Jayjay, how about instead of all this waffling about, you try to explain what it is evolution doesn't explain/can't explain, but should, and why you think it should?

Jayjay4547 wrote:
The assertions found in Genesis aren’t blind in that they express a perception of the human condition that arose from living in the world.

The assertions found in the scribblings of a mad man hopped up on magic mushrooms aren't blind in that they express a perception of the human condition that arose from living in the world. For all that's worth. They do nothing but reveal some hint of the mindset of people who wrote the texts, and perhaps of how things were assessed in that time and place.
But who really knows? The mindset of people who actually had some insight into reality and the origins of the universe etc.? Or perhaps nothing but the imagination of a writer of fiction? What we do know is that the text now known as "Genesis" was a story about the actions of the pantheon of gods under the leadership of the chief god El, known collectively as the Elohim. A pantheon worshipped by the Canaanites prior to the advent of Judaism.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The views of the “piss-stained” as you called them- fathers of the Abrahamic religions might well outlive your own.

That is of no greater significance than the very real possibility that the healing power of crystals, of divining rods, tarot cards and astrology might well outlive my own views. "Longevity" does not equal a "accuracy."

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I’m arguing that “mythological assertion” informed evolutionary explanations in the negative. In other words, people put forward evolutionary perspectives that were the opposite of Genesis. For example, in Genesis the biological world is fashioned from the top down. In Dawkins’s view, its fashioned from the lowest, from the selfish genes.

You are dreaming if you think that evolutionary biology is nothing but a reaction to religious dogma.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
You are returning to an earlier point here. I can only speak for myself. I think the author of Genesis , inspired or whatever, was expressing true knowledge of the world in that (a) we along with all life are created beings. By that I refer to our status or condition . I could say we are spectators of the creation except that may have the power to frustrate it, to turn the planet into a rotten egg.. (b) the Creation is good. (c) we have special status in the Creation, though that status is fraught with risk, sin and responsibility.

Okay, so you believe that. How nice for you. Is there any reason that anybody else should believe that as well?

Jayjay4547 wrote:
Buss’s overreaching application of “evolutionary genetics” to domestic violence in humans is my example of failure.

If it is a failure, then it is Buss's, not the theory of evolution's. Is that not the case Jayjay4547?

Jayjay4547 wrote:It can’t inspire anyone or suggest a way to reduce domestic violence.

Theories like the theory of evolution aren't about inspiring or suggestion how one ought to act though are they? no, they are about explaining how things are (and/or were, came to be etc.)
To confuse and/or conflate the is with the ought like that is to commit the naturalistic/moralistic logical fallacy.

What it does do is inform us of the facts of the situation. From which one can then hopefully make a more informed decision of what one ought to do in that face of that information.
In this case; if there is a biological/evolutionary base to those behaviours, then that is something that needs to be addressed. (Biologically "in-built" tendencies are not automatically unchangeable, there are often competing tendencies that can counter or at least mitigate their effects of human actions. But no matter what; understanding the foundations of the tendency is an important first step in dealing with it.)

Jayjay4547 wrote:In fact it has some potential to do the opposite, to make domestic violence seem natural.

So only a "potential" in the sense that some people are foolish enough to confuse "natural" with "desirable" then. Foolish enough to fall into the naturalistic fallacy trap.

Jayjay4547 wrote:And in the twentieth century the Spensarian/Darwinist notion of survival of the fittest did a whole lot of practical damage. Thank goodness those teeth were pulled.

"Pulled" by realising that those who thought that way had fallen into the Naturalistic fallacy trap.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
You could have mentioned Konrad Lorenz there as well. But let me get this right. You are saying that because murderous domestic violence amongst some fish occurs naturally, therefore murderous domestic violence amongst humans is also possibly natural? Oh no, fume, swear, you are NOT saying that. Lying creationists etc. etc. But we could easily get confused.

{Sigh}
There is a "natural" tendency for violence among humans, and quite possibly for violence from men toward woman (a physical domination thing.) That says NOTHING about whether that is in any way morally acceptable or not.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
Let’s bring that into the realm of human domestic violence, which is what Buss highlighted as being beautifully explained by modern evolutionary genetics and reproduction strategies. I wouldn’t be surprised is genetics does play a role in human domestic violence. I could have trouble separating that from learned behaviour passed from father to son.

Sure. The two (biologically and socially driven) probably both play a part, and are all tied up with one another such that distinguishing what caused what aspect may well one nigh on impossible.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
But I would like it explained to me, how the act of the abusive husband is going to be usefully or beautifully explained in terms of his reproduction strategy.

Huh? Perhaps you could start by asking your questions in a more coherent fashion.
If there are biological foundations for specific tendencies in humans, including violent tendencies, then that is a useful and valuable thing to find out and learn as much details on as we can. As understanding why things happen is a vital part of devising ways to change/stop them happening, if that be the preferable situation.

Jayjay4547 wrote: The way Ive seen it usefully explained is, the guy is a bully and a bully can be stopped when a bunch of guys go around at the minister’s instruction, and persuade the husband to stop beating his wife.

What does that garbled half told story (or whatever the hel that is supposed to be) have to do with anything?!

ADParker wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
The way I see it, Creationism is basically a rejection of the evolution explanation for the biological past. before Darwin there was no such word as Creationism. I agree it’s not a scientific explanation.

Then you haven't been paying proper attention.
Creationism is at base a religious belief that a god "created" everything (the universe, life, people...whatever.) It is not a "rejection of the evolutionary explanations, but a completely separate explanation. One, unlike the theory of evolution, that has no evidential foundation, only a historical narration one (i.e. stories.) Creationism is the belief in any one of the innumerable creation myths. The rejection of evolution comes in after the fact; because the theory of evolution is seen as a competing threat to creationist doctrine.

Creationist apologetics on the other hand is treated as if it were nothing but a rejection of 'evolution' (be that evolutionary biology or "evolution" as dishonestly defined as "everything in the sciences that conflicts with creationist dogma.") But this is only because of the recognised failings of the doctrine of creationism:
It has no rational or evidential foundation. So apologists can't really properly defend or promote it on those grounds. So they instead attempt to shift the burden of proof by attacking 'evolution' (however they define it) instead.

I set out my interpretation earlier like this:
“The emergence of creationism has been a bit like the way people came to understand that the world is round. The ancient Greeks “knew” it was round and educated westerners took up the cue, whatever the Hebrew Bible had to say on the matter. But they knew it in a curiously formal way. For example the Greeks never developed a decent map projection from the round earth although they were wide awake to geometry. Later when Columbus proposed exploiting a practical consequence of roundness, that was considered a radical thing. He did “discover” that the world is round in the sense of putting that practical understanding of roundness in the western mindset. And one can argue that western man still has a long way to go to really really understand that the world is round

In a similar way, before the geological discoveries of the 19th century, Westerners formally believed that the creation came about as told in Genesis – but they kept it in the same part of their mind as their belief the world is round. I’m not denying that our ancestors made spiritual use of the creation and their veneration for the Creator. Geology brought up new facts that directly contradicted Genesis as a practical account: long age and a long advancing sequence of extinct species. That’s when Creationism arose- as an affirmation that Genesis is true in the practical sense.

You could argue that the similarity breaks down on the point that the world is actually round but Genesis is actually wrong. What I believe though is that the theory of evolution is a matching polar product of the geological discoveries of the nineteenth century. To a greater extent than atheists might think evolution is just the negative of Genesis- and in ways that Genesis is right. I’m picking out atheists here because the theory of evolution has become the big lever and home of atheism- It’s difficult for a atheist to critique the foundation of his own belief.

As you can see, I’m taking a developmental view of the word “Creationsim” Spearthrower found a pre-Darwinian use (1847), meaning a Christian theological position that God immediately created a soul for each person born; from creation + -ism.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?ter ... in_frame=0

As a name for the religious reaction to Darwin, opposed to evolution, it is attested from 1880.

So the pre-Darwin usage was about a fine theological point, it wasn’t a doctrine that a “god” created everything as you put it. You distinguish between creationism and creationist apologetics. I don’t see the point in that. I’m not interested in classification for its own sake, but in emphasising that creationism and evolutionism are doctrines in a dance with each other. Creationism has been influenced by Evolutionism “as a name for the religious reaction to Darwin”. Well I want to argue that evolutionism has been influenced by creationism.

ADParker wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Well I’m pointing to a problem for a model which is (a) in contention (b) forms an origin narrative and (c) is used as a tool for weak and silly explanations.

However (a) the imagined problem you are claiming is that it succeeds in explaining too much for your tastes, explaining bad things as well as good! and (b) is only in contention ( in the broader scope of the theory) among those who hold to a primitive creation myth that doesn't fit into the scientific theory, not among those who actual understand and care finding out the truth no matter what it might turn out to be.
As for (c); well it has been misused in that way at times, this is true. Such abuses are regularly exposed however. Don't see what that has to do with the topic you started though.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
How dare one be sceptical about the utterances of a professional lecturer? Well in the first place this one admits that many other professionals don’t see issues like domestic violence the same way he does.

You weren't being sceptical. You were complaining that he was describing explanations that you found displeasing or not of a "higher" nature, or whatever. You were not challenging the accuracy of his insights (that would be scepticism) but accusing him of using the theory to explain the 'wrong' kinds of things, or something.

Oh no, I was and am totally skeptical that a consequence of modern evolutionary genetics can provide the most beautiful theoretical explanation for those darker sides of human sexual interaction as includes intimate partner violence. I wouldn’t be surprised if it provides a sidelight on domestic violence. But a beautiful theoretical explanation implies completeness and adequacy- like Newton’s law of gravitational attraction. The claim is overreaching.

ADParker wrote:You claimed that the theory shouldn't explain "dysfunctions", not that it couldn't. And you didn't explain either.
And your second assertion was that the theory of evolution should be used to explain "wonders of creation" and not the negative things that exist just the same.

It tends to be evolutionists who explain dysfunction. That is, evolutionists in the sense of people who like to argue with creationists. Most biologists –(believers in evolution but not evolutionists in that sense) are more fascinated by function. I’m thinking of a piece on the BBC site the other day, about the system whereby a whale opens its mouth to sieve 100 tonnes of water and fish in 10 seconds. I’d like to develop the argument that evolution is used ideologically to support atheism and atheism isn’t just a disbelief in God, it’s a kind of argument with God, and a claim to equality with God. To foreground dysfunction as part of the (anti-)creation is to discredit the creator- even if the speaker doesn’t believe consciously, that the Creator exists..

His suggestions as to the evolutionary underpinnings of such human interactions may well be flawed, and/or overreaching. But that is not what you were blathering on about in the OP.

In the OP I said “I’d expect a theory of how the Creation has worked, to overwhelmingly explain function rather than dysfunction- how cunning functions came about such as the liver, feathers, and human language.

That’s consistent with the above.

