Darwin's theory

J C · 16-10-2014 09:28PM

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

Thanks J C.

I needed a laugh.

Don't we all.:)

Thargor · 16-10-2014 09:34PM

J C wrote: »

Here is a relevant Youtube video that does the maths on the odds against the Complex Functional Specified Information that we see in life arising via non-intelligently directed processes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

What a load of bilge, its just the tornado in a junkyard crap dressed up in numbers for people who dont understand evolution.

J C · 16-10-2014 09:36PM

Thargor wrote: »

What a load of bilge, its just the tornado in a junkyard crap dressed up in numbers for people who dont understand evolution.

Do you have an issue with anything specific that it says?

Thargor · 16-10-2014 10:29PM

J C wrote: »

Do you have an issue with anything specific that it says?

Yes, basically every sentence that came out of his mouth, a major one being the way he calculated the odds of a genetic sequence emerging from random molecules assembling themselves in a bucket of water or whatever, that's not how it works and should be obvious to a child, but I think you know that.

Pherekydes · 16-10-2014 10:45PM

J C wrote: »

... and Sheldon ended with the observation that "now I'm worse than a fraud ... I'm practically a Biologist"!!!

I wonder what could he possibly mean?:pac:

http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/435:_Purity

Surely any scientist would know of that joke? :eek:

EoghanIRL · 16-10-2014 11:09PM

J C wrote: »

Do you have an issue with anything specific that it says?

Do you even biochem ?

SaveOurLyric · 16-10-2014 11:44PM

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

Thanks J C.

I needed a laugh.

Well, I checked the sums he does in it and they look OK. Also, he has a friend who has a PhD in Caltech so I guess he knows what he is talking about.
So Darwinian evolution does look to be wrong. OK, to be pernickity, we can say it looks unlikely in the extreme. The number dont lie, and the with the odds he calculates, we can now pretty much discount Darwin. Which does make it look like someone who understood how to put together amino acids in a way that would create us and plants and other animals so that we wouldnt starve, did just that. Which is pretty clever without a doubt. And looks to be the best thoery for the moment. (BTW, does anyone know what Unversity that is ?).

MrPudding · 16-10-2014 11:53PM

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Similar happened when the Higgs Boson was titled "the God particle". At some point scientists will realize that using religious language under artistic license, causes more harm than good. It either confuses.... or is willfully misunderstood with intent.

My understanding of this, which comes from a tv programme the name of which alludes me, is that it was actually called the 'god damned' particle. The source of this was, apparently the frequently asked question 'where is the god damned particle.' This was supposed shortened to the 'god particle' by a copy editor that didn't want to use a swear word.

Not sure if it is true, but I saw it on tv, so it must be.

MrP

MrPudding · 16-10-2014 11:55PM

SaveOurLyric wrote: »

Well, I checked the sums he does in it and they look OK. Also, he has a friend who has a PhD in Caltech so I guess he knows what he is talking about.
So Darwinian evolution does look to be wrong. OK, to be pernickity, we can say it looks unlikely in the extreme. The number dont lie, and the with the odds he calculates, we can now pretty much discount Darwin. Which does make it look like someone who understood how to put together amino acids in a way that would create us and plants and other animals so that we wouldnt starve, did just that. Which is pretty clever without a doubt. And looks to be the best thoery for the moment. (BTW, does anyone know what Unversity that is ?).

<sigh> and you were doing so well.

MrP

obplayer · 17-10-2014 12:13AM

SaveOurLyric wrote: »

Well, I checked the sums he does in it and they look OK. Also, he has a friend who has a PhD in Caltech so I guess he knows what he is talking about.
So Darwinian evolution does look to be wrong. OK, to be pernickity, we can say it looks unlikely in the extreme. The number dont lie, and the with the odds he calculates, we can now pretty much discount Darwin. Which does make it look like someone who understood how to put together amino acids in a way that would create us and plants and other animals so that we wouldnt starve, did just that. Which is pretty clever without a doubt. And looks to be the best thoery for the moment. (BTW, does anyone know what Unversity that is ?).

