Progressive Creationism vs Darwinian Evolution

CHARACTERIZATIONS AND MEASUREMENTS Unfortunately, in order for my opponent and I to adequately respond to each other's arguments and not bore the audience, I need the extra room. So I will refer everyone to my last debate in round 3 where I define God's divine attributes (eternal, omnipresent, immaterial,personal, omnipotent and omniscience) into existence. http://www.debate.org...In Summary From my research, we can define the cause in this manner. A Divine intelligence in the form of an absolute mind is the potential cause for all the known phenomena and complexity within the universe. Now, we can probably also infer that this mind created and sustains the universe along with the earth for our existence, but the question now becomes "why". What are the actual intentions of this designer and what is the overall purpose of life? If there is a reason for human existence, then this absolute mind perhaps intended to have a relationship with its offspring the same way human minds usually have offspring themselves forpersonal relations rather than through unintended biological purposes [11]. In other words, "this agency seeks to interact with human nervous systems in such a way as to orchestrate the necessary neural activity that coincides with emotional attachment to itself" according to RobDelestun, a cognitive scientist I asked in this field of science. Religious Belief Unlike, all the other gods (like Zeus, Apollo etc.) that have died out in dust-bins of time, the belief of a monotheistic God described by my theory and the Abrahamic religions has endured throughout time within culture and society despite scientific inquiry being at an all time high.According to development psychologists, there is an apparent reason for this. We are naturally disposed, from an early age, to see purpose and meaning in everything, including the natural world. This tendency has been referred to as "implicit-theism", since it is the inclination to see purpose throughout our world [12]. This naturally disposes us to believe in a purpose-driven force in the universe: gods or a God. Therefore, based on these observations, we are either dealing with: a responsive theistic God thatmaintains reality as well as a personal relationship with humanity or a deistic God that only sustains and reveals itself within the laws of the universe. This brought me to Andrew Newberg’s ongoing study in neuroscience that I stumbled upon. When researchers studied Judeo-Christian sects who were speaking in tongues by brain scanning them, there were decreased levels of activity in the frontal lobes while there was increased activity inthe emotional centers of the brain [13]. Frontal lobes are an area in the brain that is responsible for self-control or will. This was significant because when they studied other religious practices, previous studies showed frontal lobes to be highly active suggesting that the participants created these experiences under their own power. In conclusion, this being seems to be actively involved in human affairs as well.As Andrew Newberg says, "These findings could be interpreted as the subject's sense of self being taken over by something else. We, scientifically, assume it's being taken over by another part of the brain. But we couldn't see, in this imaging study, where this took place." http://www.world-science.net... GOD HYPOTHESIS As human beings, we generally view ourselves as mind-body composites. However, what if all of reality itself is maintained by a greater consciousness that Max Planck himself referred to as“the matrix of all matter”. This absolute mind would not have extension in the spacial and temporal constraints within the universe but occupy an independent "realm" of existence distinct from that of the physical while the material world would largely rely and depend upon this mind to operateaccordingly. The interaction between this mind and the universe would be similar to the human mind’s interaction with the brain where it manifests in the physical world through the body. Moreover, what if all of humanity was specially created for some greater purpose, and we possess an additional 6th sense (spirit) among our other five senses (mind-body) that enables us to connect with this being in a special way, which helps us understand this ultimate purpose of life. This ultimate meaning of life would be to either accept a personal relationship with this designer or reject this purpose and find our own meaning in life. I will call this the God hypothesis. PROGRESSIVE CREATION MODEL Design Inference Recent experimental results seem to suggest that life could only be guided by an intelligence [14]. However, there are many scientists that have pointed out alleged flaws within this design inference. For example, they claim that the placement of the optic nerve in the human eye is flawed because it would result in a small blind spot in our visual field. If these were truly flaws in design then this would certainly challenge the theory that an all-powerful omniscient designer or divineintelligence was and still is at work in biology as well. ID theorists provide two explanations for this: the appearance of morphological and biochemical suboptimal design and the design decayargument. 1. The appearance of suboptimal design (morphological)As Michael Denton explains, "the difference in the placement of the optic nerve in the human eye in comparison with cephalopod eyes is because of the need for the greater supply of oxygen for high-acuity vision in warm-blooded animals". According to Denton, "Rather than being a case of maladaptation, the inverted retina is probably an essential element in the overall design of the vertebrate visual system".2. The appearance of suboptimal design (biochemical) We already know that useful mutations are responsible for survival/reproduction and adaptations within a species resulting in variations of different species we see today. However, vast majority of the neutral mutations, also called non-coding regions of the cell, were claimed by scientists to be “Junk” DNA left over from the evolutionary process for years. Now, we know from the human genome project that large amounts of this so-called “Junk” DNA was reveal by a group named ENCODE that most if not all of the non-coding regions of the DNA are required and play a vital role for the proper functioning of the DNA [15]. 3. Design decay argument Most ID theorists view harmful mutations as inevidentable consequences of design decay from the second law of thermodynamics. As Stephen Meyer explains, “part of the program of design research was to distinguish the evidence of aboriginal design from the evidence of subsequent decay in biological systems”. According to design theorists, “diseases arose as the result of the degradation of well-functioning original designs, not from actions that can be directly attributed to a designer. http://www.discovery.org... In summary, ID theorists have pointed out several other examples in nature that what appeared at first to be left over design flaws have, with greater understanding, turned out not to be flaws at all or just a decay of aboriginal design. Thus, these supposed flaws were apparently only flaws in our understanding, and we should try to look at the organism as a whole even if it may exhibit some features that may be perplexing. The only presumption I would continue to use from the evolutionary framework is the idea that evolution is a bottom-up process. In the next round, I will go over the creation model of the diversity of life. [11] http://www.cdc.gov... [12] http://www.yale.edu...[13] http://andrewnewberg.com... [14] http://www.nature.com... [15] http://www.sciencemag.org...