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A problem of Gradualism and the Survival of the Fittest within Evolutionary Theory.

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  • Originally posted by JohnMartin View Post
    Through the act of life manifested in the powers of vegetative and sentive life.
    But how does this occur, all you’re doing is asserting that it does.

    The act of life caused by the soul is enacted through the vegetative powers of life, to inform the body with vegetative life. The soul's essence is spiritual, but the soul's powers are both spiritual and material. The material powers cause life in the body. The spiritual powers cause the intellective life within man apart from any organ of the body.
    Where is the point of contact between the “spiritual” and “material” components of the soul?

    The material powers of vegetative and sensitive life have there root cause in the essence of the soul. The powers of the soul remain with the soul after the soul leaves the body.
    This is just the discredited notion of 'vitalism', which has been superseded by our better understanding of the chemical and physical nature of our brain.

    There is a series by Gardeil on the Introduction to the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The work on psychology would answer your questions on the soul.
    What we need is a biological explanation, not a medieval, philosophical argument.
    “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
      Through the act of life manifested in the powers of vegetative and sensitive life.

      But how does this occur, all you’re doing is asserting that it does.
      The soul is the form of the living body. The soul as the formal cause, causes to inform the body as the material cause. The union of formal and material causes cause the living human body as a compound of body and soul. The soul has one essence in which the powers of vegetative, sensitive and intellective life reside. The powers of the soul are enacted through an automotive act from the soul (and God as prime mover) to cause acts of the living which are immanent and self-perfecting of the living body.

      The soul enacts life within the body, wherever life exists within the body. The enactment of life by the soul manifests itself empirically by causing biological organism to move from entropy to tension as immanent acts of the living body. Wherever the biological/chemical act from entropy to tension is observed, the soul is present through its powers which enact the observed process.

      The act of life caused by the soul is enacted through the vegetative powers of life, to inform the body with vegetative life. The soul's essence is spiritual, but the soul's powers are both spiritual and material. The material powers cause life in the body. The spiritual powers cause the intellective life within man apart from any organ of the body.

      Where is the point of contact between the “spiritual” and “material” components of the soul?
      The essence of the soul is a spirit, but some of the powers of the soul include powers to move matter, and are thereby material. The powers of the soul are rooted in the essence of the soul as the point of contact between the soul's essence and powers.

      The material powers of vegetative and sensitive life have their root cause in the essence of the soul. The powers of the soul remain with the soul after the soul leaves the body.

      This is just the discredited notion of 'vitalism', which has been superseded by our better understanding of the chemical and physical nature of our brain.
      Vitalism has not been discredited. The cause of life is diverse from the cause of non-life. The cause of life is a form of the substance, which is the substantial form of the body, as the soul.

      There is a series by Gardeil on the Introduction to the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The work on psychology would answer your questions on the soul.

      What we need is a biological explanation, not a medieval, philosophical argument.
      You assume a biological explanation can give you the answers when in fact a philosophical explanation will give you the answers about the cause of life in a body.

      JM

      Comment


      • Originally posted by JohnMartin View Post
        The explanation on eye evolution, like all other similar explanations begs the question concerning the nature of biological life as being mechanicist, rather than hylomorphic. The development from skin to an eye is only a mechanicistic dream. There is no evidence that skin can transform into an eye, other than men want TE to be true,so they make up a series that never occured, and never can occur.

        Skin develops to form the eye. What a joke.

        What's next?

        The eye sees the sky and develops into wings?

        Wings are good for fitness.

        What a complete joke.

        The eye and wings act so the thing develops rockets.

        Rockets are good for fitness.

        What a complete joke.

        JM
        Further thoughts related to the Evo eye series.

        If the eye series can be constructed by the Evo's who understand the human eye as a product of evolutionary development, why not apply the Evo principle of more from less and construct any number of series of organs that lead to as yet unobserved organs which are posited to have not yet evolved but are expected to evolve in the future? After all, if biological life was caused by evo, then biological life in the future must also be caused by evo as well. So why not make up any series from any organ(s) to evolve to any organ some time in the future? The seemingly limitless range of possible organs caused by any evo series infers evo theory is almost impossible to pin down to that which is really probable and actual rather than not just a possible outcome.

