Happy 200th Birthday Charles Darwin!
Uncategorized February 12th, 2009Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist who realised and demonstrated that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors through the process he called natural selection. The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the scientific community and much of the general public in his lifetime, while his theory of natural selection came to be widely seen as the primary explanation of the process of evolution in the 1930s, and now forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory. In modified form, Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, providing logical explanation for the diversity of life. (Wikipedia)
February 12th, 2009 at 4:22 am
Happy birthday Chuck old boy.
Yes, we keep evolving, into higher levels of ourselves. We’ll meet again some day.
Nothing but Peace and Love.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:54 am
After millions and millions of years of evolution living side by side with our monkey and ape brothers it is absolutely amazing that just this year some of them have started to speak in English. Just last week at the New York Zoo a chimpanzee was heard saying he wanted out of his cage , he wanted to work and needed a job. They have finally evolved just like us.
February 12th, 2009 at 8:46 am
http://Darwin200.org/ has a lot more information about Darwin and his birthday.
BTW, today is also Abraham Lincoln’s 200th. birthday.
February 12th, 2009 at 9:36 am
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DARWIN!
Too bad 200 years worth of evidence gathered and piled high in museums all over the world, and 200 years of supporting scientific literature stacked in libraries, still hasn’t been able to suffocate the Intelligent Design pushers who continue to lie to religious addicts everywhere.
February 12th, 2009 at 9:41 am
I’m still waiting for the monkey’s to start talking. I don’t know anything at all about intelligent design. Hubble’s theories make more sense to me. The universe is expanding (stretching) from a single point of light. That’s real evolution.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Monkeys already communicate between themselves well enough for there survival.
If a monkey speaking english is the only thing that will convince you of evolution than you “don’t know anyhing at all” about it either.
Btw Your glorious expanding universe will evetually expand so much that no two atoms will be close enough to matter. The universe will become an incredibly vast, dark, place of nothingness, where nothing, not even sadness can exist
February 12th, 2009 at 10:35 am
has anyone seen even one article on Darwin today? Is it total media snub IMO
February 12th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Devon, Why did man start talking then…. making tools, building houses, creating cities, forming governments, building automobiles, computers, airplanes, space shuttles, visiting the moon…. Is that evolution or somthing else ?
February 12th, 2009 at 11:23 am
@Offgrid: “I’m still waiting for the monkey’s to start talking.”
I’m still waiting for people to learn how to use apostrophes.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Offgrid that is something else, I think. That is not biological changes but instead a build up of knowledge in civilisation.
Homo sapiens have not changed much since before the agricultural revolution. There is tonne of articles on why humans evolved the way we did, too much for me to cover in a comment. What I will say is that there are/were? native peoples, who only have the basic ideas of bows…etc but are genetically essentially the same as us… if you take them as babies and raise them in our society they are just as smart..etc.
In my opinion, the main reason for our technological advance is due to the discovery of agriculture, giving us time to put our overdeveloped brains to use, instead of endlessly tracking down prey.
But first we needed our “overdeveloped brains” which is where I would point you to some good articles on why we evolved to be extraordinarily social and adaptive creatures, if I could remember where I read them…
By the way talking is key, you have that right, it allows for the handing down of knowledge.
Louis, I can’t remember how many times I have spelt “ad” as “add” in this site, you can’t discount peoples’ arguements based on typos.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:41 am
My Dad told me that 610 A.M. had a large call in session this morning on Darwin…the host was suggesting they make it a holiday
February 12th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Offgrid, I was thinking about it and I think you might be confused about the nature of evolution, it is not a linear process. No creature is more or less evolved, when you here these terms they are often used erroneously to describe the complexity of organsisms. If something survives and breeds better, than natural selection will favour it. Single cell organisms are as “evolved” as us.
