Thing is, we are impacted by a big old' organic thing, and that big ol' organic thing does include components which are chaotic, and it does include components which are probabilistic, and some of the drivers of that big ol' organic thing are random.

Wishing it were otherwise don't make it true.

I can understand someone thinking that if all that could be reduced to a simple whole without any uncertainty then we'd all be better off and life would be easy.

But it isn't and it ain't.

You assert that the treatment of biological systems as probabilistic is purely ideological.

There are two ways to go here.

1) you could support your assertion. All that is required to do so is to pick a process which science treats as probabilistic and rigorously show that it is not. I've tried to make that easy by suggesting a fundamental and fairly uncomplicated process which science treats as probabilistic and asking you to show how it isn't.

2) you could just declare your position and simply expect everyone to agree.

1 will gain you kudos, even if you fail.

2 will engender pointing and laughing.

So far you appear to be going with 2.

tolman wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I pasted your use of “pretend” in just this one post, it came out:

pretend pretend pretend pretend pretend pretend pretending pretending pretend

So you compulsively present the notion that someone who presents a contrary view to yours (shared apparently by other atheist posters) must be insincere, or stupid or ignorant:

You are consistently avoiding the fact that nature is not deterministic while making references to mechanisms erasing the effects of true random inputs, and making references to the environment being a product of past states which seem to be implicitly claiming that it is purely a product of past states.

After all, since no-one is claiming or even hinting that they think the present is unaffected by the past, you would either be saying nothing of importance, or trying to erect a stupid straw man.

If what you are doing is not a pretence, then it's the result of fundamental misunderstandings on your part.

Why, after plenty of exchanges with me, do you raise the option of pretense 9 times in just one post? It’s not rational. It’s propaganda.

Why do you say above as I bolded, that nature is not deterministic, when you also said nature is unarguably chaotic, yet you agree with Fenrir that chaotic behaviour is deterministic? You wanting to be so strict and all about the meaning of “deterministic”.

The truth of all this complicated seeming discussion is that you fill your discourse about nature, with words signifying non -organic behaviour. A sort of biological coprolalia but its atheist propaganda.

If that’s unfair, you could prove me wrong by depicting nature as a creative system. Starting a sentence with “OF COURSE” won’t be enough nor will “INCREDIBLE COMPLEXITY”. Let’s see at least one bucket full of forthright affirmation.

There are some other points in your post that I’m keen to discuss, but first I’d like to press you on your skirting the comparison between the treatment of the theory of evolution and the treatment of history by historians. I know that this board gives posters a lot of freedom to steer the discussion by selecting what to respond to, but in this case it’s become too blatant.

Here again is my entry on that subject from my previous post to you. What is your response?

“To see more of the strangeness of the atheist vision of the biological creation, it’s useful to compare it with how the discipline of history is conducted- that also studies how a (partly) creative system developed . I’ve raised that repeatedly but the discussion as often gets steered towards empty theorising. Historians simply don’t waste time discussing what might have been, or how far randomness affects history. They focus on discovering what did happen and developing explanatory narratives from that. To support that I cited Jeff Guy’s analysis of Theophilus Shepstone. To contradict me, cite some other history book. Please, bring it on, let’s see. Historians are more sensitive to the interplay of a historian’s approach, and his ideological context- historiography. I suppose it would be an unusual modern historian who would defend the notion that his view isn’t affected by his ideological position.”

JJ could you please stop misrepresenting Tolman. Tolman is not disagreeing with me nor I with him. There are chaotic elements involved in evolution, which are deterministic. These are perturbed with random noise. When the noise is accounted for chaotic processes remain. When the chaotic elements are accounted for the random noise remains.

It isn't a question of one or the other.

Now, how about showing the use of probabilistic methods is an artefact of ideology. Predict the direction an alpha particle will leave a nucleus when it decays. Predict where a point mutation will occur. Predict which mutation will be fixed in a population under selection. Accurately predict which juveniles in a cohort will survive to reproduce. Be specific. Show your working. Show were the ideology is hiding.

Show me specifically where science is wrong, sweeping assertions will not cut it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Why, after plenty of exchanges with me, do you raise the option of pretense 9 times in just one post? It’s not rational. It’s propaganda.

Propaganda is continually trying to pretend the existence of a Great Atheist Plot, without providing any evidence beyond stupid allegations and serial misrepresentation of what people are saying to try and fit with your prejudices.

There are no people I am aware of (biologists or any religious inclinations or none, or non-biologist atheists) who are saying that nature is devoid of (or particularly lacking) patterns, rules, laws or causality.

