An Atheist Philosopher reconsiders.

[amicus]

Hellbaby...

you said in part:

"... The bottom line is even in evolution, some one or thing had to make the elements or the space or the galaxy.You can mind fuck yourself over it to no end but there is a being or force greater than us,call it whaterver you wish, but it is there. The big question is who made that entitiy, your 'god' your higher power....Where did that come from...."

Not a mind fuck, my friend and I share your question concerning the origin of matter. However, if we can eliminate that bearded anatomically correct vision of god and concentrate on physics, we may have a shot at understanding.

If it can ever be understood.


amicus...

 

[English Lady]

This thread is not about religion. It is about belief in God. In my mind there is a massive gulf.

religion is man(human) made and so by that is flawed. Humans have things like greed and jealousy and fear and allsorts of emotions to deal with , hence the fact that there is often bad mixed in with the many good things religion does.

Amicus Science can not disprove the exsistance of God because it is FAITH and BELIEF that leads people to God. Science will never ever be able to disprove faith. faith is a personal thing and it isn't completely based on measureable and provable things.

 

[amicus]

English Lady...we all do what ever it takes to get us through the night...so do I...

regards...always...amicus...

 

[woodnymph_O]

Organized religion, like every other income producing entity is designed in whatever way will be most accepted,thus bringing people into churches and putting into the offering basket.The Catholic church has reinterpreted the bible over and over to suite their needs over the centuries. God sells, and offers a safe house for men(and women)with sexual perversions where if they were lay people incarceration would be a given. Judging by the way the (Catholic)church has consistantly covered up for decades pedo. and rape of minors how can anyone say that is what "god" wants? Organized religion is not set up for the interest of god, only for the interest of those who set it up.
It is a given that we came from somewhere. Evolution is all good and fair as is the Adam and Eve theory. The bottom line is even in evolution, some one or thing had to make the elements or the space or the galaxy.You can mind fuck yourself over it to no end but there is a being or force greater than us,call it whaterver you wish, but it is there. The big question is who made that entitiy, your 'god' your higher power....Where did that come from.
{{Just my opinion,thats all and I was raised Catholic }}

I am moved to tears well said. If you're a good girl Joe will be along in a minute to call you a moron, but that just means you have a point

 

[~hellbaby~]

I am moved to tears well said. If you're a good girl Joe will be along in a minute to call you a moron, but that just means you have a point

Thanks for the warning

 

[rgraham666]

To me, atheism and belief are two sides of the same coin, that of faith.

An atheist says there is no God.

A believer says there is.

Neither can prove it. It's a matter of faith.

 

[Pure]

Hi RG, (note to mab)

There is a better formulation of atheism: Having no belief about God/gods.

Negatives cant be proven conclusively, in general. It's silly to say, "There is no Great Pumpkin; I know it definitively and conclusively." Rather, I say "I have no beliefs one way or the other; but you may show be some grounds or evidence." I.e., the burden of proof is on the person trying to induce/create the belief. Just like a science teacher tries to induce the belief that the earth is some many billion years old by showing the theory and the evidence.

Alternatively, agnosticism is an old remedy. "I have no knowledge about God/gods." or perhaps, "There is [or can be] no knowledge of God/gods."

As to Flew, he's saying, "I believe that probably there is an intelligent designer or designer intelligence or 'prime mover with intelligence'." His evidence is the 'fit' of the parts of the universe and the origination of 'unlikely' arrangements, like our eyeballs.

There is the old problem: How can wings evolve? What possible advantage is there to a small or badly formed proto-wing? (Helping the beast run faster?) So are we to say that pre-birds developed appendages for better running *that happened to end up serving to lift the beast off the ground*? Isn't that like saying, "I improved the performance of my car. Giving it better and better engines, I've now found it can fly like an airplane."

In simple terms, if a process is 'moving' towards improving animals' speed of running for predation or escape/protection, [one can see why] there is evolution (selection) towards the fast lizard/crocodile, or, up the road, to the mouse or cheetah. But it's hard to see, toward the eagle or sparrow. And of course, protection doesn't *require* better running, as witness the skunk or the prairie dog.