The lecture he gives is nothing to do with Darwinian evolution, it is a lecture on the possibility of life first arriving, that first self-replicating molecular structure, by chance. It has nothing at all to do with evolution which is exclusively about what happens once life has arisen. As to how life first arose, that is a fascinating debate but a separate one.

Squeedily Spooch · 17-10-2014 03:56AM

J C wrote: »

I agree that tyranny will use any 'flag of convenience' to promote itself ... and it can (and has) used both Theism and Atheism to its own end.

If we all arose via purely materialistic processes ... then that is the end of Christianity ... there was no Fall ... and therefore no need for redemption ... and Jesus Christ was a nice but ultimately deceived guy whose death was as meaningless as all of the billions of Human deaths, since and before.
Christianity will struggle on like a headless chicken for a while ... but it is doomed to extinction, if we weren't created by God - and this can be objectively demonstrated.

I have faith in my faith ... but I also don't under-estimate the power of the alternatives ...
... that are packaged and marketed in very shiny attractive clothes indeed.

"shiny attractive clothes" damn those facts, making themselves look appealing. That's when you break out the talking snakes and people living in whales. Facts are a gateway to things like thinking.

Maybe there's a special type of self loathing required to be a committed Christian. After all it's a great business model, convince people they're somehow broken and need spiritual mending, and there's only one person who can do it. Who happens to be the person who made you broken to begin with...

You're basically committing yourself to eternal worship of a tyrant because he couldn't manage to stop two people from eating an apple. The mental gymnastics behind such a belief system are actually boggling.

paddy1990 · 17-10-2014 05:40AM

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Do these darwinists actually exist, because I know I do not have this blind spot and I have not observed it in anyone on this thread. Nor do I think the phrase "darwinists" actually means anything.

But it is not a delusion for the reason I outlines very clearly in my post. A post you just called a good post.

Myths are things that do not exist at all. Emotions exist, whatever they might be. What they appear to be is an emergent attribute of the system itself. A self referential system that is self aware. I am not sure what is mythihcal or delusional about it.

Again there is no delusion. The subjective entity is subjectively important to itself. And we are ok with that. You are making more of it than needs be. Or less of it, depending on how you look at it.

I just saw your post. You are a good poster. I appreciate your reply. My reply will be long winded and hard to understand in parts but bear with me and I hope I do a good job of explaining my thoughts.

My point is this, and this is the view I have at the moment, - darwinists have to have a blind spot about the ramifications of evolutionary theories and the darwinian evolution & physical materialist view (im just going to call this darwinism for short). Let me explain more deeply...

They ultimately CANNOT apply darwinism to their subjective experience or truly understand the ramifications of it (i will explain what i mean as you read on). This is because they are unable to be completely objective due to a subjective bias (even though they claim that they are). However, your subjective experience is, in darwinian materialistic terms, reductable to physical material dynamics and the entire emotional circuitry that you have is a chance product of evolution. (again, this is all glossed over and not fully understood).

You have said that the subjective entity is important to itself - prefering life over death. This is a bias for life over death - and is embedded into the organism (i.e you have been programmed to prefer life rather than death ultimately) by evolution. This is the foundation of why the blind spot/delusion exists - and you can see it in the responses to my posts (i only read two but i imagine there were others along the same lines) who couldn't understand what I was saying. This was because they couldn't grasp true nature of what I was saying about emotions/experiences due to this subjective bias (hence blind spot = delusion). you cannot interpret your emotions/experiences as arbitrary and as physical material and apply that to your life - instead you see how delusional they are - they couldn't even understand the points made.

I've had this argument before, so I knew exactly what kinds of responses I would get. It's human nature to be rigid and hard headed - I don't expect to change anyones mind here - im only making this post because I am bored & cant sleep. However, I will read your reply at some point, as you've written good posts. I will just search your posts and read your reply, rather than browsing through the thread and the predictable replies.

