moonflake.wordpress.com — Good Idea: include Richard Dawkins in the Time 100, the list of the 100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world. Bad Idea: get Michael Behe to write the profile.
May 9, 2007 View in Crawl 4
madhighlandcowMay 10, 2007
"It's a parasite that is completely human-based. It is not part of the food chain. The physical viruses you cite are that -- a competing life form."A lot of study has been made of memes and the way they interact. From what I remember, there is an interesting correlation between the way viruses exchange RNA and the way memes borrow ideas from each other (The biblical flood is probably a reproduction of a section of the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, for example). So I believe that the viral analogy is actually better than you give credence to."I don't think any atheist scientist would claim that religion began as an external virus"That's not what I meant to imply. I said that religion behaves like a parasite. It spreads between hosts without necessarily bringing any net benefit to the hosts. "Defining a person's beliefs as a parasite (an inherently negative term) serves to manipulate the people who read it and believe it and is by definition unscientific (in that it places a value judgement on something -- religion's job)."No. I argue that Religion has usurped that job from the conscience of the individual. Science exists in part to provide the evidence needed to describe reality and make informed, ethical decisions as to how we are to interact with it. It is far easier to say 'If it is God's will' than to say 'No, I will not do this because it is unethical.'
jm9206755May 10, 2007
@slaveboyYay. Another moron for the block list. It's getting full today.........
trevorbradleyMay 10, 2007
I agree that sometimes this discussion degrades into outright mockery, and that's a bad thing.The question is: are all beliefs worthy of respect? Or as Dawkins' paraphrases in his book "I'll respect your beliefs in the same way I'd respect the statement that your wife is beautiful, and your children are intelligent."I'd love to think that the absence of respect was different from mockery, but (a) many people don't interpret them differently and (b) a lot of what goes on here is in a mocking tone (e.g. uses of "moron", comparing people to chimpanzees. People can be mistaken, and passionate about their beliefs, that doesn't make them unintelligent.)For the record, I was strongly in the permanent agnosticism camp for about 15 years until about 6 months ago when I started playing some of the games here <a class="user" href="http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/">http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/</a> , particularly the "Philisophical Health Check" which really got me thinking. Today I'd classify myself as a 6 on Dawkins' scale, a de facto atheist.If you're agnostic and you haven't read (or listened to) "The God Delusion" you owe it to yourself to do so, at the very least so that we can use a common language when discussing these issues.
nitsujMay 10, 2007
"Nope, you'd expect them to be hydrologically sorted (it was a watery catastrophe after all), also, ecological zoneation and mobility would play a role."Hydrologically sorted? <a class="user" href="http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH561_2.html">http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH561_2.html</a>Don't you think it's curious how, for example, many creatures are found in the Cretaceous beds but not the Triassic beds and vise versa?""What you do find are distinct kinds of creatures in separate layers stretching over measured large time expanses."Measured how exactly?"Radiometric dating."Well, as mentioned, some fossilisation would've occured after the flood, but certainly the majority would've occurred during the flood, which means that most of those things fossilised would've lived at the same time. Why is this a problem?"Let's take a small example. Earlier beds do not contain fossils of flowering plants - these evolved later. Many insects, bees for example, are completely dependent on the pollen from flowers. Bees evolved after/during flower evolution. Do you see the problem?"The evidence is everywhere for massive hydraulic catastrophe, but the old-earthers like to write it all off as "local"."The Earth has undergone enormous geological transformations. For example in just the UK where I live has evidence of tropical rain-forests (fossils, coal), deserts (gypsum deposits) and ice age. There's no evidence I'm aware of for a global flood. To explain away the entire of the Earths geological history in terms of a flood that happened a few thousand years ago doesn't make much sense."Or Old Earthers scrabbling around trying to make reality fit with their belief that nothing can make itself into something (excepting that 90% of that something is completely indetectable)? Or that frogs can turn into princesses given the kiss of time."They do? That's news to me. We're still at a very early stage of discovering the origins of the universe. I'll got for complexity arising out of natural physical laws over time because there's evidence for it - we can observe it happening. You don't have a single jot of evidence for a god creator being(s) - take your pick from history which one."Ah yes, "may have evolved". Gather round children and I'll read you the story of how the tiger got it's stripes. Once apon a time..."Yes, "may have evolved". Point is we don't know for sure and, really, it's ok to admit it. And don't think for a minute that the bible gives any kind of satisfaction in the origins of life - how did God supposedly create Adam and Eve? Magic? How does that work exactly?"Well, it seems like a good experimental test to me."It isn't. We still don't fully understand the conditions of the time that multicellular lifeforms evolved in. Until we find out more we can hardly even contemplate recreating such an experiment."Lindahl, T., Instability and decay of the primary structure of DNA, Nature 362(6422):709–715, 1993."Thanks, I'll check it out.
lordbyr0nMay 10, 2007
I find it a little immature when someone preaches there belief but is not willing to listen when others preach theirs. Religions pick and choose what they believe based on the times. How many people were slaughtered in the name of God during the crusades? How many cultures have been wiped of the face of the earth for having different belief systems? I find religion as contradicting and hypocritical. They holds a hidden evil that followers are blind to. I also find that religions can hold good moral messages but are far from a way to live your life especially in todays world. Religions hurt society as a whole while they try to empower God or a higher power. Whatever happened to good will towards men?
