Posts by Qcmbr

285

Evolution disproved by 11 year old niece

by StopTheTears in

jw
friends

mary: what's evolution?.

me: well it's kinda complicated.

they think plasma gave birth to monkeys which gave birth to humans.

Qcmbr

OK you do realise that evolution is observed in nature now? i.e. the process does not require man or god or anyone to intervene - it just happens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

These experiements showed change occuring without the need for god to intervene (unless you say that god was taking different samples and alteringt them at different rates - to what end who knows - and then decided to bless one group with citrate utilising capabilities.)

Abiogenesis is a different subject however, if a mechanism can be seen to produce replicating systems within lab environments will your argument change one iota (if not then it can be disregarded as an essential plank of your argument!)?

Do I mischaracterise you by saying that you simply want the possibility that god lives and that purely natural evolution threatens your god? Surely all these arguments can be solved by not worrying about the parts of your god that are threatened by evolutionary theory and just roll your dice and see how they lie rather than rolling a double six and calling it snake eyes. In short why seek to re-interpret a clear and unobtuse set of facts to fit your construct of what god is. If there is a god your concept of that being will hardly affect the reality of that being and that being MUST fit with observed reality. Thus you can relax, knowing that any existing god isn't at odds with the facts but your construct or mental idea about that god might just need tweaking.

285

Evolution disproved by 11 year old niece

by StopTheTears in

jw
friends

mary: what's evolution?.

me: well it's kinda complicated.

they think plasma gave birth to monkeys which gave birth to humans.

Qcmbr

Vidqun - why do you dislike evolution? It is a proven fact (not a hypothesis or nice idea) its a fact so your motivation is much more important than any argument you are using since your arguing against the observed world. If you can simply state your motivation why you know god did it and then I'll state mine to support that why I know evolution is the mechanism by which life is being inexorably changed in response to environmental pressures and it isn't a process driven by imaginary beings.

Dawkins was utterly right when he expressed his frustration in having to deal with idiotiotic stories rather than being able to focus on the facts. The sooner these fables are outlawed in the school curriculum the better and hopefully the rising generation can finally think without thousands of years of superstition promulgated by countless fooled parents.

..and by the way what happened to AG? Its like a breathe of fresh air here not to wade through pages of pap but I hope she's Ok.

83

Did Jesus sacrifice really mean anything?

by highdose in

suspending for a minute the realisation that it never happened and instead looking at it as a beliver would.... jesus had to endure a painful death, yes.

but he knew that he would only be dead for three days and that afterwards he would get reserected and be able to mind f**k around with those who had put him to death.

and then he would live for ever in a brand new body!

Qcmbr

I want to know by what right he took away the responsibility for my actions. I am more than capable of answering for the excellent life I have lived and I have no need of a sacrificial scapegoat to be nailed and whipped on my behalf. I want none of that sordid sickness.

285

Evolution disproved by 11 year old niece

by StopTheTears in

jw
friends

mary: what's evolution?.

me: well it's kinda complicated.

they think plasma gave birth to monkeys which gave birth to humans.

Qcmbr

Tec - is it not stupid to post on a topic you know little about , admit to having done no research from very easy sources where the information has been made accessible and then stonewall from that point on with statements about listening only to those who know ( code for fundamentalist Christians / a god .) if that isn't stupid behaviour what is it?

You also say that there is no conflict between your god and evolution. What Cofty and others have tried to do for you ( since you - like so many - refuse to ) is frame your argument with evidence, if god did a creation what would it look like? Well the primary source of the story is the creation myths especially the bible one. You've said you don't see the bible as infallible so I suspect you reject te seven day creation story * 2 as presented by the bible ( a story that is diametrically opposed to evolution as it has all species already formed at creation. ) The odd thing is that having rejected the story you still hold onto creation ( or do you accept abiogenesis!?) but now you have no cards other than evolution plus an initial creation on the table. Since evolutionary evidence shows us a time when only simple life forms existed this makes your god a creator of basic replicating machines and nothing else ( certainly no crowning glory of creating man as per the bible ) so god turns up and makes one self replicating machine then bogs off to watch. Not only does this destroy the Garden of Eden story and creation myth it also handily does away with your need for an atonement. Oops no need for Jesus to die. While we are at it the flood story also disappears ( creation had to be done a second time since evolution isn't quick enough a process to handle the variety of species in the world observed currently .)

So evolution pretty much destroys the OT and the need for a NT. Lets not get too bogged down in that though and look back at what a deistic creator plus evolution says about that god:

1 - hands off. Either through impotence, laziness or curiosity ( add additional terms as you see fit ) this being is no longer involved.

2 - cruel. To design death via predation and illness is to have been sadistic. Design solves problems and makes things easier.