ADParker wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
It seems to me that evolutionary explanations have been heavily influenced to be the opposite of the creation narrative. After so many decades of confrontation and considering how exercised evolutionists are about it, that should be expected.

And once again you have it arse about face.
Evolutionary theory is science. Creation myths play no part in their formulation whatsoever. While it is possible that some people who have chosen to enter into the argument with creationists (who are so hot to denigrate any science that challenges their cherished little doctrinal beliefs that they will go to any lengths of dishonesty and mendacity in order to at least appear to do so) may at times be influenced by creationist claims, this invariably only amounts to examining real science with a specific intent to counter creationist apologetic nonsense.

You say “arse about face” as if creationism is a contrary product of evolution (which I agree is true) but evolution is unaffected structurally by creationism. But consider that evolution was promulgated by a man who might as a young man have entered the ministry, at a time when British society was seriously disturbed by the geological discoveries in the preceding decades. The intellectual elite of Victorian Britain were serious rounded men of the world with a high sense of responsibility, not science geeks. it would be surprising if Darwin wasn’t influenced by the established origin doctrine of his time- and not necessarily to accommodate it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I’m discussing what was presented to me as the views of one of the brightest people on the planet,

ADParker wrote: Why do you so often feel the need to harp on about this claim that Buss is "one of the brightest people on the planet"?! Who gives a fuck?

The editor of Popular Mechanics gave a fuck, presumably because it lent authority to the article he put in.

Jayjay4547 wrote:that “sexual conflict theory, a logical consequence of modern evolutionary genetics, provides the most beautiful theoretical explanation for those darker sides of human sexual interaction”. I’m happy that other people disagree with Buss. The more annoyed other psychologists get with this imperialism by the grand “evolution” paradigm the better for science.

ADParker wrote:What are you talking about?!
Oh...I get it; you are playing that pathetic little game where if someone (especially someone that you can claim as some kind of authority or other) makes an argument using the theory of evolution, and that argument is flawed, erroneous, or even if simply not generally or widely accepted, then that counts NOT ONLY as a slap in the face for this one argument, this one "authority figure evolutionist" ( ) but by some bizarre twist of reasoning; for the theory of evolution itself.

I don’t find it’s a pathetic little game. If someone uses a theory to make weak and overreaching claims on behalf of some theory and if those claims are given provenance then that does impact on the theory. Maybe the whole darn thing is overreaching. It’s not the one big lever but it’s something.

ADParker wrote:Sorry to burst your happy little bubble Jayjay4547, but it doesn't work like that. If you want to achieve that goal then this is what you have to do:
1. Demonstrate to a sufficient level of reliability that this hypothesis is the only reasonable conclusion if examined through the paradigm of evolutionary theory. In other words that if the theory of evolution is accurate then this hypothesis also has top be true. then;
2. Demonstrate that the hypothesis is in fact false.
Only then will refuting the hypothesis affect the theory of evolution on which it rests. Only then.

If the theory of evolution were one theorem then what you say could be valid. But it’s actually a ramified and huge ruling paradigm. It is not to be overthrown by any single test.

When you say “Sorry to burst your happy little bubble” I don’t accept that your really are sorry. You are just exercising your habit of putting some snide piece into every paragraph. That seems to be standard practice on this board. Have you ever considered just writing with ordinary politeness?

ADParker wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Add “good” by all means- you still can’t pontificate about the necessary qualities of the creator of the universe. It’s a very big place, been around a while, contains many wonders. And we are young and untaught..

Blah blah; God of the gaps...we know.

It’s not about God of the Gaps. It’s about how far one can reasonably claim to be able to define the qualities of a creator of the universe.

ADParker wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:My point about Buss’s expression of evolutionary psychology is that it is trivial and weak. Seeing that evolution deals with what mankind has considered the most marvellous and great thing, which is has been called the Creation, that is bad news for mankind’s understanding of the creation in light of evolution. Creationism is strengthened by that weakness.

Did that make some kind of sense when it was in your head?

Yes it did but let me try to make it clearer. The old Christian idea of the Creation is that It is good and it is beautiful. I’m thinking of clouds, flowers, butterflies and elephants. Those are also intuitive responses by people all over. Excepting maybe Jews about to gassed in Auschwitz. As a replacement narrative, evolution would need to work with that response. But often evolutionists take the other tack. As Buss did. His punch line was that evolution beautifully explains those darker sides –which includes rape, murder and wife-beating. That’s one of the reasons why many people stick to creationism- in spite of all the hits against it.

Rumraket wrote:You should edit that post jayjay, because it's not clear what spearthrower said or what you are responding.

thanks, done

I like how you started with Creationism being a movement to contradict Evolution, the claimed that Evolutionary theories are just to oppose Creationism, now you're back to the first one again without so much as a flutter of your eyelashes.


"Yes it did but let me try to make it clearer. The old Christian idea of the Creation is that It is good and it is beautiful. I’m thinking of clouds, flowers, butterflies and elephants. Those are also intuitive responses by people all over. Excepting maybe Jews about to gassed in Auschwitz. As a replacement narrative, evolution would need to work with that response. But often evolutionists take the other tack. As Buss did. His punch line was that evolution beautifully explains those darker sides –which includes rape, murder and wife-beating. That’s one of the reasons why many people stick to creationism- in spite of all the hits against it."

Aside from this being yet another extraction of your own imagination imposed onto the world without there being any support for it, I find it amusing that you consider this a pro. It's back to the dichotomy between an inconvenient truth and a reassuring lie.

Jayjay, please answer one simple question.

If evolutionary processes WORK, are demonstrated to do so in thousands of laboratory experiments, including experiments harnessing those processes to produce useful biotechnology products, and have been demonstrated time and again to be capable of producing novel features, new species, etc., why should we accept blind assertions from mythology instead of those thousands of empirical verifications?

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I set out my interpretation earlier like this:

Yes I read it the first time, but as you saw fit to rehash it for me:

Jayjay4547 wrote:“The emergence of creationism has been a bit like the way people came to understand that the world is round.

Rubbish. Creationism "emerged" far more like the belief that the world existed on the back of a giant turtle.
The more modern formalisation of creationism as a movement and labelled as such, came later as a result of there (finally) being a large enough body of work (i.e. actual evidence) in opposition to those views that had existed for centuries, specifically in the form of the Abrahamic creation myth (Judaic, but the creation texts are actually centred around an earlier polytheistic religion.)

Jayjay4547 wrote:The ancient Greeks “knew” it was round and educated westerners took up the cue, whatever the Hebrew Bible had to say on the matter.

Yes, the ancient Greeks knew it way back then, as did Indians (and probably Egyptians as well), both including rather accurate calculations of the circumference of the world. For example Plato refers at least once in his writing to the Earth, quite casually, as if speaking of a spherical body, as if it were the common understanding.

Jayjay4547 wrote:But they knew it in a curiously formal way. For example the Greeks never developed a decent map projection from the round earth although they were wide awake to geometry. Later when Columbus proposed exploiting a practical consequence of roundness, that was considered a radical thing.

Not really, no. Around that time there was a bit of a rather dishonest trick to make it seem that the Christians still believed the world was flat, but Columbus's proposal was met with scepticism because he was working with an inaccurate map/measurement which implied that the world was smaller than was the case, and thus that the proposed trip was a far shorter endeavour than in fact it was (which is why they ran out of rations and only survived at all by reaching a continent that lay between 'home' and their intended destination.) In truth the voyage of Columbus had nothing to do with the question of "roundness."

Jayjay4547 wrote:
In a similar way, before the geological discoveries of the 19th century, Westerners formally believed that the creation came about as told in Genesis – but they kept it in the same part of their mind as their belief the world is round. I’m not denying that our ancestors made spiritual use of the creation and their veneration for the Creator. Geology brought up new facts that directly contradicted Genesis as a practical account: long age and a long advancing sequence of extinct species. That’s when Creationism arose- as an affirmation that Genesis is true in the practical sense.

Huh?

But yes I suppose creationism in the modern sense did arise as a movement in the face of the rising amount of evidence piling up against such primitive ignorance laden nonsense. From those who realised that they couldn't really continue just asserting their ancient doctrines with empty assertions of authority and hope to convince as many as they once did. They chose to fight the demise of a failed "hypothesis" rather than face up to reality as it really is. Sad really.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
You could argue that the similarity breaks down on the point that the world is actually round but Genesis is actually wrong. What I believe though is that the theory of evolution is a matching polar product of the geological discoveries of the nineteenth century. To a greater extent than atheists might think evolution is just the negative of Genesis- and in ways that Genesis is right. I’m picking out atheists here because the theory of evolution has become the big lever and home of atheism- It’s difficult for a atheist to critique the foundation of his own belief.

What?
And you have it back to front once again. Evolution is the "big lever" of the creationist movement, it is they that bring it up all the time, as if they think that disproving the theory of evolution means that their creation myth then wins by default. Discussions about evolution aren't really about atheism, they are about facing attacks on the validity of science. Many atheists also being promoters of the scientific method etc. As both their appreciation of science and their atheism stems from the same source; Seeing the greater value in reason.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m not interested in classification for its own sake, but in emphasising that creationism and evolutionism are doctrines in a dance with each other. Creationism has been influenced by Evolutionism “as a name for the religious reaction to Darwin”. Well I want to argue that evolutionism has been influenced by creationism.

Ah, so it is evolutionISM you are arguing about then, not the theory of evolution. Well I have never had any taste for "isms" such as that. Unfortunately too many people with an proper understanding and appreciation of the science have been accused of being "evolutionists" in the sense of adherents to some kind of evolutionism doctrine, when they are no such thing. In fact too many times any positive comments on the theory of evolution have been dismissed as doctrinal belief in some kind of evolutionism, and any individual who accepts the theory of evolution in any way is immediately labelled as just such an "evolutionist."

That by the way is why some are so dead set against the "evolutionist" label; it can be read in two ways:
1. Simply anyone who accepts the validity, value and significance of the theory of evolution, and
2. Adherence to some form of dogmatic doctrine based on some fixed notion of evolution (evolutionism.)
Yet the vast majority of creationists (or at least that is how it looks from here) assume that anyone supporting evolutionary science in any way fits within that second definition.

There may be an "evolutionism" doctrine. I expect there are at least some people out there who hold some kind of fixed doctrinal view of evolution as understood at one point in time (probably distorted from that base to some degree as well), even though I don't recall ever meeting anyone like that. But that is a far cry from the appreciation and understanding of evolutionary science. In fact I would say that it represents a failure to really understand what evolutionary science, or indeed science as a whole, is really all about.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
Oh no, I was and am totally skeptical that a consequence of modern evolutionary genetics can provide the most beautiful theoretical explanation for those darker sides of human sexual interaction as includes intimate partner violence. I wouldn’t be surprised if it provides a sidelight on domestic violence. But a beautiful theoretical explanation implies completeness and adequacy- like Newton’s law of gravitational attraction. The claim is overreaching.