Since all emotions are simply the chance result of natural selection and also reductable to physical biochemical processes - they don't mean anything in themselves - they are physical material and not better (and not worse) than any other physical material. This is a key understanding and this is what 99% of people will fail to be able to understand due to subjective biases.

This means that to be consistent with evolution and the darwinian materialic view, subjectivity would have to be overcome with objectivity, at least in this respect. This seems very hard for most people - "my emotions are not physical material". However, (and I think you will agree), the programmed subjective bias means that subjectivity cannot overcome objectivity and the real ramifications of what I outlined in the above paragraph are either not able to be understood (blind spot - seen on this thread) or understood and avoided/ignored.

The "subjective entity" is automatically biased against the arbitrary nature of the foundation of their subjectivity and materialistic view of their own subjectivity/their own mind.

I could go on but im getting tired. To summarize, delusions/blind spots are built into the subjective entity so that subjectivity overcomes objectivity. This is needed because strict darwinian objectivity is counter to life itself. If emotions and so on are actually understood and interpreted as nothing more than physical material and the arbitrary and essentially meaningless nature of the chance evolutionary proccesses that happened to naturally select arbitrary biochemical pathways are understood and emotional circuitry is truely accepted and interpreted as nothing more than meaningless physical material (meaningless in objective terms), then objectivity overcomes subjectivity and life isn't necessarily better or worse than death and "believing" in emotions (i.e physical material) becomes a delusion. This isn't to say you wouldn't HAVE emotions.

Therefore, delusion and blind spots are absolutely critical to the subjective entity. To be anything other than completely objective (i.e consistent with a materialist view of subjectivity/your own mind) is, by definition, a delusion/blind spot. The darwinian physical materialist POV coupled with the chance/arbitrary design (evolutionarily) of subjectivity itself, combine to essentially negate that subjectivity and expose it as a delusion.

PopePalpatine · 17-10-2014 09:41AM

Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monster, there's a second poster engaging in verbosity now!

I notice there's no mention of the "subjectivity" of creationists, of course. :rolleyes:

yellowlabrador · 17-10-2014 09:49AM

I'm on a diet, but this one is making me want to start on a packet of Aldi gluten free chocolate digestives. maybe that is darwinian subjective and materialistic?

Wibbs · 17-10-2014 10:03AM

Squeedily Spooch wrote: »

Maybe there's a special type of self loathing required to be a committed Christian. After all it's a great business model, convince people they're somehow broken and need spiritual mending, and there's only one person who can do it. Who happens to be the person who made you broken to begin with...

You're basically committing yourself to eternal worship of a tyrant because he couldn't manage to stop two people from eating an apple. The mental gymnastics behind such a belief system are actually boggling.

+1000. It's one of the biggest issues I have theologically and philosophically with the Abrahamic faiths.

Knasher · 17-10-2014 11:08AM

SaveOurLyric wrote: »

Well, I checked the sums he does in it and they look OK. Also, he has a friend who has a PhD in Caltech so I guess he knows what he is talking about.
So Darwinian evolution does look to be wrong. OK, to be pernickity, we can say it looks unlikely in the extreme. The number dont lie, and the with the odds he calculates, we can now pretty much discount Darwin. Which does make it look like someone who understood how to put together amino acids in a way that would create us and plants and other animals so that we wouldnt starve, did just that. Which is pretty clever without a doubt. And looks to be the best thoery for the moment. (BTW, does anyone know what Unversity that is ?).

Firstly, as obplayer pointed out, we are now talking about a separate area than evolution. Evolution is about how complex life arose, while the study of how life began is called abiogenesis. Abiogenesis is an ungoing field of research, there are leading theories but it is far from settled. Point is that they are separate things, I'd imagine that the catholic church, which officially accepts evolution, probably takes a god centric view of abiogenesis.

