Is "Dublin" a real place?

Wanderer78 wrote: »

it comforts people to think so which cant be a bad thing

I beg to differ. It comforts some people sometimes. Other times it torments people. Surely I don't need to give examples?

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

Maybe I have some kind of OCD thing when it comes to this topic, but I can't imagine being an atheist and having a drive to live life to the fullest.

On the contrary, when you're aware that this is 'it', a tendency to live 'it' to the fullest follows. What's hard to understand about that?

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

What's the point in a living being reproducing even though it's going to die? Do sheep reproduce because they want the sheep race to dominate the world?

I dunno. Not much point to it really, except LIFE. We are born, we live life (through chance and happy circumstance) and the purpose or point is what we make of it. We have the drive to want to stay alive (and I've no idea where that comes from - some primeval instinct?) until such a time as we've maybe had enough of wherever we're at - maybe we're old and tired and sick, maybe we're past caring - and then we can be comfortable with our lives ending. I don't know, I'm not there yet.

TBH though....I don't think there's a point to it, from some external force. Just an internal urge to live your life to the full.

Deleted User wrote: »

DNA, that's where it's at.

If you're going to read Dawkins - and I recommend that you do - don't bother with that God Delusion book. Read The Selfish Gene instead.

Thanks, but tried him a few times. Life's too short I have both those books actually....

Not that he's not fierce interesting, just that I exclusively use reading for relaxation and I like a good fictional drama! Wish I did know more about DNA, but am quite happy not knowing much, at the same time.

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

My grandmother is an atheist. Sometimes she talks about her own death in a laid back way. "When I die I'll give this to X". And sometimes she mentions having a pain and not being able to have surgery because she's too old and she says things like "Well I have to die sometime". Obviously she doesn't look forward to dying but she seems happy despite her irreligious beliefs.

Maybe I have some kind of OCD thing when it comes to this topic, but I can't imagine being an atheist and having a drive to live life to the fullest.

If anything athiests have more of a drive to live life to the fullest. Mind you, that does depend on what a your definition of a full life is.

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

Ah, no. Evolution wasn't discovered. It's a theory that Darwin himself said can only be proven by future scientists if they find the missing links, which they haven't.

For any unfortunate believers of the evolution theory, this is a good read: http://humansarefree.com/2013/12/9-scienctific-facts-prove-theory-of.html

According to endacl, the link I gave above is "riddled with malware". It's fine for me with the necessary malware blocking add-ons. Proceed at your own risk.

OK, two problems here.

Firstly, evolution was discovered. The idea of evolution (i.e. that things change over time) had been around long before Darwin. What Darwin did was propose a naturalistic mechanism to explain the changes that occur from generation to generation. In fact Darwin proposed two mechanisms which act in concert with each other. Natural selection explains how mutations are retained because of the physiological advantages they confer on their parent organisms. Sexual selection explains how mutations are retained because of the attractiveness advantages they confer on their parent organisms. While Darwin's original theory was a pretty good explanation it didn't have the benefit of modern discoveries like genetics, DNA, cladistics etc. However in the last 150 years all the information that we've obtained from microbiology, palaeontology, cladistics, genetics, geology etc. have only confirmed Darwin's theory. Again and again and again.

Secondly, there's your link. As endacl points out it's wrong. In fact, it's fractally wrong. And here's why.

"The Theory of Evolution is not a scientific law or a law of biology. A scientific law must be 100% correct."

It is clear from the opening sentence that the author has no clue what the terms theory and law mean in a scientific concept. A law is a linguistic and mathematical description of a phenomenon. Take gravity, for example. The law of gravity as formulated by Newton states:

"any two bodies in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them."

The law can also be represented mathematically:



So the law tells us how gravity operates and what the factors which govern it are and their relationship to each other. However, the law doesn't explain why gravity exists or why it behaves the way it does. That's what the theory of gravity of is for.
A theory is the highest level of confidence that science can attain. A theory is an explanatory framework encompassing laws, observations and experimental results. So a theory includes laws, it doesn't ever become a law. So when the author of the article says:

"The Theory of Evolution will never become a law of science because it is wrought with errors. This is why it is still called a theory, instead of a law."

he is dead wrong.

But the fail doesn't stop there.

