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drgonzo
Trad climber
east bay, CA
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I think cars with the little fish symbol that say "Darwin" will be my target today.
I feel the love of Jesus from you Jody!
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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After enough cars with those stickers get tickets, fewer will put them on.
unnatural selection
;-)
I'm sure (hope) jody was kidding.
Karl
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jody, you obviously have a different view of "evidence" than what is regarded as "scientific evidence." And you should come out and say that you would accept nothing that would be regarded as "scientific evidence" regarding evolution.
It is rather an extreme point of view, but you have made it quite clear that it is more important for you to justify your creationist point of view by dismissing the legitimacy of evolution. Really, after thousands of words spent just here on SuperTopo Forum you essentially come to the same point each time.
I understand that you feel strongly about this, but you argument always comes down to "prove it to me." But there is not way of proving it to you, you will not accept any of the arguments. So we go round and round. You might get satisfaction that there is no way to actually provide the evidence that would convince you, but really what you are asking for is idiotic.
I could demand the same evidence from you on any number of events from Christian mythology, and demand, essentially to be shown it. You would not be able to do it, and perhaps that would justify my smug response... not much you could do about it especially if I were to push the point on "evidence."
So this whole thread is sort of a meaningless exercise. Once again, you have taken advantage of people willing to reason with you and explain their reasoning on evolution while you string them along, only in the end to refute it all with you absolute denial that it could possibly be true.
What a waste of time on your behalf. I feel totally duped, once again, and I have only myself to blame for engaging in this useless discussion with you.
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monolith
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Not totally useless Ed, I and others enjoy your posts on this subject.
(Wanda nailed the situation pretty clearly last night)
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nature
climber
Santa Fe, NM
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Ed, I agree with monolith. You have not wasted your time. You knew full well we're you'd end up with Jody (right where you are) so yes, you can only blame yourself. However many others have read what you wrote and we get a lot from you. You are an excellent scientist and do a great job of logically presenting your thoughts in an understandable way. Those of open mind and heart that seek the powers that science provides appreciate reading your words. Your words further solidify for many what we know to be valid and worth pondering. Your words help with clarity of thought for many.
Yes, Jody strings many along. We've seen it. It's rather sad. It's the same old scene that's played itself out for years. It won't change and many of us know that. It's why I read this thread but care not to engage him. It's a pointless endeavor that does nothing for me. But I have read and followed and laughed or rolled my eyes.
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Jennie
Trad climber
Idaho Falls
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Jody Wrote:
"By the way, it has been me against a hundred of you in this discussion. I can't address everything, I'd never get away from the computer. Sorry. :)"
Actually, it’s only ninety-eight, Jody. I entered every post from this thread into an author attribution detection program. The posts of three of your “opponents”, on this thread, are apparently coming from one writer.
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L
climber
Jello fan from the City of Lost Angels
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Ed,
You haven't wasted your time at all. Please hear me on this.
Like Nature and Monolith pointed out, so much of what you write here is "common language" science and theory--things that many of us couldn't understand when a textbook was thrust under our noses. But your eloquent illustrations and analogies are so beautifully delivered that the average person (ie. me) can understand and apply them to the world around us. (I'm thinking in particular your expose on Scientific Method.)
You are also quite good at keeping current on science...I haven't had a subscription to Scientific American in years, so don't know much of the new stuff unless TED posts on YouTube, or you write it here. And I love learning the new stuff, it's just time gets short and magazines go unread, if you know what I mean. So I depend on you.
Now this thing with Jody...you have to understand that he works on faith where his religion is concerned. Plain and simple. He's made a decision to believe something and no empirical evidence is going to change his mind--that's how faith works. That's why religions hold such power over people...facts and proof are not part of the requirements.
I have a brother a couple years younger than me--Eric--who was "born again" when he was 17. He got into the heavy-duty fundamentalist thing--bible study 6 hours a day, living in "church houses", graduated from David Lipscomb Bible University, the whole 99.9 yards. Even started guest preaching at several churches.
