Immortal4life

You seem to be falling into the trap so many spiritual seekers throughout history have fallen into. The inability to reconcile the mind and matter paradox. You are bordering on denying matter, and only accepting "experience" and phenomena of the mental plane. I would say that God is the principle, the original first causeless cause, and the soul back of the Image. Yes, the Image is the Thing. The Universe is the only begotten son, matter is the only begotten son. God is the principle back of the Uinverse. God is the Way.

Maybe you will get what you are asking for at some point.... But the fact remains, this particular topic is not actually about Intelligent Design.

If you don't think issues about the Nature of Life, and Origins of Life, are relevant to your particular spiritual beliefs, I think you are sorely mistaken and short sighted. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, issues that has been diffcult for all spiritual teachings to resolve, is the spirituality vs. matter issue, or mind vs. matter issue. Different paths have taken different approaches. Some deny matter, and deny material desires. Some say the material world is evil, seperate from the Spiritual realms. Some attempt to use material methods to develop spiritually, while others reject material methods. I believe the issue of the nature and origin of Life, to be fundamental to the spirituality vs. materiality debate.

The main sources cited in this thread are not Christian or Fundamentalist. When a portion of evolution theory is debunked, that does not mean the scientists doing the debunking were religous, and in this case, it is not connected in any way to Intelligent Design.

This is a common piece of misinformation often perpetuated by evolutionists. Sometimes they try to claim that anyone who doubts the theory of evolution, or acknowledges it's weaknesses, is either ignorant of the theory, or has religous motivations. The information cited in this thread alone disproves this notion.

It is not true that all Intelligent Design theories have to invoke a God. It has also been argued that evolution theory does not have an adequate explanation of how evolution works. Here is an example of an Intelligent Design theory which does not have to invoke a God as an explanatory mechanism. Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA, when faced with how complex DNA and the cell really was, instantly recognized that DNA could not have formed by chance or random processes. He knew some sort of design had to be invovled. He theorized that Life on Earth had been seeded by Extra Terrestrials a very long time ago.

The fact is that it is not only individual species that exist in a state of perfect balance and complexity. The whole round of Nature is in fact one Circle of Life. One interconnected and interdependant cycle. Everything is connected. Everything exists in it's perfect place, in balance and harmony with all else, and is designated to it's proper place within the whole. Complexity and perfect harmony exists at all levels in the universe.

Intelligent Design theory can and does involve evidence, every bit as much as Evolution theory. The real difference is the paradigm through which the evidence is interpreted.

My position is ultimately one of balance. When we look at how forceful and condescending many pro-atheist and pro-evolution fanboys can be, yes you have to come back and dish it back to them. As for what you say about diversity and different varieties existing within a species, that is just variation, adaptation, and the so called micro-evolution. It's like dogs, no matter how far we go back and no matter how much they change they are still dogs. Bacteria, no matter how much they change and adapt, they still stay bugs, etc.

Absolutely, a human being is one of the highest forms of physical matter that can exist, and one of the highest concentrations of Universal Life Energy that exists in the material plane. Human beings have the potential and capacity for very high level abiities, and god-like qualities.

Many evolutionists have argued that if you take darwinian evolution completely literally, the natural conclusion is to rule out free will. From a completely materialistic point of view, the actions an individual takes can be attributed to 2 things, genetic programming and societal conditioning. Some people call this theory nature vs. nurture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuVSIG265b4 So I agree with you that when it comes to an understanding of mind and comnsciousness in relation to existence and creation, evolution and modern science itself, are lacking in this respect.

No, in mainstream science journals, by high level scientists in the world's leading universities, and in peer reviewed research.

I am primarily interested in spirituality, and the spiritual implications of a given issue.

I was recently watching two interesting and educational documentaries about Nature, the Origins of Life, and theories about evolution. First up, here is the documentary Icons of Evolution. Documented are many examples where what is claimed in textbooks to be the "evidence" in fact is false and distorts the evidence. Watch all your favorite evolutionary icons fall. Icons of Evolution- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlyW5rnvIgU Icons of Evolution Website- http://www.iconsofevolution.com/ Here is the cool Documentary, The Collapse of Darwinism. His theory is picked apart bit by bit, piece by piece. The Collapse of Darwinism- The Collapse of Darwinism websites- http://www.evolutiondocumentary.com/ http://www.srf-tr.org/collapse_of_darwinism.htm

It is debatable how enightened people really were in the midieval age. Even the most spiritual people of that time may have still had limitied concepts and thinking.

Cool. Can you talk more about the Essene Gospel though? What it is, where it came from, who wrote it, what it's purpose is, etc. ?

Certainly bit by bit, piece by piece, aspects of evolutionary theory have and are being debunked.

Actually much of my interest in this subject came from interacting with Richard Dawkin fanboys on discussion forums. Many of the things I say, are actually direct responses to and come backs to the things that are popular amognst fans od Dawkins. I am actually providing a balance to people like Hitchens and Dawkins. Before they got popular I wasn't as interested in Evolution because no one really talked about it much before a few years ago.

The truth is that there is prejudice and a systematic attempt to silence all opposition to evolution within the Academic community. When mainstream science, and yes peer reviewed research, debunking evolution comes to light, it is a positive and beautiful thing.

Textbooks and schools have as much potential to limit one's thinking and send someone off course, as they do to expand one's thinking. An example is Anthropology. Anthropologists are trained to automatically assign a ritualistic meaning to any ancient artifact they find. They are taught to assume all ancient people were primitive and superstitous simpletons, who understood nothing but primitive rituals.

That is not the original source of the information on the tree of life presented in this thread.

Except the source cited here for the debunking of the Tree of Life, is the publication New Scientist, not the Discovery institute.

There's actually a lot of depth to that issue. Interesting facts like similarities between gods across different ancient cultures, or myths from different cultures around the world of a huge flood or catastrophe. Maybe some of these so called Gods were actual people, or actual beings of some kind.

These ideas and issues are as relevant to eastern mytics as they are to western religions.