Had there actually been people denying that there were patterns/rules/laws, you should easily have been able to find people doing that, instead of consistently and dishonestly misrepresenting references to luck as being some atheist plot to deny patterns when in fact they are simply references to a lack of precise predictability in complex systems like nature.

The only thing references to luck really mean is that there is no inevitability in precisely how things are now.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Why do you say above as I bolded, that nature is not deterministic, when you also said nature is unarguably chaotic, yet you agree with Fenrir that chaotic behaviour is deterministic? You wanting to be so strict and all about the meaning of “deterministic”.

As I have said enough times for even you to understand, nature combines processes involving chaos with random noise.
Irrespective of any number of 'conservative' mechaniams which may be among emergent properties of life, that gives a situation where the future cannot be predicted with certainty.

That's all people mean when they talk about 'luck' - things like that in the distant past, humans weren't guaranteed to exist at all, and that a couple of centuries ago, no particular human alive today was guaranteed to exist right now.

That in no way stops people choosing to believe that an interventionist god could have intervened in order to make things happen as they did, or to believe that some god did so intervene.

As far as I can see, it is a challenge only to a potential subset of weird pseudo-believers who don't believe in an interventionist god but still want to believe that humanity in general (and maybe themselves in particular) were somehow inevitable product of natural laws operating naturally. People who want to look at a naturalistic nature and pretend it is a god

Clearly, such odd people are rare and insignificant enough not to be a likely target of some atheist conspiracy, at least outside fuckwitted paranoid fantasies.

To anyone but a fool, it is obvious that an atheist is unlikely to describe any real-world process as needing gods, since if they thought there was a need for gods to explain reality, they would not be an atheist.
But that doesn't stop anyone else choosing to believe that gods have some part in such processes.

'Not seeing a need for gods' is not part of some 'Atheist Ideology', it is simply a restatement of what being an atheist is.

Jayjay4547 wrote:There are some other points in your post that I’m keen to discuss, but first I’d like to press you on your skirting the comparison between the treatment of the theory of evolution and the treatment of history by historians. I know that this board gives posters a lot of freedom to steer the discussion by selecting what to respond to, but in this case it’s become too blatant.

Here again is my entry on that subject from my previous post to you. What is your response?

“To see more of the strangeness of the atheist vision of the biological creation, it’s useful to compare it with how the discipline of history is conducted- that also studies how a (partly) creative system developed . I’ve raised that repeatedly but the discussion as often gets steered towards empty theorising. Historians simply don’t waste time discussing what might have been, or how far randomness affects history.

See post #1389

Very obviously, when historians focus on important figures or pivotal events in history, they [i]are implicitly accepting that quite different outcomes could have happened had things been different.
When they tend to write about people in power rather than peasants, they are accepting that the decisions of the former are likely to have larger/more immediate/more traceable effects than the decisions of the latter.
But do they really think that all those decisions were actually inevitable?

If someone saw all of history as being deterministic, what would be the point of studying it?
Why try and learn about the past if you think the future is inevitable?
As far as I can see, the best fuel for nihilism would be thinking that everything that happens is divinely ordained and inescapable.

Jayjay” wrote:Why do you say above as I bolded, that nature is not deterministic, when you also said nature is unarguably chaotic, yet you agree with Fenrir that chaotic behaviour is deterministic? You wanting to be so strict and all about the meaning of “deterministic”.

Fenrir wrote: JJ could you please stop misrepresenting Tolman. Tolman is not disagreeing with me nor I with him.

I know you and Tolman aren’t disagreeing with each other. Together you created a sort of self-contradiction. I was just needling you.

Fenrir wrote:
There are chaotic elements involved in evolution, which are deterministic. These are perturbed with random noise. When the noise is accounted for chaotic processes remain. When the chaotic elements are accounted for the random noise remains.

It isn't a question of one or the other.

When you implement a Genetic Algorithm you do need a RND function, that enables the method to optimise without the “preconceptions” that make alternative “gradient following” methods less robust. So I enthusiastically support the notion that evolution involves a blind feeling-out or learning. Like I said before.

Fenrir wrote: Now, how about showing the use of probabilistic methods is an artefact of ideology. Predict the direction an alpha particle will leave a nucleus when it decays. Predict where a point mutation will occur. Predict which mutation will be fixed in a population under selection. Accurately predict which juveniles in a cohort will survive to reproduce. Be specific. Show your working. Show were the ideology is hiding.

Show me specifically where science is wrong, sweeping assertions will not cut it.

