“As a scientist, I’d like to say that the currently accepted scientific theory is evolution. But, some competing ideas have been proposed, such as ID and FSMism, and discussion to include one should include the other, as these ideas are equally valid.“
– Mark Zurbuchen, Ph.D.
“As a medical practitioner and scientist, I wholeheartedly believe that every theory and hypothesis needs full consideration and explanation with formal ratification by peer review. We have a duty to inform our schools and presumably pasta should form a staple part of our educational diet.“
– Dr. A. Macintyre (UK)
“Letting the religious right teach ID in schools is like letting the Marines teach poetry in advanced combat training. As a scientist, I see these the relevancy between the two sets to be equal. If Kansas is going to mess up like this, the least it can do is not be hypocritical and allow equal time for other alternative “theories” like FSMism, which is by far the tastier choice.”
– J. Simon, PhD
“One of the hardest things to do as a scientist is to put my personal beliefs aside when discussing matters of science. So as a professional, I have to say that both forms of Intelligent Design – ID and ID-FSM are equally valid and if intelligent design is taught in schools, equal time should be given to the FSM theory and the non-FSM theory. But, speaking personally now, it seems to me the FSM theory is MUCH more plausable than the non-FSM ID theory, because it is the only one of the two that takes into account all the discrepancies between ID and measureable objective reality.”
– Professor Douglas Shaw, Ph.D
“In discussing competing theories, if one is to present ID then it is only fair and logical to teach other theories with commensurate evidence. Based on Mr. Henderson’s letter, it is clear that the FSM theory has evidence comparable in weight to ID. As a scientist and professor, it is often difficult to present differing opinions in an unbiased way. However, it is important to the student to be exposed to these ideas to form their own opinions. This comes right out of the handbook of the ID purporters: present the different “theories” and let the listener decide. If those in favor of ID are so convinced, then they should not be concerned that the presentation of the FSM theory would serve to undermine the credibility of ID. “
– Elizabeth Garrett-Mayer, PhD
“At one time, I believed as the Aztecs did, that the universe was created by two gods, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca who attacked and ripped apart Hungry Woman to create the universe. Then I believed, as the Moriori do, that the universe was created when Papa and her husband Rangi hugged and bore children, and were subsequently separated by their son Tane who let light shine between them. However, my views have been swayed by the substantial evidence that the earth and universe was actually created relatively recently by the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). I am firmly convinced that the evidence supporting this depiction of the origins of life, the universe, and everything has many of the trappings of science, and I therefore support the inclusion of FSM creation evidence in the Kansas science curriculum and standards.“
– Sebastian Wren, Ph.D
“ One of the most exciting developments in fundamental physics in the last twenty years has been the development of so-called “String Theory.” In String Theory, all fundamental sub-atomic particles are visualized and described mathematically as microscopic vibrating strings. Although as yet unproven, many physicists believe that String Theory has the potential to become the long-sought “Theory of Everything,” through which the fundamental physical nature of all matter and forces will become understood.
Obviously String Theory IS correct, although misnamed (a secular humanist conspiracy perhaps?). As NOODLE Theory clearly unambiguously reveals, He has created the fundamental subatomic particles that form all matter in this universe in His own quivering image! You, me, the Earth, the stars…everything in the universe…are all built of trillions of tiny jiggling noodles, microscopic copies of our Divine Saucy Maker. Truly He is everywhere and in all things!
Boy-oh-Boyardi and Ramen!“
–Steve Lawrence, PhD
“As a scientist I believe that when presented with a new idea every possibility should be considered so we can eventually find the truth. It would be very biased if the only possibilities presented would be regulated by some authority. As a scientist I am biased towards the theory of evolution, but this does not mean that everyone should be forced to only learn this and believe this. Putting this aside, I feel if the government feels the need to regulate what students need to learn, then all ideas should be taught in school. Not only Intelligent Design (ID) should be taught, but the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) should also be taught. In my scientific opinion when comparing the two theories, FSM theory seems to be more valid then the classic ID theory. There is more data to back FSM then I have ever seen for ID. The graph which was presented should alone more convincing then anything ID has ever presented. I endorse the FSM theory.“
–Afshin Beheshti, PhD
“As a scienctist, I think that ID is a form of pseudoscience–nothing more, nothing less. Pseudosciences lack the well-designed and carefully-interpreted experiments which characterize the true sciences. ID is popular because it provides the general public with an easily understood “answer” to nature’s complexity. Why is it human nature to try to fill the gaps in science with some form of a deity? Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, in his response the Challenger disaster, wrote, “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” It is too bad that many in the USA have fallen into the ID trap, and are making emotional rather than logical decisions.
That being said, and the more I consider ID and the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) theory, the FSM theory has a lot going for it. First, it should satisfy even the most ardent ID detractors. Secondly, since everyone needs to eat and to believe in something, the FSM theory fulfills these desires. Finally, FSM neatly ties together the many ideas about the creation of the universe. I plan on exposing my students to the FSM theory over a pasta dinner. “
–Elizabeth Cowles, PhD
Continue to Academic Endorsements – page 2
Several “authorities” have attempted to “refute” Pastafarianism by “pointing out” that “spaghetti was invented by man in the 12th century.” What these “contrarians” fail to realize is that spaghetti was created by man in FSM’s image. Consider the eating of spaghetti to be an act of communion with FSM.
Ramen, insalata verde.
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This is outrageous!!!
This is an insult to religion – all the talk about spaghetti and NOT a SINGLE WORD (!!!!!) about divine intervention of Chianti (!!!!!) You are false prophets! Half the truth is worse than the outright lie. Where are young and brave ones to declare war on the rotten whore of heresy? Only the union of spaghetti and Chianti will produce a spark of True Faith!
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I was listening to Richard Dawkins speaking and he said two things:
1. He said –It is entirely possible that life could have possibly been seeded by aliens. So,a major atheistic evolutionists is saying something akin to the pasta in the sky theory. Albeit a very intelligent pastaman. If one man calls the pastaman God and one an alien pastaman from another planet. It is still an intelligence beyond our imagining. And still a form of intelligent design even if it is just in our case, and evolution did happen some where else. Dawkins is still validating the possibility of intelligent design for our specific instance of earth as a valid hypothesis.
2. Dawkins also said that we are finite and determined. Therefore we are merely the product of our environment. The information that is contained in our brains is the sum total of the chemical reactions that have made up the composition of our minds and nothing else. We are not actually thinking we are just recording the collisions of atoms. Ironically the spaghetti that you have eaten could have caused any conclusions about the world just as much as reading a book or hearing a lecture. It is all just a random collection of collisions. It has no meaning it is all absolutely absurd. Information has no meaning. I contain no more information in my brain than is recorded in the collisions of dust and light on the surface of the moon. Who is to say that pasta is more important than man? Who is to say that your collection of collisions is right and mine is wrong? Is there such a thing as the wrong chemical composition? If my brain has one composition and yours another who cares? There is nothing wrong with my brain chemistry, it merely is, so is yours. They are determined and unchangeable. We are both made of carbon molecules mine are just in a slightly different order. It is all absurd in a closed system. In a closed system there is no morality or right and wrong. It is only fashion, caprice, and absurdity. As the Apostle Paul said “let us eat [pasta] for tomorrow we die”
RSW
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@ – Dr. Y,
My preference is for Pinot Noir, and I have so stated a number of times past in other threads on this site. Other knowledgeable Pastafarians have definitively stated that Heaven is Heaven, and that the Beer volcanoes will dispense your beverage of choice. Since I have stated often that my communion meal of spaghetti, meatballs and marinara includes said Pinot Noir, and I have never been taken to task by any doyen of this faith, I presume that the choice is Fit, Kosher, Holy, or otherwise approved. I believe that when you and I dine together at the “beer” volcano we shall lift our glasses together joyfully, yours with chianti, and mine with pinot, and we will be at peace.
RAmen
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Sorry, that should have been, “Chianti” and “Pinot”.
To all Pastafarians,
We’ve gotten a nice mention in yesterday’s New York Times. I’d like to share it with all of you:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html?_r=2&hp
RAmen
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@ Robert (Dumbfounded) Post #879
“Sorry, but to take it too far is too much.” ….thats kinda the whole point bubba. Have you seen the extent that organized religions have gone to? No matter how you slice it and dice it, or cherry pick what suits you, the fact remains that religion has been and still is responsible for multitudes of deaths throughout history. You believe what you will, but you and your kin please keep your misguided, reality blinded, simple minded fairy tales out of public fora and keep in your multi million dollar hovels where it belongs.
…and while Im at it, brainwashing your children into the cult of your choice should be outlawed. Kids should have the freedom to choose after they have had a proper education and not before.
All hail the FSM!
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#894 -Salvation Truth
You should really should read through this discussion thread…read all of it.