        The hypothetical nature of any evo series of organs quickly becomes an unmanageable biological maze of endless possibilities where anything that is biologically possible has at least one biological series to develop the organ. And because any organ can have an evo series as its cause, and organs develop other organs, then any evo series of organs can be caused by any other evo series of organs. Such a possible outcome within TE infers any simple series, such as the eye series is only an oversimplified guess about the hypothetical evo historical development of the eye, which hides or ignores the many other possible outcomes within the proposed eye series.

        For the evo’s to push the eye series as a solution to the development of the eye, they must ignore the many possible outcomes permitted by TE within any biological series.

        JM

        Comment


        • Originally posted by JohnMartin View Post
          The soul is the form of the living body. The soul as the formal cause, causes to inform the body as the material cause. The union of formal and material causes cause the living human body as a compound of body and soul. The soul has one essence in which the powers of vegetative, sensitive and intellective life reside. The powers of the soul are enacted through an automotive act from the soul (and God as prime mover) to cause acts of the living which are immanent and self-perfecting of the living body.

          The soul enacts life within the body, wherever life exists within the body. The enactment of life by the soul manifests itself empirically by causing biological organism to move from entropy to tension as immanent acts of the living body. Wherever the biological/chemical act from entropy to tension is observed, the soul is present through its powers which enact the observed process.
          Once again, where is the point of contact between the “spiritual” and “material” components of the body that enable it, as you assert, to enact “through an automotive act from the soul”.

          The essence of the soul is a spirit, but some of the powers of the soul include powers to move matter, and are thereby material. The powers of the soul are rooted in the essence of the soul as the point of contact between the soul's essence and powers.
          So, again, where is the point of contact between the “spiritual” and “material” components of the body that enables it “to move matter”?

          Vitalism has not been discredited. The cause of life is diverse from the cause of non-life. The cause of life is a form of the substance, which is the substantial form of the body, as the soul.
          Outside of certain religious traditions and New Age woo, ‘vitalism’ ceased to be relevant in science in the mid-nineteenth century.

          You assume a biological explanation can give you the answers when in fact a philosophical explanation will give you the answers about the cause of life in a body.
          No it won't. A philosophical argument can only be as true as the premise upon which it’s based. If its premise cannot be shown to be true (as in this case) then neither can the conclusion of an argument based upon it. This is why we need a biological explanation.
          “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
            What is your evidence that “acorns” or any living organisms, has a soul? How can an immaterial entity, such as your hypothesised soul, interact with the material acorn?
            The souls of plants and animals are material, for plants and animals only do acts that are material (organic). Te vegetative soul is essentially one with the powers to grow, nourish and generate. The sensitive soul of animals is essentially one with the above powers along with the power of sense knowledge. The vegetative and sense powers are all organic, inferring the organic acts are from material powers, which reside in the essence of the material soul. The human soul is essentially one, and essentially, or properly a spirit, but also material according to power as required to account for vegetative and sense life in man.

            JM

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
              The soul is the form of the living body. The soul as the formal cause, causes to inform the body as the material cause. The union of formal and material causes cause the living human body as a compound of body and soul. The soul has one essence in which the powers of vegetative, sensitive and intellective life reside. The powers of the soul are enacted through an automotive act from the soul (and God as prime mover) to cause acts of the living which are immanent and self-perfecting of the living body.

              The soul enacts life within the body, wherever life exists within the body. The enactment of life by the soul manifests itself empirically by causing biological organism to move from entropy to tension as immanent acts of the living body. Wherever the biological/chemical act from entropy to tension is observed, the soul is present through its powers which enact the observed process.