I, on the otherhand, studied Christianity and the bible for many years, along with most of the World (organized) Religions and many of the "disorganized" religions (haha), out of a desire to find out what spirituality was. I refused to settle for someone else's interpretation of what I was supposed believe in, feel, or how I was to act in the world. Thus, most of what I know and believe today where matters of spirit are concerned, I have experiential knowledge of. I've experienced the state. I believe it because I know the truth of it--there's no "faith of the unseen" necessary.
Religion and Spirituality are not synonomous.
So my brother and I would have 3-hour phone conversations about Christianity vs. Joseph Campbell, or the Bible vs. The Course In Miracles...Prayer vs. Meditation, and of course, Gay vs. Hetero. (Somehow Christians always want to control people's sex lives--ever noticed that? Do you ever wonder why? Do they?)
I learned so much about the Christian mindset from my conversations with him. He would often end up angry and resort to yelling, and sometimes hanging up on me...because the power of the Love of Christ was moving him so, I suppose. And the next morning, he'd call me and apologize. Always did. Because in the end, my brother and I love each other a lot, and once his temper had cooled, he knew he'd jumped the shark.
My brother couldn't stand for me to believe what I did, and was always trying to convert me into a Christian. But since I'd already been there, and knew that a religious label wasn't going to fulfill my spirit, he eventually just settled for semi-friendly arguments.
And this is how you have to look at Jody. Jody's a great guy in so many ways...and these are the things you appreciate him for. That his belief system isn't based on something you concur with (unquestioning faith in what appears most questionable) doesn't mean your friendly arguments are worthless.
Sometimes debate from opposite sides of the fence illuminates things you had no idea would pop up: true conviction; grudging understanding; hardheadedness; your own questions; the other guy's true motivation for his beliefs. Whatever it is, as long as people can keep their minds open to the process, nothing is wasted. And you are very good with your words, Ed--you do know how to write and keep an open mind.
The only frustrating part of this whole deal is if you truly think "reason" is going to change a mind that's chosen "faith" as its modus operanti.
So don't do it...and be happy. ;-)
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Blight
Social climber
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I always find it amusing to see this, one of the biggest lies shared by humanism and atheism, touted around.
"Why does religion exist?" is an important question. Religion has always existed as far as anyone knows; there has never been a civilisation without it.
The answer in no small part is right in front of us: religion exists because spirituality exists, and being spiritual is healthy for human beings. We could all live by eating bread, water and vitamin supplements. But we don't. We could all spend the time in which we're not productively working staring at a wall. But we don't. So why would anyone limit themselves to the confines of only ever thinking "rationally"?
This is the lie: so often we see anti-religous fanatics pretend that they're the righteous champions of "reason" (which is of course touted as the incompatible opposite of "faith"). In every area of life they act normally and indulge the same range of appetites as the rest of us, then suddenly and without any explanation when it comes to spirituality they claim, bizarrely, that only the dullest, most sterile of rational thinking is permissible.
It's simply one of the little group of boring little lies wich makes up humanism and atheism. We all know that even the most anti-religious fanatics don't really act this way, nor would they dare to say so in person.
So why, I wonder, do they peddle such a laughably implausible idea?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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This statement has no basis as a fact: Religion has always existed as far as anyone knows; there has never been a civilisation without it. And were it even to be true (which cannot be determined), it is not a justification for perpetuating a set of beliefs the consequence of which are most painfully played out in conflicts in the middle east, africa, eastern europe, north ireland, to name a few recent events.
Perhaps it would be an abomination to believe that the basis of our deeply held convictions regarding spirituality, and religion, are only the consequence of our physically based set of behaviors, evolved over time in response to a huge set of environmental challenges. Those behaviors could be very complex, and sufficiently subtle that we are forever lost in self-examination, imagining that there is a deep universal meaning to existence, where there is none, where there is actually just infantile, narcissistic infatuation with "us," justified by an imagined "supernatural force."
Blight, you have old ideas, medieval ideas of an academy that repels in horror at the displacement of man and god from the center of study. The irony is that you are liberated from your dusty corner study by a technology which is the result of a set of new ideas, the very foundations of which you deny, the result of "the dullest, most sterile of rational thinking..."