“For my part, my Christian beliefs are almost entirely based on the eyewitness testimony of Paul the apostle.”
http://www.venganza.org/2006/10/18/for-my-part-my-christian-beliefs/
p.s.Just re-read that whole thread..:@
If any of you are reading, a big Hello and RAmen to those dedicated Pirates who contributed, especially J, Aussie (Jingles), Davey, OEJ, NowtheworldhasMeaning, RAT…too many others to mention…
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How do you teach kids in an unbiased way? By not repressing alternative views from schools like ID do you think we are getting an unbiased view? How are they supposed to make up their minds when they are never presented the alternative perspective but only the evolutionary one?
Also why don’t we study evolution in Math class? Why is there no studing how 200 odd protiens of a basic life form came together by sheer luck. We could represent this luck with the factorial 200! Which results in a number that is more than all the atoms in the universe. That is some math that I never studied. Did you ever study this in College or was it repressed there too?
Why don’t we study evolution in micro biology class? I guess it doesn’t work their either. Explain the evolution of blood clotting, or the evolution of Mitochondria, never seen it. Give me a link with a peer revied article that explains either the math that I suggested above or either of the systems below…
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@ – RSW, #908,
Very simply, we teach children(Of any age) in an unbiased way by segregating the subjects to be taught into separate categories. Science questions can be dealt with by the scientific method, and are taught in science classes. Religious and theological questions (which are not amenable to the scientific method) are covered in philosophy classes. By your writing, I presume that you have never studied statistics (the mathematics of biology) or calculus (the mathematics of rates of change). There are examples used throughout these math courses which deal with all kinds of growth and change and diminution and extinction. I will hand the torch over to – Wench Nikkiee to answer the questions you raised in your last paragraph, both as to blood clotting and mitochondria, and to links to peer reviewed journal articles. I’ve seen her lists on other threads here, and if you read all of them, you should be able to do modern molecular biology after absorbing the material.
If you can get her to come here and give her list of links, remember, YOU ASKED FOR IT! I’ve seen at least a couple of ill informed blowhards who’ve pretended to know enough about these subjects to put them into a creationist context who’ve been blown away by her knowledge, experience and resources.
Remember that your reversion to fundamentalism is a retreat based on the fear that your eternal guideposts of truth are being attacked. You should purchase and carefully read: “The Battle for God” by Karen Armstrong. The last quarter of the book is filled with notes and references. This other reference is free on line, and you should study it:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Good luck, but you asked for this.
RAmen
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what the fuck do you do with a flying spaghetti monster???
godddd you are fucked in the head. i think you need to lay off the acid. nooo joke. you are fucking crazyyyy dudeeee.
ahahahahaha flying spaghetti monster.
pastafarianism…??? hahahaha pastafairii!
hahaah your fairies!!!!!!
fucks.
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@t – Fuck you pay me. #910,
Sounds like you’ve not been off the acid since 1970. Do you have a real question or a rational, civilized comment?
RAmen
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RSW,
Evolution = scientific theory (i.e. a tested hypothesis)
Religion = Theology
ID = bad science and poor theology
You might like to educate yourself on how evolution works (I find reading helps) rather than make some strange assumptions that it is based on ‘chance’ rather than cumulative process.
Ta.
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plumber bob–
Thanks for your reply, I hope that I don’t sound too much the expert on things. No I am not a statistics expert or anything. It just seems simple probability calculations. That is the probability of the random formation of a cell that will likely have more than 200 parts. Just getting the parts together in the correct order is 200! factorial. That is not even factoring in how the proteins are not supposed to dissolve in the primordial soup of amino acids and other reagents. Likely the probability factors are even higher. If you want to stretch out random luck forming a being as complex as a human the universe could not contain the zeros. Try calculating 1,000,000,000! Sounds like you have studied these things more than me. Please do let me know how this adds up in your mind.
I would like to read the articles and things that others might have. I am not sure I have the time to read all the threads. Is there something I could search for the posts on biology?
Any thoughts on the epistemological arguments? Or the arguments of determinism? If your system is closed how do you know that it reality is what it is don’t we all need to make some presuppositions and start from there? Are not all philosophical systems based on faith presupposition?
I agree with having subjects well segmented, but it is hard to do. I think in a public forum this is really hard to achieve a good balance. As I wouldn’t want my 6th grader going to a class taught by a Wikken without perhaps going to the class with my child. Perhaps there could be opt in courses that parents could decide to send kids to willingly, or like I said attend with them. There are overlaps in subjects that complicate things too, how do you teach business per say without talking about ethics and morality? Science without talking origins. Literature like Shakespeare with out knowing religion? Or US history without dealing with the fact that there were many Fundamentalists Christians that were involved in the framing of our constitution.
It is really hard to secularize things. Even if one does it a statement of belief and an interpretation. By not teaching children things we are teaching as well. It is really hard to make unbiased statements.
I used to live in Greece, and they don’t really believe in unbiased reporting, because they know everyone has a bias. They believe it is just better to know what bias the person has so you can understand from where they are coming. I think that is an honest approach.
I appreciate your thoughts.
Peace,
RSW
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Oh, anyone have thoughts about my Dawkins-aliens-ID comment. Perhaps there are comments about that elsewhere as well. I am new to this site.
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plumbbob —
followed the link. Is there something specific you would like me to read? There was a lot there. I agreed with the statements that authoritarianism is wrong. Jesus himself said “do not lord it over others” and “he who wants to be the greatest must be servant of all”. I have been hurt by many Christians who have failed to live by this. I would venture to say that I have hurt others myself by not following this and acting inappropriate when I have had authority. Our hearts are very deceptive, and we don’t always work from clean motives. Jesus was very upset by hypocrites, and his harshest words were against those who used religion as cover for evil. There are a lot of slimy lawyers out there who use law that were meant for good for their own selfish gain. The solution is not to get rid of laws but to help people live in kind just and unselfish ways. I think we all want this. And if we are honest we all struggle to live it.
RSW
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“If you want to stretch out random luck forming a being as complex as a human the universe could not contain the zeros”. Here, again is the glaring hole in your hypothesis (or anti-hypothesis). It is based on luck. Evolutionary theory is not based on luck, and it certainly doesn’t jump from nothing to a complex life form in a single bound. It is based on the opposite. The incremental and gradual cumulative process of inheritance and species diversification. Replication, variation, and selection works to produce adaptations and speciation. This is a continual process rather than a punctuated event, and as such each subsequent adaptation or divergence is selected upon. This very process of incremental cumulative evolution works against the assertion you put forward that random luck or chance are the drivers, as the process itself serves to make the probability against complex life arising less and less.
While I haven’t articulated this as well as I could, I fail miserably to understand why ID supporters who claim that evolution in schools presents a bias cannot see the hypocrisy of their own assertions. Why only read literature produced by authors with an agenda and a very poor understanding of science or biology, and not literature on evolution? Isn’t that one whopping big bias? If ID apologists were to take the time to research, they might realize that all of the supposed “problems” with evolutionary theory aren’t actually problems at all. Take the ‘human eye’ argument for example.
It also seems many ID’ers like to try and mix up physics or cosmology with biology. Of course biology follows the laws of physics, but they are different beasts so to speak. If you are to take the Antony Flew line of logic (i.e. diesm, where he focuses on ultimate explanations of natural laws (and accepts evolution btw)) then you will find at least more respect than you will receive from following the superstitious and pseudo-science arguments of ID. At the end of the day evolution is both a scientific theory and a fact. This duality might be confusing to some but think of it like the theory of gravity. It is both a theory and a fact. As a national from outside of America, I cannot help but feel sorry for the rationalists and skeptics in the USA who have to face such absurd and backward arguments everyday. It is indeed a bit of a joke to the rest of the world that creationism dressed up in a cheap tuxedo (ID) has had such traction among large numbers of Americans, and this is unfortunate.
Below is a link to an article about the International Society for Science and Religion’s rejection of ID.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6706
http://www.issr.org.uk/id-statement.asp
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@ – RSW #213, 215,
The whole book is useful and should be read. I see that – Wench Nikkiee has not come back to give you her lists of links to references on the reality and usefulness of evolution in biology, pharmacy, medicine, anthropology, and other modern sciences. If you start as a freshman in college with courses in math and science you will develop the background to understand the workings of our modern culture. Those who deny science, and deny things like evolution should, to be consistent, refuse medical treatments beyond those of about 1926. You would be limited to streptomycin and a few sulfa drugs. You have undoubtedly been hearing about the recent influenza problem. Without our understanding of evolution, we would be no more knowledgeable than we were in 1918 when millions of people died of influenza.
One of the things that people must come to terms with is that we all will die. If there is an after-life(for which there is no evidence), and if there is a just deity(for which there is no evidence) then rewards will be based on real performance now. If the deity is not just, all bets are off.