              Once again, where is the point of contact between the “spiritual” and “material” components of the body that enable it, as you assert, to enact “through an automotive act from the soul”.
              Your question implies more a Platonic, dualistic understanding of the body-soul relationship which posits the soul is like a prisoner inside the body. Apparently, Plato could not provide sufficient explanations for how such a soul could remain inside a single body. According to Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy,

              One problem with Plato's dualism was that, though he speaks of the soul as imprisoned in the body, there is no clear account of what binds a particular soul to a particular body. Their difference in nature makes the union a mystery.
              Yet, hylomorphism is unlike Platonic understanding of the body-soul relationship. Hylomorphism teaches the soul is the very substantial form of a particular body, and no other body. The body, as a living human body, is both living and human because the soul informs the body. The soul as a spirit does not so much touch the body, as like the Platonic understanding of the soul, but is the very form of life of the body. Because the soul is per se a spirit, and a spirit does not of itself have a body, the soul is not of itself in any place. Consequently, the notion of 'where' in relation to a spiritual soul is answered in a manner that requires the soul's location to be known not in terms of a bodily location, or 'where', but in terms of the enactment of life of the body. The soul as a spirit is where it is in act, and not in place. The soul as a spirit is a complete soul in act in all of the bodily parts. For the soul cannot be divided into parts, through division of parts of a body. Similarly, the soul cannot be divided into place according to the location, or size of the body.

              A consequence of the soul as a spirit is the soul is not divisible per se, nor per accidens. Chopping off parts of the body, does not reduce the size of the soul, nor does adding parts of the body increase the size of the soul. The soul is not a body, but the substantial form of the body, which of itself does not have the properties of a body, such as location, or size, or shape, or where.

              The essence of the soul is a spirit, but some of the powers of the soul include powers to move matter, and are thereby material. The powers of the soul are rooted in the essence of the soul as the point of contact between the soul's essence and powers.

              So, again, where is the point of contact between the “spiritual” and “material” components of the body that enables it “to move matter”?
              The soul is wherever the act of life is in the body.

              Vitalism has not been discredited. The cause of life is diverse from the cause of non-life. The cause of life is a form of the substance, which is the substantial form of the body, as the soul.

              Outside of certain religious traditions and New Age woo, ‘vitalism’ ceased to be relevant in science in the mid-nineteenth century.
              Maybe, but vitalism is the only way to satisfactorily understand the causes of life of a living body.

              You assume a biological explanation can give you the answers when in fact a philosophical explanation will give you the answers about the cause of life in a body.

              No, it won't. A philosophical argument can only be as true as the premise upon which it’s based. If its premise cannot be shown to be true (as in this case) then neither can the conclusion of an argument based upon it. This is why we need a biological explanation.
              The philosophical conclusion arrived at through the deductive method is certain. Such certitude allows one to approach the empirical sciences knowing of the existence and powers of the soul. With such knowledge, one may approach theories such as TE with a healthy scepticism, knowing such theories are founded upon a false understanding of biological life. Biological life is hylomorphic and not mechanistic, nor Platonic.

              JM

              Comment


              • Originally posted by JohnMartin View Post
                The explanation on eye evolution, like all other similar explanations begs the question concerning the nature of biological life as being mechanicist, rather than hylomorphic. The development from skin to an eye is only a mechanicistic dream. There is no evidence that skin can transform into an eye, other than men want TE to be true,so they make up a series that never occured, and never can occur.

                Skin develops to form the eye. What a joke.
                No scientist ever claimed that skin developed to form the eye. Each stage of the evolution of the eye was a functional stage of the evolution of organ beginning with the light sensitive spot in simple algae and other simple one cell organisms. The genetic and physical evidence demonstrates that the eye improved over the millennia, and the more complex eyes had a greater survival value.

                What a complete joke.

                JM
                The joke is you!!!!
                Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                go with the flow the river knows . . .