“Show your working”. You are trying to project the notion that you are setting a tut exercise. But you aren’t Fenrir, this is a chat room where we are discussing the notion that the presentation and understanding of evolution has been influenced, and damaged, by atheist ideology. A polite request; stop putting on airs.

The ideology isn't hiding in your challenge, like all propaganda it’s crudely in your face. It doesn't lie in "the use of probabilistic methods" It lies simply in ideologues endlessly talking about evolution in terms of randomness in one guise or another, so drawing attention 180 degrees away from the true nature of evolution.

The radical unpredictability of evolution isn't actually about randomness, any more than is the unpredictability of the future of science or the future of technology. All three explore what is possible, what works or what might be expressed as a formal “law” about the world. We can’t predict the future of these knowledge building systems because we don’t have the knowledge yet. We are led by the nose.

Edit: "knowledge systems" to "knowledge building systems"

What is "atheist ideology"?
Atheism is a rejection of a specfic claim - that a god/gods exist.
An atheist adopts a position that either no god/gods exist - gnostic/hard atheism - or that there is insufficient evidence to believe the god/gods claim - soft/agnostic atheism.
Therefore it has no dogmas, no doctrines and no ideology.

Ill come back on that tomorrow

You are the one making claims JJ.

Back them up or admit you cannot.

Trying to project failure to back up your claims and assertions on me really won't cut it.

Show me precisely how the use of probability in biology does not reflect observation and is an ideological bolt-on.

Or get off the pot.

c

Meme wrote:What is "atheist ideology"?
Atheism is a rejection of a specfic claim - that a god/gods exist.
An atheist adopts a position that either no god/gods exist - gnostic/hard atheism - or that there is insufficient evidence to believe the god/gods claim - soft/agnostic atheism.
Therefore it has no dogmas, no doctrines and no ideology.

For there to be an ideology there has to be a group of people and groups leave a historical trail. The group for European atheists is the university and the historical trail for English atheists goes through the professionalisation of subjects outside the professions and classics, with London University maybe playing a prominent part near the end of the 19th century. As social institutions universities have been a big economic success through the 20th century till now, bringing an ever-larger proportion of young adults under their authority. Whatever else they do, universities set norms and students who are eager to be good “university men” are eager to adopt them. There are religious clubs etc on campus but to be a real insider at a university especially in the sciences and especially in biology, it “fits” to be an atheist. You can still be religious, but then there is something you really aren’t grokking.

The ideology is what convinces one of the rightness and naturalness of the group’s belief system, it’s propaganda against others and propaganda to oneself. It’s crude and in-your face like a big stupid predator. Your term “dogma” exemplifies that.

It’s certainly worth looking for an ideology in atheist belief and the best place to look is in the way evolution s understood and presented. Because from the start, evolution was understood as a challenge to theism and its greatest public exponents from TH Huxley through Julian Huxley, Gould, Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, have been atheists. Evolution is about the origin narrative of mankind and that's a major tool for interpreting what we are.

If you-all really were rational skeptics you would be skeptical of your own beliefs and eager to investigate any alleged traces of ideology in your own thinking. But instead you are single-mindedly intent on believing you aren’t subject to an ideology.

Fenrir wrote:You are the one making claims JJ.

Back them up or admit you cannot.

Trying to project failure to back up your claims and assertions on me really won't cut it.

Show me precisely how the use of probability in biology does not reflect observation and is an ideological bolt-on.

Or get off the pot.

The claim I was making was that the radical unpredictability of evolution isn't actually about randomness, any more than is the unpredictability of the future of science or the future of technology. All three explore what is possible, what works or what might be expressed as a formal “law” about the world. We can’t predict the future of these knowledge building systems because we don’t have the knowledge yet. We are led by the nose.

I don’t see where by showing you ‘precisely how the use of probability in biology does not reflect observation and is an ideological bolt-on.’ would affect that claim. What part do you disagree with? Let’s carry the point somewhere useful.

Meme wrote:What is "atheist ideology"?
Atheism is a rejection of a specfic claim - that a god/gods exist.
An atheist adopts a position that either no god/gods exist - gnostic/hard atheism - or that there is insufficient evidence to believe the god/gods claim - soft/agnostic atheism.
Therefore it has no dogmas, no doctrines and no ideology.

Atheism -lack of belief in god[s]
Agnosticism -a statement about the status of god[s] as facts. ie one can be a technical agnostic--god probably don't exist but there is no absolute proof of their non-existence.
Gnosticism about gods -is highly problematic either way. [Epistomological problems in demonstrating an absolute claim of gods existing or gods not existing. Gnosticism implies perfect knowledge ie omniscience in humans and is therefore absurd. Omniscience in gods may be absurd both logically and scientifically. [eg Speed of light limiting different parts of god from communicating over light-year distances]. Of course one can claim god is magical and does not obey physical law, but that is absurd also. [AFAIK].