3 - haphazard. Taking no interest in the results of evolution ( allowing adaption to exist as opposed to design so forcing life to use what is there and laboriously adapt it to provide functionality is not the sign of a methodical god. You end up with stupid results like windpipes and gullets in the same place and the all too common phenomenon of choking)

4 - heartless. Evolution produces a large number of offspring who are less fit for an environment. Having DNA that can have copy errors leads to babies born with genetic defects and dying horribly or living on in constant pain or discomfort. The deistic god is responsible for every genetic illness and the brute force approach of survival of the fittest. Trillions of mini genetic life forms ill suited to their environment or genetically damaged all consigned to an early death normally via predation.

5 - liar. Deist god is willing to allow charlatans to write books ascribing him a greator role than he took and to enslave people on the basis of that misrepresentation. One of the more successful mendicants enslaves people in his name and has them waiting for a second coming thats overdue by 2000 odd years. Deist god is apparently unconcerned that women have been treated as second class citizens based upon this central lie of the book.

6 - wasteful. Evolution requires death. God supposedly promises eternal life. Death and replication cannot coexist with eternity ( an infinitely reproducing system will rapidly fill all available space .) Evolution requires death through age or predation to make room for offspring and to allow change to occur. Eternal life is anti evolution. Deist god could have cut to the chase and just created a group of eternal , physically perfect beings and not bothered with the whole fall, death, evolution mess you propose.

7 - illogical. The fall is supposed to have somehow de-evolved us allowing what was perfect become imperfect. Evolution shows that no prior perfect state existed ( DNA is shared by all life showing common ancestry and there are key areas of DNA that show the accumulation of copy errors that take hundreds of thousands of years to accrete ). If we are the result of evolution then recognisable humans have been around far longer than the bible and the bible story. Deist god has a 'plan ' to save humans ( where is the cut off point where Grandma is just too primate to make people heaven ?) but doesn't bother telling humans till its almost all over. Most humans have never had a bible and then the few who have lived in modern times rarely get to see it and when it finally gets mass printed its full of lies ( garden of Eden and creation ).

Evolution destroys the credibility of a Jehovah god and makes deist god pretty much a simple bio chemical scientist who is now on permanent holiday. Tec :)

384

Atheism 2.0

by Qcmbr in

apologies if this has been posted before or even discussed.. this ted talk gets at the heart of what atheism is missing and my wife an di discussed this for a long time last night.

in short religion provides a framework for meeting, for ritual, for art, education and sociality.

without this framework atheism can seem lonely harsh and certainly disorganised (the general idea that education and culture can replace the gap may well be true but without a formal structure the route to personal mental fulfillment is somewhat piecemeal and patchwork.

Qcmbr

S&G - thanks for link.

Terry - I think maybe I can see that it is not really possible to talk about 'knowing' in an essentialist Platonic sense(i.e. the bed you sleep in is an approximation of the perfect bed etc.) but surely we've moved beyond that strictness and recognised that absolutes are human inventions not markers of reality (for example I will define absolute white differently to the next person since whiteness is a perception in my head however, some scientific body or some artistic group may agree on a scientific wavelength distrubution or recipe of pigments that is 'absolute white'.) Thus when we talk about the supernatural it is legally correct to say we cannot know if a god exists however, we MUST also agree that the definition of god is a totally human constructed idea (ants and slime don't have the faculty for faith or imagination ) and therefore without humans the very concept of god also ceases.

To talk solely in legal terms with unchanging , council agreed definitions for meaning is at once totalitarian (the very thing you seem to be preaching against) - you will accept that this word means this and only this - and also utterly unworkable since words are an approximation of experienced thought not platonic essensialism (when I think of a rabbit I do not hold a perfect rabbit concept and it is open to further refinement and understanding from geneticists and pet shops.) The debate about concepts is used as a smoke screen, imo, to avoid asking what does it mean to be 'x'. This is the root of my quandry.

As a Mormon it was relatively clear what the church wanted my affiliation to mean (e.g. happy face regardless of what was really happening, ten percent cash cow and underwear purchaser) whereas as an atheist I realise that I've dashed to freedom with no idea how to spend that freedom and I wonder whether I've lost more (structure, sociality, family cohesion and life focus) than I've gained (of course that realisation is a step in the right direction!) I'm less interested (though it is interesting) in the semantics as much as I am with the practicals. I want to be proud of being an atheist because I want it to have enriched my - and my family's - life. In other words I wish to define my atheism. The question is also - is there anything I can do know as an atheist that I couldn't do as a Mormon (superficial knicker questions aside :) ) in other words - from a purely practical pov has my capacity really increased.

Intellectually I'm happy - I'm not heading back. Just curious about where I go now.

6

Thinking Without Words

by DT in

jw
friends

is it possible to think without words?.

i've heard many people claim that it's not possible.

recently another thread about evolution was sidetracked by this question.. i personally spend a lot of time thinking without words.