"A desired trait can be produced in dogs by selecting dogs with a particular trait to produce offspring with that trait. This specialized selective breeding can continue for generation after generation until a breed of dog is developed. This is the same as the "survival of the fittest" theory of the evolutionists.
Many different types of dogs can be developed this way, but they can never develop a cat by selectively breeding dogs. Natural selection can never extend outside of the DNA limit. DNA cannot be changed into a new species by natural selection. The same process of selective breeding is done with flowers, fruits, and vegetables."

Here the author confuses not only artificial selection with natural selection but also breeds with species and microevolution with macroevolution.

Firstly with regard to dogs and artificial selection. The different types of dogs are different breeds not different species. A breed is defined as any group of animals which have a set of characteristics shared by all members of that group and no members of a sister group. So different breeds of dog can still interbreed since they are part of the same species.
Secondly, because of artificial selection breeds have been artificially restricted to be within certain limits because, unlike natural selection dog breeders choose to manipulate breeding for aesthetic or behavioural reasons rather than survival.
In order for a new species to emerge you would need to have two separate groups of animals between which there is no genetic transfer. So, for example, if you placed two groups of dogs on two separate remote islands where the possiblity of interacting each other was eliminated and then left them alone for a few hundred generations then when you came back you would likely have two new daughter species.
There is no DNA limit as the author claims. What he's essentially saying is that you can walk 10 feet but you can't walk 10 miles because reasons. It is demonstrably false.


"New variations of the species are possible, but a new species has never been developed by science."

Again, wrong. We have observed the emergence of many new species. In fact, we've observed it so much that we've had to categorise the different modes of speciation: allopatric, parapatric, peripatric, sympatric. This image might help to explain:

Modes of speciation


The number of new species that we've observed keeps growing but here's a small list of species where we have found evidence for it:

A new species of mosquito on the London underground

Ring species

A new species of apple maggot fly diverging from parent species on North American hawthorns


"In fact, the most modern laboratories are unable to produce a left-hand protein as found in humans and animals."

This is a claim that is as strangely worded as it is laughably false. Firstly, how the claim should read is that the twenty amino acids used for life are all left-handed. Secondly, that's not wholly correct or an impediment to evolution.
We've known for twenty years or so that some species of bacteria use right handed amino acids. We've also known, for even longer, that some of those amino acids don't actually have a handedness, like glycine.
Moreover, we know from cosmology and from studying amino acids on meteorites that the tendency towards left-handedness didn't arise by chance but due to a circular polarisation of UV light in the early solar system.


"If natural selection were true, Eskimos would have fur to keep warm, but they don't. They are just as hairless as everyone else. If natural selection were true, humans in the tropics would have silver, reflective skin to help them keep cool, but they don't. They have black skin, just the opposite of what the theory of natural selection would predict.

If natural selection were true humans at northern latitudes would have black skin, but they have white skin instead, except the Eskimos who have skin that is halfway between white and black. The people from Russia and the Nordic countries have white skin, blood hair and blue eyes. This is the opposite of what one would predict if natural selection controlled skin color."

This is a classic example of what Ben Goldacre has described as: "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that." The author of the article has got it into his head that skin colour just works like a black body effect and that the only relationship of significance is between skin colour, body temperature and climate. He is of course, dead wrong.
The principal reason why you find lighter skinned people the further north you travel is that the annual amount of sunlight is less the further north you travel. Sunlight is important for a number of things, like making Vitamin D in your body, for example. Avoiding things like rickets is much more important to your survival than being a bit chilly in the long term. However, the reality is that there a number of biological factors which affect the development of something like skin colour.
As for eskimos, the Inuit people are relatively modern transplants into the Arctic circle having only settled there around 1000CE. By contrast, the ancestors of the Scandinavian peoples the Ahrensburg culture had been living in the Arctic circle since 11000BCE. That's 12 millennia earlier! That I think goes a long way towards explaining some minor physiological differences.

Most of the rest of the author's introduction is filled with assertions and assumed conclusions offered without any supporting argument or evidence:

"His famous book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, has a title that is now known to be scientifically false. New species cannot evolve by natural selection."

"Life did not start with a bolt of lightning striking a pond of water as claimed by the main stream scientists.

Kids are taught that life can evolve given enough time. This is a false statement without any scientific support."

The article is very long but if there are any specific points that you would like to discuss, then like endacl, if you want I'll explain any point you like. In detail. With pictures. And small words.


