Thank You
- Thread starter S4R
- Start date
Satori
Destructosaur
I see what you mean, but I respectfully disagree. When someone holds a belief that has been dictated to them by some silly religion, they haven't formed this opinion on their own. They didn't even had FREE WILL in adopting it because of the huge threat that looms over them if they don't adopt it (hell or whatever). Therefore, the opinion they hold is neither their own, nor was it acquired by their choice, as much as they try to make themselves believe that, it's simply not the case. For example, I hold a gun to your head (which is what the concept of "hell" does) and tell you to shove your fist up your ass. If you do it, was it your choice? was it your idea? No. As much as people want to believe that they have free will to accept or reject religious dogma, they do not, with the illusion of their "soul" on the cutting block, what "choice" do they have? Not much I'm afraid. Also, since it is fed to them against their own will and better judgement from such an early age, they have absolutely no choice whatsoever. By the time they are old enough to decide, the damage (fear, ill logic, ignorance) has been done, and the choice has been made for them already.
I think I can safely say that nobody turns 16 or 18 or something, has never been directly influenced by an organized religion, and then wakes up one day and concocts their own version of the god myth. Typically, such people are victims of an ancient/archaic political movement from the middle east and fear is the prime motivation for them "adopting" a pre-existing thelogical system which causes them to think innane things like: the world was created 6000 years ago, dinosaurs co-existed with humans, and homosexuals are deviants (just to name a few outdated concepts).
(I'm assuming you are talking about the thelogical debating)
They aren't? What board have you been reading?
Satori
TyrantOfFlames
Of Chaos and Order
Okay. Well now that I've been bashed, I'll explain myself.
Well, first, you haven't even allowed me to tell you my take on it. I am not as much of a victim of propaganda as you may think. I said there is no proof of either large-scale evolution or creationism, but there is evidence. If either can be proven, obviously there would no longer be a dabate on it, would there?
Rather presumptuous of you to say that...I'll explain later in the post.
Come now, what kind of arguing tactics are those? You haven't said anything substancial except "I'm right, you're wrong." I don't disbelieve carbon dating just because I want don't want to accept a change. The fact that carbon dating guesses at how much carbon there is in a substance at a certain time compared to now shows that it is unreliable. There is no means of measuring how much carbon was in substances millions of years ago. Even if tests are done now to find the rate of change, it still does nothing to show the original content.
Did I say I believed that? As a matter of fact, I also find it rather silly to take the Bible so literally. The creation in 6 days thing is probably more of a symbol of comparison. Each interval is comparative to the other, in that they can be evenly related to days instead of the less comprehensible aeons. I believe that the Earth is far older than 6000 years. I don't believe that humans have been here very much longer than that though. I think it is possible for some evolution to be true, for example, there was a species of rabbits or squirrels or something similar, (I don't remember the specifics of the occurence), that was exclusive to that area, andbecame separated into two groups by a canal that humans channelled through their home forest. Half a century later, it was discovered that the two groups could no longer interbreed. That is proof of very smallscae evolution. Also, there is a race of humans, who live in Africa, that have two toes. This race isn't allowed to mate with anyone outside the tribe, so we don't know if they can or cannot mate with other races. (My guess is that they can, and the offspring would just have fucked-up feet). This seems to prove that mutation can create differences, and that they aren't always wholely negative. The problem, though, is in that both of these cases, the changes are very insignificant, and in the case of the humans, I see no benefit at all, possibly a deficit. Their feet are very asymmetrical in the way they grow...not nearly as similar to each other as five-toed feet are to each other. I would venture to say that they aren't as efficient.
On the whole, mutatations have proven, in almost all cases, to have very negative effects, (I don't think I need examples for this one). If any of you can tell me a beneficial, official case of mutataion that has benefitted it's possessor, I will be surprised, (that's not to say they don't exist, but definitely not more that a few cases do). If you can think of a case, I can say now, that it is not a great benefit to that entity.