===
NOTE
But saying 'intelligent force' produced the wing, brings us to dr. mab's question: How does that force work, and where? What caused it to 'decide' X billion years ago to create (or foster the creation of) winged creatures? Why and how did the 'Intelligence' decide to have evolution go 'up' (so to say) to mammals and man? (Did she want someone to sing hosannas to her powers?)

If we focus at the simpler level, as Carrier recommends, How and Why did 'Intelligence' decide to have clay 'assemble' some longer strands of molecules and put together some self-replicating chains? Why didn't clay with odd chemicals just stay that way? (The Intelligence was bored and wanted more interesting playthings?)

 

[woodnymph_O]

what??

there is no "Great Pumpkin"? Maybe you haven't found a patch that is really sincere
nymph

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by ~hellbaby~
Organized religion, like every other income producing entity is designed in whatever way will be most accepted,thus bringing people into churches and putting into the offering basket.

What about Jainists? Ascetics? Monks? Doesn't the existance of non-profit or, in these cases, strictly poor organized religious peoples confound the absolute that "organized religion is a profit-minded entity"?

The Catholic church has reinterpreted the bible over and over to suite their needs over the centuries. God sells, and offers a safe house for men(and women)with sexual perversions where if they were lay people incarceration would be a given.

Blatently just untrue. I would be delighted to know where you have evidence for Church-endorsed asylum. There is a huge difference between private punishment and "offering a safe house".

Judging by the way the (Catholic)church has consistantly covered up for decades pedo. and rape of minors how can anyone say that is what "god" wants? Organized religion is not set up for the interest of god, only for the interest of those who set it up.

Again, what about organized religion that doesn't represent or participate in either profit or possession?

It is a given that we came from somewhere. Evolution is all good and fair as is the Adam and Eve theory. The bottom line is even in evolution, some one or thing had to make the elements or the space or the galaxy.You can mind fuck yourself over it to no end but there is a being or force greater than us,call it whaterver you wish, but it is there.

It is logically possible for the substance of the universe to have simply always existed. There is no necessary place for a Prime Mover.

The big question is who made that entitiy, your 'god' your higher power....Where did that come from.
{{Just my opinion,thats all and I was raised Catholic }}[/I]

[/B]

Me, too.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by woodnymph_O
If you're a good girl Joe will be along in a minute to call you a moron, but that just means you have a point

No, it'll mean you have an irrational argument and are aggressively ignorant in the face of reasoned responses to it. Nothing to be proud of.

 

[cantdog]

give her time to respond

Since you've posted, there are responses to be aggrassively ignorant in the face of, true.

But you could wait until she does it before assuming it.

 

[cantdog]

Wings

Hi RG, (note to mab)


There is the old problem: How can wings evolve? What possible advantage is there to a small or badly formed proto-wing? (Helping the beast run faster?) So are we to say that pre-birds developed appendages for better running *that happened to end up serving to lift the beast off the ground*? Isn't that like saying, "I improved the performance of my car. Giving it better and better engines, I've now found it can fly like an airplane."

In simple terms, if a process is 'moving' towards improving animals' speed of running for predation or escape/protection, [one can see why] there is evolution (selection) towards the fast lizard/crocodile, or, up the road, to the mouse or cheetah. But it's hard to see, toward the eagle or sparrow. And of course, protection doesn't *require* better running, as witness the skunk or the prairie dog.

===
NOTE
But saying 'intelligent force' produced the wing, brings us to dr. mab's question: How does that force work, and where? What caused it to 'decide' X billion years ago to create (or foster the creation of) winged creatures? Why and how did the 'Intelligence' decide to have evolution go 'up' (so to say) to mammals and man? (Did she want someone to sing hosannas to her powers?

It seems to me feet were the innovation, not wings. Winged creatures outnumber the non-winged. Wings are dead normal. You are affected by vertebrate chauvinism, here. Aquatic creatures already soar or fly through the thicker medium, air creatures need to be relatively lighter to accomplish that, and the existing trim planes need only to be increased in size. Feet are in use in the aquatic environment, but usually by arthropods, whose air-dwelling relatives use the same design. Dense and weighty land animals need to change flippers to feet, but that one is represented in the fossil record as a convincingly gradual process.

Just another way to look at it.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Re: give her time to respond

Originally posted by cantdog
Since you've posted, there are responses to be aggrassively ignorant in the face of, true.

