Laurence England I assert that if God is not there, then that would account for unbelief and the mockery of God since while it is true that God is present in all consciences, we can push Him away with our pride, lust, greed, vanity, envy, avarice etc, etc...We can hide, like Adam hid, but we cannot hide forever. In the end, our conscience is laid bare and we see ourselves as we are in the light of God and then we, not He, decide our eternal fate, depending upon whether we are in a State of Grace when we die, or in a State of mortal sin.
Paul Jenkins You have indeed asserted. But not substantiated.
"...while it is true that God is present in all consciences..."
This, I believe, is not true. You have made a false statement. (But I'm not accusing you of a "sin".)- Laurence England If God is not the author of what we know as Conscience, then I should like an account of how it came to be that we should have them.
- Paul Jenkins Human beings are social animals, tribal. Civilisation has evolved by means of division of labour, but that only works if some individual desires are made subservient to the desires of the larger group, be it family, tribe, nation, race or the entirety of humanity. Those humans who have a propensity for co-operation have generally been able to prosper and reproduce. Their genes have consequently been passed down to us, along with those propensities — one of which we call conscience.
- Laurence England They cannot make mistakes since they do not have consciences. If a shark kills a man, we kill the shark, but the shark was only acting in accordance with its appetite. No blame can be attached to the shark.
- Laurence England Monkeys are not a different branch of the evolutionary tree. They're a different tree altogether.
- Conor Carroll Doesn't really make sense, just look at a school playground, it is the bullies that always win. It takes something above us to be able to impose a higher moral order.
- Paul Jenkins "They're a different tree altogether." This is false. The whole of life on Earth is on the same evolutionary tree. DNA evidence shows this to be the case.
- Laurence England No animal has 'evolved' moral awareness but humans. So what is the evolutionary purpose of moral awareness?
- Laurence England Yes, there is. Moths that camouflage themselves into trees to deter predators? Is this not 'evolutionary purpose'.
- Conor Carroll No, Im open to finding the truth, but there are massive holes in the evolution arguement
- Paul Jenkins No. You misunderstand what happens. The moths didn't change colour _in order_ to camouflage themselves.
- Laurence England Am I talking to a monkey? No, a monkey cannot have such a conversation as this. A monkey cannot even consider God's existence or non-existence. Yet we can think and talk of God.
- Laurence England No, I understand they did not. I understand that God instituted such natural laws as to achieve what He desired for nature to work in the order He has given it.
- Paul Jenkins Some moths changed colour randomly. They tended to survive more than the ones that didn't change colour. So they proliferated.
- Laurence England You look at creation and you see no purpose, even were I to accept an evolutionary principle behind all living creatures?
- Laurence England There is no purpose, yet we 'evolved' conscience, along with the ability to communicate with words, make music, create the internet and comb our hair?
- Laurence England I do not believe it because man is both physical and spiritual. He has a body and a soul. He can do that which the monkey cannot do. He can PRAY. He can repent. He is in relationship with his Creator.
- Paul Jenkins ^^These are all unsubstantiated assertions. (Although I'll agree that man is physical, of course.)
- Laurence England Hmmm...you've got me thinking now. So 'conscience' evolved in us for human beings to live in co-existence, or something - yet we, freely, decide to shack up with men and not reproduce deliberately. We also, unlike most creatures, kill our unborn children. This, to me, does not sound like a Darwinian reality for human beings.
- Laurence England Oh yes and we wear condoms! We wear condoms, implant stuff in women so they cannot breed...yes, I can see how conscience, that incredible facility brought to us in our evolutionary leap for human society is helping us - when we decide that it is the place where God is not!
- Paul Jenkins It's a product of how we live now. Much of Darwinian evolution is anathema to modern life and doesn't apply to modern humans. This is because we've developed technology and medicine at a much faster rate than we've evolved in that same time.
- Laurence England So we have evolved to be more self-destructive than ever we were before? Not impressed.