There are no discovered transitional forms. Even in the human-monkey reasearch, they have only found definite monkeys, (homo erectus, homo habilis, a. africanus, a. afarensis), or definite humans, (homo sapiens neanderthalensis, cro-magnons aka homo sapiens sapiens). This is a bit of a strike against large-scale evolution.
I am not saying that evolution is totally out of the question. Because I can accept it to an extent, as there are small scale proofs of it, but there has to be far more evidence before I can believe any more than that. Also, about creation-of-the-world, it's pretty amazing that a system so utterly complex as the world of physics that we live in can just be instantly devised in a massive explosion of nothing. I understand that energy can create matter, and maybe the big-bang theory is correct, but the sheer complexity of the universe makes it hard to believe that chance is our God. I think it's possible that both evolition and creation can be correct to an extent.
One last BTW comment on evolution. There is also proof that organisms came from a lake of goo composed of materials that happened to mix together. First, just a single cell is a complex thing, and a chance mixture of elements might hae all the ingredients of a cell, but certainly not all the order of a cell. Second, lets get real here. Electricity is not the magic we once thought it to be. It can't explain everything that is unexplainable. If this goo pool were smacked up with a bolt of lightening, it still won't happen to mold into a cell. Third, scientists have not created anything anywhere near a cell by shocking organic mixtures. They have created compounds, (amnio acids).
I'm not trying to convince anyone not to believe evolution here, I'm just trying to show that it is not fact. It is a respectable theory, and has it's points of interest, but it takes just as much faith to believe as creationism.
You're joking right? Since when have you cared whether people have put their lives into creating something that they think is noteable? It's not my responsibility to "respect" them by refusing to agree completely. And I'm not your typical die-hard, refuse to believe the facts, creationist. You seem to be a bit judgemental and biased, to assume what I am and what I need.
Please. Don't patronize me.
Well, that's my perspective. I hope no one took me the wrong way.
Well, first, you haven't even allowed me to tell you my take on it. I am not as much of a victim of propaganda as you may think. I said there is no proof of either large-scale evolution or creationism, but there is evidence. If either can be proven, obviously there would no longer be a dabate on it, would there?
Rather presumptuous of you to say that...I'll explain later in the post.
Come now, what kind of arguing tactics are those? You haven't said anything substancial except "I'm right, you're wrong." I don't disbelieve carbon dating just because I want don't want to accept a change. The fact that carbon dating guesses at how much carbon there is in a substance at a certain time compared to now shows that it is unreliable. There is no means of measuring how much carbon was in substances millions of years ago. Even if tests are done now to find the rate of change, it still does nothing to show the original content.
Did I say I believed that? As a matter of fact, I also find it rather silly to take the Bible so literally. The creation in 6 days thing is probably more of a symbol of comparison. Each interval is comparative to the other, in that they can be evenly related to days instead of the less comprehensible aeons. I believe that the Earth is far older than 6000 years. I don't believe that humans have been here very much longer than that though. I think it is possible for some evolution to be true, for example, there was a species of rabbits or squirrels or something similar, (I don't remember the specifics of the occurence), that was exclusive to that area, andbecame separated into two groups by a canal that humans channelled through their home forest. Half a century later, it was discovered that the two groups could no longer interbreed. That is proof of very smallscae evolution. Also, there is a race of humans, who live in Africa, that have two toes. This race isn't allowed to mate with anyone outside the tribe, so we don't know if they can or cannot mate with other races. (My guess is that they can, and the offspring would just have fucked-up feet). This seems to prove that mutation can create differences, and that they aren't always wholely negative. The problem, though, is in that both of these cases, the changes are very insignificant, and in the case of the humans, I see no benefit at all, possibly a deficit. Their feet are very asymmetrical in the way they grow...not nearly as similar to each other as five-toed feet are to each other. I would venture to say that they aren't as efficient.
On the whole, mutatations have proven, in almost all cases, to have very negative effects, (I don't think I need examples for this one). If any of you can tell me a beneficial, official case of mutataion that has benefitted it's possessor, I will be surprised, (that's not to say they don't exist, but definitely not more that a few cases do). If you can think of a case, I can say now, that it is not a great benefit to that entity.