But you could wait until she does it before assuming it.

First Person: Joe will call you a moron, that means X

Joe: No, if Joe calls you a moron, that means Y

Joe hasn't assumed anything yet, except the reasons why he calls people morons (stripping the etiquette-ness of it out of the equation). I think I have direct cognitive access to the reasons I do that... and they aren't "because [the other person] has a point".

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

I attended a forum about the metaphysical implications of the fossil record and evolution (philosophers have a hard time with the notion of change as an inherant part of a system, as stasis makes much cleaner theory). It was really informative.

Things like "wings" or "eyeballs" came up with the question "What's the use of part of an eyeball or a wing?"... because, true, there doesn't appear to be a prima facia benifit.

But, ultimately, discerning lightness from darkness with really crude sensitivity (light sensitivity is a property of skin, even) improves the odds of survival. Even 5% vision is more advantageous than none. And so on, until we have the eye as we know it. The eye-ball theory pulled hard from what we know of biology today. The notion that skin could easily be a vision precursor was really clever.

Then there's the "wing". Ultimately, it'd be complicated, but similar. Limbs better suited to compliment running would be more advantageous--looking at a crocodile with thick stubby legs that aren't suited for running so much as supporting static weight is a good contrast. Its not much of an evolution to lighter bodied quick things being better than heavier less-quick things and eventually that first breeding of shapes and movement habits that constitute crude air foil.

 

[Pure]

cant, i like your 'fin' ideas. of course, starting with legged land creatures or vertebrates is probably what makes the problem seem puzzling. on the other hand, we do know, even now, there are 'flying fish'; hence it's a matter of extending the flight!

as has been remarked by many thinkers, those with a religious hypothesis always focus on some area of current ignorance; but in most cases, a few hundred years' more knowledge and experiment clarify the matter. Hence religious hypotheses apply to a narrower and narrower sphere, and with Flew's deism, are held to be without any continuing application in the natural world.

PS. Isn't it great to have another thread devoted to the age old question: Is Joe being obnoxious or is Ms. X being illogical, and who is more aggressive in their defect?

Note to Joe:
//looking at a crocodile with thick stubby legs that aren't suited for running so much as supporting static weight is a good contrast.//

actually crocs are rather good runners over the short haul, and can chase down both men and dogs. i can't think of any creature with legs mainly (evolved) for 'supporting static weight.'

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I’m more interested in Intelligent Design as an attempt to grapple with some real problems in evolutionary theory than I am as some ontological proof of God.

I’m a firm believer in evolution, but I still see some real problems there, despite the assurances of Stephen Jay Gould and others. I think there must be some major pieces missing from the puzzle.

Lamarkian evolution is a discredited offshoot of classical evolutionary theory that said that acquired traits could be passed on genetically: the more the giraffe stretches its neck reaching for the higher leaves, the better the chances are that its offspring will have a longer neck. As I said, it’s been discredited, but I think there might be something operating in a similar way, something we don’t know about yet. It would an evolutionary advantage for organisms to develop the ability to pass on acquired adpatations, and one thing we know about nature is that she rarely misses a trick.

Otherwise you’ve got these real mysteries. We’re not seeing anything like the number of random mutations these days that would lead to the amount of species diversification we see on earth in the amount of time given. That’s one of the reasons they’re touting the idea of punctuated evolution, where you have these spurts of mutation every so often, though as far as I know no one's come up with a credible explanation of how that would work.

The problem is though, most mutations are recessive, which means that both parents would have to make the same mutation at the same time to pass it on to their offspring. That just seems very hard to believe.

And Pure's right about the wing business. Wings didn't just appear overnight. But when you look at not only the wing appendange but the accompanying changes that have to accompany it--the development of a flexible sternum, the massive pectoral muscles, even perching behavior--it makes you wonder how all these things can be randomly generated.

Something’s going on that we don’t understand. My position is, though, that I’m more comfortable thinking that our theory of evolution is incomplate than I am having to posit the whole idea of an intelligent designer. We already know that evoution works: we can see it happening around us. We just don’t know the whole story yet.

---dr.M.

 

[NoJo]

"God" answers the "why" questions. But not the "how" questions.

How did birds evolve?