RAmen
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Edward, thanks for your reply, but neither of you nor Plumbbob have answered my original question how do you get 200 proteins to randomly come together? The odds are still 200! to 1. There is not enough time and molecules in the universe to make it happen. All the evidence after that you stack up after this door is bankrupt until you can line these up.
Additionally, the odds do increasingly stack against life. If to roll a dice once and get six it is 1/6 twice in a row it is 1/12. Simularly as we add mutations and combinations it increases the probability. Have we seen anything but extinction in recorded history? If there is momentum towards death and extinction why should we think that there is some force encouraging life to develop or evolve in the past. Seems that probability is stacked against life not for it.
Each life form even if it is a gradual step needs to make that step by a random series of mutations. These mutations are blind and most often fatal. Natural selection is not a positive force it just recognizes when a random mutation developed a positive benefit. Then you have the factors that that new development isn’t merely eaten by a bigger fish, and other environmental factors. The odds are staggering. I would welcome read an article detailing the math of all this. Math is a very precise science, much more so than biology.
Solve for me the 200! problem and we can go from there. If you can’t get to square one the rest of the arguments are moot. The whole realm of how complex information comes from nothing but random mutations is a real problem for evolution.
In my earlier post I mentioned that even Richard Dawkins supports the possibility of ID (He did not use those terms). He mentioned on video that life on earth could have been seeded by aliens. I suppose the aliens he is postulating were intelligent, ergo, ID is a real theory that real scientists consider.
Thanks for your comments.
RSW
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Plumber Bob
If I have a chance I will try and read some more. I agree that the abuse of power is one of the biggest evils of our day. Africa’s problems are in large part because of this factor.
Yes, If God is not just we are all in a lot of trouble. The problem is if there is no God there is no justice. Again to paraphrase Dawkins “Evil is not a category that exists”. If there is no evil aren’t discussions of justice irrelevant as well? I appreciate Dawkin’s honesty. I have heard people talk on this site about improving things? What does that mean other than each person is free to do what he things improvement is. I might be an animal activist and think that humans are a danger to society. I might love bar-b-que so animals are for eating. Or I might be a Jeffry Dalmer. What is the difference when there are no absolute standards?
Thoughts?
RSW
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RSW,
I’ll admit that I don’t know as much about molecular biology as I would like, but I would like a little clarification on what you are saying, because it seems to have a few flaws in my mind. It seems like your calculation on probabilities is based on the assumption that the only possible outcome that would result in life is that particular sequence which did in fact happen to produce life as we currently know it, and I believe this is incorrect – let me explain what I mean.
You are basing your number of 200! to one based on the idea that only one sequence of 200 proteins, out of all the possible sequences out there, would produce life. I’ll admit that I don’t know if this is true or not, but you go on to say that “as we add mutations and combinations it increases the probability”, and I know that is dead wrong. It is true that if things did not line up exactly as they had, life would not be what we have now, but there would still be life. Let me use an example – let’s say you flip a coin 200 times, and look back on your recorded history of flips. What is the probability of you getting that particular series of flips when you flip a coin? That’s right, 200! to 1. Will you then declare your result is impossible and thus a God must have moved your coin? No, because you were going to get a sequence of 200 flips, and of all the possibilities, that just happened to be the one you got. It’s the same with evolution. Yes, looking back, the chances of evolution taking the exact course it did are astronomically small, but once those 200 proteins were assembled, evolution was going to take a course (the coin was going to be flipped) and something was going to happen. Could evolution have taken a different course? Heck yes! Does that mean that life would not be the same as what we know? Heck yes! Does that mean there would be no life at all? Heck no. The coin has been flipped (however many times) and this is the sequence we got.
Also, to address you question of “Have we seen anything but extinction in recorded history?”, the answer is a definitive YES – there are new viruses and bacteria that are evolving all the time. If AIDS existed since the beginning of time, why did it not infect anyone until the late 1900’s? Furthermore, humans have created new species in the lab as well as with selective breeding. There are many domesticated plants that can no longer cross-pollinate with the ancestors that we bred them from, and there are dog breeds that can no longer mate with each other, or with any breed of wild dog or wolf. Of course, now you will say these don’t count because humans were the “intelligent designer”, but if humans can do it (not all that intelligently in some cases – the Irish potato famine being an excellent example) why couldn’t other species/weather conditions/environmental factors have done it in millions? (Plus, you were asking about recorded history, and surprise, surprise, humans keep better records of the species they intentionally change).
Additionally, you claim that mutations are “most often fatal” – this is untrue; mutations are most often harmless – much of out DNA is unused, and a mutation in these unused portions mean nothing. Furthermore, “fatal” would apply only to the individual with the mutation, not the whole species. If a mutation is disadvantageous, the species as a whole will not be changed because the individual with it will die out, only mutations that are useful in some way will get spread thought the species.
Finally, you claim that “real scientists” consider ID as a theory – well, of course they do. I personally believe that it is possible that were were all created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster – I just can’t figure out a way to test it scientifically. ID can and is being “considered” but until it can be tested, it’s a philosophical theory and not a scientific one.
RAmen,
Sarah
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RSW,
I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to those conclusions if I were you. Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean you should jump to superstitious explanations. There is a wealth of information out there dealing with the questions you are asking (I will have a look through some literature I have on hand and try and get back to you), and I am at pains that I cannot articulate to you the answers in a very meaningful way but I need to pass your question on to someone better qualified than I. I suspect you are again confusing physics questions with biology ones and would thus be better answered by someone in those fields. I am an archaeologist, and my partner is a psychologist so I can only answer immediately from my own (and her) knowledgebase, but I can state that evolution is an observable fact through research in our disciplines.
I have heard arguments such as yours, and I think it is usually called the “language” of DNA problem. These supposed problems actually have nothing to do with evolution but rather origin of life/natural laws questions. I think you will find you are comparing apples with oranges in this case and hense I can and will certainly reject your claim that “If you can’t get to square one the rest of the arguments are moot”. That is basically saying something akin to “if you cannot solve problem ‘X’ in cosmology, than you cannot comment on any observation in biology”. A completely absurd assertion.
Again your other comments seem to view natural selection and evolution in terms of a brand new species just “popping up” out of nowhere and having to compete with the “bigger fish” and environment. Again, not evolution at all. You also state: “Natural selection is not a positive force it just recognizes when a random mutation developed a positive benefit”. So? no one said it was positive, or negative for that matter, just a proccess.
Here again your logic is flawed:
“Additionally, the odds do increasingly stack against life. If to roll a dice once and get six it is 1/6 twice in a row it is 1/12. Simularly as we add mutations and combinations it increases the probability. Have we seen anything but extinction in recorded history? If there is momentum towards death and extinction why should we think that there is some force encouraging life to develop or evolve in the past. Seems that probability is stacked against life not for it.”
1. Odds do not stack against life through cumulative proccess. Your dice analogy assumes reseting of probability from a static point (i.e. the act of rolling the dice). This is not the case. It is not a series of periodic throws, but a proccess of building upon the foundations of the previous form which built upon the foundations of the previous form which built upon the foundations of the previous form etc. etc. etc. Thus it is always working rather than ‘resetting’ like your dice analogy and thus effecting probability.
2. You allusion to “recorded history” belies the fact that you fail to be able to think of anything outside of short periods of time based on a few human lifespans, whereas evolution works on the geological timescale. This is not a failure of evolution, but rather your own imagination. Of course we’ve seen things other than extinction in prehistory. We’ve seen species evolve. That is what the fossil record is. And remember, you are dealing with the geological timescale (i.e. human life makes up about the last 1% of time on earth, and that is a period of a few million years (if counting to Homo Erectus) rather than the last two thousand you seem to have in mind (statistically insignificant)).
Lastly, you seem to like throwing red herrings out there like ‘Richard Dawkins supports Alien ID’, which seems to have been taken out of context if you ask me. ID argues that a higher intelligence has had a direct hand to play in the creation of all species individually (i.e. that complex life can’t arise from simple life through evolution and that a magical hand came down from the sky and built the DNA of every species on an individual basis). Dawkins seems to be talking about the ’seeds’ (perhaps read conditions?)of life being planted which then evolved independantly without any interference. A vastly different idea than a step by step and constant controlling of ID.
As I stated, I am sorry I am not better qualified to answer some of your particular questions to do with origins of life vs non-life or natural laws etc. but there is alot of info out there if you’re willing to look. It just seems painfully obvious that you are comparing apples with oranges here.
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RSW,
I am relatively new to this site and was perusing the noodliness when I came across your comments.
Firstly, the chances of rolling two 6s in a row with a standard 6-sided die is 1 in 36, not 1 in 12.