There are no discovered transitional forms. Even in the human-monkey reasearch, they have only found definite monkeys, (homo erectus, homo habilis, a. africanus, a. afarensis), or definite humans, (homo sapiens neanderthalensis, cro-magnons aka homo sapiens sapiens). This is a bit of a strike against large-scale evolution.
I am not saying that evolution is totally out of the question. Because I can accept it to an extent, as there are small scale proofs of it, but there has to be far more evidence before I can believe any more than that. Also, about creation-of-the-world, it's pretty amazing that a system so utterly complex as the world of physics that we live in can just be instantly devised in a massive explosion of nothing. I understand that energy can create matter, and maybe the big-bang theory is correct, but the sheer complexity of the universe makes it hard to believe that chance is our God. I think it's possible that both evolition and creation can be correct to an extent.
One last BTW comment on evolution. There is also proof that organisms came from a lake of goo composed of materials that happened to mix together. First, just a single cell is a complex thing, and a chance mixture of elements might hae all the ingredients of a cell, but certainly not all the order of a cell. Second, lets get real here. Electricity is not the magic we once thought it to be. It can't explain everything that is unexplainable. If this goo pool were smacked up with a bolt of lightening, it still won't happen to mold into a cell. Third, scientists have not created anything anywhere near a cell by shocking organic mixtures. They have created compounds, (amnio acids).
I'm not trying to convince anyone not to believe evolution here, I'm just trying to show that it is not fact. It is a respectable theory, and has it's points of interest, but it takes just as much faith to believe as creationism.
You're joking right? Since when have you cared whether people have put their lives into creating something that they think is noteable? It's not my responsibility to "respect" them by refusing to agree completely. And I'm not your typical die-hard, refuse to believe the facts, creationist. You seem to be a bit judgemental and biased, to assume what I am and what I need.Please. Don't patronize me.
Well, that's my perspective. I hope no one took me the wrong way.
TyrantOfFlames
Of Chaos and Order
TyrantOfFlames
Of Chaos and Order
HoserHellspawn
Pixel Manipulator
TyrantOfFlames
Of Chaos and Order
Satori
Destructosaur
Don't take it so personally, it's spoils the humour, hehe.
For that matter, there's not much that can be proven with absolute certainty. We can't prove that the sun is extremely massive, that the earth's core isn't made of jello pudding, or that HIV causes aids, but we adopt these concepts nonetheless because they are the best fit to the data, and evolution is no exception.
I disagree, but I'll do what I can to rememdy this circumstance.
I don't think I'd call it a "guess", no more than I'd call the weight of jupiter a guess. We can find ancient fossils of organisms that have survived pretty much unchanged to this day and we can compare their *relative* amounts of carbon. Aside from this, carbon dating isn't the only thing used in favour of natural evolution so I fail to see how it is really all that relevent. If the world turns out to be only 2 billion years old instead of 4 all that means is that things happened more quickly than we thought, but it doesn't change the flow of events in the least.
I see. So when human remains are dated to be in excess of 50,000 years old (very accurately and consistently carbon dated since we figure (with a great deal confidence) how much carbon human corpses have, it's not a "guess") then how do you view/dismiss this evidence? But, let's forget the dating for a moment. We have some human history that goes back as far as 5000 years when people were living in pretty advanced civilizations compared to our primate counterparts. We have numerous examples of ancient human remains found in conjuction with very primitive stone tools. Do you think that these human remains are only 6000 years old and that when humans suddenly appeared on earth out of thin air that they were so incredibly primitive/stupid compared to the humans that lived just a thousand years later? So let's recap. Billions of years go by on earth, during which time many many species of primates adapt, mirgrate, evolve, create tools, and die off, then suddenly all humans appear (all over the earth at the same time) 6000 years ago and they are (just by some strange coincidence) incredibly similar to the primates that lived before them, and by similar I mean like 99.9% gentically identical. These humans even used the same tools in the same way as these primitive primates. Then, just 1000 years later, the humans are so advanced that they have written language, politics, religion, math, astronomy, pyramids, and they live in highly structured societies. That's an awful lot of evolution to occur in such short time, only 1000 years. It doesn't sound very convincing or logical. In fact, the only people I've known to even suggest something this ridiculous are the religious fanatics who seem to have no concern for anything but the propogation of their beliefs.
