61% Believe in Evolution

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by sandy, Jan 2, 2008.

  1. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    Actually no it is not Dawkins. FSM is a registered religion in the US, brought about and made public after certain events (a school board voted to force the teaching of creationism instead of evolution). You can read about it here.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    I actually know a few people who have been converted to the FSM. They even have the T-shirts and mugs to prove it.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    Dawkins brings it up as a means to discount religion and God as a whole... after all, theists cannot disprove the FSM, about as much as they can prove God exists. The founder of FSM has proof to back up his claims, about as much proof that theists use to claim God exists. Really quite interesting. I am considering becoming a pastafarian myself..

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    A quick rereading of the above should suffice.

    You are taking Dawkins's word for the source of his inspiration. Considering Dawkins's biases, that is a poor argument by your normal standards.

    By the standards of the theistic argument, Dawkins's claim to ahve invented the Monster all on his own do not subtract a bit from the probability that it was a Divine Inspiration and a Revelation of the Truth - even if Dawkins is so deluded and prideful as to sincerely believe he deserves full credit.

    Again: sincerity of belief, number of believers, unreasonably high standards of evidence.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    Oh, yes, I know. Creationism instead of evolution? Where's this then?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    The exercise strikes me a bit more as a somewhat more subtle form of goading (especially since the founder, Bob Henderson, avowedly made it all up); I commend his choice of horse, if not the use he puts it to.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    Ah! Then those wiser and more learned than I shall not refrain from illustrating my errors. After all, no one has so far.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Bob Henderson in point of fact - my mistake - but actually I do him the greater justice by appealing to reasonability: he admits the falsity of his deific creation by his own standards of knowledge, and so do I.

    Other than the creator admitting it wasn't real in the first place.

    Henderson admits he made it up; ergo it is bollocks.

    A piddling of the needlessly shoulder-chipped.

    Amounting to a single "observation", by a man who admits its falsity.

    Ahem.


    This just in:

    Patterson 'Bigfoot' Film Pronounced 'real' Despite Patterson's Deathbed Admission of Falsity. Says recalcitrant adept: We Knew it All Along!

    Best,

    Geoff
     
  8. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    You know, aside from my being forced to needlessly fisk iceaura above, I still don't usually invoke number of believers since it would be argument from prevalence. But anyway, there it is. Criticise as ye will.
     
  9. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    Many schools around the world Geoff, including the US. The founder of FSM started his 'religion' after a school teacher was fired for refusing to bow down to pressure and teach creationism instead of evolution.

    Goading? Maybe. If you read the replies he received from the school board, some of the moderates on the school board agreed and approved of his stance. One of the religious nutters who voted to teach creationism instead of evolution advised him that it was a sin to insult God. But the founder of FSM approached his religion in much the same way that theists approach theirs. He used their arguments to give credence to the FSM. Interesting really if you think about it.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    I particularly like the correlation between global warming and pirates myself. Damn pirates!
     
  10. 2inquisitive The Devil is in the details Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,181
    Bullshit, Bells. Link, please. There has been a sputtering attempt in a few locations to get schools to teach Intelligent Design alongside evolution. The only teacher I know of that has been fired was at Woods Hole Institute for refusing to personally accept evoution as a fact.
    http://blog.creation.org/page/2/
     
  11. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    Shocking and unfortunate.

    It's goading if it gets dragged out in the context of religious debate, but certainly not as he first used it. (My comment above about his choice of use refers only to that subsequent to the case, I should probably have added.) Simply put: creationism is not, to my mind, suitable fare for a public school.

    In that case:

    An oldie but a goodie.
     
  12. weiguxp Wikichem.net - WikiChem Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    35
    mutations in our genetic material happen ever day. Viruses mutate inorder to change for and infect targets that were previously immune. Some frogs have six legs.

    Evolution is a term we give to mutations that give significant and crucial advantages. We need the benefit of foresight to see that the mutations keep the certain species surviving longer.

    What is there not to believe? Evolution is only a term we apply to something we know is successful


    ----
    http://wikichem.net
     
  13. Vkothii Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,674
    That would be where they got the well-known phrase: "wrapped around my heart", long since used in many a rock-song. Also why they didn't use: "wrapped around my kidneys" - it just doesn't have the same kind of rhythm to it.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    The "ergo" is invalid. Simply because someone believes he made something up (not Dawkins, apparently, which reassures me - I had the impression that Dawkins had better aesthetic judgment, and was disappointed to accept him as inventing the FSM) is no argument against its reality as Divine Revelation. Who are you to restrict Deity in its manner of Revelation ?