So the ebil athiest randomness ideology in biology doesn't actually have anything to do with the applicability of stochastic models in science. How interesting, do go on. I'll be over her with the rest of the sane people.

I consider myself an atheist because I find the concept self-contradictory and because there is no credible evidence. There are also a number of logical problems the idea creates that go away if one does not entertain the idea, such as the problem of suffering, the nature of sin, and the puzzle of what God was doing before creation.

tolman wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Why, after plenty of exchanges with me, do you raise the option of pretense 9 times in just one post? It’s not rational. It’s propaganda.

Propaganda is continually trying to pretend the existence of a Great Atheist Plot, without providing any evidence beyond stupid allegations and serial misrepresentation of what people are saying to try and fit with your prejudices.

Propaganda is also responding to a point by alleging a “Great Atheist Plot” when that hasn’t been claimed, just self declared “scientists” putting their trousers on one leg at a time. Please address why you allege 9 times in one post that I’m just “pretending” to hold a view different from yours. That wasn’t a “stupid allegation” it was a numerical count.

tolman wrote:There are no people I am aware of (biologists or any religious inclinations or none, or non-biologist atheists) who are saying that nature is devoid of (or particularly lacking) patterns, rules, laws or causality.

Had there actually been people denying that there were patterns/rules/laws, you should easily have been able to find people doing that, instead of consistently and dishonestly misrepresenting references to luck as being some atheist plot to deny patterns when in fact they are simply references to a lack of precise predictability in complex systems like nature.

The only thing references to luck really mean is that there is no inevitability in precisely how things are now.

The effect of “luck” and “chance” being shoe-horned into presentations of evolution is to obscure the important insight that the unpredictable character of evolution arises, as with unpredictable science and technology, from evolution having been a knowledge building system that felt out what has been possible in the world and we don’t have the knowledge before it’s built. We are just carried along in a great stream of knowledge-building. By foregrounding “chance” you look in exactly the opposite direction to what brings insight. That’s part of the damage done to the understanding of evolution, by atheist ideology.

tolman wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Why do you say above as I bolded, that nature is not deterministic, when you also said nature is unarguably chaotic, yet you agree with Fenrir that chaotic behaviour is deterministic? You wanting to be so strict and all about the meaning of “deterministic”.

As I have said enough times for even you to understand, nature combines processes involving chaos with random noise.

For even me to understand? You shoe-horn personal insults just as persistently as you shoe-horn in chance. It’s not conducive to finding the truth which in this case is more along the lines of “the natural creator has built knowledge out of chaos while being buffeted by random noise. “ If you don’t like that term “natural creator”, note that when you say “nature combines” you are treating “nature” as an operator.

tolman wrote:Irrespective of any number of 'conservative' mechaniams which may be among emergent properties of life, that gives a situation where the future cannot be predicted with certainty.

I suppose you mean Irrespective of homeostatic mechanisms, which is what I cited as what living things use to combat “chance”. Would you call mammalian thermoregulation an “emergent property” of mammals? I can’t see that as useful, any more than calling your liver an “emergent property”.

tolman wrote: That's all people mean when they talk about 'luck' - things like that in the distant past, humans weren't guaranteed to exist at all, and that a couple of centuries ago, no particular human alive today was guaranteed to exist right now.

Argue that with a theologian, I’m interested in what can be observed. Life has played itself out once only and guarantees like you suggest would need the observer to time travel.

tolman wrote: That in no way stops people choosing to believe that an interventionist god could have intervened in order to make things happen as they did, or to believe that some god did so intervene.

As far as I can see, it is a challenge only to a potential subset of weird pseudo-believers who don't believe in an interventionist god but still want to believe that humanity in general (and maybe themselves in particular) were somehow inevitable product of natural laws operating naturally. People who want to look at a naturalistic nature and pretend it is a god

Clearly, such odd people are rare and insignificant enough not to be a likely target of some atheist conspiracy, at least outside fuckwitted paranoid fantasies.

I repeat, the notion of “inevitability” in a series of creative events that played themselves out once only, isn’t observable, it’s a theological issue-in the worst sense of “theological”. I mean, as when “schoolmen” tried to figure out the qualities that God “had” to have. To try that is to fail to understand the human condition, which is that we are living things embedded part way up a hierarchy.

tolman wrote: To anyone but a fool, it is obvious that an atheist is unlikely to describe any real-world process as needing gods, since if they thought there was a need for gods to explain reality, they would not be an atheist.