I'd rather try to understand things "dully" than to deceive myself by "believing" something which is basically absurd, irrational and infantile.
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HoseBeats
climber
Albuquerque, NM
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'Lizard Isles' reveal natural selection at work
* 19:00 16 November 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Roxanne Khamsi
Natural selection, the keystone of evolution, can switch direction in a matter of months, a novel experiment on lizards reveals.
Jonathan Losos at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, and colleagues visited a dozen tiny isles in the Bahamas. They tagged hundreds of tiny Anolis sagrei lizards, which show natural variation in the length of their legs.
In half of the islands, they introduced a larger lizard species, Leiocephalus carinatus, which preys on A. sagrei.
The tiny islands are each about 750 square metres (around the size of a baseball diamond) and located only about 100 metres away from land where L. carinatus naturally live.
These predatory lizards regularly colonise the tiny islands, but routinely die out because they are entirely ground-based and can be wiped out when hurricanes cause flooding. For this reason, Losos says it is ethically acceptable to introduce the L. carinatus onto the islands for experimental purposes.
Out of reach
The team predicted that introducing the predatory species would initially lead to a greater number of A. sagrei lizards with slightly longer legs, which would enable them to run faster than their shorter-legged peers, which would get caught and eaten.
However, they hypothesised that after a certain amount of time, selective pressures would shift to favour lizards with shorter legs, because such animals can climb trees better, and evade the L. carinatus in that manner.
Given time, A. sagrei would somehow learn to escape death by climbing, the researchers reasoned. “These lizards are no dummies,” Losos says.
Natural shift
In fact, all of these predictions came to pass. When the researchers returned to the islands after six months and counted the A. sagrei lizards that survived, they found a greater number had long legs. After a further six months, another survey showed that natural selection had shifted to favour lizards with short legs.
And there was a huge increase in the proportion of A. sagrei lizards that chose to dwell in trees. Normally, about 60% of these lizards are found in trees – and this was the case on the islands with no predator lizards. But in the six experimental isles, which had the introduced predator species, more than 90% A. sagrei were found in trees after one year.
Not only does the study illustrate how swiftly natural selection can act, says Losos, it also shows that the process can be experimentally induced, given the right circumstances.
Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1133584)
After reading an article like this how can anyone maintain that "no evidence for evolution exists"? It seems pretty clear.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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The fact that there are folks out there like Jody and Blight - lots of them, apparently, makes me especially cynical about the future of humankind. Jody and Blight seem reasonably smart - certainly compared to some poor Muslim born into poverty with no education other than maybe memorizing the Koran. If Jody and Blight can't be convinced by reason and the great edifice of scientific knowledge build up around the theory of evolution, I'm afraid convincing that Muslim not to hate the infidel (us, including Jody and Blight) is hopeless.
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Blight
Social climber
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"This statement has no basis as a fact: Religion has always existed as far as anyone knows; there has never been a civilisation without it."
And yet of course you provide no evidence at all to support your assertion. And to be fair to you, that's a perfectly natural product of what I'll broadly characterise as "atheistic" thinking.
Atheism, in the sense in whch we in the west commonly encounter it at least, is as John Gray said just a late christian heresy. It has no original thought, no ideas of its own: even its name is a kind of childish circular nonsense, much like writing, "all sentences are wrong".
Every single key idea we see put forward by atheists is borrowed wholesale from religion with the occasional "not" or "don't" sprinkled on.
So, "I believe in God" becomes "I don't believe in God".
"Religion is good for society" becomes "religion is bad for society".
And so on.
Needless to say, this style of thinking - reactionary, dependent and ultimately pointless - can be seen in most facets of atheism: in Ed's case he has to wait for me to make a point then just adopt the opposite position.
It shouldn't be very surprising that a small proportion of the population want to practice such a negative and reductionist way of thinking.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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fatrad, then why are these very words truly lifechanging and life enhancing for me ? Lynner
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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And yet of course you provide no evidence at all to support your assertion. which I might point out is the case for your assertion, also.
