Evolution is wack;God is the only way that makes sense!

On the contrary, I think we could safely fit all of the scientific truths that you readily advocate and have personally verified in a thimble

far from your existence disproving the statement, it confirms it

:shrug:

 

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If you have ever treated someone as your biological parent and never had them undergo a dna test, you can already answer this question

IOW the more greatly a subject contextualizes our existence, the more physical evidence becomes absurd, impractical or downright impossible as a tool of investigation

IOW empiricism, no matter how powerfully one may apply it (even with such tools of science fiction if you care), is forever relegated to the realm of metonymic (and hence limited) investigation.

This is why equating it with 'reality" is simply a bind of self referential logic like the before mentioned "all horses can fly"

 

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Hey Balerion:
try this:
The proposed evolution of brain washing, whether about science OR religion.
[video=youtube;PUl1GC_Y2js]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUl1GC_Y2js[/video]

 

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More accurately it is "currently" inconclusive. But there are many hypotheses... and it is a far cry from saying that none have currently been shown to work to "it's impossible" or "it didn't happen".

There is a difference. Everyone knows there is a difference. Just like there is a difference between a biscuit and the ingredients used to produce it.
As for "dumbing down" - feel free to provide your own "intelligent" definition.
But I'm guessing you would rather retain a definition that places it beyond the purview of scientific study, lest it be found to be not what you believe.

There is no theory to approach. There is an unsubstantiated claim, not even open to testing, let alone falsifiability.
And still neither you nor Jan, nor anyone else I am aware of, has ever provided any other types of "evidence" other than material.

So sayeth the believer in God. :shrug:
Or do you now only consider God to be merely a possibility?

No, you can't.
Everything about the example is physically based - i.e. observation. It is not a different class of evidence at all.

Yet it is the physical evidence (DNA test) that proves beyond reasonable doubt, while all this other evidence (that you consider to be a different class) can be incorrect, given how many people only find out they're adopted late in life.

Any other examples you'd care to share?

 

Nice to hear you agree that there is no conclusive evidence for it being doable .... even if taken in the best of all possible lights.

and of course the glaringly obvious difference between this and biscuits is that the ingredients and the process is actually known and doable... IOW its a pretty lame example .. worse than saying the pacific ocean is a body of water like a puddle that pools under a raincoat on a coat stand

Well I guess I would begin by pointing out that going to the toilet is not an act of reproduction

If you have never encountered a normative description in scripture I think we can safely say that you have never encountered scripture ....

ditto above

Is this where you are going to cite studies of prayer and pretend that we advocated that argument?

and you too since you can't seem to come to grips that abiogenesis is absolutely nothing like biscuits

O

I'm simply pointing out how operating out of your poor fund of knowledge about spiritual life you are left with just as much substance for abiogensis yet you passionately advocate one option and vehemently reject another.

IOW its clear to anyone its simply your ideology and values taking the mantle
:shrug:

you observed your conception?

so it kind of begs the question why you and over 99.999999999999999999999% of the world's population favour a so-called non-evidenced platform to hinge perhaps one of their most strongest values on

Of course there are plenty more of them - most of which govern the important stuff - but you haven't really begun to deal with this simple straight forward one at the moment so I think we will stick with this for the time being

 

This is the post I was responding to:

Among my answers I said:

My intent is to show the fallacy of the so-called "theist" argumentation that supports the restriction of teaching evolution in the schools (and their anti-science agenda in general).

Ok, you've demonstrated you can quote me without the quote thingy. And?

The only rehearsing that comes to mind are the endless rants against science. These I attribute to being lazy, afraid to learn and having preconceived notions of how the physical world works.

Pot calling the kettle black. I wouldn't include tolerance of ignorance as something sacred, if that's your meaning.

Upset? I was having a beer and laughing at some of the dumb posts.

I agree with little if any of yours.

In particular, vulnerable and innocent minds should not be contaminated by superstition and myth.

That ancient people invented gods to explain phenomena for which they had no science. This is the message that is confounded by the fundamentalist attacks on education.

I would ban the teaching of theosophy. Kids need facts and clarity, not muddy patronizing.

When is the last time you looked at a textbook? You're out of touch.

...indicating that you have no working knowledge of science. Hence you've not noticed that critical thinking is typically chapter 1 of most modern texts. Noted.

If "high-minded" means "anyone who passed an introductory class in math, science or world history" then you're barking at windmills.

Let's go back to this:

Now let's talk about Galapagos. This is on the agenda for nearly any science class in the country (mine or yours). Go ahead and explain to me which facts you wish to be withheld from children and which facts you wish to disclose to them. This will relate back to my remark about dishonesty.

Let's try the question I raised back at post #281.