Secondly that video is deliberately misleading. To give just one example, I pull 10 coins out of my pocket and lay them flat on the table, the sequence I got is hhtthhttth. The probability of me getting that exact sequence is 1 in 1024. However their is no "correct" sequence, it is arbitrary, so the chances of me getting a sequence are actually 1. To bring my point back then, the question is if there are multiple sequences that could result in life, and we just happen to have this one? (I'm not claiming it is entirely arbitrary though, just somewhere in between).

There are other examples, but really he says it himself at the end. No serious scientist thinks life began by chance (though he deliberately dropped the word "entirely" from that sentence). Abiogenesis is in many ways primarily the study of what natural processes, like chemical reactions, could reduce that probability down to manageable levels.

floggg · 17-10-2014 11:28AM

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

:pac:

This one was posting earlier, he's great craic.

He can't seem to grasp the fact that no one is concerned about the implications he talk about, and when anyone points this out he throws a huff and says they're just not smart enough to understand. Good debating tactic

You'll note he's also note reading any response but just assuming he knows what they'll say.

Thargor · 17-10-2014 12:02PM

floggg wrote: »

You'll note he's also note reading any response but just assuming he knows what they'll say.

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

That's because he knows if he actually debates this with anyone it will get shown up for the utter tripe that it is.

Paddy1990s stalking ground is usually The Gentlemans Forum where his boasts about his sexual prowess, physical appearance that inspires offers of casual sex in the street, male modeling career, city centre nightclub manager mates, Jessica Alba lookalike promiscuous female friends (not making any of these claims up) are nearly as legendary as J C's exploits in the Atheism and Agnostics Forum...

Faktuu · 17-10-2014 12:17PM

I don`t understand why are we still talking about that in 21 century since even Darwin had an actual factual proof of he`s theory
it ware pigeons, dogs etc. that ppl ware artificially evolving to own needs for centuries.
All that creationism BS comes from ppl not being able to cope with they`re own mortality.

PopePalpatine · 17-10-2014 12:25PM

I'd say it's more fear that creationists' entire belief system will come crashing down (I don't doubt that sentence will prompt J C to post his umpteenth "I know you are but what am I?" post in this thread) because of evolution. If the Book of Genesis is wrong, what else in the Bible is wrong?

Faktuu · 17-10-2014 12:49PM

everything in bible is wrong lets take the 10 commandments for example
You shall have no other gods before Me.
A king that has to remind about he`s position is not a king
You shall not make idols.
Same as above plus the Bank of Vatican
You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
Read. do not speak or think about it or you might discover holes.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Again same as no 1
Honor your father and your mother.
the only one that sort of makes sense but on some level it means take whatever they believe as higher truth
You shall not murder.
exept for members of other religions and infidels remeber cruasdes
You shall not commit adultery.
back in the day when it was writen a single mother would be stoned to death and a man could walk free
thats why mary had to come up whith a story for the belly
You shall not steal.
from the temples
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
of the same religion, read some history.
You shall not covet.
this means that you should not screw with someone else property like slaves

Vivisectus · 17-10-2014 12:59PM

paddy1990 wrote: »

I just saw your post. You are a good poster. I appreciate your reply. My reply will be long winded and hard to understand in parts but bear with me and I hope I do a good job of explaining my thoughts.

My point is this, and this is the view I have at the moment, - darwinists have to have a blind spot about the ramifications of evolutionary theories and the darwinian evolution & physical materialist view (im just going to call this darwinism for short). Let me explain more deeply...

They ultimately CANNOT apply darwinism to their subjective experience or truly understand the ramifications of it (i will explain what i mean as you read on). This is because they are unable to be completely objective due to a subjective bias (even though they claim that they are). However, your subjective experience is, in darwinian materialistic terms, reductable to physical material dynamics and the entire emotional circuitry that you have is a chance product of evolution. (again, this is all glossed over and not fully understood).