Earlier posts are correct in dismissing your random-chance conceptualization as a legitimate impediment to life or evolution as well. For example, here is a reference to a peer-reviewed scintific paper describing how a self-replicating RNA molecule might have formed on the early Earth using best-estimates of conditions at that time:
Washington, J.W. 2000. The Possible Role of Volcanic Aquifers in Prebiologic Genesis of Organic Compounds and RNA. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere. 30. pp 53-79.
This paper addresses how the necessary compounds might have been expected to mix and react in the right concentrations for RNA to be generated in a prebiologic setting — probability does not impose any problems.
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Here’s what the FSM showed me: “ID” is a concept that the christian fundamentalists came up with to circumvent the separation of church and state that they perceive as a threat. What is taught in school is now and probably always will be touchy, because it involves our kids. I am a proud father of two wonderful boys, so I understand this wholeheartedly. I believe that the questions of religion and God or no God are intensely personal, and that as a parent it is MY responsibility to teach these as I see fit to my children. It is in no way the duty of a teacher or a public school. SCIENCE class is about SCIENCE, and the hallmark of all sciences (as I understand it) is that they require proof. Not fancy words, but independently verifiable facts. If these do not exist, then that’s not science. Discussion should be encouraged, as it entail the ability to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes”, and this is needed to raise kids with empathy. “ID” is a slight of hand that the extremists use to start inculcating kids with their particular brand of answer. The way that I heard it put was “Believing that something as complex as a human could evolve by chance is like saying that a tornado could hit a trailer park and build the Eiffel Tower”. Catchy, huh? On the surface, it seems there’s no way to say no. Well… If the tornado needs help, then this is where it got it, and this is His Son. He was nailed to a tree two thousand years ago because God realized that NOBODY could follow all His rules and that the punishment was death, so he sent his ONLY son to die for your sins. That’s right. You eat the poison and somebody else dies of it. You can do whatever you want. You can go on the internet and leave droll, narrow-minded, filthy messages (see “hate mail”) because you Took Jesus into Your Heart, and you are forgiven. That’s a slippery slope, guys. I personally try really hard to teach my kids about personal responsibility, because that seems to me to have more practical use. I try to raise kids that have the ability to be truly happy, because then I will have contributed something meaningful to the world. Net gain for humanity, so to speak.
Kids are inquisitive, and I encourage them to learn about religion. I allow them to see and share my belief system, and to ask questions about it. Also to disagree, if that’s what they want. I learn quite a lot from their questions, if the truth be told. I also encourage them to learn about evolution, too. The theory isn’t perfect, but examples of it are clear and useful. I also try to teach them that these things all sound great, but humans are human. They will have to answer these questions themselves some day.
Organized religion is to me a fascinating and revealing history of man’s attempt to answer some of its most basic and difficult questions. I have not found a lot of practical use for it. There are important lessons included in it that have practical value, to be sure. However, these are not specific to organized religion. The ability to be taught is the cornerstone of the happiness in my life. It seems to me that fundamentalism closes the door on many forms of learning in a big way.
The bottom line is that the newly repackaged creationism has no place in public schools. Neither does the FSM, for that matter. The cool thing about the FSM is that silly though it is, it is also a brilliant way of illustrating that. That’s why it pisses so many people off.
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BTW- RSM, I’ll sketch this out and you can all criticize it if you want, but 200:1 is short odds. If the Earth has been here for four billion years and it takes a microbe twenty minutes to reproduce… Add that to the fact that the effect of evolution is cumulative rather than instantaneous, and… Quick and dirty, like I said.
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#908
“Why is there no studing how 200 odd protiens of a basic life form came together by sheer luck.”
#913
“That is not even factoring in how the proteins are not supposed to dissolve in the primordial soup of amino acids and other reagents.”
You are aware that proteins (correct spelling) are composed of amino acids…aren’t you? Care to expand on the “other reagents”?
“how do you get 200 proteins to randomly come together? The odds are still 200!The odds are still 200!”
Hi RSW, OK first things first, can you can us a reference (peer reviewed:)as to where/how you came up with this probability of 200 or for your assertion of “200 proteins to randomly come together”?
It’s just that your comments as to this probability assertions arethe common trolling talking point/ canards that I’ve come across from cdesignproponentsists more than a few occasions.
Oh,it’s also “Creationist Claim CB010.2″ on Talk Origins site and well covered there. (on many other reality based sites as well)
Creationist Claim CB010.2:
“The most primitive cells are too complex to have come together by chance. (See also Probability of abiogenesis.)”
See:
“Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations”
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
Borel’s Law and the Origin of Many Creationist Probability Assertions
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/borelfaq.html
These pages include lots of links to the peer reviewed articles for the information given there.
RSW, please read and then get back to us…
Hi Plumber Bob,
Been pretty busy lately, so not a lot of time for these discussions.
Especially very time consuming with moderation delays.
We’ll see..
As to RSW’s request:
“Explain the evolution of blood clotting, or the evolution of Mitochondria, never seen it.”
..well I’m not totally convinced that RSW is not simply a creationist troll trying to aggravate, and waste everyone’s time. Considering that, without even accessing the science journal databases, on an “evolution of blood clotting” search, Google returns:
“about 159,000 for evolution of blood clotting. (0.21 seconds)”
That’s ~159,000 results, including many peer reviewed journal articles…no doubt a number of creo sales propaganda sites included.
A Google search “evolution of mitochondria” results in ~751,000 (0.22 seconds), so no excuse for any ignorance from those who are, supposedly, genuinely interested in obtaining relevant information.
I can’t post all the links here that I have for RSW, because usually more than one or two per post consigns it as spam :( I’ll try in another post.
Still before I get into it, I’m keen to see how genuine RSW is by his/her response to the above abiogenesis probability links.
Cheers
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Arrrgh…typo demons!
Apologies for granma and speeeellling!
1!!!111 eleventy-one!
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p.s.RSWso
Just want you to also know that statistics and mathematical modeling are an integral part of evolutionary biology studies.
Population genetics
“Perhaps the most significant “formal” achievement of the modern evolutionary synthesis has been the framework of mathematical population genetics. Indeed some authors (Beatty 1986) would argue that it does define the core of the modern synthesis.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_genetics
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RSW:
Of course the odds are stacked against life developing. But you’re skipping steps in your 200! calculations. No one has ever suggested that a complex cell just popped into existence, any more than they’ve suggested that a chimp simply gave birth to the first human being.
There are steps, stages, and lots and lots of time involved. Granted, I don’t know a whole lot about it, I am neither a biologist, a paleontologist, or any sort of scientist. However, I remember most of what I learnt in high school biology, and I can use the internet. It just took me a whopping 15 minutes on Wikipedia to learn about Protobionts, which are very possibly one of the steps between muddy ooze and Prokaryotic life. They share characteristics of both living and non living matter, AND, they have been shown to spontaneously form in conditions very similar to those of prehistoric earth.
Also during this fifteen minutes, I learnt about the oxygen crisis, which changed the course of evolution, spurring natural selection on by changing the earth’s environment drastically (and, somewhat poetically, was both caused by prior evolution, and the cause of subsequent evolution), the proterozoic era, which saw the evolution of multi-celled, sexually reproductive animals from single celled organisms, and that there are rocks in Greenland that are 3.8 billion years old. My point is, the information is out there, and if you don’t understand how evolution is possible, you’re either wilfully ignoring the evidence, or too dense to understand it if you tried.
In response to the Richard Dawkins remark about alien seeding, I think his point was more along the lines of “The universe in huge and full of possibilities.” than “We are likely to be artificially engineered life forms.” There is a great gaping chasm between acknowledging that we are not omniscient and seriously considering ID as remotely probable.
We are learning more about life, the universe, and everything, all the time. What we are not doing is assuming we have the answers handed to us on a platter (or, as the case may be, in a red leatherette binding), but searching for them ourselves. We are acknowledging the myriad of possibilities before us, creating hypotheses, and testing them. We are refining and adding to our knowledge every day. We don’t have nearly all the puzzle pieces yet, and no doubt some of the pieces we think we have in place are wrong, but we are building a coherent, plausible, beautiful picture of the way things work, and the clearer that picture becomes, the more obvious it is that we are on the right track.
And in conclusion, just to even the odds further, the universe is really, really, really, fantastically huge. With this much space, even the longest odds start to look pretty puny. http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2706/spaceb.jpg Oh, I just love that!
~Riali
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@ – Wench Nikkiee,
I’m sorry for having dragged you into this discussion with RSW, but my background, as we’ve discussed previously on another thread, is physical chemistry circa 1964. Since RSW seemed to start out in a rational way, I tried to also be rational. To the sarcastic ones, I try to be sarcastic, and to the irrational ones, I tell them to go troll elsewhere. To the scripture (mis)quoters I try to engage them in the language and literature which I have studied. I have seen your posts that have given many links to peer reviewed literature. Thank you!