As am I. And I haven't read up on this particular case. However that is not what your presented in the OP. You are claiming rational scepticism of the accuracy of a hypothesis, but throughout you are throwing in arguments and complaints that reach far beyond such scepticism. If you had stuck with pointing out your scepticism on the subject and your reasons for that scepticism then I would probably have never even bothered to post here.

You sound like you are arguing against nothing but a single turn of phrase in the way you state that by the way. Did Buss claim that it can be explained "completely and adequately" by evolutionary biology alone? If he did then I can't agree, there are clearly "social evolution" factors as well, just for starters. If not, then you are railing against a straw man.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

ADParker wrote:You claimed that the theory shouldn't explain "dysfunctions", not that it couldn't. And you didn't explain either.
And your second assertion was that the theory of evolution should be used to explain "wonders of creation" and not the negative things that exist just the same.

It tends to be evolutionists who explain dysfunction. That is, evolutionists in the sense of people who like to argue with creationists. Most biologists –(believers in evolution but not evolutionists in that sense) are more fascinated by function. I’m thinking of a piece on the BBC site the other day, about the system whereby a whale opens its mouth to sieve 100 tonnes of water and fish in 10 seconds. I’d like to develop the argument that evolution is used ideologically to support atheism and atheism isn’t just a disbelief in God, it’s a kind of argument with God, and a claim to equality with God. To foreground dysfunction as part of the (anti-)creation is to discredit the creator- even if the speaker doesn’t believe consciously, that the Creator exists..

His suggestions as to the evolutionary underpinnings of such human interactions may well be flawed, and/or overreaching. But that is not what you were blathering on about in the OP.

In the OP I said “I’d expect a theory of how the Creation has worked, to overwhelmingly explain function rather than dysfunction- how cunning functions came about such as the liver, feathers, and human language.

That’s consistent with the above.

Sorry, what?!

I'm struggling to grasp just what it is you are having problems with here. And none of your further comments are helping me in the least, quite the contrary.

...
Oh I see; you messed up the quotes, so let's try that again:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

ADParker wrote:You claimed that the theory shouldn't explain "dysfunctions", not that it couldn't. And you didn't explain either.
And your second assertion was that the theory of evolution should be used to explain "wonders of creation" and not the negative things that exist just the same.

It tends to be evolutionists who explain dysfunction. That is, evolutionists in the sense of people who like to argue with creationists. Most biologists –(believers in evolution but not evolutionists in that sense) are more fascinated by function. I’m thinking of a piece on the BBC site the other day, about the system whereby a whale opens its mouth to sieve 100 tonnes of water and fish in 10 seconds.

There, that's better.

You aren't comparing "evolutionists' (those who are not biologists themselves necessarily, but argue with creationists on the subject) with biologists then, but such "evolutionists" with TV documentaries on evolution, media spun stories about aspects of the science.
Evolutionary biologists on the other hand do attempt to understand and explain all aspects of biology, functions and dysfunctions, the "wonderful" capacities that have evolved along side the strange oddities of nature. Such things as why certain species didn't evolve certain features that would have benefited them, and sometimes the novel ways they have worked around such a perceived failing.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’d like to develop the argument that evolution is used ideologically to support atheism and atheism isn’t just a disbelief in God, it’s a kind of argument with God, and a claim to equality with God. To foreground dysfunction as part of the (anti-)creation is to discredit the creator- even if the speaker doesn’t believe consciously, that the Creator exists..

Um okay, "Develop" away. You are wrong though.

The understood facts of evolution don't support atheism. Atheism is a negative-belief, a non-belief; as such it doesn't garner support, instead it is validated by the support for the belief to the contrary being invalidated. AS such evolution does not support atheism; it undermines particular forms of theism. It does away with one of the old canards used to claim that there is a creator god. Specifically the god-of-the-gaps assertion that a god is needed to explain the diversity of life on this planet (because apparently "we don't know" isn't good enough for some people, and even a bad argument, no make that an empty assertion, is better than none at all, than admitting ignorance.) Evolutionary biology demonstrates that there is an explanation after all, no need to reach for the 'comforting' delusion of a magical deity to pretend one has an answer, when a real one, backed up by actual evidence, is readily available.

Atheism is the lack of a belief in any gods. That is what the word means. If you want to argue that a subset of people who call themselves atheists are actually in some kind of argument with God (who never shows up for the discussion, funny that) then fine go ahead. Good luck finding anyone like that. If someone actually believes that they are arguing with a god (such a God) then they aren't atheists, are they?

But look: I am an atheist, a real one.
I do not have arguments with God, I have never met God, in fact I see no reason to think that this claimed entity even exists or ever existed... beyond the state of being a character from fiction.
I do not claim any equality with God. As far as I can tell I am superior to God in that I actually exist. And when people have arguments with me I actually show up and respond myself.

Atheists don't argue with God, we argue with people who believe in God (or some god or gods.) Some of whom presume to have the authority to speak on this gods behalf.

And to be perfectly honest; I don't care if you think that pointing out VERY REAL examples of "dysfunction" (as you put it) discredits this god you believe exists, or the creation myths from which that character comes. The truth is the truth, even when it challenges your cherished little beliefs.

And please don't try to pull that "subconscious belief" nonsense on me.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

ADParker wrote:His suggestions as to the evolutionary underpinnings of such human interactions may well be flawed, and/or overreaching. But that is not what you were blathering on about in the OP.

In the OP I said “I’d expect a theory of how the Creation has worked, to overwhelmingly explain function rather than dysfunction- how cunning functions came about such as the liver, feathers, and human language.

That’s consistent with the above.

And, once again, why would you expect a theory to explain function but fail to explain dysfunction?!
The theory of evolution explains both, at least to the degrees that it actually is the cause of those (dys)functions. Do you have a problem with that?

For example it explains why we humans (along with some close relatives, and guinea pigs, but in a different way) have a 'broken' vitamin C producing gene (a dysfunction) by the fact that our ancestors were not adversely affected (at least not enough) by that failing due to the availability of the vitamin through other means. I.e. the ingestion of vitamin C rich fruit (even though it can cause problems for people such as it did Columbus )

Jayjay4547 wrote:
You say “arse about face” as if creationism is a contrary product of evolution (which I agree is true) but evolution is unaffected structurally by creationism.

Evolution is unaffected by creationism. Are you using "evolution" in the disingenuous manner of actually meaning "the the belief in the truth of the theory of evolution" and not the simple fact of change in allele frequency over time? If so; please stop it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:But consider that evolution was promulgated by a man who might as a young man have entered the ministry, at a time when British society was seriously disturbed by the geological discoveries in the preceding decades.

Um, so? What does that have to do with anything?!
And it was the understanding and explanation of how evolution operated that was promulgated, not evolution. You don't talk about "promulgating gravity" when you talk about the theory of gravity (as proposed by Newton, Einstein or later work of many) do you?

Jayjay4547 wrote:The intellectual elite of Victorian Britain were serious rounded men of the world with a high sense of responsibility, not science geeks. it would be surprising if Darwin wasn’t influenced by the established origin doctrine of his time- and not necessarily to accommodate it.

Who cares? It is not as if Charles Darwin was the sole agent working on questions of evolution, nor that he was the sole arbitrator of what would be accepted by the scientific community as a whole. This is how science, the scientific method, works after all; competition of ideas (hypotheses and theories etc.) work to weed out any such biases. Some may remain, possibly for some time, this is true, but the very foundation on how science works tends to steer away from being rail-roaded by non-scientific presumptions and beliefs. If that weren't the case the prevailing view of "special creation" held by the majority at the time of Darwin and Wallace may well have continued to hold sway no matter what evidence came to light.

Are you presuming that if Darwin 's work had been influenced by "the established origin doctrine of his time" that such influences are likely to still exist within the modern synthesis as well? Well, mere assertions won't convince me sir.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

ADParker wrote: Why do you so often feel the need to harp on about this claim that Buss is "one of the brightest people on the planet"?! Who gives a fuck?

The editor of Popular Mechanics gave a fuck, presumably because it lent authority to the article he put in.

Nice dodge.
Isaac Newton was possibly the "brightest person on the planet" ever (might not have been, there is a lot we don't know about a lot of people), that doesn't mean he was All-Knowing or anything.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

ADParker wrote:What are you talking about?!
Oh...I get it; you are playing that pathetic little game where if someone (especially someone that you can claim as some kind of authority or other) makes an argument using the theory of evolution, and that argument is flawed, erroneous, or even if simply not generally or widely accepted, then that counts NOT ONLY as a slap in the face for this one argument, this one "authority figure evolutionist" ( ) but by some bizarre twist of reasoning; for the theory of evolution itself.

I don’t find it’s a pathetic little game. If someone uses a theory to make weak and overreaching claims on behalf of some theory and if those claims are given provenance then that does impact on the theory. Maybe the whole darn thing is overreaching. It’s not the one big lever but it’s something.

Did I not explain this already? No it bloody doesn't impact upon the theory. Not unless you can first establish that the argument/hypothesis really does necessarily arise from the theory. It only counts if the theory is used correctly.

By way of analogy: If I claim that it follows from Einstein's work on gravity that there are subterranean mole-people beneath the surface of this planet with special magnets, and this is the cause of things falling down toward the ground. Then proving that my claim is absolute bullshit does not impact upon Einstein's theories on gravity in the slightest.

To use your metaphor: You have to show that the "lever" is actually firmly attached to the theory of evolution, before you can rightly claim that it is a lever on evolutionary theory. It may simply be a lever on the validity of this one argument, given by this one guy.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

ADParker wrote:Sorry to burst your happy little bubble Jayjay4547, but it doesn't work like that. If you want to achieve that goal then this is what you have to do:
1. Demonstrate to a sufficient level of reliability that this hypothesis is the only reasonable conclusion if examined through the paradigm of evolutionary theory. In other words that if the theory of evolution is accurate then this hypothesis also has top be true. then;
2. Demonstrate that the hypothesis is in fact false.
Only then will refuting the hypothesis affect the theory of evolution on which it rests. Only then.

If the theory of evolution were one theorem then what you say could be valid. But it’s actually a ramified and huge ruling paradigm. It is not to be overthrown by any single test.

What are you talking about?! That didn't address what I wrote at all!

And yes, I am well aware that the theory of evolution is an overarching label for a broad paradigm covering all theories and hypotheses about the various aspects of evolutionary biology. But that has nothing to do with what I was saying here. DId I ever mention or imply anything about overthrowing the entire theory of evolution? No I did not.

Why even bother replying if you are just going to keep avoiding addressing what we are saying like that?

Jayjay4547 wrote:
When you say “Sorry to burst your happy little bubble” I don’t accept that your really are sorry. You are just exercising your habit of putting some snide piece into every paragraph. That seems to be standard practice on this board. Have you ever considered just writing with ordinary politeness?