You have said that the subjective entity is important to itself - prefering life over death. This is a bias for life over death - and is embedded into the organism (i.e you have been programmed to prefer life rather than death ultimately) by evolution. This is the foundation of why the blind spot/delusion exists - and you can see it in the responses to my posts (i only read two but i imagine there were others along the same lines) who couldn't understand what I was saying. This was because they couldn't grasp true nature of what I was saying about emotions/experiences due to this subjective bias (hence blind spot = delusion). you cannot interpret your emotions/experiences as arbitrary and as physical material and apply that to your life - instead you see how delusional they are - they couldn't even understand the points made.

I've had this argument before, so I knew exactly what kinds of responses I would get. It's human nature to be rigid and hard headed - I don't expect to change anyones mind here - im only making this post because I am bored & cant sleep. However, I will read your reply at some point, as you've written good posts. I will just search your posts and read your reply, rather than browsing through the thread and the predictable replies.

Since all emotions are simply the chance result of natural selection and also reductable to physical biochemical processes - they don't mean anything in themselves - they are physical material and not better (and not worse) than any other physical material. This is a key understanding and this is what 99% of people will fail to be able to understand due to subjective biases.

This means that to be consistent with evolution and the darwinian materialic view, subjectivity would have to be overcome with objectivity, at least in this respect. This seems very hard for most people - "my emotions are not physical material". However, (and I think you will agree), the programmed subjective bias means that subjectivity cannot overcome objectivity and the real ramifications of what I outlined in the above paragraph are either not able to be understood (blind spot - seen on this thread) or understood and avoided/ignored.

The "subjective entity" is automatically biased against the arbitrary nature of the foundation of their subjectivity and materialistic view of their own subjectivity/their own mind.

I could go on but im getting tired. To summarize, delusions/blind spots are built into the subjective entity so that subjectivity overcomes objectivity. This is needed because strict darwinian objectivity is counter to life itself. If emotions and so on are actually understood and interpreted as nothing more than physical material and the arbitrary and essentially meaningless nature of the chance evolutionary proccesses that happened to naturally select arbitrary biochemical pathways are understood and emotional circuitry is truely accepted and interpreted as nothing more than meaningless physical material (meaningless in objective terms), then objectivity overcomes subjectivity and life isn't necessarily better or worse than death and "believing" in emotions (i.e physical material) becomes a delusion. This isn't to say you wouldn't HAVE emotions.

Therefore, delusion and blind spots are absolutely critical to the subjective entity. To be anything other than completely objective (i.e consistent with a materialist view of subjectivity/your own mind) is, by definition, a delusion/blind spot. The darwinian physical materialist POV coupled with the chance/arbitrary design (evolutionarily) of subjectivity itself, combine to essentially negate that subjectivity and expose it as a delusion.

A good rule of thumb is: if you cannot explain something briefly and clearly, then you probably do not understand it. I think this is the case here: you seem to be confusing yourself because you are mixing up lots of different concepts.

Your train of thought begins to derail when you conflate evolution and a strictly materialistic point of view, but trundles on merrily for some time after.

In essence, it seems you disagree with a purely materialistic point of view. The reason you give for this seems to be an apparent inability to distinguish between the materialistic processes and the emergent experience that follows it in the materialistic model of mind. You seem to feel that since the electrons that (according to materialists) cause the experience of thought are no different from the electrons in my cheese sandwich, this means there is some sort of conflict, because we do indeed value our experiences in a very different way.

The problem seems to be that you are confusing the content with the vessel, the hardware with the software. The conflict you imagine simply does not exist, either as an experience or in a philosophical way. We value the experience that emerges from the physical processes, and in order to do that we do not need to value the material bits that make those experiences happen.

I appreciate you feel that there is something profound going on here, but if you remove the woolly logic and imprecise terms and phrases, there simply is no problem left to argue over.

