Flann wrote:That's an assumption. Evidence please?
There is more literature on the topic than you can read, including a tremendous amount of evidence. Both both types of evolution, depending on what you're referring to. Biological evolution, that gave us the capacity, planted the seed. The seed, the ability to think linguistically, evolved culturally after it sprouted. As it sprouted, the benefit it gave selected for men who could think more abstractly, use language to pass along basic behaviors such as tool making and food gathering. It's all there for the taking if you search for the right thing, rather than one man's reasons for not believing.
Flann wrote:The environment causes genetic changes. It selects from what exists but doesn't create new genetic information. Mutations can change codes but their limits are clear from experiments.
This indicates you don't actually understand the driving mechanism of evolution. The environment selects from what exists in the gene pool of the moment, it exerts the selection pressure. What exists constantly changes, from generation to generation. Not only because of the environment, as you claim, but for many other reasons. Radiation causes them, as part of the environment. But transcription errors do as well, which are internal.
Endless small mutations, some large mutations, and almost none of them are beneficial, because any change from the optimum is by definition a detriment. But this basic formula changes the instant the environment changes. An offspring with a previously detrimental trait may suddenly find itself with a greater benefit than its brethren. It will flourish, as will its children who inherit the mutation, until that mutation becomes the norm and a vast swath of the new population is once again optimized to the environment.
What you see in experiments is that when we change the environment, the organism changes, and no limit to this change is observed. But if you go for nothing but mutations, and don't change the environment, you'll get what you started with.
So it's not a theory now it's a fact? A lot of I.D.scientists are highly qualified and it's smacks of bias on your part to dismiss their scientifically based objections as soundbites.
It's been a fact for a while now. That we evolved is a fact. The description of this process is a theory.
Thanks for explaining my bias but you follow proper method of course.
Don't be so dismissive. This is perhaps the largest difference between us.
I do follow proper method as best I can. I've failed many times and corrected myself many times and I still make mistakes, but all my eggs are in the same basket. Not that of a worldview, but that of a set of methods. Methods that most reliably lead to truthful conclusions, developed and refined over the last two thousand years. I don't care whether or not evolution is true. I only care about following proper method. When you follow proper method, without playing favorites with any single worldview, you're more likely to land on the truth. It's not certain, because our minds aren't optimized for figuring out which worldview is the most truthful. We have to fight our biases, recognize which heuristics in our endless array are fallacious, and suppress our convictions. Unless you commit your entire will to that end, you will almost certainly end up with a false worldview. Your entire focus should be adherence to those methods which most reliably lead to truthful conclusions. Dismiss this if you want, but you'll never find another way to equal it, if the truth is your goal.
Getting back to the nature of evil. How do you justify the idea that there is something about people's behavior that is supernatural?