                Frank

                I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                  The goober is a wet snot ball and John Martin qualifies.
                  IIRC goobers are peanuts.
                  Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                  MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                  MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                  seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by JohnMartin View Post
                    So, all TE claims of eye development are only extrapolations of eye patterns over a group of eyes found in diverse organisms. The extrapolation -

                    1) does not provide any reasons regarding how any member of the series developed from 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 formed eye.
                    Those reasons are given in the paper you're criticising, and which you either didn't read or didn't understand. Rogue's summary above includes some of the reasons the authors give.
                    2) does not provide any sufficient motive for any change from one eye to another eye.
                    Yes it does. Again, rogue mentioned one of the driving forces when he talked about predators being detected when they block incoming light.
                    Any appeal to fitness is insufficient to provide motive, for fitness as a motive does not account for the current eye which already contributes towards fitness, nor does any improvement in any eye guarantee any change in fitness of a population.
                    If you knew what 'fitness' was, you'd know it applies to individuals, not to populations.
                    3) does not provide account for the dual causes of bodies, which remain the same and change.
                    Evolution does not need to account for your gobbledygook.
                    4) relies upon the false mechanistic understanding of biology, apart from the truth of hylomorphism.
                    ...or your rejection of it.
                    Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                    MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                    MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                    seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                      The explanation on eye evolution, like all other similar explanations begs the question concerning the nature of biological life as being mechanicist, rather than hylomorphic. The development from skin to an eye is only a mechanicistic dream. There is no evidence that skin can transform into an eye, other than men want TE to be true, so they make up a series that never occurred, and never can occur.

                      Skin develops to form the eye. What a joke.

                      No scientist ever claimed that skin developed to form the eye. Each stage of the evolution of the eye was a functional stage of the evolution of organ beginning with the light sensitive spot in simple algae and other simple one cell organisms. The genetic and physical evidence demonstrates that the eye improved over the millennia, and the more complex eyes had a greater survival value.
                      Alternatively, eye evolution is a misreading of the hierarchy of life which contains organisms that have diverse eyes which do not change as TE requires. The so-called evidence is really only an interpretation of the data using gradualism along with imagination and maths models. And of course the usual false philosophical worldviews to boot.

                      No. TE is definitely the joke.

                      If advanced lens eyes can evolve so fast, why are
                      there still so many examples of intermediate designs
                      among recent animals?
                      The answer is clearly related to
                      a fact that we have deliberately ignored, namely that
                      an eye makes little sense on its own. Although
                      reasonably well-developed lens eyes are found even in
                      jellyfish (Piatigorsky et al. 1989), one would expect
                      most lens eyes to be useless to their bearers without
                      advanced neural processing. For a sluggish worm to
                      take full advantage of a pair of fish eyes, it would need
                      a brain with large optic lobes. But that would not be
                      enough, because the information from the optic lobes
                      would need to be integrated in associative centres, fed
                      to motor centres, and then relayed to the muscles of
                      an advanced locomotory system. In other words, the
                      worm would need to become a fish. Additionally, the
                      eyes and all other advanced features of an animal like
                      a fish become useful only after the whole ecological
                      environment has evolved to a level where fast visually
                      guided locomotion is beneficial
                      So the eye evolution is very complicated and dependent upon many, many causes other than only the eye, such as all the other relevant organs related to sight (let alone all the other organs of the body that are required to sustain life), and the environment also has the evolve at the right amount for the whole darn thing to work out. TE is clearly junk science as a product of the enlightenment and atheism. A rejection of the creation event and Christian revelation has led science down a very false path. Eye evolution is so easy to explain says one evo advocate, but then the paper says the eye evolution is very complicated with many interdependent and many independent causes which must coincide to cause the desired evo effect of the eye.

                      Yes TE is a complete joke.

                      JM
                      Last edited by JohnMartin; 06-26-2017, 07:44 AM.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by JohnMartin #1
                        The essence of the soul is a spirit, but some of the powers of the soul include powers to move matter, and are thereby material.
                        Originally posted by JohnMartin #2
                        The souls of plants and animals are material, for plants and animals only do acts that are material (organic).
                        Originally posted by JohnMartin #3
                        the soul is per se a spirit, and a spirit does not of itself have a body, the
                        Well that's clear.

                        The soul is spiritual when JM wants it to be a spirit, and material when JM wants it to be a material entity, and a combination of both when JM finds it convenient.
                        The sensitive soul of animals is essentially one with the above powers along with the power of sense knowledge.
                        So JM is (unsurprisingly) unaware that plants also possess senses.
                        Last edited by Roy; 06-26-2017, 07:33 AM.
                        Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                        MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                        MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                        seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Roy View Post
                          Well that's clear.