Bite me. (You asked for that.)
Why don't you just get over it? "Sorry to burst your bubble" is a common turn of phrase (where I live it is at least.) You are correct though; if I actually had managed to "burst your bubble" in that instance (not that I expected to succeed in doing so) I would not have been sorry for doing so, as that would have been a good thing. As uncomfortable as it may possibly have been for you to lose that erroneous mode of thought, I think the improvement would have been of benefit to you.

I could have been all formal and said something like "You are in error on this matter..." but sometimes a little ridicule works better. And it was hardly a cutting blow, now was it?

And let's face it; you in fact did find it to be of use to you: You realised that you could fix on that and then ignore the actual content of what I said, and then pretend (if only to yourself) that you had actually addressed my point when you really just blew it off.

So let me repeat that point for you:
You are in error on that point Jayjay4547; it it doesn't work like that. If you want to achieve that goal then this is what you have to do:
1. Demonstrate to a sufficient level of reliability that this hypothesis is the only reasonable conclusion if examined through the paradigm of evolutionary theory. In other words that if the theory of evolution is accurate then this hypothesis also has to be true. then;
2. Demonstrate that the hypothesis is in fact false.
Only then will refuting the hypothesis affect the theory of evolution on which it rests. Only then.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

ADParker wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:My point about Buss’s expression of evolutionary psychology is that it is trivial and weak. Seeing that evolution deals with what mankind has considered the most marvellous and great thing, which is has been called the Creation, that is bad news for mankind’s understanding of the creation in light of evolution. Creationism is strengthened by that weakness.

Did that make some kind of sense when it was in your head?

Yes it did but let me try to make it clearer. The old Christian idea of the Creation is that It is good and it is beautiful. I’m thinking of clouds, flowers, butterflies and elephants. Those are also intuitive responses by people all over. Excepting maybe Jews about to gassed in Auschwitz. As a replacement narrative, evolution would need to work with that response. But often evolutionists take the other tack. As Buss did. His punch line was that evolution beautifully explains those darker sides –which includes rape, murder and wife-beating. That’s one of the reasons why many people stick to creationism- in spite of all the hits against it.

So all you are saying is that some people stick with the creationist fairy tales because they like those stories better?! That might be true for some. It ignores all the indoctrination and so forth, but I guess it might play a part; there are indeed some people that latch onto and keep a hold of cherished little beliefs for no better reason that they like them and the consequences that spring from them (Appeal to consequences logical fallacy: :X is true because I like what it means if it is true.")
The fact that some people stick to a doctrine for rationally poor reasons, such as "I just prefer this story" (a friend of mine said that he believed in God and heaven because he hates the idea that this life is all we get ) is one of the things reason loving people like me argue against; believing things for poor reasons is irrational and problematic, it is about ignoring reality in favour of delusional fantasy.

Buss's point as you bring it up, is that the theory of evolution not only explains the wonderful diversity of life on this planet, along with all of it's splendour, complexity, novelty and all the rest of it, but also the '"darker" aspects of our own species natures. And, if that is the case, what is wrong with that?

You are playing both sides of some crazy fence you erected.
On the one hand you are accusing "evolutionists" of not providing a simple scientific explanation, but rather reacting to creationist doctrine (evolutionism as nothing more than a counter doctrine to creationism.)
And on the other hand insisting that "evolution as a narrative" should work within the confines of creationist doctrine. In other words that it should be used solely as a counter to creationism, providing equally comforting stories of "creation as good beautiful" instead of what the theories within evolution do in reality; which is explain all facets of reality, be they Good", "bad" or "neutral" etc., that come under its purview.
Make up your mind.

Rumraket wrote:Jayjay, how about instead of all this waffling about, you try to explain what it is evolution doesn't explain/can't explain, but should, and why you think it should?

I responded to that in the topic "Absolute directions in the world" because it fits better there.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Rumraket wrote:Jayjay, how about instead of all this waffling about, you try to explain what it is evolution doesn't explain/can't explain, but should, and why you think it should?

I responded to that in the topic "Absolute directions in the world" because it fits better there.

You've done this cross-posting now several times. Can you stop it? If someone asks you a question in 1 thread, there's no call to post it in another.

Secondly, you didn't actually respond to that question - you just waved at punctuated equilibrium which is not something that evolution 'doesn't/can't explain, but should', so the truth is that you haven't presented anything to deal with Rum's question, regardless of where you posted it.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:The assertions found in Genesis aren’t blind in that they express a perception of the human condition that arose from living in the world.

They don't express a "perception" at all. They merely assert that the world operates in a particular fashion, and that said manner of operation is governed by a magical entity. The authors thereof were too busy gazing at their ideological navels to bother looking at the real world, as that nonsense about coloured sticks clearly demonstrates. Indeed, I suspect that quite a few farmers living in that era would be secretly thinking to themselves "this is complete garbage", based upon what they had observed by being farmers, but of course, they would have had to keep this to themselves, because the enforcers of conformity to mythology invariably resort to ruthless suppression of dissenting ideas when those ideas arise. It's not as if we lack evidence for this, and indeed, the authors of that mythology openly admitted in that same mythology, that they travelled around the countryside exterminating people who didn't conform to their doctrine. You do realise that the Old Testament is well supplied with juicy accounts of genocide?

The framers of the OT were much closer to farming than most of us are today- that is reflected in frequent references to planting, sowing, herding and predation. So “suspect”if you like that they would be on your side, it’s more likely that what found its way into the texts reflected the intuition based on being in immediate contact with the ground. It’s only in the last hundred and fifty years that their perceptions has been called by some, garbage.

Calilasseia wrote: The only aspect of the human condition that this mythology informs us of, is the willingness of people to adhere to doctrines, even when reality manifestly points and laughs at those doctrines. Indeed, that same mythology provides us with a hilarious pseudo-taxonomy of living organisms later on in Leviticus, which is so replete with basic errors as to be a sad joke. Bats classified as birds, and entire phyla of invertebrates lumped together as "creeping things with four legs" being the two most obvious howlers - with respect to the last, any moderately intelligent five year old can pick up an insect, count its legs, and realise that Leviticus got it woefully, absurdly wrong. And please, spare me the crap apologetics about locusts and grasshoppers I've seen erected before today, because I've dealt with that in the past, when assorted mythology fetishists tried peddling it to me, and I fed that apologetics into the shredder by recourse to real world evidence.

My position is that this mythology has also informed the way the theory of evolution has been understood and presented- in the negative, as the opposite.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:The views of the “piss-stained” as you called them- fathers of the Abrahamic religions might well outlive your own.

The only way in which the farcical nonsense I've covered above will outlive hard empirical science, is if humanity commits some spectacularly gross errors of judgement. You'd better hope that humanity doesn't do this, because you will like living in the 12th century even less than I will, and if some mythology fetishists have their way, that's where they'll drag us all - kicking and screaming back to the 12th century.

Well that remains to be seen. One thing that could drag us back to the 12th century or beyond could be a nuclear war. Another could be serious climate change such as envisaged by Lovelock. In either case, the survivors will have quite a different attitude to science.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

I’m arguing that “mythological assertion” informed evolutionary explanations in the negative.

Er, excuse me, but when scientists were striving to understand the biosphere and its diversity, they didn't bother with mythological assertions at all. They looked for testable natural processes to account for their observations, the same way that scientists looked for testable natural processes to account for phenomena falling within the remit of physics. Your favourite mythology was a fucking irrelevance in all of this, and the only reason scientists wasted time addressing your favourite mythology, was because fetishists for this mythology engaged in a grand piece of foot-stomping to the effect "how dare you find out that reality doesn't conform to doctrine". That's the only reason scientists have ever wasted time with the mythology you love so much, because it had political power and weapons behind it. Without that stolen political power and without those weapons, that mythology would have been a total irrelevance long ago, and it's time that we woke up to the fact that it's well and truly past its sell by date.

Historically, the theory of evolution was invented by people who were disturbed by the geological evidence and became alert to Genesis as a literal story that might wrong. I believe that influenced their new theory and set the mould of alliances that have fed a dialectic up till today.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:In other words, people put forward evolutionary perspectives that were the opposite of Genesis.

Look, drop once and for all the fatuous and oft-peddled creationist lie, that scientists launched into their investigations as some sort of a priori ideological rejection of mythology. The grand irony is that quite a few of the scientists who contributed to our knowledge today, did so starting out from a position of seeking to affirm the assertions of your mythology, only to discover that reality was telling them an entirely different story. But, instead of ignoring the real world evidence, they chose to listen to it. Which is why we now know that mythological assertions are horseshit.

Ja the narrative of apostasy. If you can cite an example we can go into it.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:For example, in Genesis the biological world is fashioned from the top down. In Dawkins’s view, its fashioned from the lowest, from the selfish genes.

Did I mention Dawkins in all of this? Er, no. Because I don't subscribe to the appeal to authority fallacy. I happen to admire his willingness to expose supernaturalist canards, but with respect to some of the science, he's actually out of date. Hardly surprising, given that he's been out of the research loop for some time. This is why I go looking for actual scientific papers, to find out what the actual researchers and their empirical work are telling anyone who bothers to pay attention. That research, if you bother to pay attention to it, tells us that some interesting entities and phenomena emerged from simpler, antecdent systems, that complicate matters with respect to modern living organisms. However, there exist sufficient examples of simpler, antecedent systems still extant in the biosphere, to provide us with a means of looking back into the past.

The fact that you didn’t mention Dawkins doesn’t stop me from doing that. I cited his notion of the selfish gene as the analytical basis for change in nature. Nothing to do with “simpler. antecedent systems”. You are treating this discussion as if you were holding it with a denialist, a young-earth creationist. I’ve given you plenty of evidence that it’s not so. Mind you, I am a fellow-traveller with them.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:which have become its opposite. A dialectic has developed.

Excuse me, but rampant denial of vast quantities of real world evidence, and the peddling of lies to prop up a mythology-based doctrine, in a futile attempt to overthrow empirically validated scientific postulates, isn't a "dialectic".

Um why not, is “dialectic” too fancy a word for an argument between scientific knights in shining armour and creationist scumbags?

Calilasseia wrote: [quote=”Jayjay4547”]Your own language suggests the partisan engagement that is found in a dialectic.

Ahem, this is merely the specious erection of the "interpretations" canard so beloved of propagadists for mythology. And I've dealt with this canard in the past too. Viz..[long text omitted]...:.....As for my own language, I happen to be of the view that when confronted with manifest canards and lies, it is entirely proper to describe them as such. Noting that lies and canards ARE lies and canards isn't "partisan engagement", it's the recognition of basic fact.

I haven’t lied or dealt in canards. I just say that your expletive-filled language suggests engagement.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
The whole issue of coloured sticks and Mendel was irrelevant to what was under discussion, which was how an all-good creator etc could have made this universe. I don’t have any problem with specific knowledge of the world having increased in the last three thousand years.