"possible for some evolution to be true"? Good lord. So what are you suggesting? "Some evolution" has occured, but in general, it hasn't occured very much in the history of this planet? Oh boy. Why are you hanging on so tightly to this archaic concept of creationism that you are willing to say whatever it takes to not let go of it? FYI, there are *many* instances of evolution which have occured in the last 100 years since this stuff has been studied, not the "some" as you suggest. Everything mutates all the time. If these mutations turn out to be advantages, the organism thrives, if not, they die. It's that simple.
Mutations also have positive effects (obviously). It doesn't matter that only 1 mutation in several thousand turns out to be positive because it is the positive mutation that lives and gets passed on into the successive generations, not necessarily the negative one. So even if we have a million negative and one positive, it doesn't matter, all that matters is that the positive one exists and is passed on. I'm just happy that you realize that 1) mutations do occur and 2) that some of them turn out to be advantageous, as this seems to be a hard thing to grasp for a lot of people. Given millions of years of evolution/adaptation with many many organisms interbreeding, the postive mutations really add up and spread throughout a population quickly. Examples of positive mutations aren't hard to find. In the last 20 years the depletion of the ozone has caused some plants to evolve more resistance to the sun's radiation. The thing with evolution is that is happens due to environmental changes over many succesive generations, therefore it's not something we can always observe directly, it takes thousands of years in most cases to notice a substantial change and we've only been looking in the last 140 years (nonetheless, there are examples out there which are so clear and obvious that they simply cannot be refuted).
The fact that other species once existed that are like 99.7% genetically identical to ourselves (without actually being human) is anything but a "a bit of a strike against large scale evolution".
Yet, oddly, you don't require any evidence to support your theory humans have only been around for 6000 years. I'm also willing to bet that you are pretty sure the earth's core is composed mostly of iron and other heavy metals. I'm sure you accept that most elements in the universe were manufactured by stars. Why do you accept these generally accepted ideas and yet you can't swallow the incredibly obvious process of evolution? Could religion have something to do with it? Could it be that you were told things when you were younger that you simply can't let go off in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
I think it's far more incredible that anything exists at all, quite frankly.
The universe does look as if it was set into motion an infinitely long time ago and that the natural laws which it had in the beginning have forged everything we see today, completely devoid of any kind of divine intervention. I'm not saying that there was no intervention, I'm saying that the evidence we currently have *suggests* that all things occured naturally, completely though natural processes which can be explained/predicted in a very precise way. Basically, if there was any sort of "creation" going on after the birth of the universe, then we haven't found it. There's nothing on earth or in space that appears at all as if it is simply too cool to have evolved naturally. Evolution is the best fit to the data and just about every day new evidence is found which supports it.
When you say things like this it denotes to me that you are lacking an understanding of how cells came into being and shows beyond all doubt that you really don't know what you are talking about. Some "goo" didn't get together and create a cell, it's a whole lot more involved than that, something I thought you were aware of. I won't bother explaining it to you, if you want to know, you'll find out for yourself. All the info is there awaiting your discovery.
Wow, please stop before you embarass yourself further. This is truly shameful, as this lightening bolt idea is an rather old and outdated concept. The energy which fueled the long process of cell formation came from the sun.
Scientists typically don't have billions of years or an infinite number of chemical reactions occuring over the entire earth either. If they had these conditions, I'm SURE live would arise, how could it not? A million monkeys on a million typewriters... all possible outcomes will eventually come into being. It's just the way reality (physics) works.
Actually, this is nonsense. Evolution is the best fit to the data, and it get better each day as new discoveries are made. Creationism is purely speculation spawned of archaic religious beliefs for which NO evidence supports.