What you really seem to want to know is why humans became capable of complex speach, although other animals may be close… I will try to look up some good resources for you on that later…
February 12th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Yes – I am confused about evolution. If man has evolved from apes and monkeys… why after millions of years of evolution haven’t other apes and monkeys evolved into humans ? Why haven’t some apes just stood up and walked out of the jungle and started to speak to us, build pyramids, huts. They continue to walk around naked.- Have they not yet eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ? What gives ?
February 12th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Happy Darwin Day all.
Offgrid, why are you still here? You are full of BS so go away!
I am tired of your BS so lets have a poll to see if Offgrid should be banned from posting his BS on this site.
February 12th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
@Offgrid: You’re judging the evolution of every animal as if humans are the end result. Why do apes need to communicate with humans? They survive perfectly well without pyramids, huts, etc. And not every human walks around with clothes… look at some of the Amazonian tribes, for example. It’s very hot and humid there… what’s the need for clothes?
Evolution is more or less a response to the environment. We moved around and were subject to different conditions than apes that didn’t. And by the way… humans didn’t come from monkeys, or apes.
February 12th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Hal,
Thanks for your constructive commentary . I thought the purpose of this site was to engage Theists ? Or those of an opposing view? Is what I am saying more controversial than what you are preaching ? There is probably no god ? How do I know you exist Hal ? I am saying that I know for certain there is a God – because God is everything. God created all. God is in all. Even the snow falling outside. He is all there is. I am not preaching Christianity or any other religion. I happen to believe that Jesus, Buddha , the Ojibwe, and many others understood that God (Spirit/Manitou) is in everything. You seem to have a very violent reaction to that concept. Sorry, but it’s my believe. I would like to discuss it with atheists since I do not understand their position at all.
February 12th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Off, boring!
February 12th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
All, TVO the Agenda has Justin on it right now!
February 12th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
First off I would like to apologize for my many, many spelling errors, especially there, they’re and their. I now realize how useless I am without spell-check…
Offgrid, like I said, evolution is not linear, we are not the pinnacle of evolution. It took a specific set of circumstances for our ancestors to gradually change into Homo Sapiens. The other monkeys and apes on the planet have also been evolving, but their circumstances, genetic material, and random mutations have been different.
“walked out of the jungle and started to speak to us, build pyramids, huts.”
I won’t get into the science of linguistics with you, but do you really think an ape would randomly learn one of our dialects? If you take a human baby and raise it in isolation it will not know how to speak english, french, german etc. Most animals however CAN communicate with each other effectively, they might be asking why you don’t come up to THEM and start speaking chimpanzee, bat, wolf, dolphin etc. I doubt they are, but it brings up a valid point, humans do have many physical devices which allow us to articulate our words.
“Why haven’t some apes just stood up and walked out of the jungle”
From this I gather that you are unclear about how gradual evolution is. It is through many, many small changes in body structure that led humans to stand upright. These changes were caused by enviromental pressure on our ancestors. If I remember correctly, the thouhgt goes that the increasingly dry nature of Africa led to more and more plains, with pockets of jungle throughout, leading our quadruped ancestors to stand upright for a clear view over the tall grass before running to the next pocket of jungle. Obviously the individual more adept at standing up would be more likely to see a predator and therefore more likely to survive.
really I must stress, Offgrid, that the monkeys of today are not the same as the monkeys of yesterday. Evolution is simply the logical process of natural selection. The creatures that survive and breed….survive and breed, creating more of the most adapted individuals. If the current configuration is optimal (or close to it), and mutations not beneficial, the species as a whole will not change much.
I am not a evolutionary biologist, but I have read a few books, and seen a few documentaries.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Wow that was a block of post, but it is in the spirit of Darwins B-day.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Offgrid,
There are many good books on the subject of Evolution that I’m sure will clear up any confusion.