    The very entity being revealed - an omnipotent Deity - invalidates all such arguments against its existence. Confusion and disbelief on the part of any fallible human (this one even has a personal interest and ego involved) is simply irrelevant - unless,of course, you are calling upon the normal standards of evidence and reason regarding the real existence of actual entities (such as Bigfoot, etc). But that is not a safe harbor for any ordinary theism - - - -
     
  15. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    No. This is absolutely not true. Re-read my original post. Evolution does NOT tell us how the first living creatures arose. It only tells us how we developed from them.

    Evolution shoots down the literal, fundamentalist interpretation of the biblical creation myth, in which all species were created in their current form in just a couple of days. But evolution does not shoot down the theory that a god created the first living things and then sat back and watched as they evolved.

    No, pure abstract logic itself does that.
    • 1. God must be a living thing.
    • 2. No thing or person can create it- or himself.
    • Therefore God cannot have created himself.
    • Therefore the statement, "God created the first living things," is false.
    We don't need evidence when we can disprove a statement through pure abstract reasoning. We may not know yet where life came from, but we KNOW that God did not create it, with the same unshakeable certainty that we KNOW 1 + 1 = 2.
     
  16. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    10,167
    Hi Fraggle,
    Can you defend the premises?
    1 - What characteristics of God define it as "a living thing"?

    2 - This premise would be considered meaningless by most Christian theologians, I think. They'd say that God is a necessary being, for which the existence is included in and identical with its very essence. That God was not created; that it is impossible for a necessary being to not exist (see Leibniz

    If God does fall under the category of "living things", then a theologian would deny "God created the first living things" as meaningless, and instead assert that "God created the first biological life on Earth."
     
  17. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    Well you said there wasn't any evidence for the FSM or God; yet the evidence is clearly that there isn't an FSM, since it was deliberately made up. Questioning the evidence for something you're not sure about - God as defined in the Bible - is not at all like making up something on the spot, which you admit is false, and then demanding evidence for it. The first one at least has a sort of viable hypothesis, if one really wants to lean across the NOMA boundary.

    The other is a load of tripe; but let's use a thought experiment for a moment and ask ourselves: what is the evidence surrounding the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Or, more precisely, if we had a supposed god, and didn't know whether it was real or not, couldn't we reject the existence of this god if we could identify a (presumably mortal) creator for it who admits in an evidentiary fashion that it's bollocks? (I note that this would be the first step in the process of the falsification of the hypothesis for the Abrahamic God, and is a step that no atheist worth his or her salt would ignore for a moment.) Well, we certainly could reject such a possibility in that case, and we do: we're unsure about the evidence of the Abrahamic God, but we do know that the FSM was invented on the merits of the very case in which it arises.

    Now you - as opposed to me - seem to be citing "you shall not put your God to the test" argument, which surprises me given our positions. If you want to declare an evidentiary process for God, then you have to examine the specifics of the cases. You can't just say "well, I think the evidence for A is bollocks, and since I could invent B that would also have no evidence then A is also bollocks". Either we're using a semi-scientific evidentiary process or not.

    Now I admit that at some point the question for me is faith-based. It doesn't trump evidence in my case, but it may indeed be that it colours my judgement somewhat. But so be it: you'll not have far or long to look to find treatises about the nature of evolution taken partially on faith or impression in surpass or violation of the extant evidence. At the core, I too am human, so if there is bias then I think perhaps it is of the incidental, acceptable kinds.

    Best regards,

    Geoff
     
  18. sniffy Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,945
    Ah and so the many may err as grossly as the few....
     
  19. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    YOU! You! How do you come to be here? What is your purpose here?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Listen! Listen to me, all of you! Do not believe this woman! She is treacherous! She is devious! She is a hamster! She knows no bounds, and believes in the existence of walking garden gnomes with pointy hats, and even Nikelodeon! :bugeye: Trust not her words, for her heart is shaped on the turning wheel and she is inconstant by nature! Begone! Begone, thou harridan!


    ...hey, Snif. What up?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  20. sniffy Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,945
    I'm day tripping.
     
  21. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    Getting a bit thin over there. I'm wondering about the success of the prolitarian revolution.
     
  22. sniffy Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,945
    shutupayourface
     
  23. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    Eep!

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    *hides from icepick*
     

Share This Page