Creation / Evolution Debate and Spiritual Development

[bylto]

Hi. I have written an article at my site about the creation/evolution debate and my conclusion has definite spiritual implications. I would love to hear what others make of this issue and possibly give some feedback on my belief. Simply put I believe

THE UNIVERSE ITSELF IS A LIVING, ONGOING PROCESS OF CREATION.

God expresses itself through evolution, and as time progresses we develop more and more of the Godlike attribute of CONSCIOUSNESS. Continue raising you Level of Consciousness, it benefits the whole world.

Mark

Build Your Life To Order ™ » Blog Archive » The Creation vs Evolution Debate - The Solution (Well, To My Satisfaction)

[The Probabilist]

Welcome to the forums. I, at least am liking what you write and I would be honored to have you keep posting your thoughts on your blog and these forums.

It's a good read and resonates well with my perspectives. So, unfortunately I don't have anything more to add that would help raise your consciousness on this matter in return. Everytime I read about insights that at least at this moment are greater than me, I can't but feel humbled about the beauty of all that is, no matter how it came to be.

[gberardi]

Wow, thanks for posting that one! I actually never thought about the way evolution works to reduce info and never adds more, and it looks like something to research. Up until now, I never got too deep into how evolution works, and I am a bit embarrassed by my lack of knowledge now. I mean, if someone came up to me and said that evolution was dead, I would consider him/her to be crazy and willing to make leaps in logic to be comfortable with his/her faith. How similarly was I acting without realizing it?

[bylto]

Thanks so much for your replies, they mean a lot. The Probabilist, I am equally honored to hear your feedback friend, thank you. Your right, 'All That Is' is beautiful and if we understand ourselves we understand that we are 'All That Is'. It's all a beautiful unfolding. gberardi, thanks for reading it and being honest, just to be clear, I believe in the process of evolution, it's just the mechanisms that don't add up for me, intelligence must be present. Yes I will staying Probabilist although I can't commit as much time as I would like to doing this as I still work full-time (though I hope not for too much longer)

Mark

[Akashic_Librarian]

"if you want to get to 10 and you have 6, no amount of subtraction or re-arranging numbers will take you there, you must add to what you have."

Thats amazing. Pure rational thought, the basis of evolution is almost disproved in that very sentence. Bravo!

[TimDineen]

Wow. I have to say that you have some truly inspired work. I was just about to start a new thread pondering the purpose of humanity as a whole, and then I read your blog post and there it was. We live to become one with all.

In reference to the actual evolution question,
I've always believed that, if anything, evolution was proof of God. Not exactly God as a seperate intelligence influencing us, but more like a wave, like a pattern drawing us back to our divine nature. God is perfection, evolution is the process of attaining perfection. That's my two cents.

[bylto]

Thanks again for the kind comments. Yes Tim I agree, this Presence draws us to it, to really Know our true identity. This is what is really meant by 'God calling you', though we can always choose not to listen for the moment we all will in our own time, the outcome of this game is guaranteed no need for worry.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Akashic_Librarian

"if you want to get to 10 and you have 6, no amount of subtraction or re-arranging numbers will take you there, you must add to what you have."

Thats amazing. Pure rational thought, the basis of evolution is almost disproved in that very sentence. Bravo!

I agree; well put. It's too bad it suffers from a disconnect from the preceding point, which I quote: "Even in the very rare case where a mutation is beneficial it is because of a decrease in the amount of information."

Information is not arithmetic. You cannot count bits of information and add them all up into a total sum. Similarly, you cannot subtract information from a whole such that there is less information.

Let's take the English alphabet (kindly provided by my keyboard) and randomly generate (semi-random: my hands) an encoded sequence:

LSDJAHFLUIARHIOUARHFKLASJERHFLKASJEHFLAK

I deleted one character such that there are now 40 characters in the sequence. Is there information in this sequence?

Yes and no.

Yes. I notice things like "LSD" is the first three characters, an acronym for a drug. "FLAK" is the last four, a type of shrapnel. "JER" is a name. "FLU" is a disease. "IOU" is an abbreviation for debt. And so on. Try this yourself: you can find dozens. Perhaps I even interpret it into a secret message. Perhaps it's a ROT-13 encryption (though there aren't any 40-letter words that aren't chemical names or German, to my knowledge).

But, no. Taken as a whole, I cannot pass it to someone else and expect them to decode it the same way; it was hardly encrypted.

Asking you this binary question, "This sequence contains information, yes or no?", the answer varies based on circumstance and interpreter. That is the nature of information. The actual sequence has not changed. This is an important point.

In a genetic sequence, evolution depends upon mutations. Mutations, in this case, can be simulated by randomly changing one letter of the sequence to another. Let's say I do a lot of mutations and eventually come up with this new 39-letter sequence:

FORGODSOLOVEDTHEWORLDHEGAVEUSHISONLYSON

Did we lose information, or did we gain information? After all, we even lost a letter! (Maybe it mutated into a period.) The correct answer is: It depends entirely on the context (a Roman would be quite perplexed) and the interpreter (read: Forg od solo ved'th eworl d'hega...).

You would have a hard time counting to 6, here, let alone 10.