If your internet service isn’t too slow you may find these videos helpful too…
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4471435322910215458
February 13th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Vadim : Correct – homo sapien did not evolve from apes/monkeys or chimps. Darwin says both apes and homo sapiens evolved from a common ancestor or Homonid. What is that common ancestor ? What caused homo sapien to develop in a way different than all our ape/monkey/chimpanzee cousins ? And if we are cousins how come none of our cousins ever developed like us ? Or are you suggesting that’s what these “undiscovered tribes” in the Amazon are ? Monkeys who evolved after us ?
February 13th, 2009 at 10:35 am
The word homo is Latin for “human”
Adam (Hebrew: אָדָם, ʼĀḏām, dust; man; mankind = “human”
It is now accepted by virtually all biologists that humans are not only similar to the great apes but, in fact, are great apes.”
By 1859, the morphological similarity of humans to certain great apes had been discussed and argued for some time, but the idea of the biological evolution of species in general was not legitimized until Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in November of that year. Darwin’s first book on evolution did not address the specific question of human evolution: “Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history”, was all Darwin wrote on the subject.”
Human DNA is 98.4 percent identical to the DNA of chimpanzee.
After 50,000 BP, human culture apparently started to change at a much greater speed … this is known as the “Great Leap Forward.”
Theoretically, modern human behavior is taken to include four ingredient capabilities: abstract thinking (concepts free from specific examples), planning (taking steps to achieve a further goal), innovation (finding new solutions), and symbolic behaviour (such as images and rituals).
Currently, scientists have estimated that humans branched off from their common ancestor with chimpanzees about 5–7 million years ago.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:03 am
“What caused homo sapien to develop in a way different than all our ape/monkey/chimpanzee cousins ?”
Thats essentially the same as asking why fish evolved differently from our common ancestor. Members of species are seperated and face different environments and threats, that leads the species to split up, thus the branches of evolution.
To simply answer your question, they were in a different situation then us, leading to different traits being preferable.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Okay, Devon, Hal, the basis you use for atheistic belief is that natural selection has something to do with survival and that a lot of time has passed “selecting” individuals.
Okay, lets make an assumption, chimps&humans diverged 5 million years ago from *something*. Assuming 15/years a generation. Also assuming a trait appears, how long until it is “selected”. According to your theory, after the child is born, it would be after family protection ends, say age 12? At this age, the offspring may get “selected”. So lets say this one is the best. Lets say he has a particular color of eye or something. How long to spread to the rest of the population? 12 years, i.e. 1/400000th of the allotted time has now passed. How long for his/her offspring to wind up being the predominant ones? 1 generation(war?) 2? 3? 1/100000th of allocated time is now used up. What about those offspring capable of independent logical thought? Is that a trait for survival? What set of single variations was it? Is it a common trait? How many selection process did it involve? 100? 1000? Certainly it would be across a population, but human population had been in the millions for a very long time and they were agrarian (not much movement). 5,000,000 years isn’t even enough time to spread blue eyes in this manner. If you want to find out how blue eyes spread, read this month’s Natonal Geographic.
I’m sorry to tell you and Hal, but the basis for your beliefs is counter-factual. In particular this statement:
Quote:
“If something survives and breeds better, than natural selection will favour it. Single cell organisms are as “evolved” as us.”
As I pointed out last month, you should really define your terms. Offgrid is defining his. Particularly “natural selection”. Do this as an off-line exercise. Write down what you think “natural selection” is then read this Month’s National Geographic, and observe the differences, if any. No need to post the results of this “experiment” here.
Science involves experiment, not authoritative articles of faith like “survival of the fittest over billions of years did it”. How do you test something like that? (Answer: read National Geographic, the answer is there).
You guys, appear to me, to be screaming out your articles of faith to see if they are challenged, and then call for censorship of Offgrid when he actually presents his definitions, something that is part of the scientific process (and in law too, by the way), and wind’s up challenging your “faith” in your “scientific” beliefs. Have you actually worked out a statistical equation?
Well anyway, read the Feb Nat. Geo. It’s online somewhere.