                          The soul is spiritual when JM wants it to be a spirit, and material when JM wants it to be a material entity, and a combination of both when JM finds it convenient.
                          The sensitive soul of animals is essentially one with the above powers along with the power of sense knowledge.

                          So JM is (unsurprisingly) unaware that plants also possess senses.
                          The soul of man is essentially a spirit, but virtually material. The souls of animals and plants are material.

                          Plants do not possess senses as you say.

                          JM

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by JohnMartin View Post
                            Plants do not possess senses as you say.
                            JM's ignorance of science shows again.

                            Role of plant sensory perception in plant–animal interactions
                            Mescher, De Moraes
                            J Exp Bot (2015) 66 (2): 425-433.

                            Abstract: The sedentary lifestyle of plants can give the false impression that they are passive participants in interactions with other organisms and the broader environment. In fact, plants have evolved sophisticated perceptual abilities that allow them to monitor and respond to a wide range of changing biotic and abiotic conditions. In this paper, we discuss recent research exploring the diverse ways in which plant sensory abilities mediate interactions between plants and animals, especially insects. Such interactions include the detection and capture of animal prey by carnivorous plants, active plant responses to pollinator visitation, the perception of various cues associated with the immediate presence and feeding of herbivores, and plant responses to (olfactory) cues indicating the threat of future herbivory. We are only beginning to understand the full range of sensory cues that mediate such interactions and to elucidate the mechanisms by which plants perceive, interpret, and respond to them. Nevertheless, it is clear that plants continually gather information about their environments via a range of sensory modalities and actively respond in ways that profoundly influence their interactions with other organisms

                            Comment


                            • Still waiting for any evidence of a soul or that hylomorphism exists.

                              Also waiting for evidence that John Martin isn't a time traveler from the 14th century.
                              "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by JohnMartin View Post
                                A consequence of the soul as a spirit is the soul is not divisible per se, nor per accidens. Chopping off parts of the body, does not reduce the size of the soul, nor does adding parts of the body increase the size of the soul.
                                So if I cut a branch off a tree, the soul (being indivisible) remains with the tree, not the branch. If I then encourage that branch to take root and grow into another tree, the new tree has no soul. This is particularly problematic with species such as brambles, ivy and bindweed that take root wherever branches touch ground, since and arcing bramble branch that takes root at both ends can be chopped in half with both ends surviving as equally viable individual plants.

                                Banana trees and some varieties of tomatoes, melons, oranges and grapes are propagated entirely by cuttings, because they are seedless. Since they are all developed from parts chopped off the body, none of them have souls, unless there is somewhere a single very ancient banana tree that still has a soul.

                                If I take a sapling and chop off its roots, the soul stays with the sapling. If I then graft the sapling onto the trunk of another tree, the combination of tree plus sapling has two souls. Every additional sapling I graft onto the tree then adds another soul, and I can produce a tree with over 100 souls if I so desire. Note that the souls of this hypothetical tree wouldn't combine into a single large soul, since adding parts does not increase the size of a soul.

                                How does an acorn acquire a soul? Does the acorn obtain its soul before it falls from the parent tree, in which case you have an organism with multiple souls (it can't have a single divided one, since souls are intrinsically indivisible)? Does it obtain its soul after it falls from the tree, in which case you temporarily have a soulless organism? Or does its soul arrive at the exact moment of separation? If the latter, that again leads to wondering what happens if the acorn is on a soulless branch cut off the tree before the acorn falls. And what about the acorn cup? Some acorns fall with their cups still attached, some fall without them. Does the soul appear when the acorn separates from the cup, or the cup from the tree? And how does this work with plants such as bromeliads or spiderworts or mangroves where the child plants sprout and mature before they separate from the parent?

                                JM's ideas fall apart completely when applied to botany.
                                Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                                MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                                MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                                seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                                Comment

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