How do you answer this to a school kid? Do you lie to them about Galapagos or not? It's as simple as that QQ. You can rant and rail all you want, but when it comes to bellying up to the bar with some actual knowledge, this is where the fundie creationists keel over. Their house is built on styrofoam, and won't stand up to the most elementary form of inquiry. All you need to do is decide which side of the tolerance-of-ignorance question you stand on. Most people get over that when they're young. Some drag it out, kicking and screaming til they're old and gray, and come online to rant and rail, only to disclose how dumb they are. So far you seem to be undecided.

Give it a go with my question. It will get you started down the path to choosing sides.

 

It's never been proven scientifically.

~String

 

Not sure what you mean by "in the best of all possible lights"?
There is currently no conclusive evidence for it being doable, but it is the most rational position to take for those who would rather explore the possible before deeming it impossible and wandering down the path of "God did it".

Sure, but that wasn't the purpose of the example, so to argue against it out of context is fairly ridiculous of you.
You claimed that scientists have defined life "as if there is no essential difference between life and the chemicals life utilizes and produces"... and I have provided an example of the kind of difference that scientists hold there to be... a rather essential difference, whether it is a known process or not.

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This is how you would start to define "life" when asked?
Why not just put up a definition, LG?

And if you have never encountered a television programme I think we can safely say that you have never encountered a working television.
Sorry, was the game to cite conditional statements?

Or perhaps you think normative descriptions equate to theory? If so, perhaps you can point out how they are falsifiable?

No, it's where I and others repeat the request for you to provide any type of "evidence" other than material.
We could go down the path of arguing against strawman after strawman, but let's stick to what is actually put forward, shall we?

They are alike, LG. Your inability to see that is your weakness here.
Both are to do with taking raw materials to create something different.
Biscuits are an end-product of baking (the taking of raw materials, applying a process, with a result that is different to the raw materials).
Abiogenesis is the process of taking raw materials and coming up with life.
That a process for the latter has not yet been identified is somewhat of a non-issue with regard the applicability of the analogy.

Here's a shrug for you: :shrug:

I don't reject anything until it has shown to be impossible.
That I don't jump on the "spiritual" wagon is because I have no evidence that it is moving forward.
I sit on the "empirical" and "science" wagon as that does have evidence.
Does it have all the answers? No idea.

But again, if you can provide me with evidence that your wagon is even moving...?

You somehow think it's possible for someone not to hold ideologies or values? Do you feel that it is somehow not your ideologies and values that you argue from?

Do I need to have done, to treat someone as my biological parent?
Surely how I treat someone is a separate issue to the underlying truth of the matter?
In most cases they would be the same, and unless one has issue to doubt then one reaches a practical assumption of truth - but that is not the same as being evidence of truth.

Basing values on something is not the same as having evidence of its truth.
And any platform one does take is still based on the plethora of observations of interaction, of physical similarity etc.
And the platform is usually one of mere practical acceptance rather than claims of it being reality.

You can argue all you want that it is "non-evidenced" - but why do you hold that one person in the 3.5bn women in the world is your mother and not any of the others? Would it perhaps be because of the physical evidence that you are provided with?
And without a DNA test, can you claim with 100% certainty that the person you believe is your biological mother actually is, that there is zero chance that they are not, despite all the physical evidence you might have had up to that point?

Nah, you'd close your eyes and wait for some non-material, non-physical entity to somehow not interact with your physical body and somehow tell you?

"Plenty more" yet you have never provided a single valid example of even one of them.

Here's another shrug: :shrug:

 

Intelligent design is a modern invention of the old creationist school that fomented the Scopes Monkey Trial. It's probably best characterized as a dumb conspiracy. By the late Industrial Era someone got a hare that they could try to invent a new branch of science that pretends to shore up fundamentalist myths and superstition.

Today it's best known as pseudoscience. Both terms, "intelligent" and "design", establish a premise that something scientific is involved. Upon this styrofoam they invent principles that pretend to be rooted in math and science. But they're not. Even marginally educated people are able to recognize that they're just gross violations of actual math and science.

To use a religious analogy, the proponents of ID are devils. This draws upon the ancient meaning of the word, not as a red guy with horns and hooves, but as someone who confounds the truth with deception and harangue. And that's all the ID movement is.

That humans evolved from proto-humans is a question of biology. It has nothing to do with ancient myth and superstition nor is a ID proponent qualified to run with it. I doubt if any of them could pass the freshman exam in biology.

Ask a biologist whether humans were designed and you'll get all the wealth of knowledge about evolution, which explains human origins without the myth and superstition, just the hard cold facts, which remain unscathed after nearly 100 years of creationism and probably 200 years of the Anabaptist movement that gave birth to the fundamentalist movement that gave birth to creationism that gave birth to Intelligent Design.