Wibbs · 17-10-2014 01:42PM

Faktuu wrote: »

You shall have no other gods before Me.

Interestingly that commandment shows the echoes of the dawn of Judaism. It doesn't say "there are no gods but me". There were "other gods" back then. Baal for one. The peoples in the region that over time became Jews had lotsa gods and goddesses going on. So get some local faiths, elevate one of those gods over time and forget/write out the others and sprinkle heavily with Babylonian influences(the Flood/Eden) and stir for a couple of centuries and you end up with Judaism. It evolved as it were...

Christianity started off as a purely Jewish cult, then butted up against the breadth of Greco Roman thought, sloughed off the "foreign" stuff, like circumcision and pork avoidance and the like, tailored it to the new market of classical Europe and you get Christianity. Protestant christianity is still "Roman" as they just went back to the already winnowed and edited texts and some took them more literally.

Islam took both Judaism and Christianity(more the latter. Initially it was seen as a Christian heresy), but took less of the classical influences on board so kept the food restrictions and mickey chopping bits.

One character that is easy to follow the evolution of is the devil. Starts off as a vague "evil"(the serpent in the garden isn't named), then is a bit of an opposing judge of mankind. Gains more legs as a tempter, an actual singular entity in the gospels, but gets the fully gothic pointy eared, cloven hoofed living in a fiery hell treatment when it hits Rome and later Mecca. Jews don't have hell, or heaven for that matter. Not in the Christian/Islamic way. It's all very vague. There's some talk of an afterlife, but it's limited. It's barely mentioned at all in the old testament/torah and never directly. Their version of hell is more like a purgatory and a soul can only remain there for a year and can repent and leave at any time. Which is in fairness a lot more fair and merciful than the eternity of agonies the later faiths cling to.

Evolution all over the place in the very religions that may deny it. Irony folks.

Vivisectus · 17-10-2014 02:08PM

Not only were there other gods apparently, but sometimes they seem to be stronger than the old testament God, who was still very much a local deity.

floggg · 17-10-2014 02:23PM

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I'd say it's more fear that creationists' entire belief system will come crashing down (I don't doubt that sentence will prompt J C to post his umpteenth "I know you are but what am I?" post in this thread) because of evolution. If the Book of Genesis is wrong, what else in the Bible is wrong?

Well they have managed to disclaim most of leviticus and repaint their god as a cuddly teddy bear so I'm sure they would survive.

Just hide behind the allegory crap like the Vatican do.

Vivisectus · 17-10-2014 02:56PM

I find it amazing that all JC's "genetic diversity" seems to have been contained in just 2 people. And that he tacitly agrees that a truly unholy amount of incest was required if we are to take that particular story literally.

Thargor · 17-10-2014 03:14PM

I notice he hasn't commented on the fact that Mitochondrial Adam and Eve didnt turn out to be the (suddenly trustworthy) scientists admitting that the Book of Genesis had got it right...

housetypeb · 17-10-2014 04:49PM

Vivisectus wrote: »

I find it amazing that all JC's "genetic diversity" seems to have been contained in just 2 people. And that he tacitly agrees that a truly unholy amount of incest was required if we are to take that particular story literally.

If Eve was made from Adams rib,wouldn't she be a genetic clone anyway?

Brian Shanahan · 17-10-2014 05:05PM

Thargor wrote: »

Ha, never even saw your post. I have low patience because I sit beside one of these people in work, they're always trying to show me things on websites that look like they were optimized for Netscape Navigator.

Next time they do that just show them the website Time Cube (warning: website is not safe for anybody who is not blind). Trust me, they won't go near you again (they'll have trouble getting out of the office, to be frank).

kingchess · 17-10-2014 05:08PM

psalm 82 -he judgeth among the gods. also you have genesis 6 :2-4 the sons of god saw that the daughters of men etc. all how you interpret it I suppose.

Darwin's theory

Comments