February 13th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Vadim says:
“Evolution is more or less a response to the environment. We moved around and were subject to different conditions than apes that didn’t.”"
This is also false. cite/ref: Feb 2009 National Geographic, same paragraph as the blue-eye thing.
Can you guys try citing your statements? You must surely recognize their source when you say/write them, correct?
February 13th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
No I can’t cite my sources, I don’t remember where exactly I learn’t everything I say. This is no a peer reviewed article, it is a post on a website.
You cite one article from National Geographic and that means you win? Go into any respected school of biology, tell them you don’t believe evolution was possible, see their reaction, oh and you needn’t post the results here. (mocking)
February 13th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Could you also please tell me which particular article you are reffering to? the one about Darwin?
February 13th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I found this article, very nicely done,
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/02/darwin-legacy/ridley-text/6
Which does support evolution to the fullest…It talks about reproduction orientated natural selection more than the environmental kind… I would say my definition matches very well with there’s. Got to go to work now, I will more thoroughly read it when I get back.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I did actually argue my viewpoint on evolution on a mailing list (1999) with a biologist and a website (2006) both run by friends. I respect them very much. The result was I was banned from the website with the counterpoint to my cited source as being “he was a Bush appointee”. (This has nothing to do with anything except that the web site is visited by a very famous left-leaning scientist).
The mailing list participant biologist concentrated on microbial evolution, his PhD area(?); he was also a friend.
So far the reaction seems to be that I am impossible to beat in an argument, 30 years running.
Yes the Darwin article. Around about the 2nd page with the bit about the blue eyes.
I have never lost an argument on ignosticism. Engage me and you will lose.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Jeff- thanks for your support. I am reading and learning about evolution every day, every minute, every second. I am living it this very minute. I am evolving…. It is a fascinating subject. My thirst for knowledge in this area is unquenchable. Everything I read and learn points me back further and further to the beginning. What was it ? How did I come to be here? Where am I going ? I am learning and my universe is expanding…every day, every hour, every minute, every second. The Genesis story is happening every minute, every second. With each new creation the Genesis story re-occurs. I believe the term “God” stands for the “creative force and presence in this world”, All creation is God. To deny God’s existence is to deny creation. If you deny “God” – then you deny your own birthright and existence. Hal and Devon are “names” on a wesite forum. I do not believe they exist. If they are real, if they are human then they are actually a part of God’s creation and have the ability to become One in God. Every cell, every atom, every electron is infused and consumed by God. There is nothing but God.
Am I watering everything down ? I don’t think so. It raises everything up. How can you kill if you realize that Muslim is your brother he is actually a part of you a part of your “Godness”.
February 13th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Devon, you took note of the key point of the article, and what I wanted to stress. I presume therefor that rational discussion will continue. Anyway, got some code to write bfn.
February 13th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Jeff K,
Curious. What sort of argument would you propose on ignosticism?
February 13th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Tiktaalik reminds me of the Ichthyostega. Ichthys or Ichthus (Greek: ἰχθύς, capitalized ΙΧΘΥΣ or ΙΧΘΥC) is the ancient and classical Greek word for “fish.” So we have all decended from the Tiktaalik ? We will be finding what came before that also in Canada. Read some of the Annishinabek myths.
First Peoples of Canada. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anishinaabe
The definition of the term “Anishnaabeg” is First- or Original-Peoples. Another possible definition refers to “the good humans”, or good people, that are on the right road/path given to them by the Creator or gitchi-manitou (Anishinaabeg term for God).
They have traced the DNA of all other aboriginal people except the Ojibwe.