It cannot be stressed enough that what natural selection actually does is get rid of information.

So we come around full circle to this notion that eliminating genes for, say, short roots is an elimination of information. There is a second problem to this argument, but I am less equipped to address it, since I am trained as an information scientist, not as a genetic one.

The crux of the problem is this: there is no such thing as The Short Root Gene. There is no Blue Eye Gene, or Red Hair Gene, or Tall Gene (what, is there a six-foot gene, a five-foot gene, and a four-foot gene?) High school biology teaches us how dominant and recessive genes will create the probability for potential outcomes. What it does not inform us of is that a gene is not totally responsible for anything.

You notice, after all, that they do not actually make a connection between the four chemicals, abbreviated ACGT, and those pretty little matrices. That's because there isn't one. Well, not one that an undergraduate college student specializing in biology and genetics could be reasonably expected to design and process in a year, never mind the average high schooler.

This gets into the area where I'm ignorant.

Let's say you have a group of ten genes, and you have this trait for red hair. Why do you have red hair? There is no single gene responsible for it: let's say we pick one at random and alter it. Suddenly, we may not have red hair. Instead, we might have six toes on each foot. When we say that mutations are generally not beneficial, you can see why: perhaps a mutation would produce an infant with only one lung. A beneficial mutation is not an evolutionary advantage: it's a survivable change. This is why incest is frowned upon: it increases the likelihood of deformed children. Mutants.

So, getting back to the original point.

Genes are not merely carriers of information, eliminated willy-nilly by the harsh fiat of natural selection. Within human beings (a single species!), we have an amazingly diverse representation, from skin, eye, and hair color, to physical size, mental disposition, even handedness. And yet our genetic structures are almost identical.

Yes, genes are an analogue for words, and perhaps species are paragraphs. Novels, even. And in these words, we have but four letters.

And yet, with these four letters, we represent every species on this planet. Information comes from the interpretation of these letters, these words. ACGT TGAC GTCA may mean a dark-skinned nomad to a desert, but it may mean a fair-haired sailor to the Arctice ice. Information is derived from context and its interpreter.

It's not 1+1. The oxymoron, "a deafening silence," comes to mind. An absence is as informative as a presence.

[Megan]

By Michael:

Information is derived from context and its interpreter.

Epigenetic adaptation is not a universally accepted idea, is it, Michael, but is somewhat forced from the failure of the genome project to come up with enough genes for genes to be deterministic?

You obviously know a great deal about this, Michael, and I'm just as obviously dabbling, but interested.

Craig Venter:

We simply do not have enough genes for this idea of biological determinism to be right.

The wonderful diversity of the human species is not hard-wired in our genetic code.

Our environments are critical.

[tim]

Originally Posted by Akashic_Librarian

"if you want to get to 10 and you have 6, no amount of subtraction or re-arranging numbers will take you there, you must add to what you have."

Thats amazing. Pure rational thought, the basis of evolution is almost disproved in that very sentence. Bravo!

You know there's only a 2-bit difference between 6 and 10 in binary? Rearranging bits will definitely get you from 6 to 10 .

Just to add to takaria's last post, that it is a distortion of science to claim that via the mechanisms of evolution no new information can be produced:

New information being gained via evolutionary mechanisms has been observed in many different areas. In populations of organisms we're constantly observing increases in genetic variety. On the organism level we have examples like the bacteria that evolved a mechanism for digesting nylon (which didn't exist until the 30's), or an antarctic fish which survives through 'antifreeze' proteins in the blood. On the genetic level we have observed many mechanisms by which information can be increased; a great example would be gene duplication.

*Shrug* Creationists won't hear a word of it though.

[bylto]

I believe that when a set of chromosomes is copied and retained it is called ‘polyploidy’. This is merely a ‘duplication’ of information but it does give an extra opportunity for mutations to occur. If this mechanism was a factor in the evolution of life we would expect life forms with the most DNA to be at a great advantage for upward evolutionary change. However, man has only 46 chromosomes (yet we are most advanced), butterflies have 380, a fern (plant) has 1200. It doesn’t seem to add up.

I've never heard of the antarctic fish that survives through 'antifreeze' proteins in the blood. I have heard of another 'beneficial' mutation to cave fish, they are blind. This is often used as proof for evolution as they are descendants from 'seeing' fish and there is no use for sight in their lightless environment. However, this again is a downward change. The eyeless fish even have an advantage over the others. This is because, as fish bump into rocks and cave walls in the darkness, the eyed ones would be likely to injure their eyes. The delicate tissue of eyes is prone to injury, which would allow harmful bacteria to enter, leading to infection and often death. The eyed fish would thus have a lesser chance of surviving to produce offspring. Those fish carrying the ‘eyeless’ genetic defect would have a greater chance of passing it on to the next generation. After many generations one would expect to observe more eyeless fish than fish with eyes, which is exactly what we do observe. Phew.

By the way, I believe in evolution. I believe in increases in genetic information but I don't believe we know how they occur. My theory is that this is inextricably linked to increases in levels of consciousness.

[Angela]

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

Rev. Gabriel Burdett explains Intelligent Falling.
"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.