Ahem, since the mythology in question erects the very assertions you've just repeated above, about a purported "creator" and the attributes possessed thereby, it IS apposite to note that the mythology in question erects assertions that are known to be wrong, and therefore is suspect with respect to other, untestable assertions. Including assertions that a purported "creator" exists, and possesses a laundry list of attributes. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand? Basically, the mythology you love so much erects a raft of assertions, all of these assertions presented within that mythology as if they constituted established fact. This posturing on the part of your mythology is rendered wholly null and void, the moment any one of those assertions is demonstrated to be wrong. The moment one of those assertions is roundly falsified, this destroys at a stroke any idea that this collection of assertions should be treated as established fact. Do learn this lesson.

I don’t have any problem with specific knowledge of the world having increased in the last three thousand years. The long list of attributes that my faith (I’m an Anglican) makes about God are just working beliefs to gain some spiritual purpose. I don’t use them to prove that the creator exists or can’t exist etc.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:you would have to design better living things yourself before being confident you understand how to do it, that you could do better.

Ahem, if I was "designing" a ground living beetle that had no use for wings, I could do better, by simply ensuring that it didn't have the superfluous wings to begin with. Exactly what part of this elementary notion do you have difficulty understanding again?

I find ID interesting in the echoes that I find with my own understanding, but I’m no IDist. You yourself couldn’t actually design a beetle. You could draw a beetle with a pencil. You could make a model out of plasticene. Designers of advanced things spend years learning how the world works in the area of their interest. To speak meaningfully about designing a beetle you would have to know and use the way the beetle form plays out from its genes. One way that works evidently, is a particular beetle with functioning wings that can never open. So, there are many more beetles with wings that do open. You are spitting on nature.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:There’s a level of hubris in the claim of natural imperfections, that might be directly connected with atheism.

Bollocks. There's nothing "hubristic" about realising that trapping fully functional wings under fused elytra is a piece of incompetence on the part of any asserted "designer". It's a recognition of basic fact. If a beetle doesn't need wings to go about its daily business, why "design" one that has wings, and moreover, has those wings rendered totally useless under fused elytra? This doesn't make any fucking sense at all. The idea that some hyper-intelligent "designer" possessing vast powers of reasoning was responsible for this, is fucking laughable. A five year old can work this out.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Considering how living things embody piled up levels of competencies, how their study has involved armies of biologists for centuries now with no end in sight, you should logically be more circumspect.

Please, once again, do explain to me how the example I've provided above is anything other than a gargantuan slap in the face for assertions about a fantasy "designer" with mega-powers. I've just explained how I could do the job better if I had the requisite tools.

You don’t have the requisite tools. I’m not sure you could even draw a decent beetle with a pencil.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I don’t believe the Bible contains magical anachronistic information.

Ahem, I've just supplied you with a glaring example of this [coloured sticks to control genetic outdomes] . Do you actually READ my fucking posts?

Yes. Like I said, I don’t think the Bible contains information about what can be experimentally determined, but wasn’t known at the time. It’s a book of wisdom. And some of what is said today in the name of science lacks wisdom.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:If it did I might suspect it of being written by aliens posing as God. Because the apparent interface between mankind and the higher level would be suspiciously simple.

Actually, there's a far simpler, far more parsimonious explanation, that doesn't involve fabricating ANY superfluous entities. Namely, the Middle Eastern nomads made shit up and treated their made up shit as fact, because they were too backward to do any better. We don't need to invoke fantasy aliens, let alone fantasy invisible magic men in the sky, all we need to do is recognise that pre-scientific humans were capable of letting their febrile but limited imaginations run away with them.

Gosh, pre-scientific humans. I believe we aren’t that different from people of earlier ages, just as liable to invest in ideologies, defend them to the death.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I don’t much like the term “evolutionist” either, I hesitated long before using it. But it’s a practical working term for people who are attracted towards arguing with creationists.

No it isn't, it's a piece of discoursive duplicity, and I explained why it's a piece of discoursive duplicity in the part you snipped out above. Namely, it's a deliberate attempt to misrepresent valid empirical science as a "doctrine" and an "ideology", partly as a smokescreen to hide the fact that creationism is an ideology, and partly for the mendacious purpose of then erecting the apologetic fabrication that said valid empirical science is, by default, the "wrong" ideology, which of course, once again, is merely asserted by stormtroopers for creationist doctrine. Creationism consists of assertions all the way down.

Creationism is interesting as contradiction. A bunch of people in the most vital culture on Earth enjoy partaking in it. Instead of swearing at it you could try to understand it.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Many aren’t evolutionary biologists.

But, and this is the important part, those of us who aren't, exercise the effort to pay attention to those who are. Which is why we expend the effort required to read the scientific papers. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand?

The 128mm atomic canon, the constant swearing, don’t get me started.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Many are there to snigger and bully

Bullshit. Exactly how much "sniggering" is involved in demonstrating, for example, that one of your assertions in another thread, about evolution being teleologically directed, is refuted wholesale by numerous scientific papers documenting real world evidence? Speaking of which, got an answer for any of those papers?

You will never find me using that word “teleological”. I’ll reply to your post there as I have the time.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:and to be on the “educated” side.

Well if being educated means paying attention to the people who do the hard work of actual empirical research, then I'm guilty as charged and proud of it. Which is a damn sight better position to be in, than the position of ignoring wholesale vast reams of evidence, and pretending that the scribblings of some backward tribal people 3,000 years ago constitutes the last word in knowledge.

I don’t claim the OT constitutes the last word in knowledge. I claim it embodies a valid vision of the human condition or status , as widely understood up till 150 years ago – and that the replacement vision is more reactive than creative.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:To some degree, their behaviour determines the colour that sticks to the term.

Bollocks. I've already explained the duplicity behind the use of the term, and you haven't provided anything remotely approaching an addressing thereof, let alone a refutation.

I’m saying that intemperate language and bullying behaviour sticks to the name of its users.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:. I think the author of Genesis , inspired or whatever, was expressing true knowledge of the world in that (a) we along with all life are created beings.

Evidence for this? Where is it? Please, point to the evidence that humans are the product of a cheap conjuring trick with some dirt. I'l have fun pointing you at relevant papers from the world of moelcular phylogeny in return.

It’s about status in the world. A created being doesn’t know the full story how it came to be, some thing or someone else knows more. The atheist ideology seeks to make out that isn’t the case. When we get that monkey off our backs we will make some progress.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:By that I refer to our status or condition . I could say we are spectators of the creation except that may have the power to frustrate it, to turn the planet into a rotten egg..

Oh, you do realise that some of the world's leading physicists are about to toss the whole "creation" myth into the bin? I've presented relevant papers in the past, it won't be hard for you to find them. Just look up "Steinhardt & Turok".

Their theory that universe pulsates is interesting but irrelevant as a response. The risk our turning this planet into a rotten egg is that we take over and enslave planetary ecology before finding the basis for its generosity. A Borg planet.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:(b) the Creation is good.

Blind assertion. More correctly, a pair of them.

Not blind, it’s an exclamation that comes to many when we look at clouds, the sea, flowers and butterflies. It’s in Genesis as well, its author was inspired by the creation.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:(c) we have special status in the Creation

Again, blind assertion. More correctly, a pair of them.

No, that one is objective fact. Ours is the one species on Earth that could totally screw up the planet. And we are the one species that could understand a charge laid against us on that score.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:though that status is fraught with risk, sin and responsibility.

Again, all assertion piled upon assertion.

All too real, for anyone living consciously in the 21st century.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Buss’s overreaching application of “evolutionary genetics” to domestic violence in humans is my example of failure.

Well if he's wrong, we'll soon know, because someone will come along and provide the relevant empirical research demonstrating this. When that happens, we'll move on to a better idea. That's the whole point in case you hadn't worked this out, namely, ideas are disposable entities, and the decision to dispose of a given idea, or collection thereof, is made when reality tells us to. At least, this is how it works in genuine intellectual disciplines. Religion, on the other hand, responds to real world evidence by making up more shit in a desperate attempt to keep failed assertions alive at all costs, including assertions that reality has long since pointed and laughed at.

In the real world professor Buss put on a kind of theatrical show, he realised a popular position in terms that he might not have taken that seriously himself. The discipline of evolutionary psychology will survive so long as a sufficiently large group of salaried academics are drawn towards it. It’s probably pretty robust at present. Schools survive by different rules than individual scientific publications.

Calilasseia wrote:Please, drop the naturalistic fallacy. Just because a given phenomenon occurs as a natural outcome of various contributing factors, has no relevance to how we choose to judge that phenomenon from an ethical standpoint. The two are entirely different. Rape occurs in numerous animal species, but no one here amongst the reality defenders will erect apolgetics justifying rape, they will all agree that from an ethical standpoint, it's repugnant, and that it's repugnant because of the measurable harm inflicted upon the victim.

What is deemed to be natural is in practice a powerful implicit justification for it, on the lines of “boys will be boys”.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:And in the twentieth century the Spensarian/Darwinist notion of survival of the fittest did a whole lot of practical damage.

Actually, it wasn't Darwin who erected this notion. It was the product of Francis Galton, who took Darwin's ideas and barked up an entirely wrong tree with them. If you actually read Darwin's own words on the subject, his view was much more sophisticated, namely, survival of the sufficiently competent. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be good enough. Unfortunately, Galton was not only a man with a gift for rhetoric, he was also a part time occupier of the fringes of madness, and a professional racist. Oh, and please, don't try and erect any of the duplicitous lies peddled by the likes of Richard Weikart, trying to misrepresent Darwin as a racist, because I'll happily come back and carpet bomb that bullshit too.

Carpet bombing is a term for trying to obliterate everything at huge cost and uncertain success, for lack or accurate targeting. It was in fact Herbert Spencer not Galton who coined the term “survival of the fittest”. Richart Weikart had only complimentary things to say of Charles Darwin.

Calilasseia wrote: Oh, and what about the practical damage arising from creationism? You do realise that creationism was adopted in full by the Ku Klux Klan, who used the "Hamitic races" nonsense in Genesis to justify slavery and oppression of black people? Indeed, arch-charlatan and professsional liar for doctrine Henry Morris continued peddling this in the 1960s, and Ken Ham's concentration camp for the mind in Kentucky still peddles this venomous racist bullshit.

Yes, Creationism has been championed for the aims of venomous racist buillshit like you say. I know that well from my own childhood when my classmates held it as a fact that black people had evolved from monkeys, but whites came from Adam and Eve. But on a larger scale, to understand thestaggering excesses of the twentieth century by Westerners, it is necessary to look at the coupled impact of atheism and the theory of evolution.

Calilasseia wrote: Like I said above, there's a difference between "natural" in the sense of "occurring as a result of well defined and testable processes" and "natural" in the oft-misused colloquial sense of "ethically justified". Once again, drop the naturalistic fallacy. Just because there happens to be a natural explanation for a given phenomenon, doesn't affect ethical judgements about that phenomenon. Oh, and fish aren't the only animal model, I merely chose those because they're the ones I'm familiar with, courtesy of 35 years of fishkeeping amongst other things.