February 13th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
There are many oral traditions throughout the Anishinaabeg themselves in regards to creationist stories. One example of which lies in the story of the seven “miigis.” According to the oral history, seven great miigis (radiant/iridescent beings in human) form appeared to the Anishinaabe peoples in the Waabanakiing (Land of the Dawn, i.e. Eastern Land) to teach the peoples of the mide way of life. But there was one great miigis that was too spiritually powerful and would kill people in the Waabanakiing whenever they were in its presence. This being would later return to the depths of the ocean leaving the six great miigis left to teach the people….. radiant/iridescent=nachash in Hebrew. The Shiny One. Similar to Tiamat (sumeria)
February 13th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Offgrid, Stop reminding me about the universe expanding!
Its kind of depressing!
As I said before with no response from you…
Your glorious expanding universe will evetually expand so much that no two atoms will be close enough to matter.
The universe will become an incredibly vast, dark, place of nothingness, where nothing, not even sadness can exist
I hope the Big Bounce wins out, that way the universe will collapse and start over…
February 13th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
SkepticalLynda:
Well I’m not to sure my point that there exist a set of atheists who base their views on a false statement of the mechanism of the theory of Darwinian evolution’s tenet of survival of the fittest got accepted into the record, but moving right along:
Ignosticism is something I noticed covered my philosophical view of the definitions of “atheism”, “agnosticism” and “deism” in relation to the definition of the word “deity”.
If we take as an example offgrid’s assertion that “god” is in everything; I can’t speak for him, but if I were to take the view of an ignostic, I would have to drop the word “god”, but I might for the sake of argument adopt the word “creator”.
So if one reads just this month’s National Geographic, and notes that the peacock is an example of (they call it sexual selection), but there might be Victorians around, so lets call it “attractiveness of a mate”, and then defines “creation” as the cognitive process in all animals driving evolutionary pressure in mate selection, voila, via pure semantics, the “creator” is in every animal.
I’ve softened it so it’s somewhat academic, but most ignostic arguments would follow similar lines with slight changes depending on whether you were beating up deists or atheists that day.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Ignosticism is the premise that you can’t define god, therefore you can not even argue about him…
February 13th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Do you think I base my atheistic views on “a false statement of the mechanism of the theory of Darwinian evolution’s tenet of survival of the fittest” ?
If we still knew nothing about evolution I would not assume a creator, I would say I don’t know where life came from, and taht would be the truth.
February 14th, 2009 at 12:55 am
Jeff. The goal of the atheists is to get you to drop the word “God”. So that they can say that they have banished God from existence. Not sure why.
Yes, God is the “Creator”… the Gitchee Manitou is also called the “Great Mystery” or Great spirit. And Yes that “Great Mystery” is in everything- even the stones, because before there was the “any-thing” there was the “nothing”. And out of that “no-thing” the everything was “created” By what ? The Great Mystery. So if every-thing has been created out of no-thing, then the everything is infused by that creative Act (of creation) Also called the WORD. God, the Great Spirit, The Word permeate from our every pour, our every cell, every atom, every electron, every neutron – you get the idea. We don’t need to be afraid of science. God is Science. All discoveries point to that Divine Light that created the every-thing. The All.
February 14th, 2009 at 1:35 am
Hey Jeff- Do you know why Spinoza was issued the writ of “cherem” ? Hebrew: חרם
February 14th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Offgrid, I don’t care what you call it, but there is no evidence for it.
Firstly, my worldview is a rational, empirical, skeptic one… It is from this worldview that a god, creator, magical sky fairy, seems entirely implausable, so I am an atheist.
You seem to try to argue for its existence by being as vague as possible with your definition of a god, than, slowly adding more and more rubbish on until you have something you like. You use unrelated semantics to try to shoe-horn “it” into existence…
“And out of that “no-thing” the everything was “created” By what ? The Great Mystery”
People will accept that the creation of the universe is a mystery, but than you make a bunch semantic word changes and somehow that means there was a god and its no mystery to start with.
P.S. Do you not like what the expanding universe will turn into? You don’t seem to have acknowledged my comment…
February 14th, 2009 at 10:42 am
There really is no mystery. I am trying to speak your language.