Qcmbr

It is possible to think without words - obviously (most of our perceived reality is constructed without words) - however, words are like tools that better enable us to communicate, organise , categorise and theorise by associating meaning with sound (and normally other sensory inputs like vision.) Where words are powerful is that they allow repetition which wires the brain, thus when we enunciate or think of language that say degrades the opposite sex we are actually training our thought process. This is one of the reasons why the underpinnings of political correctness (however annoying) are actually correct. When we consciously train ourselves to avoid language based in prejudice we are a step closer to being less prejudiced as we are not refreshing prejudicial ideas - even if they are only by association. Words are also very inadequate to express emotion or feeling which is one reason why poetry works (its power is in associating concepts but leaving the bulk of the words out so allowing us to feel between the lines.)

Some languages allow you to perceive and conceive of new concepts (I never thought much about the varieties of snow but I can see how that might be important to another culture and may be reflected in their language) and in that aspect they are a form of art, words act as boundary indicators for our understanding.

384

Atheism 2.0

by Qcmbr in

apologies if this has been posted before or even discussed.. this ted talk gets at the heart of what atheism is missing and my wife an di discussed this for a long time last night.

in short religion provides a framework for meeting, for ritual, for art, education and sociality.

without this framework atheism can seem lonely harsh and certainly disorganised (the general idea that education and culture can replace the gap may well be true but without a formal structure the route to personal mental fulfillment is somewhat piecemeal and patchwork.

Qcmbr

Hehe - well we all have moments when we say stuff that probably represent our extremes rather than our averages. It shouldnt be enough to disregard the idea though?

384

Atheism 2.0

by Qcmbr in

apologies if this has been posted before or even discussed.. this ted talk gets at the heart of what atheism is missing and my wife an di discussed this for a long time last night.

in short religion provides a framework for meeting, for ritual, for art, education and sociality.

without this framework atheism can seem lonely harsh and certainly disorganised (the general idea that education and culture can replace the gap may well be true but without a formal structure the route to personal mental fulfillment is somewhat piecemeal and patchwork.

Qcmbr

I think this discussion is very valuable because I freely confess that it's actually very difficult for me to express what atheism means to me in a satisfactory but concise manner but I suspect that is partially because I am so , relatively , new to it and wider society has not discussed it as thoroughly as it has religion ergo the ideas are not universally familiar. This forum is 95% of my proving ground for atheist thought since it is such an uncomfortable topic in my religious family and amongst my Mormon friends. If religion taught me anything is to see philosophy as combative , shared thought as sermon and influence as supernatural warfare between light and dark.

Today I read some of PZ Myers thoughts on atheism and it put a new spin on the pointlessness of traducing ideas to black and white, there needs to be a story , a prize won through effort rather than simply a label. In short , in his view - which i find quite persuasive - atheism is earned just as is religion. This then leads us to avoid labelling the religious as merely foolish or atheists as merely rational ( or vice versa depending on which side of the church door you stand .) In that spirit I would call myself an atheist but a very new one though my two years of study got me here. I feel happier that i've at least done something to earn the title but now comes the challenge. What follows, is the tag atheist now a less useful definition that has had its day ( and is still necessary when I find myself in a religious context ) and needs to now be supplanted by some more exciting tags ( my wife thinks I've sailed past 'sexy' without stopping lol ) so I can define my philosophy in more positive ways, humanist is definitely a good one, philanthropist.. The scary thing about any new privileged tags is they encourage positive action, it's not possible to be philanthropic and do nothing. It is much easier to be an atheist as it seems potentially very passive.

Which leads back to my original post...what does one do with freedom once it's been won and what actions do you take to make sure you don't lose personal gains thereafter? Atheism 2.0?

218

Does anybody still believe in God and the Bible?

by tornapart in

i just want to know out of interest how many here still believe in god and christ and that the bible is god's word.

my faith in the wts is gone but i still love god and his son.

i've noticed that many here have lost their faith in god as well as the wts.

Qcmbr

Where does the operator get the energy from to start the system without suffering entropy? Answer that and you can probably dispense with the operator. Without it the operator is merely an added complication to the real question.

218

Does anybody still believe in God and the Bible?

by tornapart in

i just want to know out of interest how many here still believe in god and christ and that the bible is god's word.

my faith in the wts is gone but i still love god and his son.

i've noticed that many here have lost their faith in god as well as the wts.

Qcmbr

The more we study the universe the more mathematically elegant and simple the underlying concepts seem.

It is entirely possible that life is merely an expression of entropic eddy as the energy gradient equalises so rapidly allowing momentary energy peaks (so a rapidly flowing river can be seen to momentarily stop or reverse in eddy pools.) In other words the non-intelligent universe is 'working' to maximise entropy but there is room for complex chemistry, energy storage and chaos patterns to occur which manifest in one special case as self replicating engines (life.) Life cannot continue infinitely in a universe experiencing unstoppable entropy and that very entropic state does not argue for an external lifeform to start it.