an infinite amount of times in the past, then it didn't take an infinite amount of time to happen.

I am asking how would the event of your birth come to past, Andro? That is the question. If I told you that I am counting to infinity, and when I reach infinity, you will get a $100000000000000000000000000000 deposited in your bank account, and I began counting...when will you get the money? Every number that I count will always be a finite number, so I will never reach "infinity" as a destination, so you will never get the money, and that is the problem.

If the past is infinite, that mean the events which lead to your birth is also infinite, and for you to be born, infinite had to be traversed...but to say that your birth came to past and it was preceded by an infinite number of events would be saying that you got the money in your account after I counted from 1 to infinity.

It can't happen. So, try again.

Also, occupying a position in time doesn't necessarily mean you have to traverse infinity. Likewise with space, a rock occupying a position in space where space around it is infinite, doesn't mean the rock had to traverse infinite space to occupy that position.

In the analogy, I used events in time. Please stick to the events.

So there's your answer. What kind of animal is this? Without Googling it, because you said you can tell the kind of an animal based soley on looks, and hold looks as the end-all be-all way of analysis. Googling it wouldn't count as an analysis based on looks.

I don't know...it doesn't look like any dog I ever saw, or any cat that I ever saw. I don't know.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

t0 is a timeless state in which no change can occur.

idav, that can't be the case, because even in the big bang theory that is when time began, and obviously the big bang was an event and therefore change DID occur. My goodness.

God can't "do" anything anymore than an active particle. There is the thing though, an active particle in an timeless state will still do things, just not in any realm of time. It isn't that something outside spacetime doesn't do anything, it is that spacetime are not a factor so anything it does doesn't effect itself relative to spacetime.

Who said that God was doing anything in time? The argument is God wasn't doing anything in time? The argument is that God was in a stationary state, yet content...there were no moments leading to this state, and if there were no moments prior, there couldn't be any moments after...God created the big bang, and it was only at that instance that God became temporal and thus, in time.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Then why do you disbelieve in evolution considering that the confirmation of it is thanks to DNA? Keep in mind by the way that you do not need believe to accept evolution

DNA is another problem for naturalists, and it actually helps the ID position than it does the naturalist.