They are linked in practice. What is “natural” has great authority. In a sane society it can merely keep people from effective remedies- as Darwin’s view on the natural inevitable extermination of “savage races” merely lessened the horror of the English at what they had already done to the Tasmanian aboriginals.



If it were true that evolution provides a beautiful and therefore complete and adequate explanation for rape then I would hesitate to say, don’t investigate or publicise that. But I don’t for a second believe that it does and the claim is overreaching and dangerous.

I’ll just drop in here the little file of abusive terms you sprinkled your post with and that I gathered up as I went along. I left off abusive terms where I happen to agree with you about fascists. For your interest.

gazing at their ideological navels, complete garbage crap apologetics woefully, absurdly wrong, mythology fetishists, farcical nonsense, fucking irrelevance, fucking irrelevance, oft-peddled creationist lie, horseshit. supernaturalist canards. peddling of lies, mendacity, discoursively dishonest, duplicitous fabrication, manifest canards and lies, posturing, apologetic fabrication, Bollocks, any fucking sense at all, fucking laughable. fucking posts, de shit up, scribblings of some backward tribal people, cheap conjuring trick, nonsense in Genesis

My position is that this mythology has also informed the way the theory of evolution has been understood and presented- in the negative, as the opposite.

Yup - that's your position, unfortunately you are unable to make a case for it, so it's a bit of an empty position all told.

The atheist ideology seeks to make out that isn’t the case. When we get that monkey off our backs we will make some progress.

As per usual, your statements are entirely ignorant of recorded history. We started making progress when we stopped invoking gods as explanations for phenomena.

Not blind, it’s an exclamation that comes to many when we look at clouds, the sea, flowers and butterflies. It’s in Genesis as well, its author was inspired by the creation.

You mean when you cherrypick the good parts.

No, that one is objective fact. Ours is the one species on Earth that could totally screw up the planet. And we are the one species that could understand a charge laid against us on that score.

It's objective fact that we have a privileged position in Creation i.e. the Universe, and the solitary support that you can muster for this is that we can destroy a significant part of our world's ability to support life?

You really do produce the most nonsensical assertions, JJ.

All too real, for anyone living consciously in the 21st century.

With the knowledge and consequent ability to engage in critical thinking of the 21st century B.C.

Yes, Creationism has been championed for the aims of venomous racist buillshit like you say. I know that well from my own childhood when my classmates held it as a fact that black people had evolved from monkeys, but whites came from Adam and Eve. But on a larger scale, to understand thestaggering excesses of the twentieth century by Westerners, it is necessary to look at the coupled impact of atheism and the theory of evolution.

Ignorant unsupported assertion is ignorant and unsupported.

You seem to think you can just extrapolate your imagination out onto the world. Unfortunately, as with all the other crap you've spewed on threads in your career - this is indicative only of your complete ignorance of facts and preference for making shit up.

They are linked in practice. What is “natural” has great authority. In a sane society it can merely keep people from effective remedies- as Darwin’s view on the natural inevitable extermination of “savage races” merely lessened the horror of the English at what they had already done to the Tasmanian aboriginals.

More historical ignorance with delusional outcomes added.

Don't bother complaining about people's language to you - you deserve any abuse you get for bullshitting at people. In fact, this forum offers you protection from what I would be more than happy to tell you to your face - I detest people who can't stop themselves from lying to prop up their ludicrous claims.

If it were true that evolution provides a beautiful and therefore complete and adequate explanation for rape then I would hesitate to say, don’t investigate or publicise that. But I don’t for a second believe that it does and the claim is overreaching and dangerous.

Who called it 'beautiful' JJ? More imagination projected onto the conversation.

Rape is easily explained in terms of nature and males propagating their genes. It happens throughout the natural world. Of course, unless you're totally incompetent at grasping the difference between an explanation and a justification, you'd quickly realise that this offers no excuse for humans raping each other whatsoever. As for your desire for everything to suit your notion of beautiful creation - it just shows how abstracted from reality your belief makes you - you'd prefer to sweep under the carpet anything you can't feel intellectually comfortable with: the perfect explanation why you're a fundamentalist Creationist.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:The assertions found in Genesis aren’t blind in that they express a perception of the human condition that arose from living in the world.

They don't express a "perception" at all. They merely assert that the world operates in a particular fashion, and that said manner of operation is governed by a magical entity. The authors thereof were too busy gazing at their ideological navels to bother looking at the real world, as that nonsense about coloured sticks clearly demonstrates. Indeed, I suspect that quite a few farmers living in that era would be secretly thinking to themselves "this is complete garbage", based upon what they had observed by being farmers, but of course, they would have had to keep this to themselves, because the enforcers of conformity to mythology invariably resort to ruthless suppression of dissenting ideas when those ideas arise. It's not as if we lack evidence for this, and indeed, the authors of that mythology openly admitted in that same mythology, that they travelled around the countryside exterminating people who didn't conform to their doctrine. You do realise that the Old Testament is well supplied with juicy accounts of genocide?

The framers of the OT were much closer to farming than most of us are today- that is reflected in frequent references to planting, sowing, herding and predation. So “suspect”if you like that they would be on your side, it’s more likely that what found its way into the texts reflected the intuition based on being in immediate contact with the ground. It’s only in the last hundred and fifty years that their perceptions has been called by some, garbage.

Nobody gives a fuck how close to farming the authors of the OT were, what matters is that they were talking shit in direct contradiction to observations from the real world. That makes the idea that the book contains the infallible word of a creator-god the laughing stock of people with properly functioning brains.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: The only aspect of the human condition that this mythology informs us of, is the willingness of people to adhere to doctrines, even when reality manifestly points and laughs at those doctrines. Indeed, that same mythology provides us with a hilarious pseudo-taxonomy of living organisms later on in Leviticus, which is so replete with basic errors as to be a sad joke. Bats classified as birds, and entire phyla of invertebrates lumped together as "creeping things with four legs" being the two most obvious howlers - with respect to the last, any moderately intelligent five year old can pick up an insect, count its legs, and realise that Leviticus got it woefully, absurdly wrong. And please, spare me the crap apologetics about locusts and grasshoppers I've seen erected before today, because I've dealt with that in the past, when assorted mythology fetishists tried peddling it to me, and I fed that apologetics into the shredder by recourse to real world evidence.

My position is that this mythology has also informed the way the theory of evolution has been understood and presented- in the negative, as the opposite.

Then your position would be horseshit, because the theory of evolution is formulated primarily from observation and evidence.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:The views of the “piss-stained” as you called them- fathers of the Abrahamic religions might well outlive your own.

The only way in which the farcical nonsense I've covered above will outlive hard empirical science, is if humanity commits some spectacularly gross errors of judgement. You'd better hope that humanity doesn't do this, because you will like living in the 12th century even less than I will, and if some mythology fetishists have their way, that's where they'll drag us all - kicking and screaming back to the 12th century.

Well that remains to be seen. One thing that could drag us back to the 12th century or beyond could be a nuclear war. Another could be serious climate change such as envisaged by Lovelock. In either case, the survivors will have quite a different attitude to science.

No they won't, genious, because adherence to doctrine over lessons from reality will be what takes us to a nuclear war or shitting on the climate.

Guess who's most staunchly opposing even the idea of man-made climate change in the world today? That's right, CREATIONISTS. Guess who's most desiring of nuclear annihilation of their "enemies" today? That's right, CREATIONISTS. The people who think they have god on their side. The people who think the planet has been made for US, as is, and is unalterable except through the will of a divine creator.

As usual, the real world turns out to be diametrically opposiste of the nonsense regurgitated by creationists. Why is this always the case?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I’m arguing that “mythological assertion” informed evolutionary explanations in the negative.

Er, excuse me, but when scientists were striving to understand the biosphere and its diversity, they didn't bother with mythological assertions at all. They looked for testable natural processes to account for their observations, the same way that scientists looked for testable natural processes to account for phenomena falling within the remit of physics. Your favourite mythology was a fucking irrelevance in all of this, and the only reason scientists wasted time addressing your favourite mythology, was because fetishists for this mythology engaged in a grand piece of foot-stomping to the effect "how dare you find out that reality doesn't conform to doctrine". That's the only reason scientists have ever wasted time with the mythology you love so much, because it had political power and weapons behind it. Without that stolen political power and without those weapons, that mythology would have been a total irrelevance long ago, and it's time that we woke up to the fact that it's well and truly past its sell by date.

Historically, the theory of evolution was invented by people who were disturbed by the geological evidence and became alert to Genesis as a literal story that might wrong. I believe that influenced their new theory and set the mould of alliances that have fed a dialectic up till today.

What a fantastically stupid way to describe the phenomenon of finding evidence that mythology is wrong and subsequently trying to work out what's correct, in it's stead.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:In other words, people put forward evolutionary perspectives that were the opposite of Genesis.

Look, drop once and for all the fatuous and oft-peddled creationist lie, that scientists launched into their investigations as some sort of a priori ideological rejection of mythology. The grand irony is that quite a few of the scientists who contributed to our knowledge today, did so starting out from a position of seeking to affirm the assertions of your mythology, only to discover that reality was telling them an entirely different story. But, instead of ignoring the real world evidence, they chose to listen to it. Which is why we now know that mythological assertions are horseshit.

Ja the narrative of apostasy. If you can cite an example we can go into it.

An example of what? People finding out genesis was wrong and working out how the real world worked instead? How about all of the findings in astronomy and biology, to date?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:For example, in Genesis the biological world is fashioned from the top down. In Dawkins’s view, its fashioned from the lowest, from the selfish genes.

Did I mention Dawkins in all of this? Er, no. Because I don't subscribe to the appeal to authority fallacy. I happen to admire his willingness to expose supernaturalist canards, but with respect to some of the science, he's actually out of date. Hardly surprising, given that he's been out of the research loop for some time. This is why I go looking for actual scientific papers, to find out what the actual researchers and their empirical work are telling anyone who bothers to pay attention. That research, if you bother to pay attention to it, tells us that some interesting entities and phenomena emerged from simpler, antecdent systems, that complicate matters with respect to modern living organisms. However, there exist sufficient examples of simpler, antecedent systems still extant in the biosphere, to provide us with a means of looking back into the past.

The fact that you didn’t mention Dawkins doesn’t stop me from doing that. I cited his notion of the selfish gene as the analytical basis for change in nature. Nothing to do with “simpler. antecedent systems”. You are treating this discussion as if you were holding it with a denialist, a young-earth creationist. I’ve given you plenty of evidence that it’s not so. Mind you, I am a fellow-traveller with them.

That's great except you're not telling us anything of value or meaning. Whether you're a biblical young-earth-creationist or not, you certainly are a creationist, by your own admission.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:which have become its opposite. A dialectic has developed.

Excuse me, but rampant denial of vast quantities of real world evidence, and the peddling of lies to prop up a mythology-based doctrine, in a futile attempt to overthrow empirically validated scientific postulates, isn't a "dialectic".