Their own evolution is a contradiction in itself.

 

There was a time when there was no life on earth. Now, there is life on earth. There are several possible ways that it could have gotten here: it developed naturally by abiogenesis, it was created by God, it came here from somewhere else in the universe, etc. If you think it came from somewhere else, you're just moving the problem. You're still left with the question of how it started there. If you think God created it, you're at a dead end. There's nothing you can learn about how He created it. Abiogenesis is clearly the only one of those examples with any possible conclusion.

If there's an "essential difference", feel free to point out what it is.

Of course it does. The synthesis of polypeptides and proteins is an essential step in the synthesis of life.

I'm only interested in whether or not abiogenesis is possible - and all indications from science are that it is. If a living cell can be synthesized from simple chemicals, then yes, it wil be necessary to incorporate that reality into any worldview, just like it's necessary to incorporate the reality of a round earth. If your worldview is wrong about the shape of the earth or the possibility of abiogenesis, you need to change your worldview.

What first maxim would that be?

I don't expect evidence for God any more than I expect evidence for pink unicorns or leprechauns. If evidence is presented, I will accept it.

They're all based on the same science. None relies on any of the others because they're all individually evidenced.

Did I say "it did happen"?

To clarify: Science has never discovered an obstacle to abiogenesis. Ongoing research shows several promising pathways for synthesis of life. It seems quite likely that it will happen. If/when it does happen, that will tell us nothing about what did happen. Even if we discover three different ways of making cells in a test tube, the science-deniers wll still be able to fall back on, "but it didn't happen that way." Denial is very resilient.

 

The person who raised me is my real parent. The person from whom the sperm or egg came is my biological parent.

We don't treat somebody "as a biological parent". We treat them as a real parent.

It is possible to be mistaken about who our biological parents are. If evidence shows that we are wrong, we have to accept it. It is not possible to be mistaken about who our real parents are.

What you're doing by denying evolution and/or abiogenesis is throwing away the DNA evidence.

 

I like your posts. This thought is the launching point for understanding how life got here. We run back to the earliest known monocytes, and the leap from non-living to living isn't nearly as great as the Denialists would hope. The difference is, we are looking for truth about nature and they are looking for a way to justify an obsolete belief.

Allow me to interpose my thoughts onto your own:

. . . then you're relying on ancient superstition and approaching the question from a position of functional illiteracy instead of one of the minimum standards of, say, a high school education.

Working from even a marginal amount of education, the "enquiring mind" would rather quickly converge on the following facts:

(1) the word "God" and the notion of "God" is a cultural artifact that originated in antiquity
(2) ancient people invented "God" to explain phenomena for which they had no science
(3) science is now available to address the phenomena for which ancient people were clueless
(4) most notably, "special creation" was disproved by Darwin at Galapagos
(5) the ancient explanations requiring "God" to explain phenomena are rendered obsolete
(6) "God" is rendered obsolete without "special creation"
(7) science supersedes "God" as the authoritative source for explaining natural phenomena
(8) creationism is quack pseudoscience at best and interference with opinion and policy at worst

 

It's interestig how God's involvement with "His creation" has changed through the ages. To primitive man the gods controlled the lightning. In the Middle Ages God killed your cattle, though He seemed to need witches to help Him. Modern primitive man - e.g. the creationist - has practically given up on the idea of God doing anything demonstrable in our lives and has relegated Him to the ancient past, which they seem to think is immune from examinaton.

 

There is a way that the notion of "God" can be accepted by sciences and various religions, including behavioural, psychological, physics, theosophic, and all the other fields of intellectual belief and thought.
I raised this issue years ago with a series of articles titled amongst other things:

• God redefined ~ an evolving collective and instinctive and reactive inteligence.
• Evolution ~ Goal focussed evolution towards sustainable success. EOSS.
• Evolution by naturally derived collective intelligent design.
• The personification of self in the collective ego mirror. [your personal God]
• How interconnnected-ness via the universal constant of Gravity, allows collective consciousness, unconsciousness, awareness, intelligence to manifest.
• How religion and science can be exactly the same field and entirely material and evidenced.

Essentially it is the evolution of Panthiest thinking that provides the "Golden mean" and brings all conflict into the one harmonious philosophy [science]
The conceptualisation starts with the basic premise that the entire universe is a living entity, whether self-animated [eg. humans] or not [eg. Planet Earth], and then seeks to show why this is so.


* note: most branches of sciences in universities fall under the "Faculty of Philosophy"

 

It is really only a matter of seeing "the universe" "God" for what it is and not for what you wish it to be. The religious notion of God could be redefined or clarified as the personification of your existential self in the collective ego, there fore the worship of self [ self serving interest and motivation ] can be understood as the worship of God in reflection.