I have said plainly – “You are made entirely of God”.(Since He created everything) But since you do not see that — He remains hidden from you.
He does not hide himself – you are refusing to see him. In everything. You have closed your eyes to Him. And He is trying to reveal Himself to you. In Everything – God IS.
February 14th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Go listen to the flying spaghetti monster guys…they say the same stuff.
“He does not hide himself – you are refusing to see him.”
That is a bogus argument, as though I have a motivation to not see him. It implies that either your all powerful god is so stupid he can’t think of a way to explain himself properly to me and billions of others, or that I am lying.
There is no evidence for his existence, the best way for him/her/it to show itself would be by evidence.
You just say there is evidence but don’t show a single scrap to me.
And you still have not acknowledged where your expanding universe leads!
“I have said plainly – “You are made entirely of God”.(Since He created everything) But since you do not see that — He remains hidden from you. ”
That is not, NOT, evidence, that is a statement/theory that you need to back with evidence. The last bit just sounds like a twisted version of “there is no evidence so you don’t believe” which is a perfectly reasonable stance.
I can say there is no god, we are not god, everything is not god, (There is no evidence) I have said it plainly, you for some reason think that there is even with no reason to believe so. Your logical reasoning skills are trying to show you this, but the mind virus has your logic carefully partitioned. There is no god.
February 14th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Devon.
You cannot prove your side so me.
When I say “Everything is God” therefore it is just as valid as you saying “God is Nothing” (or God does not exist)
But in my viewpoint the statement that “Nothing is God” means the same thing as “Everything is God” Because in an infinite universe “Nothing encompasses everything” and everything encompasses nothing.
Whether God is something or God is nothing – all that exists in the universe either comes from something or comes from nothing.
Either Way proves that God exists. If you cannot understand this concept there is nothing more I can say.
February 14th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Offgrid – you are very very close. Can I email you something ?
February 14th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
LMAO, Offgrid you and your semantics, gets me everytime! You can’t prove something just by twisting words around.
“When I say “Everything is God” therefore it is just as valid as you saying “God is Nothing” (or God does not exist)”
It is not just as valid, you are the one making the claim, you need to back it up with evidence. That would be like the folllowing claims, “that there is an invisible purple spotted unicorn” and “There are almost certainly no invisible purple spotted unicorns” being equally valid. I was making that point by trying to create a sort of mirror image of your statement.
Still no comment on the horrors of the expanding universe? Would you view the eventual dissipation of energy and matter as your god’s death? Is this why you have not responded?
P.S. You do have a way with words
I bet by only twisting words you could prove almost anything…look up the right words in your thesaurus and presto! The holocaust never happened!
February 14th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
The holocaust happened. Why ? Because the German soldiers under Hitler did not see that the Jews were their brothers, and their sisters, their sons and their daughters. If they had the clarity of God’s light moving in them they would have seen this. Schindler saw this. The Jews were his family – his children. He saw the same light in those jews and he saved them. Thank G-d.
I am not afraid of an expanding universe. To me it is evidence that the universe started from a point of light. God. I am at peace – I am not afraid for my children and my children’s children. I will teach them about the Light that is God infused in All and they will be at peace with anything that comes. I will teach them the words that Jesus taught. And they will be happy, and they will not worry. I will not let them be misled by churches and religion. By the Pharisees and Saducees, by priests that teach Laws of man. The Kingdom of God is within me. It teaches me to be charitable to my brother. And you Devon are my brother.
Peace be with you Devon. I will pray for you. Even though you don’t want me to. God is movement and God is repose. God is Love. Love created this universe. We are here for 3 things, To Learn, to Love and to Create. Now get on with your business in these 3.
February 14th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Right, but you do understand that the scientific conclusion of an expanding universe is an incredibly vast, dark, place of nothingness, where nothing, not even sadness can exist?
I am curious, would you say this would be the death of your “god”?