Since my posts to RSW, Edward, and Sarah, and Descendent of the Archean, and Monkeypuzzle74, and you have come aboard with relevant comments far better than I could have presented. Thank you all!
I believe after reading down to here, that you are right, and that RSW is probably a preprogrammed Troll, not interested in gaining knowledge. My original sense was that RSW’s education did not cover the math and science that’s necessary to understand modern science; I now believe that RSW’s education stopped at the door out of the church.
When we all meet at the beer volcano we can each raise a glass or stein of our favorite libation and celebrate the community we’ve developed here.
RAmen
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RSW: You really have an anti-evolution hangup, don’t you? Why SHOULD we study evolution in mathematics? Everything has odds, even the low probability that your god exists!
Firstly, if you want other SCIENTIFIC theories to be presented as an alternative to evolution in a science class, great! But ID is not science and not bad science. It’s ANTI-science.
Now, let’s talk math, something I know, seeing that’s what my degree is in. Where do you get the misplaced idea that 200! results in a number that is more than all the atoms in the universe? I sincerely doubt it results in a number greater than all the STARS in the universe – perhaps even all the GALAXIES. Your coming up with these odds is dubious, too.
You asked “Why is there no studing how 200 odd protiens of a basic life form came together by sheer luck”. Don’t look now, RSW, but astronomers have found rather complex strands of protein in interstellar space. Perhaps it’s not sheer luck – they probably have an affinity to bonding.
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RSW #919
I think you will find a lot of people on here are likely some form of [secular] humanist, that would be why we always speak of social/human progress. The ‘absolute moral laws from God’ argument is an old and arrogant one. So, in your view every culture and society who ever existed including the 99% of human existance before christianity was born (or even Judaism) and the vast and growing populations of agnostics, atheists etc. in the west today are all immoral? You don’t think that’s a tad, lets see: egotistical, arrogant, ethnocentric, bigoted, and biased? Seriously!?
Also with regard to your assertion that some kind of extreme moral relativity or apathy results without god, are you not aware of the human evolutionary behaviour of altruism?? Human behaviour is riddled with it. What of the philosophical line of thought which leads to ethics? These are a bit different to morals (i.e. ethics such as laid out in the declaration of human rights – the Bible didn’t write that document). Altruism, ethics, and ample evidence of societies being ‘good’ without gods aside, don’t you think it is a little…well, pathetic…to have to rely on fear that there might be a God in order to be a ‘good’ person? Do you think you’ll start acting like a murderer and a prick the minute you stop believing in deities? Are you that insecure with your moral fibre that you need to be kept in ‘check’ by a god? Not to mention you must have a pretty dark view of human nature.
Each to their own so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, and that includes religion in my books. The only problem is that some religions (such as fundamentalist christianity) have this uncanny desire to not only attempt to destroy science (try getting a flu vaccine without evolutionary science you smart ass ID’ers) but also to stick its condescending nose into innocent peoples private lives (think fundamentalist views on other religions, sexual preference, marrage, womens rights, politics etc.). I would probably classify the above as hurting people (in the context of fundamentalists (i.e. ID)) and as such not really in a position to start throwing around ideas of ‘moral highground’. Even the reasoned or sophisticated theologians would agree with me on this point (for example Anglicans, orthodox, and other scholarly theists) in seeing fundamentalists and their ID as dangerous dogmatism and superstition.
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whoh, lots o posts. Thanks for taking time to write. I will try and get to responses one at a time, as I have time. Let me back up because a few people were asking what a factorial is. (forgive me I am not trying to be pedantic, I only learned this recently as well) 1×2x3×5 would be 5! and 1×2x3×4x5×6 would be 6! simple enough. It is the way to calculate how many possible combinations of some thing you can have. for example if I have 7 numbers and I want to rearrange them in every possible combination it will result in 7! combinations.
Sounds simple enough and the numbers seem small enough
However go to this calculator
http://math.about.com/library/blcalcfactorial.htm
and play with it you will find that after 170 factorial it responds with infinity. That is a number so large that it is not even going to try and calculate it. It is a nonsense number after 170. 200! is number beyond fathoming. So if I have machine with 200 parts how many different combinations can I have them in if they could be assembled in any give way? 200! If there was only one correct way out of that 200! for it to be significant than my odds would be 200! to 1 correct? There is a difference between theoretical odds and actual experience as Sarah mentioned. But we can only use theroretical odds to calculate something that we cannot statistically track by observation.
I am indeed making assumptions here I think 200 properly sequenced proteins is a fairly generous assumption, for a self replicating life form. So I think my model is fairly reasonable. I could be wrong.
I did read your link Nikkee about probability. It does suggest that in order to properly calculate this we would need to factor in man more factors. I am not knowledgeable enough to factor in all the factors, so I am just looking at the parts. Even if we give the parts every chance they need to assemble they would need to go through 200! iterations Never the less it is a steep hill to climb. I don’t know of some natural force out there that is geared to assemble proteans into life. We certainly do not observe life forms spontaneously gernerating themselves today. Life only comes from life today. So I will assume no life assembly force out there. If it helps we could look at this as numbers in a math equation rather than a living being perhaps it would take the heat off a bit. What are the odds of randomly coming up with a sequence of 200 numbers in a specific sequence? How long would it take to generate this if I tryied one number each second. Likely 200! seconds.
Each of us humans are a result of a very long chain of events according to evolutionists that resulted in an assemblage of DNA that is in the 20-25,000 properly sequenced genes. So from inanimate chemicals to human is 0-25,000 changes directed by random chance. Like I said natural selection does not provide intelligence it just squishes me when I make a wrong selection. Random chance over 4.5 billion years had to sequence a number as large as 25,000!. Now thread that out over each path of species whale, bird, fish, cat and chance has to out put a staggering number. Some of you seem to take exception to this, please suggest another way to calculate the odds.
Some of you seem to suggest that there is a positive something out there other than the spagetti monster, that is driving this from a naturalistic point of view. I don’t understand what that is.
Feel free to comment on this. I will try and get to the rest when I have time. Please don’t feel like I am trying to one up you guys. I am just humbling stumbling along here. Apologies Nikkiee if I have not done all my homework, it is always good to get more info than you thought was out there.
Be well,
RSW
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Re: Monkeypuzzler
I cut my teeth as a Kid on Carl Sagan, and was originally in the evolution camp. I switched to ID because it makes more scientific sense. I was a Christian at both times. I cannot say that I have some subversive agenda, maybe somebody in the ID camp does but I think that they are mostly convinced that evolution has a lot of issues. I think if evolutionists are honest they should admit as much. The text books are a bit too dogmatic about things that took place before any of our times. Just in my life time I have seen the world grow older by a billion years, and geologist embraced catastrophic models which were previously shunned. It is not as neat and tidy as it is made out to be. I don’t think ID has it all tied up in a bundle either. I think we should have the right to speak though and not just labled, we do come from a predominatly conservitive perspective, as evolutionist have athistic tendencies but not all. I think that it is very difficult to go into a public forum like a school and talk about origins. I don’t want my kids bean taught Buddhist pantheistic ideas like it was fact. I do want my kids to understand Buddhism though. I do want my kids to understand evolution, and they do but they also understand the flaws in the theory as well. I think people need to know that evolution tied with athism has spawned some very dangerous social political movements in this century. The church has had it share of dangerous social political activities as well. Theistic dialog cannot be barred from the public forum just because it speaks of God. If we are to live together. I think things like FSM needs to tone it down a bit, too. I appreciate that it is a bit of a joke, but I think ridicule is a slippery slope. I think we need to promote a healthy dialog from all sides that allows people to feel safe enough to speak without being belittled. I have seen ID people use a lot of sarcasm when speaking of evolutionists, and I don’t care for that either. If my kids raise their hands and ask a question, I hope the teacher doesn’t ridicule them and call them unscientific. That might be her opinion but many ID people think we have a legitimate point of view than has a right to be heard.
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Edward:
and selection works to produce adaptations and speciation
Natural Selection is not an active force. It only kills what fails thats all. Unless a random mutation happens that hits the dna jackpot, it cannot come about. Natural selection is simply death. I see a whole lot of extiction happening right now– Each year as many as 50,000 species disappear. There has yet to be a new species evolve in my life time.
Even if it is gradual change over billions of years it can still be formulated into a probability statement. You could factor the probability of a Chimpanzee becoming a Human. How many genomes need to change? What are the odds of random mutations making those steps. Even if it has to go through 50 interminably forms it is still a factor. Each step is another toss of the coin so to speak it is still a series of probability steps that cumulative. I would be like saying what is the probability winning roulette on number 23 50 times in a row. Each time I get a 23 does not reduce the probability or reset it. Each step has a random causality, the only “force” guiding the process is failure and death. Winners get to roll again. Does this make sense, or am I still missing something in your eyes? Thanks for your post.