But that doesn't stop anyone else choosing to believe that gods have some part in such processes.

'Not seeing a need for gods' is not part of some 'Atheist Ideology', it is simply a restatement of what being an atheist is.

It’s possible that atheism s wrong and that atheists protect their wrong perception that there is no need for gods to explain realty, by distorting their presentation of what realty is. At any rate that distortion is objectively observable.

tolman wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:There are some other points in your post that I’m keen to discuss, but first I’d like to press you on your skirting the comparison between the treatment of the theory of evolution and the treatment of history by historians. I know that this board gives posters a lot of freedom to steer the discussion by selecting what to respond to, but in this case it’s become too blatant.

Here again is my entry on that subject from my previous post to you. What is your response?

“To see more of the strangeness of the atheist vision of the biological creation, it’s useful to compare it with how the discipline of history is conducted- that also studies how a (partly) creative system developed . I’ve raised that repeatedly but the discussion as often gets steered towards empty theorising. Historians simply don’t waste time discussing what might have been, or how far randomness affects history. They focus on discovering what did happen and developing explanatory narratives from that. To support that I cited Jeff Guy’s analysis of Theophilus Shepstone. To contradict me, cite some other history book. Please, bring it on, let’s see

I bolded my actual challenge, that you left off your quote.

tolman wrote: See post #1389

Here is what you said in that post:
“Why would that be idle musing, at least for people who didn't see history (and maybe themselves) as inevitable?

Sure, it's not history-as-enumeration-of-events, but if understanding history is thought important, that seems to involve trying to imagine how things might have happened differently.
If one person claims a revolution which happened was in the air and another that it came out of the blue due to one special individual, they are effectively making claims about what might have happened had things been a little different.

If people aren't going to try and understand history, and understand how some events seem to have been more predictable than others, how are they going to learn anything from it?

Similarly, for a historian faced with a claim that some new piece of data about the past should be considered plausible or factual, they have to consider how that fits with what is known and how they think history would have played out if the data were correct or incorrect.”

tolman wrote: Very obviously, when historians focus on important figures or pivotal events in history, they are implicitly accepting that quite different outcomes could have happened had things been different.
When they tend to write about people in power rather than peasants, they are accepting that the decisions of the former are likely to have larger/more immediate/more traceable effects than the decisions of the latter.
But do they really think that all those decisions were actually inevitable?

If someone saw all of history as being deterministic, what would be the point of studying it?
Why try and learn about the past if you think the future is inevitable?
As far as I can see, the best fuel for nihilism would be thinking that everything that happens is divinely ordained and inescapable.

In both responses you rely on what is implicit in a historian’s approach but the issue I raised was about how historians can be observed to treat their subject, compared with how an atheist treats the natural past. It’s really clear that the historian is professional while the atheist is obsessed with a theological issue- again, theology in its worst sense.

tolman wrote:
They can invent deist-like deities which lay down laws at the start of time and then sit back and watch.
They can invent deities which micromanage reality by constantly and subtly tweaking laws.
They can invent deities which micromanage reality by constantly and subtly influencing truly random inputs to reality (or by subtly playing with variables below the noise floor).
They can invent deities which macromanage reality by making more blatant interventions.
They can invent deities which they handwavingly equate with 'nature' or 'the universe' or 'the life force/spirit' without actually specifying what they really mean by that (maybe because they have no real idea what they do mean).

This is an earlier point that I wanted to get back to. Of your five imagined deities, the first expresses deism as you say. I understand that as a waypoint on the voyage of European scientists towards atheism, inspired by Newton’s laws and maybe by the Greek understanding that the world is basically made of things rather than the Jewish conception that it s based on words.

Your middle three visualisations are really one, a Micromanager-God – which seems to be what atheists imagine God would be like, given evolution as they see it- it’s the hypothesis they reject. And by implication, it is the vision they would accept if they rejected atheism. What strikes me about that concept, is its utter lack of spiritual element. It’s a Meccano God.