“I will teach them about the Light that is God infused in All ”
Please, your children would believe you if you told them a fairy comes and takes there old teeth, don’t abuse this trust by teaching them unsubstantiated, unproveable, stuff at an early age (once infected with such a mind virus it can be difficult to remove…). If your so sure that your truth is so obvious won’t they see it the same way? Or is your brain just bigger than everyone elses and that is how you figured it out?
February 15th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Devon:
Sorry for the delay, been on vacation, still am, actually. After 25+ years of argument on lists and such, I find it best that I do not directly attack a participants views, I can if invited to, but I’m going to have to pass on judging the basis for your atheism.
Instead, it is easier to go after key atheists who have a large body of written work, as for example Dawkins or Dennet or look at a general, commonly accepted principal among atheists such as “Darwinian evolution is a good tool for atheists”.
Also, for anyone like yourself who might one day come to question the certainty of your convictions, I offer some other techniques that could be tried in such a hypothetical case:
1. Since atheism is not a self-consistent system, it is not necessary to quote anyone aside from atheists to establish that it is invalid.
2. It is sometimes necessary to show an atheist that the reasoning being used to arrive at their conviction can be improved by examining a book on logic and reasoning, focusing on what sorts of conclusions follow from an inconsistent set of axioms.
3. Sometimes, as is the case with Dawkins, the argument is well written and researched, there is a slight flaw in Dawkin’s philosophy, namely the ability or willingness toi examine one’s own beliefs.
So without further ado,
Dennet doesn’t even write articles with reasoning in them, they are but manifestos showing no consciousness of the self-referentiality of what was written. Ref: In this month’s Psychology Now article Dennet wrote about atheism (and his life). He even admitted himself he was not looking for arguments (to present).
Dawkins’ views on evolution as a crane (instead of skyhook, as you astutely pointed out last month) for development in biology is the key issue. Here we note that the particular mechanisms *of* evolution are not noted to be the tool, but rather a single *word* (“evolution”). It is equivalent to magical thinking in many respects. To use something as a crane, it better have tracks, an engine and controls, to use an analogy. In other words, some random person such as myself better not be able to defeat the “5 million years is a long time” fall-back with a simple statistical equation.
Now it is true that this month’s Skeptic Magazine acknowledges that the theory of evolution is progressing and also notes that it is important to “keep the loonies away” while introducing these new ideas to the public or some such, but if a book written in 1993 can’t be held accountable to its assumptions about length of time required and particular mechanism for evolution, neither can the “tool” be considered valid for use in the propagandistic endeavor to which it is currently being employed.
Anyway, that was pretty long. Did I miss any of the major crumbled and shaky pedestals of atheism that you would like me to take quotes from any major atheistic thinker and examine?
February 17th, 2009 at 1:47 am
Dear Jeff K
I just dropped by for a second and read your comments because they were the last posted. You seem pompous and empty. You say you are going to “go after” Dawkins and other published authors.
So, who are you? What books have you written? What makes you an authority? Please tell us what books you have published, and we’ll read your ideas.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Jeff, I must point out that perhaps the reason that atheists seem inconsistent to you is that all atheists are different, the only thing they are required by definition to share is the lack of a belief in a deity. You could probably find some pretty illogical people who are atheists…
At any rate I find your arguments difficult to follow. You cannot blame Dawkins for using the word evolution…it entails all the particular mechanisms. Evolution is a solid theory, at times I am amazed by the sheer logical simplicity of it, summed up in “those that live and breed…..live and breed.” that I said earlier.
“Since atheism is not a self-consistent system,”
Hhhmm, atheism is not a belief system…its a single aspect of a persons world view. Do you mean to attack the rational, skeptical, and/or empirical world views?
I was just rereading your post, you seem to feel that peoples arguments do not matter in less they relate them to their own beliefs…If they have not shown this in their articles/books is it not possible that they just didn’t share their own views? Perhaps because it is fairly obvious that they believe what they are trying to convince other people of?