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There is no doubt that self worship is a huge part of all human behaviour. The notion of God as a personification of self is certainly not new.
"In his image God created Man" ... however it could be just as easilly stated that "In his image Man created God" ultimately demonstrating his desire to worship himself in reflection. The essence of the Narcissistic personality ~God Complex.

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Narcissism - wiki
As Narcissus gazed lovingly at his own reflection being disposed to such vanity, he discovered the divine in the form of "love of self" and immediately sought to become what he discovered about himself...that being God.
The birth of the God Complex and Mans quest for supremacy over nature and himself has led mankind through out history and will continue to do so whilst man continues to breath. ~qq 21/01/2012
*Narcissu by Caravaggio - c/wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder


Evolution by design can be more correctly founded if one applies the notion of instinctive collective intelligence. A bit like standing on a hillside and looking down on the megatropolis of Sao Paulo, Brasil and noting the collective creativity, synergy and organic symmetry of unbridalled and unregulated housing developement and road networks with in a massive city of millions. A showcase of collective intelligence [ and chaos I might add

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]

A collective construct performed entirely instinctively/intutively.

 

Narcissism is the dominant trait of the psychopathic personality.
Religiosity is another.
Lying, in this case about the fact of evolution, counts as another.
Feelings of special worth, e.g., "the chosen people", "the true religion" is also a syndrome.

 

so to is elitism, and delusioned thoughts of superiority, grandure and evangelistic cravings to force others into a particular belief system whether justified by evidence or not.
A belief that facts are indeed facts when they are not facts but only qualified speculations.
Yep the narcassistic personality runs deep ...

The ego is quite naturally vain and therefore narcasistic. It loves it's own reflection so to speak and when it doesn't see it, it seeks to change the reflection until it does see it. [reference to: Will to power - Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900]
However most contemporary psychologist would recommend that it is not the reflection of the nacassistic ego that needs to change but the source.

Example: The ambitious craving nightmare/situation for the ego of a creative painter is a blank canvas.

 

Primitive people were at least not guilty of willful ignorance. They had no science to explain phenomena and they certainly had no clue about human origins.

Modern primitives are deliberate. They purposely ignore the evidence that is just a mouse-click away.

They are clinging to a fantasyland constructed for them most often at 'the age of reason". Sunday school would be an example, where kids are coloring manger scenes and perhaps even the crucifixion.

Holding on to a fantasy forever must cause a mental strain, and one that probably foments personality disorders. This is why I think we often see the fundamentalists expressing antisocial traits, such as racism, xenophobia and lack of empathy for the poor.

The personality disorders can be seen in their patronizing politicians, church leaders, and media pundits who tend to exude a grandiosity and self-righteousness, usually at the expense of some minority group.

Their last defense is to strike back at the educational system that indoctrinated them, to attempt to restore it to its Sunday School days. They are relegated to attacking the teaching of evolution, banning textbooks, and regulating how teachers can discuss topics such as human evolution or global warming.

This idea you bring up, that they immunize the past from examination, is an interesting way to characterize their resistance to the teaching of evolution. It makes me wonder how they could ever launch a similar crusade against the teaching of history, a subject which also tends to undermine their glorification of myth.

 

All of which relate to narcissism. It's a disorder.

A reference to the modern day Anabaptists, no doubt.

You mean fundamentalism. Speaking of belief vs fact, did you come up with an explanation for the origin of Darwin's finches?

Yet you were advocating for it.

Vanity appears to be the central cause of resisting the teaching of evolution. The vain persona can not accept the reality that humans descended from animals.

Not sure what you mean. A shrink would nail a narcissist in a heartbeat.

Darwin's finches:

Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends

Were they specially created?

The problem with special creation of the finches is that they were created on the archipelago. However, it did not exist until only recently. How then did they come to exist? This is the door Darwin opened when he arrived at Galapagos.

Should we hide this evidence from school kids or not? That is the crux of this whole thread.

 

No, it's a function of the ego that when manifested in extreme forms can become a disorder. [ depending on what you consider the definitin of disorder to be in it's social context.]

If you ever studied agnotism and philosophy you would know that there is no such animal called facts.

Based on your rudimentary understanding I guess you would say that but alas this is not the case. Just merely describing an opinion [ not fact ] concerning preexisting nature of all human ego.

True, how ever, some will find the notion of being a some stage in a theoretical evolutionary scheme of things just mere hydrogen atoms or slime in a puddle somewhere, as offensive to their ego.
Vanity or nacassism is the reason for all wars, all conficts, all arguement and debate. [and agreement if you wish to take it further]
you really need to get the facts about fact factually factual.... seriously!

yep see this unnamed posters statement as an example: