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BassCadet wrote:

They’re two totally different aspects of inquiry. Evolution is a wonderful theory and I subscribe to it, but it doesn’t attempt to explain why there is an evolutionary mechanism in place to begin with. For instance, why did living beings develop eyes or ears or any sensory organs? How did the primordial soup suddenly realize, “There is an observable universe that I want to see, so I’ll evolve myself an eyeball to translate lightwaves into the viewable spectrum.” Same goes for hearing.

There are a few things I disagree with here. Firstly, we can explain why evolution exists. It exists because things like biochemistry and statistical mathematics tell us it should. As for why biochemistry exists, that's because of chemistry. Chemistry exists because of physics, and both physics and mathematics exist because they appear to be fundamental parts of our universe. That's where you should direct your 'why' question. We know why such a thing as evolution exists, but we don't know why our universe is the way it is (at least not on a fundamental level).

As for why organisms developed sensory organs, that's simply due to natural selection. In this case, evolution is both the 'how' and the 'why' (yes, science can answer 'why' questions. Not everything requires a philosophical explanation). Organisms who had better mechanisms for detecting their environment and reacting to it would be more successful in finding food or escaping predators, so organisms with those mechanisms would be more likely to reproduce and pass the mechanisms on to the next generation. It wouldn't have been anywhere near as sudden as you made it seem. Things like ears and eyes are extremely complicated sensory organs that could only develop over millions of years, and the first sensory organs would have been much, much simpler (to the point where it would be incorrect to call them 'organs' in the first place). Also, you've assumed there was some kind of conscious intent when evolving these mechanisms. This simply wasn't the case. Nothing ever decides to evolve, it's just a thing that happens.

Let’s just try to get on the same playing field that order does not emerge from chaos without willed force.

Sorry, but that's a big assumption, and one that I'm not willing to accept. We see examples of order arising from chaos on a daily basis. For example. plants take in sunlight and use the energy to grow, and I think we can all agree that plants are more ordered than the random scattering of atoms of photons that are required to make them. There are many more physical phenomena in which order arises spontaneously, so there's no reason to assume that conscious intervention is required to produce order.

@Algernon

Evolution as a working theory also requires a total randomness that becomes a bit hard to grasp when it comes to developing the ability to sense generally. I understand the theory of evolution, and I wasn't proposing that organisms decide to evolve consciously. It was somewhat hyperbolic to demonstrate a point: that a genetic mutation that develops "sense" is unreasonable. There is a fundamental level to "sense" that, once breached, crosses into the level of remarkable complexity, and there simply isn't logical room for prototypes of this ability. There are just too many assumptions you're working upon, I think. Your explanations of mechanical workings are very good, but very basic questions are constantly overlooked. Why, from the very instant that life spontaneously occurred in otherwise barren water, did life endeavor to continue and survive? Why did the will to live exist in the first generation of life? I think we differ on a very basic philosophical level, in that I believe that effects have causes. I believe that "will" governs the act of creation, in this case the matter of vitality and the eruption of a big bang.

I actually do direct all of my philosophical inquiry into the meaning of these "fundamental parts of our universe." I cannot stress enough that philosophy (which is what we're engaged in here) cannot be totally examined in a vacuum. You cannot simply attempt to use science as a tool for skepticism of an Absolute and just take complex systems as evidence. There is a bigger picture of assumptions that we all take for granted, but are for some reason rarely addressed in modern neo-atheist thought. For instance, in the proposed concept that our big bang was one of an untold number of big bangs that just happened to have the proper circumstances for everything in our universe to develop the way that it has takes into account several primary forces needed to bond matter and develop stars to collect and bond hydrogen. Among the factors are whether the force of gravity is strong or weak and whether or not nuclear force is strong or weak. Why does gravity exist? Why does matter have mass? Why is time a linear arrow? Science will never account for why mathematics exists or why the physical laws of the universe exist, both of which are the total foundation of science. All questions can be followed to their logical conclusion, to a very fundamental level. Why you stop at, "Well math and physics just sort of exist because that's the way it is," does not make sense to me intellectually, and is strange in the face of such harsh scientific vigor.