Your last visioning is the one closest to my own and there is some justice in your criticism that it is “handwaving”. Religions have been initiated by great seers or interpreters in an intimate relation with their time. Christianity arose when Roman rule created an existential threat to the Jewish vision of the world. In this age we face an existential threat from reaching the limits of expansion on a round surface on which has grown our natural creator and support system. It’s an obvious step to equate God with Nature but the problem is, we don’t have either a great modern prophet or a clear existing spiritual tradition that seems directly appropriate. Some people search for pre-Christian European druidic or wiccan traditions. I moved back towards the Anglican faith I was baptised in and which of all sects, has been most damaged by the rise of atheism. There is some core issue to be solved, a fault line that runs through the Western world picture, it appears here or there but it won’t go away.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The effect of “luck” and “chance” being shoe-horned into presentations of evolution is to obscure the important insight that the unpredictable character of evolution arises, as with unpredictable science and technology, from evolution having been a knowledge building system that felt out what has been possible in the world and we don’t have the knowledge before it’s built. We are just carried along in a great stream of knowledge-building. By foregrounding “chance” you look in exactly the opposite direction to what brings insight. That’s part of the damage done to the understanding of evolution, by atheist ideology.

Chance isn't shoe-horned in. Look at what happens during DNA copying. An enzyme moves along the DNA strand, and a complementary triphosphate nucleotide is stitched to the complementary strand it has already created. Let's do a thought experiment starting with this enzyme. Let's assume that one of its amino acids was replaced by another, affecting its structure a itsibitsi tiny bit. If that affect the accuracy with which it can distinguish the triphosphate nucleotide that it is going to stitch to the complementary strand it has created, then the number of errors in the copying process is going to be higher than with the enzyme we started from, OK? So, this would result in mutations in the complementary strand.

I didn't say the original enzyme was perfect. They aren't and that is where chance comes in, without being shoe-horned in like: Let's assume it is there because otherwise we have a problem.

How do we know that the original enzyme isn't perfect: Cells of higher organisms have more enzymes, they are proof-reading enzymes, and mistakes in the copying process are corrected. This reduces the mutation rate. I say reduces, because, of course the proof-reading enzymes aren't perfect either/forget a spot.

There is no knowledge in the system feeling out what is possibile. Just selection for the end-product on whether it is possible.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wg2mnzIH9mI/T ... gers+3.jpg

Girl with Harlequin ichthyosis
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 6302_n.jpg

Pick your choice:
- Your god at work making parents happy
- Your god being a prankster
- None of the above, i.e. sorry result of evolution

Bert

Jayjay4547 wrote:In this age we face an existential threat from reaching the limits of expansion on a round surface on which has grown our natural creator and support system. It’s an obvious step to equate God with Nature but the problem is, we don’t have either a great modern prophet or a clear existing spiritual tradition that seems directly appropriate. Some people search for pre-Christian European druidic or wiccan traditions. I moved back towards the Anglican faith I was baptised in and which of all sects, has been most damaged by the rise of atheism. There is some core issue to be solved, a fault line that runs through the Western world picture, it appears here or there but it won’t go away.

You can only pursue this sort of argument if you already think humans are a special product of the universe. You can't do apologetics based on the existential threat to something that is not assumed in your apologetic to be a special creation. Species go extinct all the time. It's all natural, unless you admit supernaturalism.

Most of the world believes in some sort of deity, and yet we find the world in the sorry state it's presently in. Is your ambition to be the messiah of a new religion of equating God with Nature? Hint, Jay: It's been tried before. In light of that, why do you think the atheists and skeptics are the best audience for it? It's only another, more futile pile of disorganised woo, in this case driven by personal emotional commitments to induce someone to 'reject atheism'. It still boils down to you declaring, "you're doing it wrong; listen to me to find out how to do it the right way". Another voice crying in the wilderness or standing on a podium ranting into a bullhorn. The only thing you can find wrong with atheism is that it doesn't believe in God.

Jayjay4547 wrote:c

Meme wrote:What is "atheist ideology"?
Atheism is a rejection of a specfic claim - that a god/gods exist.
An atheist adopts a position that either no god/gods exist - gnostic/hard atheism - or that there is insufficient evidence to believe the god/gods claim - soft/agnostic atheism.
Therefore it has no dogmas, no doctrines and no ideology.

For there to be an ideology there has to be a group of people and groups leave a historical trail.

That doesn't answer the question. Ideology doesn't require a history or a group. A group of atheists can have similar or wildly different ideologies - the only idea/belief that they may have in common is the non-existence of gods.

The group for European atheists is the university and the historical trail for English atheists goes through the professionalisation of subjects outside the professions and classics, with London University maybe playing a prominent part near the end of the 19th century. As social institutions universities have been a big economic success through the 20th century till now, bringing an ever-larger proportion of young adults under their authority. Whatever else they do, universities set norms and students who are eager to be good “university men” are eager to adopt them. There are religious clubs etc on campus but to be a real insider at a university especially in the sciences and especially in biology, it “fits” to be an atheist. You can still be religious, but then there is something you really aren’t grokking.