I'm getting a little tired of hearing how evolution requires "faith". I see this as little more than an attempt to belittle the science of evolution to be as speculative and pathetic as that as creationism, and it's not working. I think evolution is the most likely and painfully obvious explanation for everything, not because I have faith in it, I have none, but only because it is by far the most logical and tangible.
Creationism (obviously) is a creation of the religious right to be viewed as being "logical" and "scientific". It came about not long ago in a attempt of the church to defy the division of church and state and to have their speculative bullshit taught in biology classes (to directly contend with the teaching of evolution), as it a law that only things with a scientific basis can be taught in science classes. That's why "creationism" was concocted and why the bible-thumpers recanted on their claims of 6-day creation. By attempting to appear scientific, they are trying to dodge under this law, and so far (obviously) they have been unsuccessful. For many many years now creationists have tried to get their crap into schools and they have failed every time cuz of the simple fact that science can only tell us what has occured and theorize about why/how it has occured, it does not tell us who did it or why. Any reference to divine intervention is NOT science, it's theology. If science comes across something which it cannot explain, it will say "I don't know", it will NOT say "God did it". That's the difference. Science seeks the best explanation for the data, it does NOT manufacture explanations to suit it's purpose the way that creationsim does.
BTW, with ALL life on earth being so genetically similar, I find it hard to believe that anyone, including the fanatically religious, cannot see that all live on earth is very related and had the same orgins. It's no coincidence that most all animals have 2 eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Here's something cool, if you remove the chromosome that creates a fly's eye and replace with one from a mouse, what happens? Does the fly grow a mouse eye? No. It creates a perfectly formed fly eye. That's how related life is, you can take parts of one animal and mix it with another completely different animal and there is virtually no difference. The genes responsible for creating the eye of an insect or reptile are pretty much identical to the genes that creates the eye of a person or whale. It's also no coincidence that humans and chimps are over 99% genetically identical. It all makes so much sense, why would we ever think otherwise?
Satori
Satori has a point here and I would second that you mind this.
Creationists for whatever odd reason think that if they can show a theory is somehow imperfect ("evolution takes faith!!") then they must be right. What kind of logistics and fallacious strategy of debate is this?
Evolutionists will freely concede that theirs is indeed a theory. But quite frankly it's the best theory, far better than creationism. I reccomend that you accept this *fact* about the *theory* of evolution, ie., that it's superior
Incidentally, this kind of logic exemplified in TyrantofFlames stance against evolution is the same one people have been tasking in the anti-american threads. That something is IMperfect doesn't stultify the fact that it's *better* or basically good and worth supporting. (from birthdays to relationships to evolution to politics? hmm hope not, hehe)
I'm kind of out of it tonight so I'll be as brief as I can be.
Evolution is theory that explains two things.
1) the origin of species; how the variation of organisms on this earth has come about.
2) the process by which species change and come into existence; the basic principles of this process can be pinned down to sexual reproduction and natural selection (which are plain facts of ecology)
Evolution *does not* attempt to explain the "how" and more importantly the "why" of life itself.
Most scientists when asked "how and why did life come into existence" will freely concede that they don't know. This is a concern that's quite extraneous to the aims of the theory of evolution.
It's interesting to ponder anyway. Can life happen by purely naturalistic, physicalistic means? (in which case scientists would be able to create life themselves-- hasn't this already happened?) Or does it need the impetus of a transmundane agent who intervenes in history and "brings" life into existence?
Call me optimistic but I"m pretty sure we'll be able to explain these things too, down to a science.
TyrantOfFlames
Of Chaos and Order
Damn...I'm wishing i hadn't started it now...it's such a tired subject...well I'll be mild in my response.
I wasn't aware of this...I'll have to look into it...I must admit, I haven't had any interest in this stuff for a very long time, (a few years), so my information is, apparently, a bit dated. I did a bit of research to refresh myself before I posted, I guess it wasn't quite enough.
I wasn't meaning for you to take me literally. At that point I was getting a little fecitious. Apollogies. I realize it would take a little more than just a flash of light and a little slime. The hardest thing to comprehend is: at what point did something become alive? What provoked life, and not just another group of compounds and mixtures? Maybe viruses are a key, alot of the connections made in evolution theory are pretty faint. I understand that you are sick of people denying the strength of the evolution case, and I'm sick of people ignoring holes in it. (I can already see some rebuke from that statement).