Now as for your other "questions"

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

I find it to be the absolute height of arrogant, ignorant, absolute nonsense for an educated person in the 21st century to think that of all the billions of stars in the billions of galaxies in the universe vast beyond our understanding and all life on earth, DNA, our brains and this universe's physics which all heavily point to intelligent design, that everything we know (including ourselves), created itself from an explosion that happened when nothing existed.

How can you explain intelligent design? In the beginning, there was nothing. Then an explosion happened. Stuff appeared. Life started to form. In fact, I can't understand why life would start itself. Why does life need to exist? I mentioned this before, I believe that the universe is inside a closed cardboard box (not literally). Something in this box causes an explosion and then a universe appears inside the box.

How does life get into the universe? More specifically, how does consciousness get into the universe? Even more specifically, how did I get into the universe? Why wasn't I left alone in eternal darkness while someone else was put into the universe? We're all individual, we all have our own individually unique consciousnesses. It's like waking up in a forest without any memory and saying "How did I get here?"

"In the beginning, there was nothing. Then an explosion happened. Stuff appeared."

Well, I've already answered this (not that you acnknowledged that post) but there was never nothing. The furthest back we can go is to a point just after the Big Bang. Before that we think that there was a singularity a point with zero size and inifinite energy density. So not nothing. There was never a point at which there was nothing at all. Check my last post for a more detailed explanation.
BTW, to address one of your other points. Nobody here is advancing that God couldn't have done it. I and I'm sure a lot of other people here will freely admit that it's possible that God could have created the universe. It's just not very likely because no other evidence suggests that God is responsible. I am an agnostic atheist. I don't know if a God exists but I don't believe that there is one because there is no evidence to support it. You seem to think though that atheism is the positive belief that there are definitely no gods and that God couldn't possibly have started the universe. I doubt you'll find many people who actually hold that view.


"Life started to form. In fact, I can't understand why life would start itself. Why does life need to exist?"

Well, you're really asking two questions here. How did life start? Well, the short answer is we don't know. And it's not a case of we have no ideas at all, we do in fact have several well supported hypotheses. It's just that we don't have the ability to travel back in time to find out which hypothesis is correct. Imagine, for example, trying to figure out how someone was killed after they've already been cremated. You can formulate ideas and gather circumstantial evidence but you're never really going to know for sure. If you want to know the details of how life began I've posted on this topic in the creationism thread previously.
Now as to why life began? That's really a philosophical question not a scientific one?


"I mentioned this before, I believe that the universe is inside a closed cardboard box (not literally). Something in this box causes an explosion and then a universe appears inside the box."

Well, no. While there are some models within M-theory which describe bubble universes (e.g. Alan Guth, Andrei Linde) none of them describe an actual physical boundary to the universe in the way you're thinking. It's better to think of the universe as a cloud of particles where the edge of the overall cloud is defined by the positions of particles within it. There's no actual container that our universe is inside. At least as far as anyone can tell.


"How does life get into the universe? "

Check out my linked post above.


"More specifically, how does consciousness get into the universe?"

I don't know. To be more specific, we don't really understand to a huge degree how consciousness emerges other than as an emergent property of our evolutionary journey. However, there is an important point to be made here.

Saying I don't know is important. Because it's honest. In most of your posts you have supported your reasons for believing in God by appealing to all the things about life and the universe that you don't understand and that you think nobody else does either. In logic terms, that's what we call an argument from ignorance. Just because you don't know the answer doesn't mean that you can assume God did it.

As Richard Feynman once said:

"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting not to know than to have answers which might be wrong."



" Even more specifically, how did I get into the universe? "

Well that's a question for your parents really.


You came onto this thread asking about how atheists cope with life. My response is pretty similar to those already offered. Why would I be. Death doesn't scare me. Dying scares the crap out of me. Lot's of sickness and pain and sorrow. That sucks. Death doesn't. Death is just non-existence. Before I was born the universe was around for over 13 billion years and all that time I was in a state of non-existence. And it wasn't bad, pretty comfortable actually. So I figure it'll be just as comfortable for the next 13 billion years.


Note: Rob, feel free to move this to "that" thread if I've gone too far OT.

Note: OP, in case it got lost in the noise of my post, my offer, like endacl's stands. If there's any part of that godawful article you want explained in more detail (or anything else about cosmology, evolution or all the things that you think we don't understand) just ask.

Intelligent design has been fairly thoroughly debunked, unless anyone's come up with something less retrodden than the eye and bacterial flagellum.

Oldrnwisr, that was an excellent post and not only for people ill informed on the subject.