Why did birds evolve?

Some scientific principles, like conservation of energy, can't be explained by any unerlying mechanism, or more basic set of rules. Conservation of energy "just works". I imagine scientists would have no problem with someone saying that God makes the principle of the conservation of energy work. But you couldn't get a research grant to test it.

 

[cantdog]

The one that weirds me out is the birthrate mechanism. Coyotes were the study species, and the thing is very marked.

Coyotes produce litters of a certain size under what we'll call normal conditions, and that was the rub, because different teams got wildly different averages, which were consistent for the pack studied. It seems that if the population is under stress, being aggressively hunted, or poisoned, or driven out by wolves, or whatever the stress is, the coyote moms begin making much larger litter sizes happen.

Lamarckian features put to one side, and also rejecting the idea of voluntary control by the mother of the number of eggs which will be fertilized, what this means is that there is some kind of built in response system, maybe triggered with hormones. It goes into effect, shifts the reproductive production into high gear, as it were, when the pack is under real threat.

What sensory trigger, though, can it be using? What would tell a given organism that the pack was in need of greater replenishment? The whole system was mysterious and puzzling. Other species of mammals seem to do the same, some of them, though. And, of course, social insects seem to know how many workers or drones or queens need be made at any moment, but that's a different mechanism.

There are always more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of.

 

[NoJo]

The argument against Lamarck is that although nature has a mechanism to go from "egg" (genotype) through to "chicken" (phenotype), it's pretty much impossible to go the other way.

I personally don't think there's a logical reason why it can't go the other way. It's just that people have looked and looked, and just haven't found a mechanism.

Organisms haven't developed a "reverse" map so that they can genetically modify the dna in their eggs or sperm. It would be a great evolutionary advantage if they could, and I guess would lead to organisms having very long lifespans.

 

[rgraham666]

Dr_m? My understanding is that mutation is not a major factor in evolution. It's the genetic variation in a species. A mutation might be useful, but it's the base species that changes, rather than the individuals.

As I understand it, speciation takes place at the edges of a species range. The environment here will be different from the one a species originally evolved in.

For example, A species evolves in a warmer climate and spreads from there. At some point, if the species range becomes large enough, the species will move to colder climates. Many members of the species will have the genetic code for responses to this. Thicker fur or larger size. The environment will cause selection for these traits. After a short time, in geological terms, a new species will arise.

So, to my mind, it's variation and not mutation that drives evolution.

 

[cantdog]

Or we could leave the whole thing to the actual biologists or something.

What thread is this one, anyway? Oh. Well, I guess we're called upon to speculate wildly about evolution, in that case. Carry on.

I don't follow Zoot on intelligent design, which I find difficult to swallow in the first place.

dr_mabeuse: Otherwise you’ve got these real mysteries. We’re not seeing anything like the number of random mutations these days that would lead to the amount of species diversification we see on earth in the amount of time given. That’s one of the reasons they’re touting the idea of punctuated evolution, where you have these spurts of mutation every so often, though as far as I know no one's come up with a credible explanation of how that would work.

It has to work, zoot. I think you're postulating too great a necessary time scale. This ain't mountain formation, it's life in action. Lifetimes are the brake on the process, and lifetimes are very short. In some cases, evolution has no handle; cheetahs are all genetically nearly identical. A challenge to the cheetah to adapt would result in a dieoff of all cheetahs. But in any species with some diversity, I bet variation happens constantly. Look at the variations in the human species. Some weigh 300 pounds, some weigh under a hundred. And neither is the outer limit of the normal variation.

No, I think the question with punct. equil. is not "How does the spurt occur?" I think it's merely, "How come it doesn't occur all the time, species fizzing crazily and changing in mere centuries?" Because If the rates of speciation on islands, volcanic ones newly formed in a known time period, are any indication, that IS the normal rate of it.

And I think the answer is, natural selection. If the climate and food, the diurnal cycle and the moisture and all that shit is basically unchanged century to century, then all the wacky variation is selected against. That's how it works. Stasis in the environment makes natural selection nullify, largely, the usual rapid action of species variation. You give a bunch of finches a lot of empty niches and no predation, and you gonna find natural selection can't hold them back. Soon enough you got flightless ground finches living in burrows and all the rest, because there is no natural-selection pressure to stop them.