RSW
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Re Sarah:
ID recognizes that there are variations within kinds or species. This is the way they were created. In fact variation and hibreadization that you mention, I believe is actually a loss of genetic information not a gaining. My Golden retriever has less Dog genes as does a wolf. ID recognizes that all dogs descended from a common dog ancestor, but not from another species like a mouse-proto k9- dog. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2002/01/01/html/ft_20020101.1.html
I did google this one. Hope that helps. Let me know if you feel I have missed something.
Viruses and Bacteria are the same deal. We see variations within kinds not a different species of bacteria. Viruses I am a little more vague on, any good articles out there?
Basically the idea of ID is this. If we see a Saturn 5 Rocket we don’t say that likely this evolved over millions of years. Nor do we think that the Nasa Scientists meditated and it appeared my spiritual genesis. We believe that rocket scientests used natural means but manipulated them intelligently to create a Saturn 5 rocket. We feel the same is true of life forms. We see something far more complex than a Saturn 5 rocket in an eagle. We recognize the natural materials involved in it but see that it has been organized so precisely and so complexly that natural chemical reactions are not the most probable source of it’s origin. Doing the math on this bears this out. We can say that it is natural for atomic reactions to occur naturally in a star, but when one happens in Heroshema we attribute that to designed causes. Evolutionary scientists offer some plausible scenarios, but we feel that they are not the most likely explanations.
RSW
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Re: Descendent of the Archean
Good comment. I am no expert about abiogenesis theories. But it is facinating to talk about. I don’t think this site is about high brow scientific comparisons. Just generalities and trading of ideas. It would be impossible to be too precise. Good call about 1 out of 36, you are right. There are some possibilities out there but they don’t fully complete the picture, but do offer some possibilities. Yes at some point things might be explicable by natural means. You still have a bunch of random RNA sequences that need to be properly sequenced. The point is that a what level is complexity normal and at what point is it abnormal. We must agree that abiogenesis is very abnormal. Even in evolutionary theory the first cell could only have happened once in 4.5 billion years and all life is decedent from that one cell. That’s some pretty steep odds. My theory is that it didn’t happen.
Re: Sarah and Dawkins. Yes Dawkins was suggesting that aliens were naturally evolved beings. However he does give the nod to ID by suggesting that some higher intelligence is the solution for life On earth. That it is not wacky to search for a higher intelligence as a solution to the puzzle of abiogenesis.
No one willing to comment on Dawkins’ statement that evil is not a category? Niche said that since God is dead the 20th century will be the deadliest one in man’s history. Are evolutionist atheists willing to own up to the death and destruction of atheistic evolutionary regimes who were living out the logical extensions of their philosophies. More people were killed at the hands of these regimes than were ever killed in any religious wars. Christians feel shame for the wars that were fought in the name of Christ becasue we know it does not represent his teachings. We Christians still act hypocritically, but it is just that hypocracy, we are falsely representing what we say we believe. Evolutionary atheistic philosophy of the 20th century is full of uberman and eugenics and expendable people. I could be wrong perhaps there are evolutionary atheists that regret this period and this philosophy. But with statements like there is no category of evil coming from the big voices of Atheism. Where is the outcry against him? Where are the voice shouting NO! haven’t we learned from the 20th century and the outworking of such conclusions?
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I’ve read the required reading for the talk origins site, and that’s not easy for a single dad that only gets to read after bedtime. Fascinating stuff. It is actually what I started to go to school for, and I wound up getting a degree in something entirely different. Thanks for reawakening the old passion. You’ll hear more from me, but for now I have more reading to do.
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I’m afraid Wench Nikkiee’s right, RSW is just a preprogrammed troll. He admits to not understanding the math or the biology, but he keeps trying to misuse them in his arguments. He makes a great number of unsubstantiated assertions in his posts that are just plain wrong either technically, mathematically, and/or philosophically. As has been pointed out above, there is a wealth of references to peer reviewed literature for him to study and learn what he admittedly doesn’t know. His insistence on posting here on our website instead of being in the library learning is just wasting our time.
@ RSW:
Go and learn. Start with freshman chemistry, biology, calculus, and philosophy. Proceed with sophomore physics and genetics. When you know what you are talking about, then come back here and not until then. Goodby.
RAmen
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@ RSW #935
You have no idea what you are talking about. First of all, the scientific definition of a species is: “the major subdivision of a genus or subgenus, regarded as the basic category of biological classification, composed of related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species” – if a Chihuahua can no longer breed with a wolf (and it can’t) then they are different species – end of story. Furthermore, are you claiming that every virus and bacteria are all members of the same species? That makes no sense. As for your second comment, rockets can’t reproduce! They don’t have DNA, nor do they mate, so comparing them to a living organism that can do these things, and then claiming that because one had a creator, the other must as well, is ridiculous.
Secondly, ID has been demonstrated, in court and in the words of its proponents, to be a specifically engineered attempt to get Christian creationism taught in science class. If you were unaware of this, you didn’t do your research; but I also cannot really blame you, as the people who came up with it have very specifically tried to fool people. None of us are saying that the reasoning behind different religions should never be taught in public schools, but they should be taught honestly, as philosophy, not as science. You have posed to us several very specific scientific questions (which is how science is done – by addressing specific, testable questions) and we have answered every single one – you response has then been to simply restate the views of ID, with no experimental data to back it up. You may not want to hear it, but you are being unscientific. Science is not philosophy, and it is not logic, it is experimentation – whatever the experimental data says is what we have to work with, and there is no experiential data supporting ID. If you guys get some, please let us know, and we will welcome you into science class with open arms, but until then ID has no place in science class.
Finally, addressing post #936. I thought we were talking about evolution vs. ID, not the morality of Atheism, but like most IDers you’ve resorted to “Atheism is bad” when you began to see you didn’t have a scientific leg to stand on. But never mind, I’ll respond, because it is exactly this claim, that Atheists are bad people, that both pisses me off and scares me. I pay my taxes, give to charity, and try my best to be a nice, giving person, but crowds of people are calling me “evil” just because I don’t believe a higher power is telling me to do all that stuff.
To begin: Please give me a reference regarding your claim that more people have been killed “atheistic evolutionary regimes” than in religious wars, because I’m pretty sure that’s not true. Secondly, just because a government is secular, does not mean it is “Atheistic”, or that everything it then does is the result of it not being guided by religion. Let me explain: I assume you are going to claim that the USSR was once such regime, and its attempt to created a global empire was based on its lack of religion, am I right? This is not true. The USSR was simply a nationalist government, like every other nationalist government that has ever existed (many of which used religion as a prop for that nationalism – the Shinto religion of Japan and the “divine right of kings” philosophy of Western Europe being two excellent examples), and its aggression was based on this nationalism. The grab for territory by the USSR were no more about it being a secular government than the 100 Year’s war was about France and England being Christian governments. Were these conflicts wrongs? Of course they were wrong, and I don’t know of a single Atheist (unless they also happened to be a Soviet, French, or British Nationalist) who would claim otherwise. Now, you’ll probably claim that evolutionary theory encourages nationalism because of some “survival of the fittest nonsense”, but you’ve got it backwards. Nationalists use that as an excuse (just as they use religion as an excuse), when in reality evolutionary theory demonstrates that we are one species, with no significant genetic differences, and that national lines (and racial differences, for that matter) are largely arbitrary.
It comes down to this: without a holy book to tell us what is “evil”, we have to decide morality for ourselves. We try to figure out what helps the greatest number of people in a given situation, and that is the “right” course. Conversely, when someone hurts someone else, we can’t just label that person as “evil” and forget about it, we need to examine what happened, and try to repair the harm as well as prevent the behavior in the future. Christianity teaches the value of forgiveness, does it not? Well, I find it is a heck of a lot easier to forgive someone when you see them as ill or misinformed rather than “evil”. Sometimes, the illness is incurable, and the person must be jailed for life for the good of society, but we don’t just jump to that conclusion based on what a 2,000 year old book says, but based on our judgment. As Atheists see it, the moral failure of religion is that it tells people “behavior X is always good, and behavior Y is always bad”, and then tells people not to question it. The problem is, if we don’t question it, if we don’t examine each case individually, they we will never learn the ultimate cause of behaviors X and Y and how to prevent or encourage them in the future.
