First of all, it's not like I have this viewpoint just because of ignorance. Almost all of the scientific community is atheist. I read somewhere that for the "top scientists" (Nobel prize winners I think, forgot the name of their group), virtually every single one of them didn't believe in God. Like 99%.

For the card example, you distinguish between an unfortunate blind event and cheating by examining the dealer as he shuffles the deck and deals the cards. We can examine natural selection similarly, and there doesn't appear to be any "cheating" going on. Here cheating would mean some kind of divine or supernatural thing influencing natural selection. There have been countless experiments that have observed natural selection happening, such as the Galapagos finches experiment. In literally 100% of these experiments, there is not a single hint of any kind of "cheating" happening.

If there is no cheating/supernatural manipulation of natural selection, then we can assume there wasn't any earlier on Earth, during evolution that led to us. Therefore no matter how improbable it may have been that humans or intelligence can actually evolve, our existence is not design or creation and is due to chance, just like randomly dealing out cards and giving someone a straight flush.

No it's not possible. And if you manipulate the blind process, then by definition the process isn't blind any longer.

If evolution was guided and we were the goal, then God exists and he could fit the description of the Christian God perfectly fine. If evolution was not guided, but God knew at the start that humans would eventually arrive, then God exists and he could be called a deistic God. If evolution was not guided, then God doesn't exist.

So now the only question is, is evolution guided. Once you understand it, you'll see the answer is no it's not guided, therefore God doesn't exist.

a survey in 98 polled national academy members of those who returned the survey 7% believed in god, 72% disbelieved. others just had doubt. the numbers of overall PhDs that believed in god were much higher.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../394313a0.html

now you can argue that being voted into the national academy makes you a better scientists (keep in mind like all other organizations, there is some politics involved) so their opinions are the ones that matter. but then if that's true, others can argue that francis collins as the director of the NIH (the government organization that even national academy members may ask money from) is even "Greater"

Let me give a brief argument why evolution is not "guided".

First, 99% of species have gone extinct before humans arrived on the scene. If evolution was guided, why would he kill off almost all of his creation? Second, natural disasters affect evolution, and God doesn't control natural disasters (but if he does, then he is evil because recently tsunamis have killed millions of innocent people in India and Japan), therefore God doesn't control evolution. If an asteroid didn't kill off the dinosaurs earlier, then we don't exist today.

Third, if evolution is guided, then we would expect to see ZERO detrimental mutations. We would expect to see only beneficial mutations, when God has decided "it's ready for this species to evolve". Instead, we see exactly what we expect if evolution is blind. Random mutations that are indifferent as to whether they help or hurt the organism. Almost all these random mutations are detrimental, only a rare few are beneficial but these are important because they are naturally selected and drive evolution.

Fourth, if evolution is guided that means animals are under mind control by a designer. They don't appear to be. Why is it that, if we humans are the goal of evolution, tigers, lions, and snakes attack and kill humans? How do you explain the Greylag Goose's "stupid" behavior of using it's bill to push an invisible egg towards its nest when the egg is removed? You can youtube videos of this, type greylag goose.

So you're telling me that if I use precipitation to generate electricity, that precipitation is no longer a blind process.

God can't create a RNG. Cite?

Back to this nonsense again? Essentially, what you're saying is that you have not abandoned any of your previous failed positions and you're kind of just going through the same motions all over again.

yoda, your arguments seem to be reasons why evolution isn't completely controlled. They don't seem to encompass why it isn't guided or tweaked here and there. Like a gardener pruning trees, or weeding, or our ancestors breeding domestic animals from wild ones, with the qualities we want.

It's laughable that you think you understand evolution better than I do, or even better than Collins. 2-3 months ago you said that humans evolved from monkeys.

Wow, so I was a little uncertain earlier when I said this thread would be an "exact replica" of your other ones, but you really want it to be. All these have been dealt with in the past. Just go read any of your old threads to understand why you're wrong on all these points. They're basically just blind assertions from you without any good reason to just accept that they're true.

