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From: Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Evolutionary creationism
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2025 13:03:59 +0100
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On Tue, 25 Mar 2025 15:04:09 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>On 2025-03-20 11:25 a.m., Martin Harran wrote:

[snip for focus]

>Similar apologies. I've started a reply in my head many times but they 
>always led to long, convoluted arguments with digressions and other 
>sidebars that indicated that it would go on for pages. So I quit.  So 
>instead I will just make a few quick comments with little exposition.
>> 
>> Apologies for a somewhat elongated response to this but there isn't a
>> simple answer. For that reason, I'm generally hesitant of getting too
>> deeply into this kind of stuff in a Usenet post along with my general
>> experience that the people who least understand religious belief and
>> theology are those most likely to dismiss any attempt to rationalise
>> it - not applying that to you specifically, just my general
>> experience. That also of course applies to evolution, those who
>> question it most are often those who understand it least.
>
>I admit I have little understanding of formal religious belief and 
>Theology but I do not dismiss attempts to rationalize such beliefs out 
>of hand. Rather I have found all such attempts that I have come across 
>to be utterly unconvincing.

Can I ask how in-depth those attempts were? I feel I can with
confidence challenge the views of Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne as I
have taken the time to read both their books on religion; the same
with ID as I have read Stephen Meyer's book [1]

Can I ask how much effort you have put into actually understanding the
beliefs you find so unconvincing?

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] I did a detailed critique of these books with links still
available on Google Groups; I give those links here simply for the
record, not because I expect you to read them as they are all long
posts

God Delusion (Dawkins): 
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/hO1KU8PMK7g/m/jZWqII_vcrAJ

Faith vs Fact (Coyne):
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/sHb33H-Yucw/m/gSZR-KO7CAAJ

The God Hypothesis( Meyer)
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/z8Yq7lvkAfU/m/um8mt8MDAgAJ

------------------------------------------------------------------

,

>
>
>  Religious
>> belief is in its own way, as complex and wide-ranging as evolution and
>> trying to explain it to someone who has never studied it is a bit like
>> trying to explain the roles of natural selection and genetic drift to
>> someone who doesn't have a basic understanding of genetics.
>
>The lack of any concrete evidence means I cannot take the comparison to 
>the theory of evolution seriously.

You seem to have completely missed my point there. I was not trying to
compare religion and ToE - I was simply making the point that it is
extremely difficult to explain *any* complex subject to a person who
doesn't even grasp the fundamental principles.


>> 
>> Anyway, with that proviso in place, I will try to cover some of the
>> key aspects of what you are asking about.
>> 
>> First of all, the basic mistake made by both IDers and RonO, is that
>> they focus in on the *biological* evolution of the human body but the
>> relationship with God is a *spiritual* one, not a biological one. The
>> human body is important in Christian belief but only of secondary
>> importance as a container for the Soul - that's why the body is often
>> referred to as a "temple". How it developed biologically is
>> interesting in its own right, just as the construction of a church or
>> cathedral may be of architectural or cultural interest. Arguing about
>> the development of DNA and cells and so on, however, is a bit like
>> trying to argue that the value of Mass in a church or cathedral ios
>> dependent on how much stone or marble was used in the construction.
>> 'Tweaking'  of the human body (or that of any lifeform) has nothing to
>> do with the relationship between our Soul and God and I see no need
>> for God to take part in it.
>
>So you are a dualist. I found dualism suspect as a youngster and as I 
>grew older it just became completely untenable to my worldview. So any 
>arguments using it is a non-starter.

You agree that it is a worldview i.e. something based on opinion, not
evidence, but you regard alternative views as non-starters. That comes
across as a closed mind.

>> 
>> The second thing that has to be borne in mind is that Christian belief
>> is based on the principle that full understanding of God is beyond
>> human understanding; we can get glimpses of him but never fully
>> understand him as he is wrapped in mystery and the deeper we study it,
>> the deeper that mystery can become.  Frank Sheed summed tis up in his
>> book 'Theology and Sanity':
>> 
>> "Thus a Mystery is not to be thought of as simply darkness: it is a
>> tiny circle of light surrounded by darkness. It is for us so to use
>> our own powers and God's grace that the circle of light will grow. It
>> means using the mind upon what reality may be made to tell us about
>> God, and upon what God, through His Church, has told us about Himself;
>> it means praying for more knowledge, and using the knowledge one gains
>> to enrich one's prayer. Thus the circle of light grows; but it is
>> always ringed round with darkness: for however our capacity may
>> increase, it remains finite, and God remains infinite. Indeed the more
>> the light grows, the more we realize what His Infinity means, what
>> Immensity is. The theologian sees far more problems about the Blessed
>> Trinity than the ordinary Catholic. But this is an ordinary
>> accompaniment of knowledge. The man who knows nothing about a subject
>> has no difficulties either, sees no problems, can ask no questions."
>
>So God is a 'mystery beyond understanding' but some people occasionally 
>do get to understand bits and pieces? Just how does one determine that 
>they are correct about these bits and pieced?

It is obviously impossible to "determine" correctness in a scientific
way but what one can doe is examine that understanding in the context
of everything else that we know and experience. I have done that. My
interest in ToE and later ID began twenty odd years ago when I was
told by someone I respected that my religious bleifes were God of the
Gaps. I knew nothing about evolution at that stage - I had never even
studied Biology at school - so I took the time and trouble to educate
myself in evolution and other subjects and am totally comfortable that
my religious beliefs have developed in a way that is totally
compatible with everything science has to offer. 

This, again is where I think ID'ers go wrong. They struggle with
matching science to their religious beliefs and, instead of opening
their minds a bit to figure out the conflicts they see, they try to
discredit the science which is a futile exercise.


>
>> 
>> Science is like this too; every time a question is answered, it opens
>> up new questions. Take abiogenesis, another example of a word for
>> something we don't really understand. Around a hundred years or so
>> ago, we knew virtually nothing about the origin of life; we now know a
>> heck of a lot about it. We have figured out the ins and outs of the
>> Big Bang and that it happened just under 14 billion years ago. We have
>> figured out that the earth came along about 9 billion years later and
>> bacteria, the first recognisable life forms, bacteria, came along
>> about a billion years after that. We are still, however, trying to
>> figure out how that bacteria came into being. At some points,
>> scientists just have to say "We don't know" and that admission does
>> not undermine or denigrate science; it certainly does not mean, as
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