- Laurence England Not many other animals commit suicide either - especially not out of guilt, since they have none.
- Laurence England Paul, a man who kills himself destroys himself. This runs contrary to Darwinian 'doctrine' who proposes that nature (including us) is always acting in its own self-interest.
- Laurence England A woman who kills her baby is not acting in a darwinian way - in terms of the species.
- Paul Jenkins That's not what modern Evolution theory says. The evolutionary unit is the gene, which may be shared across kin.
- Laurence England Rather it sounds as if you are making up the theory of evolution and its role in human affairs, 'on the hoof' so to speak.
- Laurence England Well, if you are proposing, as you have, that it accounts for 'conscience' I would like a good account of it. As yet, you have not given one, other than something rather vague that does not add up, given human behaviour.
- Paul Jenkins I think it's fair to say that evolutionary theory can explain how the human race got to where it was some time before the industrial revolution. After that, technology is the main power-house of progress.
- Paul Jenkins If you don't accept what I wrote above, when I explained how I saw conscience as a result of evolution I can't help you. It seems clear enough to me.
- Laurence England It does not make sense nor does it add up, nor is a cogent argument in the slightest!
- Laurence England Apart from the Catholic biologists, Paul. What you have, my friend, is a superstition.
- Paul Jenkins Progress. Good point. I guess it's an increasing number of people living longer in comfortable conditions, feeling fulfilled in their lives and social interactions. Fewer people starving to death in misery and oppression.
That's _some_ progress. Still a way to go. - Laurence England Behold, Paul, to the left of our argument is a picture of progress, no, since we have evolved so much since the Industrial Revolution and our progress has been so great, indeed, that babies are the prey of vultures and few men care for the babies plight. Since the Industrial Revolution, too, we have 'evolved' so well as to think nothing of killing our own infants. Yes, we have evolved much, Paul. Unfortunately, we did not consider God, or His Kingdom, or His Justice, or His Love, or His Mercy in our 'progress'.
- Paul Jenkins The biggest step we could take towards "progress" in this day and age is the emancipation of women worldwide, and the way to do that is give them control over their own fertility. That means contraception.
- Laurence England I tell you, Paul, that if you want to know the reason for the child dying of starvation, you need only look to the theory of evolution for a reason for it. It's the 'survival of the fittest' remember.
- Paul Jenkins "...you need only look to the theory of evolution for a reason for it." Utter nonsense.
- Laurence England You mean, in order to emancipate women we have to impede fertility? Fertility is natural.
- Laurence England It is not nonsense, Paul. The Royal Society and the British Eugenics Society who generated the theory of evolution, along with Malthus, then decided to apply it to those who they believed were not worthy of life.
- Laurence England In fact, without the theory of evolution, it is unlikely Hitler would have arrived in such a devastating way. Recall, that he saw, in Darwinism, - the fit and the unfit.
- Paul Jenkins That's not Darwinian Evolution. That's something akin to breeding pigeons. Note the key word in "Natural Selection" — natural. What you're talking about is entirely artificial.
- Laurence England So did Marie Stopes, that 'liberator of women' who wanted the poor to stop breeding and whose abortion mills now kill 200,000 unborn babies a year.
- Laurence England In fact, a great many evils have been perpetuated under the guise of 'social darwinism' which you are, in fact, advocating, by applying 'evolution' to human beings in a 'social' way.
- Paul Jenkins OK. "Fit", as meant by Darwin in "On the Origin of Species" when referring to an organism means fit for the environment in which it finds itself. It has nothing to do with being the strongest or most powerful.
- Laurence England Just one last thing. If everyone believed that there was no purpose in our existence and that we're all here by a random fluke of an explosion that happened for no reason, and that conscience is something that has no value, what would the world look like? A happy place? It sounds like a world with no joy, where death had the last word on everything and everyone and in which nobody cared about anything because nothing means anything. That is not, as you understand, the Christian worldview. GOD cares and loves everyone so much He would even die for us.
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