Relevance?
I was a occasionally-practicing Catholic all through university. I certainly never felt any pressure, institutional, peer or other, to become an atheist to fit in with some pre-concieved notion of an ideal student. The only pressure I could imagine leading me to atheism was my training in using/analysing evidence to draw rational conclusions

The ideology is what convinces one of the rightness and naturalness of the group’s belief system, it’s propaganda against others and propaganda to oneself. It’s crude and in-your face like a big stupid predator. Your term “dogma” exemplifies that.

Huh?

An ideology is no such thing - its a collection or system of ideas/ideals. As atheism addresses a single position - belief/non-belief in a god/gods - then its never going to be the above. It just deals with one question.

It’s certainly worth looking for an ideology in atheist belief and the best place to look is in the way evolution s understood and presented. Because from the start, evolution was understood as a challenge to theism and its greatest public exponents from TH Huxley through Julian Huxley, Gould, Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, have been atheists. Evolution is about the origin narrative of mankind and that's a major tool for interpreting what we are.

Evolution is about how species change. Its a set of scientific statements about what we observe in nature.
Atheism =/= evolution. As for skepticism. As for rationality. There are plenty of self-identified skeptics and rational thinkers that are still theists, of all sorts of flavours.

Just because the evidence that evolution occurs contradicts various religious narratives/texts about human origins, doesn't in and of itself lead to a lack of belief in god/gods.

If you-all really were rational skeptics you would be skeptical of your own beliefs and eager to investigate any alleged traces of ideology in your own thinking. But instead you are single-mindedly intent on believing you aren’t subject to an ideology.

What is that ideology. Again, I'll repeat the question - what is "atheist ideology"?

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:In this age we face an existential threat from reaching the limits of expansion on a round surface on which has grown our natural creator and support system.

You can only pursue this sort of argument if you already think humans are a special product of the universe. You can't do apologetics based on the existential threat to something that is not assumed in your apologetic to be a special creation. Species go extinct all the time. It's all natural, unless you admit supernaturalism.

Supernaturalism must be highly adaptive if it encourages its adherents to try to avoid going extinct. But a worse fate would be for mankind to keep the mindset it developed on the up-spike, draw all of nature into an obligatory relation with itself, and create a high-tec slave planet.

Cito di Pense wrote: Most of the world believes in some sort of deity, and yet we find the world in the sorry state it's presently in.

Very true, but then we also find that in those countries run on explicitly atheist lines, namely the Eastern bloc, there the people simply walked away out of a mixture of poverty and boredom. Those governments made the significant mistake of believing that the human intellect can take control of economies and run them better than the natural economic system can run itself. That’s the mistake at the heart of atheism, to exalt the human intellect above other aspects of the world.

Cito di Pense wrote: Is your ambition to be the messiah of a new religion of equating God with Nature? Hint, Jay: It's been tried before.

I’d be grateful if you could name one of these messiah-hopefuls. The closest I’ve found is James Lovelock and the Gaia hypothesis and he is far from presenting himself as a messiah. I’m a few floors down from his office Cito, in a basement chat room.

Cito di Pense wrote: In light of that, why do you think the atheists and skeptics are the best audience for it? It's only another, more futile pile of disorganised woo, in this case driven by personal emotional commitments to induce someone to 'reject atheism'.

I don’t actually have a personal emotional commitment to induce anyone to reject atheism. I come here to investigate the influence that atheism has had on the understanding of presentation of evolution. That’s what Ive said many times and that’s the truth. As I’ve also said quite a few times, in simplistic theory the influence could be investigated by atheists without them changing their belief system. Might make them better atheists, with a broader vision of the world but there’s no harm in that.

Cito di Pense wrote: It still boils down to you declaring, "you're doing it wrong; listen to me to find out how to do it the right way". Another voice crying in the wilderness or standing on a podium ranting into a bullhorn. The only thing you can find wrong with atheism is that it doesn't believe in God.

I’m finding more than that, I’m finding that atheist ideology has influenced and damaged the understanding and presentation of evolution. Especially amongst atheists. Take this latest to-and-fro. It demonstrated that atheists see evolution upside down as a chaotic system when actually it’s been a knowledge building system, building order out of chaos. It took atheists 150 years to totally fuck up the theory of evolution but eventually you got there.

I find that exciting because the contrarian vision of a “knowledge building system” that came out of this to-and-fro, connects with other previously disjointed bits of ideas. 'Im even excited by understanding that I should say "Evolution HAS BEEN a knowledge building system" rather than "IS" . In a way, I selfishly don’t want you to change, so that I can peer deeper. It would just mess things up, create an unmanageable dynamic, if you started agreeing with me.