Um why not, is “dialectic” too fancy a word for an argument between scientific knights in shining armour and creationist scumbags?

Yeah pretty much. In the same way a child insisting that 3+2=9 is having a "dialectic" with the math teacher. One side is wrong, completely wrong, and the other isn't.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Your own language suggests the partisan engagement that is found in a dialectic.

Ahem, this is merely the specious erection of the "interpretations" canard so beloved of propagadists for mythology. And I've dealt with this canard in the past too. Viz..[long text omitted]...:.....As for my own language, I happen to be of the view that when confronted with manifest canards and lies, it is entirely proper to describe them as such. Noting that lies and canards ARE lies and canards isn't "partisan engagement", it's the recognition of basic fact.

I haven’t lied or dealt in canards. I just say that your expletive-filled language suggests engagement.

Don't mistake engagement for implying your position has any basis in fact.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
The whole issue of coloured sticks and Mendel was irrelevant to what was under discussion, which was how an all-good creator etc could have made this universe. I don’t have any problem with specific knowledge of the world having increased in the last three thousand years.

Ahem, since the mythology in question erects the very assertions you've just repeated above, about a purported "creator" and the attributes possessed thereby, it IS apposite to note that the mythology in question erects assertions that are known to be wrong, and therefore is suspect with respect to other, untestable assertions. Including assertions that a purported "creator" exists, and possesses a laundry list of attributes. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand? Basically, the mythology you love so much erects a raft of assertions, all of these assertions presented within that mythology as if they constituted established fact. This posturing on the part of your mythology is rendered wholly null and void, the moment any one of those assertions is demonstrated to be wrong. The moment one of those assertions is roundly falsified, this destroys at a stroke any idea that this collection of assertions should be treated as established fact. Do learn this lesson.

I don’t have any problem with specific knowledge of the world having increased in the last three thousand years. The long list of attributes that my faith (I’m an Anglican) makes about God are just working beliefs to gain some spiritual purpose. I don’t use them to prove that the creator exists or can’t exist etc.

Well isn't that convenient. Never mind the facts, they just might disprove my silly beliefs, no let's instead just define it such that anything we find is what we expected to find all along.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:you would have to design better living things yourself before being confident you understand how to do it, that you could do better.

Ahem, if I was "designing" a ground living beetle that had no use for wings, I could do better, by simply ensuring that it didn't have the superfluous wings to begin with. Exactly what part of this elementary notion do you have difficulty understanding again?

I find ID interesting in the echoes that I find with my own understanding, but I’m no IDist. You yourself couldn’t actually design a beetle. You could draw a beetle with a pencil. You could make a model out of plasticene. Designers of advanced things spend years learning how the world works in the area of their interest. To speak meaningfully about designing a beetle you would have to know and use the way the beetle form plays out from its genes. One way that works evidently, is a particular beetle with functioning wings that can never open. So, there are many more beetles with wings that do open. You are spitting on nature.

A totally meaningless statement, and I can't help noticing it lacked any sort of expanation for the beetle with a fused exoskeleton. How inconvenient it must be to you that said beetle makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:There’s a level of hubris in the claim of natural imperfections, that might be directly connected with atheism.

Bollocks. There's nothing "hubristic" about realising that trapping fully functional wings under fused elytra is a piece of incompetence on the part of any asserted "designer". It's a recognition of basic fact. If a beetle doesn't need wings to go about its daily business, why "design" one that has wings, and moreover, has those wings rendered totally useless under fused elytra? This doesn't make any fucking sense at all. The idea that some hyper-intelligent "designer" possessing vast powers of reasoning was responsible for this, is fucking laughable. A five year old can work this out.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Considering how living things embody piled up levels of competencies, how their study has involved armies of biologists for centuries now with no end in sight, you should logically be more circumspect.

Please, once again, do explain to me how the example I've provided above is anything other than a gargantuan slap in the face for assertions about a fantasy "designer" with mega-powers. I've just explained how I could do the job better if I had the requisite tools.

You don’t have the requisite tools. I’m not sure you could even draw a decent beetle with a pencil.

Again you completely avoid the subject. The beetle only makes sense with evolution, not any kind of ID-creationism.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I don’t believe the Bible contains magical anachronistic information.

Ahem, I've just supplied you with a glaring example of this [coloured sticks to control genetic outdomes] . Do you actually READ my fucking posts?

Yes. Like I said, I don’t think the Bible contains information about what can be experimentally determined, but wasn’t known at the time. It’s a book of wisdom.

That's a contradiction in terms if I ever saw one. If your book of myths is full of outright falsehoods, it isn't a fucking book of wisdom at all.

Jayjay4547 wrote:And some of what is said today in the name of science lacks wisdom.

That's great, except it's a blind assertion you have completely failed to back up. Thus far your entire argument here seems to be a blank statement of opinion: I don't like it.

Well good for you.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:If it did I might suspect it of being written by aliens posing as God. Because the apparent interface between mankind and the higher level would be suspiciously simple.

Actually, there's a far simpler, far more parsimonious explanation, that doesn't involve fabricating ANY superfluous entities. Namely, the Middle Eastern nomads made shit up and treated their made up shit as fact, because they were too backward to do any better. We don't need to invoke fantasy aliens, let alone fantasy invisible magic men in the sky, all we need to do is recognise that pre-scientific humans were capable of letting their febrile but limited imaginations run away with them.

Gosh, pre-scientific humans. I believe we aren’t that different from people of earlier ages, just as liable to invest in ideologies, defend them to the death.

True, there are plenty of brainless creotards around today too.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I don’t much like the term “evolutionist” either, I hesitated long before using it. But it’s a practical working term for people who are attracted towards arguing with creationists.

No it isn't, it's a piece of discoursive duplicity, and I explained why it's a piece of discoursive duplicity in the part you snipped out above. Namely, it's a deliberate attempt to misrepresent valid empirical science as a "doctrine" and an "ideology", partly as a smokescreen to hide the fact that creationism is an ideology, and partly for the mendacious purpose of then erecting the apologetic fabrication that said valid empirical science is, by default, the "wrong" ideology, which of course, once again, is merely asserted by stormtroopers for creationist doctrine. Creationism consists of assertions all the way down.

Creationism is interesting as contradiction. A bunch of people in the most vital culture on Earth enjoy partaking in it.

The most vital culture on Earth you say? Don't tell me you think god's on your side or some shit like that, or that "religion is useful".

Jayjay4547 wrote:Instead of swearing at it you could try to understand it.

Oh but we do understand it, here it is in all it's glory:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Many aren’t evolutionary biologists.

But, and this is the important part, those of us who aren't, exercise the effort to pay attention to those who are. Which is why we expend the effort required to read the scientific papers. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand?

The 128mm atomic canon, the constant swearing, don’t get me started.

What's not to understand about that?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Many are there to snigger and bully

Bullshit. Exactly how much "sniggering" is involved in demonstrating, for example, that one of your assertions in another thread, about evolution being teleologically directed, is refuted wholesale by numerous scientific papers documenting real world evidence? Speaking of which, got an answer for any of those papers?

You will never find me using that word “teleological”. I’ll reply to your post there as I have the time.

One does not have to include a word directly to imply the meaning of it in his arguments.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:and to be on the “educated” side.

Well if being educated means paying attention to the people who do the hard work of actual empirical research, then I'm guilty as charged and proud of it. Which is a damn sight better position to be in, than the position of ignoring wholesale vast reams of evidence, and pretending that the scribblings of some backward tribal people 3,000 years ago constitutes the last word in knowledge.

I don’t claim the OT constitutes the last word in knowledge. I claim it embodies a valid vision of the human condition or status

Then you'd be wrong, because the OT creation of man and the world is wrong. Just, simply, wrong.

Jayjay4547 wrote: , as widely understood up till 150 years ago – and that the replacement vision is more reactive than creative.

A wholly meaningless and unqualified statement. And furthermore one that smells an awful lot like an appeal to consequences, which makes me wonder whether you main beef with the theory of evolution isn't whether it's true, but whether it makes you feel good.

However much it creates or doesn't, of things you value in your life, is besides the point. What matters is what is true.
It just so happens that I don't agree with you, because I find a lot of both beauty and creativity in the evolution and divsersification of life. Nature is beautiful without it having to be fiddled with by a cosmic wizard.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:To some degree, their behaviour determines the colour that sticks to the term.

Bollocks. I've already explained the duplicity behind the use of the term, and you haven't provided anything remotely approaching an addressing thereof, let alone a refutation.

I’m saying that intemperate language and bullying behaviour sticks to the name of its users.

Now you're just avoiding the subject. All I can say is if you can't take it, stay away.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:. I think the author of Genesis , inspired or whatever, was expressing true knowledge of the world in that (a) we along with all life are created beings.

Evidence for this? Where is it? Please, point to the evidence that humans are the product of a cheap conjuring trick with some dirt. I'l have fun pointing you at relevant papers from the world of moelcular phylogeny in return.

It’s about status in the world. A created being doesn’t know the full story how it came to be, some thing or someone else knows more. The atheist ideology seeks to make out that isn’t the case. When we get that monkey off our backs we will make some progress.

There is no atheist ideology. Atheism, in it's most inclusive form, is simply the absense of belief in the existence of god(s).

The only progress one will expect from a mass-conversion to bronze-age mythology is towards extinction and increased suffering. It is exactly because of the decreased influence of organized religion in society that things like the enlightenment took place.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:By that I refer to our status or condition . I could say we are spectators of the creation except that may have the power to frustrate it, to turn the planet into a rotten egg..

Oh, you do realise that some of the world's leading physicists are about to toss the whole "creation" myth into the bin? I've presented relevant papers in the past, it won't be hard for you to find them. Just look up "Steinhardt & Turok".

Their theory that universe pulsates is interesting but irrelevant as a response. The risk our turning this planet into a rotten egg is that we take over and enslave planetary ecology before finding the basis for its generosity. A Borg planet.

Ahh, the recurring and completely irrational fear that by leaving bronze-age fables behind we wish to turn the planet into sterile machine nightmare.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:(b) the Creation is good.

Blind assertion. More correctly, a pair of them.

Not blind, it’s an exclamation that comes to many when we look at clouds, the sea, flowers and butterflies. It’s in Genesis as well, its author was inspired by the creation.

Mmm, and he neglected to mention the countless of species and lives lost to the horrors of disease, famine and catastrophe. Oh how good a creation that resulted in infants dying exceedingly horrific deaths to leukemia?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:The assertions found in Genesis aren’t blind in that they express a perception of the human condition that arose from living in the world.