Looking back on this post, I realize it comes it comes off as more angry that I usually like to be, but the fact is, I am angry. I spent quite a bit of time composing my last response to you (and made a concerted effort to be polite and not assume you were ignorant – a courtesy you did not return), and not only did you largely ignore that effort, you then basically accused me (and all other Atheists) of being immoral. It pisses me off when people do that (and you are just the latest in a long line of people to do it), but it also scares me. You’ve already demonstrated that you aren’t really willing to listen to ideas other than your own, so what is there to keep you from decided that I’m evil and must be locked up or killed? I have no defense against someone like you; if you get it in your head that I’m a threat, I have no chance of convincing you otherwise. It’s like arguing with a madman, a madman’s whose illness not only remains untreated, but is actually encouraged by the majority of people in this country. That is how Pastafarians (and many other people) feel when they go about their day and see “in God we trust” on our money and our courthouses, listen to our president invoke God in his public addresses, and hear about people trying to get creationism taught in science class. Please, RSW, convince me that you are not mad, that you are willing to listen and accept the possibility that you might be wrong. If the Apocalypse began tomorrow (and yes, I’ve read the book of revelations, several times, in fact) I would have no choice but to accept the evidence and change my position. What would it take for you to do the same?
Ramen,
Sarah
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RSW, I applaud your apparent willingness for discussion, and general courtesy, but I still think you’ve been fed some outrageous lies, and swallowed them without chewing.
At the moment, I am referring specifically to this little bit of nuttiness:
“Are evolutionist atheists willing to own up to the death and destruction of atheistic evolutionary regimes who were living out the logical extensions of their philosophies. More people were killed at the hands of these regimes than were ever killed in any religious wars.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
I’m assuming you’re referring to the crazies that decide that natural selection should in fact become artificial selection, and start murdering people. If this is a false assumption, let me know.
in fact, let me know regardless, because I want to know which “atheistic regime” killed more people than the Crusades. And the Spanish Inquisition. And all the jihads and holy wars and witch hunts and genocides that have killed in the name of some god or another.
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RSW,
‘Scientific theories’ are not the same as the word every day term theory (in most cases this would be a hypothesis in the scientific community, which is an un-tested assertion). ‘Scientific Theories’ are tested rigorously, must be observable, and all the tests when repeated must be able to yield the same results. They are then published in peer reviewed journals where scientists all over the world have access to the data, and can conduct their own tests to insure the results are in fact repeatable. They are then accepted as ‘scientific theories’ until they are disproven. This usually occurs when knowledge and technology increase. If they are disproved a new hypothesis is formed, then tested. Many people seem to not understand the difference between a ‘theory’ which any moron can spew in everyday conversation and a ’scientific theory’. For example gravity is still just a ‘scientific theory’. They stay theories forever and are never considered fact by the scientific community.
As to the fossil record, we have successfully extracted DNA from fossils (and sequenced it), in recent years. The first time was by Svante Paabo from a Neanderthal fossil found in Neander Valley in Germany in 1856 (not done in 1856). This shows a clear link to modern humans (through things like the mitochondria. The transitional animal from sea to land has been found, all though it is a more recent find, so most likely fewer people know of it. It is called the Tiktaalik roseae. Not going to explain it a Goggle will give you like 20 articles about it. Besides all of this if the world was only 6 million years old as the bible claims we would not have fossils that are way older than that (that test of faith stuff is not a scientifically valid argument). Then add in that most Creationists claim that humans and dinosaurs lived together and they were herbivores. The simple build of a dinosaur and basic logic rules out that they were all herbivores (some have sharp teeth and claws).
Next we move on to the argument for Irreducible Complexity. I could go on and on about this. But basically it doesn’t hold up. First example was the eye which was debunked. So Creationist supporters went after a microscopic organism, specifically the eukaryotic cilium and its flagellum, which is used for propulsion. Anyway that one doesn’t hold up either;
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/MillerID-Collapse.htm
I am tired of typing it out. If you don’t understand it, ask.
And just a bit of information, being a scientist does not automatically mean they are an atheist. I know many scientists who believe in evolution who are religious. Belief in God and belief in science does not have to be mutually exclusive (though there is nothing wrong with being an atheist, either). I find most people who think it needs to be don’t get science and find it easier to believe than to learn and question.
People also mistakenly assume that if they can disprove something it automatically proves something else, which it doesn’t. It defies logic to assume so, and God gave us logic for a reason, don’t you think? If say some one disproved the current theory of gravity, it does not automatically prove their theory that the reason we don’t fly of the planet that little invisible imps are holding us down with pocket change, does it? No. Evidence for a new hypothesis would have to be presented and tested, if it stood up it would become a ‘scientific theory’. Could you imagine the state of medicine today if we didn’t present and test new theories and have them stand up to those tests?
Some people try to take the Bible literally, which I explained earlier is pretty much impossible to do. Aside from which I don’t think it was ever intended to be taken literally. Christians will argue that the Bible is the proof they need. Well then they need to learn the history of their Bible. You can’t be a true believer if you don’t even know the history of your religious text. For example the Jesus story, shows up in many older religions for their important people. A lot of the parts of the story are the same. Many have a virgin birth, there are others that have a resurrection (same time frame and everything), and etc. The list is pretty long. Then there is the fact that the stories about Jesus a written long after his death mostly on third party accounts. When you can look at the complete history, like the editing, the translations (many languages to don’t translate well into each other), at this point you are relying on the interpretation of the Bible by the translator, hence all the English versions of the Gospels. Then there are copying errors made by monks copying the Bible (a good number who could not read), etc. Only after knowing all of this and taking it into account can you know your religious text.
I think people who feel that others must believe as they believe are actually that way because they are insecure in their beliefs. The more fervent the less secure they are. They need others to believe the same as them to give credence to their own belief. They justify it a number of ways to themselves the most common one is that they are ’saving the non-believer’. The truth is they are trying to save themselves, so they don’t have to think through what they believe and why, because once they started questioning they might find they were wrong, and that would be too much for them to handle.
Scientists understand that fundamentalists don’t believe in science when it tells them anything they don’t want to hear. Then when they are sick they can’t get in line fast enough for the medicines, treatments, and cures that science has created. Not to mention things they use every day like cleaners, plastic, lotions, etc. There is very little in your daily life science didn’t contribute to (I can say this because you are obviously on a computer). So unless you want to go live in a cabin and live off the land with tools you made yourself, realize the style of life you live is due to science. Strange don’t you think. Looking down your nose at science until you need it. I think more should stand by their convictions, and suck it up when they are sick. I know it just warms my heart when someone calls me a godless heathen and then goes and gets a treatment that my research helped to create.
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RSW
You present your arguments as well as a trained monkey with a pre determined outcome can. The one thing you continually ignore is the complete lack of any evidence what-so-ever of your imaginary creator.
Now back up and look at the evidence supporting evolution, yes there may still be many questions that need answering, we dont have the full picture yet, but evidence exists, mountains of evidence from every major science. Science being self correcting, there will be mistakes adjusted along the way as new evidence supports those adjustments. Can you say the same of your religion?…I didnt think so…
The fact is people like you, who fail to grasp the big picture, mostly because of the religious dogma that clouds your minds, have taken the cop out, its much easier to say “god done it” rather than attemting to identify that which we dont understand. For those whom all evidence points to a creator, Id say say you dont know the first thing about using logic to arrive at a conclusion. Yes you can flail about, putting on an intelligent monkey show, (that no doubt impresses the slow monkeys) but in the end none of your arguments hold water, and you are revealed as a simple little monkey, while intelligent enough to craft useless arguments, you remain blinded by dogma, and chained to out dated myths. Now, go toss feces, you’re much better suited for that.
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RSW,
You are still insisting upon ‘chance’ and ‘random luck’ so you obviously still haven’t ventured into your local library or even wikipedia to learn about what evolution actually is – because despite your assertions to the contrary, I doubt you actually know.
As for evolution being death – read the above.
As for your Atheist-murderers assertion, i’m not sure what to say. I mean this in the nicest possible way but I think you’ve got about as good of a grasp on history as you do on evolutionary theory. You are reciting the same old ‘rebufs’ which are generated by the ignorant and bigoted anti-science/secularism leaders. Eugenics for example is not science, it is not evolution, it was simply pseudo-science based on a really bad idea and terrible interpretation of Darwin’s work. Also, the USSR form of communism did not contain as its central tennant ideas of “atheistic evolutionary” regimes. Have you not heard of Karl Marx? The political system used was based to a large degree on a warped interpretation of the political philosophy of marxism.
Lastly, I replied to your evil question. I called your view of godlessness = evil as arrogant. I also asked how you could not be aware of human altruism and the philosophical line of thought which leads to ethics. Think of the declaration of human rights. What of the fact that slowly but surely it can be argued that the world is getting more and more progressive? Compare the average person’s awareness to moral and ethical delimmas to someone who lived six hundred years ago. If God is the answer to ethical delimmas then why did it take until the age of modern science and secularism for the abolishment of slavery? The movement of womens’ rights? the embracing of cultural diversity?