bigblu3May 10, 2007
Love being an emotion is not easily proven to exist but their is evidence that supports the existence of love. Namely self sacrifice. Husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, and lovers do it all the time. Sacrificing their own needs for the good of the other. Now where is the evidence that god exists?
treadnotonmeMay 11, 2007
imperium2000 writes: "Love the use of all the made up ID and creationist key words(variation of a theme? What the hell is that?). Since evolution is not related to abiogenesis, your arguments against it is also irrelavent."Sorry about the confusion on the "made up" words. The term "molecules to man" is quite prevalent in the literature, but granted, as far as I know, I've made up the term "variation on a theme" in regard to evolution. I've used this term because it seems to me to be more descriptive than the term with which you're probably familiar, "microevolution". I figured that my examples in parentheses would have made it clear "what the hell" was meant.To be more specific, I use the term "variation on a theme" to describe relatively small changes we see in organisms: a short dog breed evolving over time into a tall dog breed, or light-colored moths evolving into dark moths, or short, three-toed horses evolving into tall, one-toed horses, or a mid-skin-toned human ancestor evolving over generations into "red and yellow, black and white" (reference to a Christian children's song, for those not familiar with it). All of these examples of "evolution" are indeed well-established; I daresay no creationist would claim otherwise.Two things should be noted however about this "variation on a theme".1) This variation is often transient, reverting back to the original form after some generations. For example, Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands have been observed to "evolve" from short-beaked to long-beaked back to short-beaked over just a couple of generations, mostly due to environmental conditions. This indicates that the variation is not due to genetic change, but merely to a change in the expression of those genetics.2) This variation is almost always at the expense of losing genetic information. Examples of an increase in genetic information (which is necessary for molecules-to-man (macroevolution)) are extremely rare and disputable at best. Cave fish losing eyes over generations, or an ancestral dog splitting its genetic variety into two descendant lines so that one line loses the short-hair gene and one loses the long-hair gene are examples of variation due to a loss of genetic information. If molecules-to-man is true, a gain of genetic information needs to be demonstrated, going from none in a rock, to some in an amoeba, to more in a fish, to a lot in a monkey. (Unless, of course, you want to "front-load" the first living organism with all the genetic information needed to produce the vast variety of life today so that no new information needs to be produced as life evolves. But then I think you're going to have even bigger problems.) Darwinists freely extrapolate from this micro-evolution (variation-on-a-theme) to macro-evolution (molecules-to-man); creationists absolutely agree that micro-evolution occurs; they disagree on the macro-evolution.You claim that evolution is not related to abiogenesis (the origin of life), and that my arguments against it are irrelevant. If you go back and read my post, I made no claims whatsoever about abiogenesis, although, to be fair, the term "molecules to man" does imply abiogenesis. So let me be more precise. Assuming we start with some simple form of life, ignoring where that came from, you still have the problem of generating lots of new genetic information in order to evolve from that simple life to the complex life in all its variety we see today. It's quite trivial to demonstrate micro-evolution in the lab, or in the field, or in the fossil record; it's quite another matter to demonstrate change from a single form (or a few simple forms) of life to today's complex and varied forms, and its that type of demonstration you need in order to convert creationists to evolutionists. Substantial experiments and observations of new, functional genetic information would go a long way toward accomplishing this task, but so far, the bulk of experiments and observations have demonstrated that new genetic information does not arise without intelligent intervention.Also notice in the above, we ignored where that first simple life came from. It's sleight-of-hand to say that the origin of life has nothing to do with evolution, because life had to come from somewhere. Is it at this point that a staunch evolutionist invokes an intelligent designer, or is it at this point that s/he says, "Hey, look at those neat balloons, OVER THERE -- oh, look over here now, we have Life. Now evolution can start its job." What's the point in kicking an intelligent designer out of the development of life forms if you have to invoke one (or some other miracle) for the formation of life to begin with?
nitsujMay 11, 2007
"Darwinists freely extrapolate from this micro-evolution (variation-on-a-theme) to macro-evolution (molecules-to-man); creationists absolutely agree that micro-evolution occurs; they disagree on the macro-evolution."That's like believing in inches but not miles.You should look into the evolution of dolphins and whales. In particular, whale evolution is well studied. Here it's more obvious for you to see - a once land mammal evolving into a sea dwelling form. Would you consider this to be 'micro' evolution? Drastic physiological changes have altered the creatures form despite it retaining certain mammal characteristics.There's no doubt that whales were once land dwelling either - take the cases of vestigial limbs. Occasionally a whale is born with a limb marking a genetic throwback. You could argue this is some kind of loss of genetic information but then look at what characteristics a whale has evolved in order to be suited to it's environment."Also notice in the above, we ignored where that first simple life came from. It's sleight-of-hand to say that the origin of life has nothing to do with evolution, because life had to come from somewhere."It's not sleight of hand. Abiogenesis is not addressed in the scientific theory of evolution. It's as simple as that."What's the point in kicking an intelligent designer out of the development of life forms if you have to invoke one (or some other miracle) for the formation of life to begin with?"You don't have to invoke one. There is simply no evidence for an intelligent designer or designers. Just because we don't yet have the full details on how life got started doesn't mean we can cop out and invoke magical causes. That approach has been proven to be folly time and time again throughout history.
zarathustra2k1May 11, 2007
Have you read abovegod.com or timecube.com ? I'm sure you'll find them fascinating...
diggerphelpsMay 11, 2007
Richard Dawson is an assh**e, though.I always hated him on Family Feud.