Well, I don't want to be aken the wrong way, so I'll try to approach this from the perspective of logic. We can all agree that an Opeth song can be detected without knowing that it is Opeth first. A person (given theyhave heard Opeth before) can hear a song by them and know it is them without being told, because they have a certain style, a trademark sound. Same goes for almost any band. Same goes for artists, poets, fim directors...creators. So now that we know all creators put something of themselves into their work, to give it a certain trademark, to give each work a similarity to another work by the same creator, if all living things were created, then would they not share many similarites, considering that they all came from the same creator? Of course it's not coincidence, either way. Everyone agrees that life came from one place, the argument is exactly what that one place is. The genetic similarities don't really mean much as you have just stated. All life is very similar. Not just humans and monkeys.
Also, I really wasn't trying to disprove evolution, as it can't be done. Just thought I'd interject that.
One last note. I think Satori (and maybe myself too, I suppose) should take notes on how E V I L agrues. He seems to have the right approach, that being a very objective view. People are much more inclined to believe someone who doesn't offend them every step of the way. And, frankly, Satori is pretty good at that.
I wasn't aware of this...I'll have to look into it...I must admit, I haven't had any interest in this stuff for a very long time, (a few years), so my information is, apparently, a bit dated. I did a bit of research to refresh myself before I posted, I guess it wasn't quite enough.
I wasn't meaning for you to take me literally. At that point I was getting a little fecitious. Apollogies. I realize it would take a little more than just a flash of light and a little slime. The hardest thing to comprehend is: at what point did something become alive? What provoked life, and not just another group of compounds and mixtures? Maybe viruses are a key, alot of the connections made in evolution theory are pretty faint. I understand that you are sick of people denying the strength of the evolution case, and I'm sick of people ignoring holes in it. (I can already see some rebuke from that statement).
Well, I don't want to be aken the wrong way, so I'll try to approach this from the perspective of logic. We can all agree that an Opeth song can be detected without knowing that it is Opeth first. A person (given theyhave heard Opeth before) can hear a song by them and know it is them without being told, because they have a certain style, a trademark sound. Same goes for almost any band. Same goes for artists, poets, fim directors...creators. So now that we know all creators put something of themselves into their work, to give it a certain trademark, to give each work a similarity to another work by the same creator, if all living things were created, then would they not share many similarites, considering that they all came from the same creator? Of course it's not coincidence, either way. Everyone agrees that life came from one place, the argument is exactly what that one place is. The genetic similarities don't really mean much as you have just stated. All life is very similar. Not just humans and monkeys.
Also, I really wasn't trying to disprove evolution, as it can't be done. Just thought I'd interject that.
One last note. I think Satori (and maybe myself too, I suppose) should take notes on how E V I L agrues. He seems to have the right approach, that being a very objective view. People are much more inclined to believe someone who doesn't offend them every step of the way. And, frankly, Satori is pretty good at that.
shopping = economy = livelihood = celebration = growth = evolution = people being able to get on the internet to complain about shopping?
where do we go from here?
where do we go from here?
Lina
kickass elizabethan style
Satori
Destructosaur
I think my true intent is often misinterpreted, and I have a reputation to uphold, heheh
Satori da mega-prick
Satori
Destructosaur
Me? Extensive vocabulary? I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not. If not, you must have me confused with Xytoklon or EVIL, hehe.
BTW, I write exactly like I talk, and it is never my intent to show off, only to get my point across as articulately as possible. Thanks for the compliment nonetheless however, undeserved as it was, heeh.
godlessly,
Satori
BTW, I write exactly like I talk, and it is never my intent to show off, only to get my point across as articulately as possible. Thanks for the compliment nonetheless however, undeserved as it was, heeh.
godlessly,
Satori
Satori
Destructosaur
Originally posted by Lina
what'd i tell ya? argh!
Let's go back to talking about men being whipped!
Well then, what about it?
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