If you really want to go down that line of argument, you might actually find the reverse to your assertion. The world gets more progressive the less gods are involved in human existance. As it stands, most forms of true christianity (such as Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicans etc. rather than the pittiful excuse for a guiding moral framework that Americanist Fundamentalism is) are stuggling to keep up with the changing and progressive morals of a modern world, rather than leading it. Of course fundamentalist anything is bad and that includes non-religious ideas too. But the point is you are stating “well, it’s one or the other” in terms of fundamentalist christianity or an agressive regime where religion is largely abolished. Can you not see the absurdity in this? Theology and science are two different beasts but can find harmony as the Catholics, Anglicans and orthodoxy have shown, heck, there are even vatican cosmologists and biologists nowadays. This is however different to the anti-science and reason campaigns of ID which seek to insert theology yet again into and in place of science – the same dichotomy humans have had to suffer through for much of history. Your “science” isn’t science at all but a political tool for spreading ignorance and coralling innocent people into creationist frameworks of belief based on nothing more than agenda and pseudo-science. Of course, I suppose you can try and argue that 99.9% of scientists and the majority of the populations of Europe, Australasia, and many parts of Asia might all be wrong, and that it is in fact a group of uneducated middle-americans with no background in any science and a bias the size of a bus who really know the truth. But that is your delusion.
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After all this foolishness with RSW, I was reading letters to Scientific American, and a comment on creationism from Southern Ptarmigan near the bottom of the page bears notice. S P is clearly a Christian Evangelist, but his comments, from the early church Fathers put this Evolution/Creationist bru-ha-ha into perspective. I just thought that I’d share with other Pastafarians:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=letters-may-2009&sc=DD_20090508
RAmen
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Sarah,
I do apologize to you, as I don’t want to be directly offensive to you. It is rather difficult in a forum like this and using e-mail where there is no other feed back about what is being said (as 80% of communication is body language). I have scened your care in your responses and would like to thank you for that. I hope in no way did I use derogatory language towards you. I think that my responses were generalized about atheism and not specific to you. Yes I am critical about atheism as a philosophy. And yes I have been good friends with atheists who were very decent and moral people. I understand that the two are not mutually exclusive. And again I appreciate your concerns.
RSW
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Poll Pot 4,000,000
Stalin 20,000,000
Hitler 60,000,000
Mouist China ?
Spanish inquisitino 20,000
crusaids: 200,000?
Just guestemates, I know you guys hate it when I do that. There are a lot of questions here.
The point was also not to see who has killed more and make a determination based on that number as to who is right or wrong. It is more a recongintion that an honest outworking of evolutionary thought is that the strong survive. Driving that conclusion to its logical end one could use it to justify quite a bit, and it has been done.
RSW
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I will step back and read some of the articles that you have suggested me to read on the biological side of things. As I think the discussion has matured past generalizations into more specific claims and counterpoints. That will slow down the discussion, and I am not sure there will be individuals here when I get back in a couple of weeks. I noticed that there is a forum associated with this page, I was not able to get into that is that a more appropriate place to continue these dialogs? As these pages seem to be a bit of an odd place for this category of discussion.
Additionally, I would like to ask that we lift the tone of the discussion. I don’t mind if you are harsh about my ideas or philosophy. I don’t mind you correcting my spelling or math, I am not above that, I do make mistakes. But lets leave the name calling for another time. I don’t know if anyone else in the discussion thinks that this is appropriate?
If you feel that I have been unkind or unfair, please like Sarah bring that to my attention as well. I am not above making personal mistakes as well. I do wish to at least not hurt your feelings in the process of dialog.
RE: Niteshade, I don’t simply accept the scriptures without testing them as well. I can read ancient Greek and am vaguely familiar with the workings of Hebrew. I have studied the manuscripts and found that your claims of the scriptures being highly inaccurate are not true. In the Hebrew manuscripts we have copies from 900AD that match the dead sea scrolls with startling accuracy. There are indeed textual variants in the Greek MS that we have. These variants are not substantial enough to make a large difference in meaning. They are mostly syntactical in nature, and if you know Greek this does not pose a huge problem as the word order does not change meaning as substantially as it does in other languages due to the tight grammatical rules. There is no ancient document that we have more copies of than the NT. Despite some popular books by authors like Bart Erdman that are picked up on the media market and that make most skeptics lists on Amazon, most serious textual critics do not give their work much weight.
RSW
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Sarah:
Thank you for your comments, I would like to comment on the following statement that you made:
It comes down to this: without a holy book to tell us what is “evil”, we have to decide morality for ourselves. We try to figure out what helps the greatest number of people in a given situation, and that is the “right” course.
I find this position, difficult. If in a given situation a group of young men decided it is OK to gang rape a young woman. I don’t think because this group in that given situation decided that it was not evil to do so, that it becomes morally ok to do this. Our group might find it repulsive, but their group found it ok. I think that Rape is morally wrong because it does not reflect the revelation of our creator. It is something that is inherently wrong always and forever. Perhaps a better example on a societal level is that of ancient Athens. They believed that one could reason one’s way to morality. They believed that it was not only morally ok, but virtuous for older men to take young boys as sexual partners as young as 10 or 11. In fact the parents would encourage this. I find that this is something that is morally repugnant, because of the way that God as made us. Back in ancient Athens it was OK. Our society finds this to be one of the most heinous evils that can be perpetrated.
Was slavery wrong in the south only because northerners invaded or is it something innately wrong.
Groups as defining morality, is essentially might makes right. If I can either persuade more people to my point of view or some how coerce them as the North did to the South, then my morality wins.
This the difficulty when people like Dawkins says there is no such thing as evil. If someone rapes someone. This is evil. Without a moral category as evil, at best it is tragic, or an undesired outcome. And we need to apply treatments so as not to get this undesired outcome. Or force those who violate our standards into our system. The best I could say to the youths who gang rape is. I find your behaviour to be at odds with what I would prefer. To use languge like this is wrong! Is less than honest and ultimately hypocritical. An anthist should be consistant and say I find war inconvientent, or intollerablly destructive. But wrong, immoral? These are catagories that only exist in the world of absoultes. I know that many athists chaff at this, but people like Sarte and Camus had enough philosophical integrety to recognize that what I am saying is consistant. This does not mean that all atheists act poorly, but if they do act poorly or say kill someone, and you ask them why did you do this? They can say why not? What’s wrong with it? Your only response is Our group does not like this. Moral categories like evil do not exist in the consistant Atheistic world. I agree with Dawkins. I am pointing out that inorder to be a consistent Atheist, morality does not exist, only personal or group preferences.
I do agree with you that there should be something done to help those who fall into evil. Punishment, and justice is one thing, but also aide and understanding and mercy.
RSW
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Let me ask this question. At the core of self replicating life is DNA. DNA is the information on how to exactly replicate any given life form. This is information correct? as apposed to randomness. We only find this kind of information in the chemical world inside of life forms. Out side of life forms we find patterns, but not detailed information that are specifically ordered and repeatable like as in DNA. Nothing in the universe seems to compare to the information stored in DNA correct?
I am going to make a point based on this assumption, but lets deal with this assumption first and allow people to comment on this.
RSW
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RSW,
Your Athiest/lack of morality is complete crap. I kow of far more christians that have no morals/lower morals. The ancient Greeks were quiet god fearing/worshiping individuals and at the time young boys were considered adults. What if 200 years from know socety determines that an adult is 21 and older. By your logic, anyone who has sex with and 18 year old is moraly questionable.
Your failure to take things in context simply furthers your ignarance. How many serial killers, murders, rapists claim to be christian. Since you work in generalities so can we. So by that logic, christian morales include rape and murder. And reading your bible that seems to follow.
Simply because someone does not believe in your god does not make them a moraly questionable individual just as being a religious person does not make you a moraly upstanding individual.
I understand the logic of writing down moral laws in a book of an ancient society so that everyone follows them under pain of eternal damnation. But just as with the ancient Greeks, we have advanced our society to include new laws. While biblical law provides a good moral framework for which a society to follow, people who do not follow your religion have come up with similar laws all over the world. This is because for civilization to exist you need laws. Athiest are capable of comming up with the same moral framework for a society as are christians (some of the founding father of America were most likely athiest or thiest and not christian)
And most times, athiests are more capable because they are not held down by archaic dogma, or feel threatened by new things that they must threaten to “beat up” as most hate mailers here tend to do.
Religion is fine, so long as worship for yourself and try not to push your beliefs on the masses. You can see countries where freedoms are hindered because religious rule is impossed on others (most of the Arab world is an example).
Worship all you want…just keep it away from my kids until they decide they want it. Or else, teach all religion in classrooms, to include the logical and correct assertion that the FSM created the world.
Ramen
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