But Blight, why do you argue? why do you feel that you should try to convey your ideas on the basis of some logical train of thought? Is it really necessary, after all, to invoke a rational argument to make a point that is beyond rational thinking?
Isn't it more in keeping with your tradition to just assert your belief as correct, without basis in fact, but as a story, handed down from long ago, beyond the reaches of history, that you are right, and righteous, and those who oppose you are wrong.
I bow down to your superior heredity.
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bc
climber
Prescott, AZ
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Blight, ironic that you use the word "fanatic" two times to describe atheists and humanists. Note the etymology.
fanatic
Main Entry: fa·nat·ic
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin fanaticus inspired by a deity, frenzied, from fanum temple. According to the simplest etymology, "fanatic" derives from the Latin fanum, "temple"; but the meaning "zealous" or "zealot" seems to derive from the peculiar behavior of priests who served the Roman war goddess Bellona at a fanum built by the military dictator Sulla in the first century B.C.
Every year the priests staged a festival during which they tore off their robes and hacked at themselves with axes, splattering blood everywhere. This behavior could only be a sign of divine inspiration, and so fanaticus came to mean something like "crazed by the gods".
When the word "fanatic" first appeared in English in the sixteenth century, it meant "crazed person", and then more specifically "possessed with divine fury".
"Religious maniac" is still the principal meaning of the term, but in the shortened form "fan", it also simply means, "devotee" or "adherent".
I somehow doubt my atheist leanings would lead me to tear my clothes off and hack myself with an axe. Religion on the other hand can lead people to do some truly crazy stuff. Enjoy your religion and imagined spirituality if you want to, just leave the axes in the garage (and the suicide bombers, plane hijackers, etc.)
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Blight
Social climber
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"Isn't it more in keeping with your tradition to just assert your belief as correct, without basis in fact, but as a story, handed down from long ago, beyond the reaches of history, that you are right, and righteous, and those who oppose you are wrong."
This is another of the key lies of atheism, which I alluded to earlier but I'll explain further here.
The idea that religious faith is just a blind, unthinking belief in untested ideas is just a reversal of the obvious facts: that religious people question, doubt and analyse their beliefs, often very deeply.
In fact almost every church and temple holds teaching sessions several times a week and runs outside study groups to challenge and discuss the ideas and thinking being presented.
Do atheists attend such seminars?
Of course not.
So what we see atheists present is a simplistic reversal of the existing reality. Again the idea originates with religion only to be appropriated and suitably tampered with, without any sophistication it has to be said.
It's worth adding that an accessory trait is on display here: I aid nothing at all about my beliefs being "superior" or that I am "righteous", yet Ed feels the need to attribute those arguments to me in place of discussing what I really did say.
Again, this kind of ordinary (and it should be said very predictable) lying is a common trait of atheist thinking, but I expect we'll have to time to go into why later.
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Blight
Social climber
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"I somehow doubt my atheist leanings would lead me to tear my clothes off and hack myself with an axe. Religion on the other hand can lead people to do some truly crazy stuff. Enjoy your religion and imagined spirituality if you want to, just leave the axes in the garage (and the suicide bombers, plane hijackers, etc.) "
Well, that didn't take long.
Of course anyone can see the double standard here: bc pleads innocence for atheism because he himself has never committed any atrocity, yet condemns religion because of vague crimes, none of which I've committed, of course.
This is a key area of the pathology of atheism: a powerful need to ascribe terrible (and often farcical) crimes to religion.
This stems from a key conflict: a crusading atheist hates religious people but yet the actual religious people he meets and speaks to never commit awful crimes, never infringe his liberties unduly or in fact behave in any way deserving of hatred.
So in order to justify this consuming bitterness, he concocts lists of crimes, dozens or even hundreds of years old, and blames modern religion for them. The crusades, the inquisition and many more are called into play. The plain fact of course is that terrible though those crimes were, no religious person alive today participated in them, nor have he or any of his brethren been their victims. But the motivation - whose source by the way is almost never the actual behaviour of religious people, not that many atheists will admit that that! - is so strong that even the most extreme crimes can be ascribed to the meekest of people without hesitation.
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