OK that's an irresponsible introverted take. Formally, in discourse I'm obliged to desire you to come to agree with me.

bert wrote:
Chance isn't shoe-horned in. Look at what happens during DNA copying. An enzyme moves along the DNA strand, and a complementary triphosphate nucleotide is stitched to the complementary strand it has already created. Let's do a thought experiment starting with this enzyme. Let's assume that one of its amino acids was replaced by another, affecting its structure a itsibitsi tiny bit. If that affect the accuracy with which it can distinguish the triphosphate nucleotide that it is going to stitch to the complementary strand it has created, then the number of errors in the copying process is going to be higher than with the enzyme we started from, OK? So, this would result in mutations in the complementary strand.

I didn't say the original enzyme was perfect. They aren't and that is where chance comes in, without being shoe-horned in like: Let's assume it is there because otherwise we have a problem.

How do we know that the original enzyme isn't perfect: Cells of higher organisms have more enzymes, they are proof-reading enzymes, and mistakes in the copying process are corrected. This reduces the mutation rate. I say reduces, because, of course the proof-reading enzymes aren't perfect either/forget a spot.

There is no knowledge in the system feeling out what is possibile. Just selection for the end-product on whether it is possible.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wg2mnzIH9mI/T ... gers+3.jpg

Girl with Harlequin ichthyosis
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 6302_n.jpg
Pick your choice:
- Your god at work making parents happy
- Your god being a prankster
- None of the above, i.e. sorry result of evolution

Bert

Of the choices you offer me, the first two are contemptuous. The third purports that “a sorry result of evolution” covers all remaining options. That’s not valid.

I didn’t look at the pics you linked to, assume they are distressing. Your post up to then describes some steps nature takes to avoid disfigured progeny being born. I’m grateful that those layers of protection exist, instead of wanting to call examples where they have failed ,“sorry results of evolution”. Just how perfectly suited to our ease would the world need to be, to “earn” your approval? There’s an unjustifiable level of entitlement in today’s secular society.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Pick your choice:
- Your god at work making parents happy
- Your god being a prankster
- None of the above, i.e. sorry result of evolution

Bert

Of the choices you offer me, the first two are contemptuous. The third purports that “a sorry result of evolution” covers all remaining options. That’s not valid.

So, there should be a fourth one. One where there is a god who did something. Because if he did nothing, it would be answer three: the result of evolution. So, what did god do? I.e. what further options exist?

I didn’t look at the pics you linked to, assume they are distressing.

Either you did (and then lied) or you didn't, in which case you apparently pose limits on what evidence you are willing to face/accept. Not because it isn't true but because you don't want to see it and don't want to accept the consequences of that.

Your post up to then describes some steps nature takes to avoid disfigured progeny being born.

You make it sound to me like it is a goal of nature, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

I’m grateful that those layers of protection exist, instead of wanting to call examples where they have failed ,“sorry results of evolution”.

Grateful to what? Are you grateful to the oxygen molecules that dared to diffuse right in front of you mouth when you were about to inhale?

Just how perfectly suited to our ease would the world need to be, to “earn” your approval? There’s an unjustifiable level of entitlement in today’s secular society.

I'm not a native speaker and although the words seem easy, I really don't understand you. I don't understand where my approval comes into this. But if you want to know what I want:
I couldn't care less about religion if it were a personal matter and kept that way. I don't care whether people want to play hockey or chess either. But as soon as personal convictions start to adversely affect other people, it starts to matter. What I do want people to think critically and reason in a sound and evidence-based way. It helps to prevent all kinds of trouble, such as mass-uprisings/war (war-mongering in Crimea going on as we speak) and advances our knowledge how to make life better for each other (praying doesn't work). Religion is in particular harmful where it teaches uncritical acceptance of beliefs and (in the case of creationism), closing their eyes to verifiable facts, and active spreading of lies.

Bert

Edit: The picture of the girl was from an anti-zionist website where the condition of the girl was attributed to depleted uranium left by the US after the war. The comment section was a good illustration of what unsound reasoning does. Ughh.

((C'mon JayJay4547, where's your response. The suspense is killing me. I'd love to hear the fourth option where a perfect all-powerful being exists who doesn't lift a finger to prevent the girl from getting harlequin ichthyosis but is - according to information that is second hand at bes - willing to judge me-the-imperfect on morality for not doing what I should have done in my life. Interesting, because if I could have prevented her affliction by lifting a finger, I think I'd done so)).

Bert