Scientists debate minute issues of the big bang like the conditions that allow hydrogen particles to bond, without realizing that they're overlooking the very base foundation of why hydrogen, gravity, and nuclear force are a logical product of a big bang. You're going to say that I'm taking leaps of reason throughout my original post, but how is that not what you're doing as well? You believe that the physical laws that govern and, indeed, order the universe materialized out of literally nothing? Spontaneous materialization is a rule of science that expired in the Middle Ages when scientists realized that flies produce maggots.

I've never understood why Dawkins and the other neo-atheist types believe that demonstrating the complexity of the universe and our ability to understand it somehow makes the role of God (on a very basic level) unreasonable. They actually go further, ridiculing those who believe in God as somehow ridiculous and anti-intellectual. I think that if you objectively look at what you're arguing here and the tenacity of your own understandings, you'd see that your faith in science as a source of religious satisfaction is profound.

>give him a skin-graph

Well, that doesn't seem very helpful…

Science/technology: 0
Faith/religion: 0
Grammar/spelling: 1
Beaker/Honeydew: meep

@BassCadet:

I don't know if Algernon is busy or if he's quit, but I can address a few of these.

Evolution as a working theory also requires a total randomness that becomes a bit hard to grasp when it comes to developing the ability to sense generally.

I'm not sure I understand, but I'll try this: Evolution does not require "randomness", but it does require "chance", a slightly different concept. If the chance of life rising from non-life ("abiogenesis") is like simultaneously rolling a six on 1,000 dice, then biologists would tell you at the time life arose on earth, chemicals in the oceans were like billions of molecular "dice" being rolled continually for millennia.

Developing sense organs is a much simpler process. If a simple organism develops the ability to react to light, and its reaction allowed it a greater chance to thrive, then natural selection will make that organism biologically successful. When an entire species has this ability, but one has a better mechanism for reacting to light (being able to discern shape, color, movement, etc.) then once again, natural selection will make that organism thrive. This ongoing selection and specification leads towards more complicated systems that become "full-fledged" sense organs of some sort. (And there are far more than "five" senses.)

…crosses into the level of remarkable complexity, and there simply isn’t logical room for prototypes of this ability.

If you're talking about irreducible complexity, I regret to inform you that while it's an interesting idea, it's not logically tenable, but explaining why is definitely going to put me over 5k characters.

Why, from the very instant that life spontaneously occurred in otherwise barren water, did life endeavor to continue and survive?

Dawkins is one of the most prominent scientists to have explained this. It's not "endeavor" or "will" but mechanical chemical process. Biochemical processes have all the possibility of (if not more than) computer languages. Hackers make computer viruses which don't have a "will" to damage computers, they just do what they're programmed to do. Chemicals have certain reactions according to physics, and if a molecule forms that by its nature is "programmed" to reproduce itself and/or grow, it will do so. This is akin to a computer virus being programmed accidentally, but then go back to the point above about dice.

Science will never account for why mathematics exists or why the physical laws of the universe exist, both of which are the total foundation of science.

I think I agree with you on this, but it raises intriguing questions. Ex: Do you think logic and mathematics were created by God (or whatever), or do you think that they exist with or without a higher power, and God is subject to them to some extent?

Scientists {are} overlooking the very base foundation of why hydrogen, gravity, and nuclear force are a logical product of a big bang.

I don't think so. I think it's a subject that science has actually taken a lot of time to examine, although by its nature, it must be discussed in abstract rather than through experiment.

I’ve never understood why…neo-atheist types believe that demonstrating the complexity of the universe and our ability to understand it somehow makes the role of God (on a very basic level) unreasonable.

I definitely agree here. There's a school of thought that says "If I can explain how things work without appealing to God, then God must not exist." As said in my previous post, this makes no more sense than theists saying, "If I can explain how things work without appealing to evolution, then evolution must not exist."

@Vazquez:

Regarding Penn's first quote, I strongly disagree. Expecting that the universe works in a reasonable, determinate fashion does not exclude the possibility of believing in a higher power. If, as a little kid, you want to have a Band-aid on your owwie even after Mommy kissed it to make it feel better, that doesn't mean you don't believe Mommy loves you. If, as an adult, you tell your doctor that you want a second opinion concerning his diagnosis, that doesn't mean you think he's a quack.

Also, of course, if you run a red light thinking that there's no way that fucking semi is going to hit you, that doesn't make you a theist.