Yodachoda believes that there is exactly 1 path that could have led to humans from the first life-form on Earth, so to him, God would need to control every single detail in order for theistic evolution to be true. What he doesn't realize, despite me telling him in the past, is that there doesn't need to be just 1 path, and there could also have been multiple targets. For instance, when we breed animals like dogs for certain traits, we don't have a single genome/epigenetic structure in mind, but a general sense of the phenotype we're looking for. (not that I think you, PingClown, don't understand this, I'm just explaining what I've said to yodachoda).

You should look into evolutionary engineering. That shows how a creator and evolution can both exist. It's simple really. God is the programer and the code uses the process of random mutations to increase complexity. If man can program an evolutionary process, then why couldn't a god?

Ah, I see. So breeding requires the farmer to manipulate his crops genetic mutation directly, and not by applying selection pressure.

See 1? Selection pressure without genetic interference means preventing others from breeding/competing. That's precisely how the farmer applies selection pressure.

This seems to be a great example of Poe's Law.

I think the same thing every time he posts.

So............what does the bible say about evolution

If God controls evolution, here are the only options:

A. He controls mutations.

B. He mind controls animals and plants.

C. He forces natural disasters and events that shape evolution.

I'm not even sure if just doing one of these is enough to control evolution. I seems like he might have to simultaneously control all three to truly have complete control over evolution. Anyway, my question to theistic evolutionists is: "Which does he control and where's your proof?"

There is no hint or evidence of any kind that he controls any of those. He doesn't control A because we see humans and animals with all sorts of horrific terrible detrimental birth defects and mutations. He doesn't control B because if he did, animals wouldn't attacked his beloved creation: humans. He doesn't control C because we've seen natural disasters kill millions of innocent people.

I think OP is pretty ******ed. Look at the USA for instance, and the % who believe in god, and the % who accept evolution. If OP gets his way and these are non compatible then now the usa is even more ******ed than before.

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These people don't even know how evolution works though. For example, I heard someone the other day say, "I believe God created the evolutionary process." This person shows he has no idea what evolution is when he says this because evolution is not a process that is invented or needs any inventing.

You forgot option D: he wrote the program and let it go.

Why does God have to control evolution? Human engineers who use evolutionary engineering don't control the evolution. They program the rules that the program follows and they see what it produces. This is what I think God did.

As far as evidence, I don't have any. It's just a way I could see it being done. I started to think that it might be possible for a god to exist when I heard Professor Hugo de Garis talk about the strong anthropic principle. The universe is very finely tuned for life to be able to exist. It is not unreasonable to think it possible for the universe to be the creation of some advanced external entity. It's either that or it all came from nothing. What's your proof that that is the case?

Here's the problem. The "program" he had to write is very simple. In fact, it's so simple that even a rat could write it. It's actually so simple, that even a worm could write it. It's actually simpler than that. The "program" he had to write is the exact same "program" that "nothing" could write. It's not a program that even needed to be created in the first place.

And I'm not even sure what you mean by evolutionary engineering, but I assume you mean an engineering automatic process. For example, you program a machine to create some wonderful and complex object. Once you create and program the machine, the machine can mindlessly produce these amazing objects. This is completely different from the evolutionary process though, because again evolution is not a process that needs to be created. An automatic process in engineering IS a process that needs to be created.

The anthropic principle shows that it's has to be the case that we live in an apparently finely tuned universe because if the universe weren't finely tuned, we wouldn't exist. Keep in mind there may have been millions of universes in the past, perhaps there is a chain of universes. So far ours has lasted 13.7 billion years, but maybe there was another before ours that lasted 20 billion years. And another before that, for 100s of billions of years. None of those universes had the right physical constants for life so none of them had life. Each was 20 billion years of just stardust and lifeless planets.

No comment required....

No, that's not what evolutionary engineering is. It's actually a pretty complex operation. Something that is too complex for a worm or a rat to do lol. I'm not going to be your Google. Look into it if you care. I bet you don't.