Current ideas about the value of the gravitational constant are simply that in universes without the "delicate balance of gravity" to which Shanglan referred would have no witnesses like us. They'd have retracted or else expanded at too great a rate for enough heavy elements to form. Since we're here, we got a good one, is the idea. No more necessary to postulate a calibrating hand than ever. I repeat, on no front do I see the hand of the watchmaker. And assuming 'Intelligent Design' for some rhetorical purpose seems silly to me.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Screw around in a lab with a bunch of fruit flies and you learn real quick how fast change can occur. Similarily, tests have created life from nothing, but an approximation of early Earth conditions in a short amount of time. Add to that the advancements on Darwin that Gould, Dawkins, and others made, especially Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker and intelligent design is revealed for the cop-out that it is.

It is intellectually similar to a stressed-out student throwing up his notebooks and screaming "Math is bullshit!" Just because the scientist hasn't the capacity to comprehend how everything is piecing together and sees the spiritual in the explainable, doesn't mean it's accurate. Most of the mysteries can be explained. It can be seen how random chance creates a great benefit (mitochondria sucked up by a giant phage species "learns" that the energy output of said prokaryote can drive more complex reactions and thus begins to dominate the rise to larger and more complex unicellular and eventually multicellular species). It can also be seen the hidden costs and unintended consequences (mitochondria fragility is a key reason for why our lifespans are thousands less than simple E. Coli).

It truly is random chance, lucky breaks, shifts toward superiority in a particular area which drives evolution, not some divine will or great Watchmaker.

I'm not saying this proves the non-existence of deities or spirituality or even if there may be a point in the future where the two may intersect, but intelligent design isn't it. It's just a cop-out for those too encumbered by the macro to appreciate the micro for how it works.

 

[cantdog]

So how are we doing on wings, since we did so well on rates of speciation? Remember, we know jack about jack, here. I never took a bio class.

cantdog

PS screwing around with a bunch of fruit flies. On a porn site, everything sounds a little hinky, dunnit?

c

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

So how are we doing on wings, since we did so well on rates of speciation? Remember, we know jack about jack, here. I never took a bio class.

You mean, creating working wings on a non-wing possessing creature? Zero so far that I know of.

If you mean strengthening the existing wings of a species slightly? Pretty well in the Science for Science's sake section.

If you mean explaining the movement to flight creatures through fossil records of dinosaurs? Then very well. So well, it has moved into the public knowledge and used for sci-fi novels such as Jurassic Park. The structure of many of them are indeed quite bird-like and there are cases of flight-having and feathered dinosaurs. There are also modern cases of possible halfway species such as the mammalian flight animals that are bats and the glide-dependent flying squirrels. Furthermore, most cases of birds are heavily reliant on thermals and low body weight to defy gravity in the ways that they do.

The full-extent of the hows and whys are still sketchy however. There is circumstantial evidence that in an environment of large land-based creature with bad sight and tiny brains, there would be a favorable evolutinary trend for small lizard creatures to become more tree based and that perhaps a half-step or divergent path of tree leaping lizards like can be seen in modern days may have occured. Similarily, a rocky coastal area like that which favored Pteranedons and Pteradactyls may have allowed a punctuated equilibrium change of scrawny stick-like long arms into membrane-encased wings. In fact, I doubt it would be too difficult of an evolutionary mutation or viral transposition to do. It would simply be a factor of having the embryo not remove the extra "skin" between arm and body. There are in fact cases of humans who have such a problem on their hands (of the skin between not dying during differentiation) and thus have so-called "webbed hands or feet" and have had to have it surgically done.

The explanations are out there and the educated guesses are many. There just hasn't been enough data to outright state: "This is the reason". For our impatient species, I'm sure this sounds like "We are lost little lambs who have no clue", but this is far from accurate.

Sorry, did that make any sense or do I need to go further in depth on a few things?

 

[cantdog]

I'll hafta let you know when I've mulled it a bit. You don't speak the same lingo in your biology clothes.

I never knew about the rocky coastal areas being the original home of pteranosaurs. The first dump ducks.

I thought dinos were pretty much classed as Aves nowadays. They look birdlike to me, but what do I know?

cantdog