They don't express a "perception" at all. They merely assert that the world operates in a particular fashion, and that said manner of operation is governed by a magical entity. The authors thereof were too busy gazing at their ideological navels to bother looking at the real world, as that nonsense about coloured sticks clearly demonstrates. Indeed, I suspect that quite a few farmers living in that era would be secretly thinking to themselves "this is complete garbage", based upon what they had observed by being farmers, but of course, they would have had to keep this to themselves, because the enforcers of conformity to mythology invariably resort to ruthless suppression of dissenting ideas when those ideas arise. It's not as if we lack evidence for this, and indeed, the authors of that mythology openly admitted in that same mythology, that they travelled around the countryside exterminating people who didn't conform to their doctrine. You do realise that the Old Testament is well supplied with juicy accounts of genocide?

The framers of the OT were much closer to farming than most of us are today- that is reflected in frequent references to planting, sowing, herding and predation. So “suspect”if you like that they would be on your side, it’s more likely that what found its way into the texts reflected the intuition based on being in immediate contact with the ground.

So please, do tell us all why no farmer has ever reported using coloured sticks as a means of changing the attributes his livestock possesses? Because if this fantasy actually worked, they'd all be doing it, and we'd be seeing accounts in biological science journals today proposing various mechanisms for this. The simple fact is, that this assertion IS a manifest fantasy, and a truly cretinous one at that, and those simple facts I've just covered above, namely, that NO farmer uses this as a means of controlling breeding output, and NO scientific journal has ever proposed a mechanism for the operation of this process, should be telling you something important here. But please, do continue ignoring real world evidence when it sticks the middle finger to your pet mythology and its fatuous, worthless assertions.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It’s only in the last hundred and fifty years that their perceptions has been called by some, garbage.

Once again, please do tell us all why it is that NO farmer has ever resorted to this method to control the breeding output of his livestock. Because, once again, if this stupid idea wasn't a stupid idea and actually worked, we'd be doing it today. Or is this elementary fact too hard for you to understand?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: The only aspect of the human condition that this mythology informs us of, is the willingness of people to adhere to doctrines, even when reality manifestly points and laughs at those doctrines. Indeed, that same mythology provides us with a hilarious pseudo-taxonomy of living organisms later on in Leviticus, which is so replete with basic errors as to be a sad joke. Bats classified as birds, and entire phyla of invertebrates lumped together as "creeping things with four legs" being the two most obvious howlers - with respect to the last, any moderately intelligent five year old can pick up an insect, count its legs, and realise that Leviticus got it woefully, absurdly wrong. And please, spare me the crap apologetics about locusts and grasshoppers I've seen erected before today, because I've dealt with that in the past, when assorted mythology fetishists tried peddling it to me, and I fed that apologetics into the shredder by recourse to real world evidence.

My position is that this mythology has also informed the way the theory of evolution has been understood and presented- in the negative, as the opposite.

No it hasn't, and your repeated parroting of this bullshit assertion doesn't stop it being a bullshit assertion. The REAL source of information that led to the development of evolutionary theory was observation of the real world, and if you bother to pick up a copy of On The Origin Of Species and read it, you'll find real world observation mentioned by the container vessel load. Mythology was a total fucking irrelevance in this process. Once again, try looking at the real world for a change, instead of your apologetic navel lint.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:The views of the “piss-stained” as you called them- fathers of the Abrahamic religions might well outlive your own.

The only way in which the farcical nonsense I've covered above will outlive hard empirical science, is if humanity commits some spectacularly gross errors of judgement. You'd better hope that humanity doesn't do this, because you will like living in the 12th century even less than I will, and if some mythology fetishists have their way, that's where they'll drag us all - kicking and screaming back to the 12th century.

Well that remains to be seen. One thing that could drag us back to the 12th century or beyond could be a nuclear war.

Actually, we won't be the ones worrying in that case, because the planet will be ruled by cockroaches. But one thing I do note with interest, is that an awful lot of the people striving to stop us descending to that level of madness have an avoewdly secular viewpoint. On the other hand, there are a fair number of supernaturalists who welcome the idea of a nuclear war, in order to validate their sad little Rapture fantasies.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Another could be serious climate change such as envisaged by Lovelock.

And who are the people trying to do something about this? Oh, that's right, scientists. Who are being opposed by comspiracy theory fruit loops and venal politicians with their hands in the fossil fuel pig trough. But that's properly a subject for its own thread.

Jayjay4547 wrote:In either case, the survivors will have quite a different attitude to science.

Only if they're misinformed. Because the people who make the decisions to start World War III won't be scientists, they'll be politicians. Likewise, the people who make the decisions to ignore the scientists' warnings about climate change will also be politicians. Those of us who bother to pay attention to reality will know where the blame truly lies in both instances, assuming we're still around to apportion that blame of course.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m arguing that “mythological assertion” informed evolutionary explanations in the negative.

Er, excuse me, but when scientists were striving to understand the biosphere and its diversity, they didn't bother with mythological assertions at all. They looked for testable natural processes to account for their observations, the same way that scientists looked for testable natural processes to account for phenomena falling within the remit of physics. Your favourite mythology was a fucking irrelevance in all of this, and the only reason scientists wasted time addressing your favourite mythology, was because fetishists for this mythology engaged in a grand piece of foot-stomping to the effect "how dare you find out that reality doesn't conform to doctrine". That's the only reason scientists have ever wasted time with the mythology you love so much, because it had political power and weapons behind it. Without that stolen political power and without those weapons, that mythology would have been a total irrelevance long ago, and it's time that we woke up to the fact that it's well and truly past its sell by date.

Historically, the theory of evolution was invented by people who were disturbed by the geological evidence and became alert to Genesis as a literal story that might wrong.

Actually, you'll find that one of the foremost workers in the field of palaeontology in the 19th century was one Richard Owen, who was a creationist, and who remained a creationist even after Darwin published his work. It seems you need to add a little rigour to your history lessons.

The parts of mythology that geologists rejected consisted principally of that fanciful nonsense about a 600 year old man and his floating petting zoo. Because they learned what to look for as evidence of flooding, then decided to go and look for evidence for the so-called "global flood", and found none. Moreover, those geologists paid attention to what reality was telling them about sedimentation processes, and the length of time that those processes took to deposit layers of various thicknesses. On the basis of this, they concluded, amongst other things, that the Bishop Ussher "calculations" were out of whack by at least four orders of magnitude. It was only later that this was tied in to biology, courtesy of the explosive emergence of palaeontology as a proper scientific discipline.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I believe that influenced their new theory

Your beliefs count for nothing when the facts tell a different story.

Jayjay4547 wrote:and set the mould of alliances that have fed a dialectic up till today.

Actually, what "set the mould of alliances" was the insistence of supernaturalists that the scientists were wrong when their findings disagreed with mythology. And that insistence dates back a lot longer than 150 years. Galileo, anyone?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:In other words, people put forward evolutionary perspectives that were the opposite of Genesis.

Look, drop once and for all the fatuous and oft-peddled creationist lie, that scientists launched into their investigations as some sort of a priori ideological rejection of mythology. The grand irony is that quite a few of the scientists who contributed to our knowledge today, did so starting out from a position of seeking to affirm the assertions of your mythology, only to discover that reality was telling them an entirely different story. But, instead of ignoring the real world evidence, they chose to listen to it. Which is why we now know that mythological assertions are horseshit.

Ja the narrative of apostasy. If you can cite an example we can go into it.

Try just about every contribution to modern science from the relevant era. Which started out as an exercise in trying to demonstrate that reality and mythology were in complete accord, only to find that, oops, they weren't. Which happened right across the board, in physics, astronomy and geology.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:For example, in Genesis the biological world is fashioned from the top down. In Dawkins’s view, its fashioned from the lowest, from the selfish genes.

Did I mention Dawkins in all of this? Er, no. Because I don't subscribe to the appeal to authority fallacy. I happen to admire his willingness to expose supernaturalist canards, but with respect to some of the science, he's actually out of date. Hardly surprising, given that he's been out of the research loop for some time. This is why I go looking for actual scientific papers, to find out what the actual researchers and their empirical work are telling anyone who bothers to pay attention. That research, if you bother to pay attention to it, tells us that some interesting entities and phenomena emerged from simpler, antecdent systems, that complicate matters with respect to modern living organisms. However, there exist sufficient examples of simpler, antecedent systems still extant in the biosphere, to provide us with a means of looking back into the past.

The fact that you didn’t mention Dawkins doesn’t stop me from doing that. I cited his notion of the selfish gene as the analytical basis for change in nature. Nothing to do with “simpler. antecedent systems”. You are treating this discussion as if you were holding it with a denialist, a young-earth creationist. I’ve given you plenty of evidence that it’s not so. Mind you, I am a fellow-traveller with them.

In other words, it doesn't matter how much real world evidence is available refuting mythological assertions, you are going to continue preferring those assertions to that evidence.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:which have become its opposite. A dialectic has developed.

Excuse me, but rampant denial of vast quantities of real world evidence, and the peddling of lies to prop up a mythology-based doctrine, in a futile attempt to overthrow empirically validated scientific postulates, isn't a "dialectic".

Um why not, is “dialectic” too fancy a word for an argument between scientific knights in shining armour and creationist scumbags?

Your choice of epithet, not mine, but one that quite a few here will find pleasing.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: [quote=”Jayjay4547”]Your own language suggests the partisan engagement that is found in a dialectic.

Ahem, this is merely the specious erection of the "interpretations" canard so beloved of propagadists for mythology. And I've dealt with this canard in the past too. Viz..[long text omitted]...:.....As for my own language, I happen to be of the view that when confronted with manifest canards and lies, it is entirely proper to describe them as such. Noting that lies and canards ARE lies and canards isn't "partisan engagement", it's the recognition of basic fact.

I haven’t lied or dealt in canards. I just say that your expletive-filled language suggests engagement.

Oh, please, you've erected canards on a grand scale throughout your posting tenure here. Canards such as:

[1] Asserting that Weaver's acceptance of the absence of any teleological direction inherent within evolutionary processes was the product of "dogma" - an assertion I blew out of the water with a nuclear depth charge, courtesy of relevant scientific papers (speaking of which, have you read any of them?);

[2] Asserting that mythological assertions counted for more in the development of evolutionary theory than empirical data, an assertion that is manifestly nonsense to anyone who has bothered to study the actual science;

[3] Erecting the "mysterious ways" apologetic evasion, to try and side-step the fact that numerous instances exist in the real world, of features in living organisms that make no sense whatsoever from the standpoint of asserting that they were "created" by some fantastically gifted "creator";

[4] Asserting that evolutionary biology is "being driven into failure" by some fantasy "doctrinal opposition" to creationism, when the real world evidence tells us that evolutionary biology is rampantly successful, has reached the point where evolutionary processes are being applied to the solution of interesting problems, and is successful precisely because it doesn't waste time with worthless mythologicla assertions;

[5] Erecting the canard that scientific views are accepted because they are purportedly "trendy", ignoring the fact that scientific theories enjoy that status precisely because real world evidence supports them;

[6] Your erection of the "evolutionist" canard, despite the fact that it is known to be a canard, and one that is rooted in rampant discoursive duplicity to boot.

There's probably more lurking in your posts, but these are the ones I've dealt with and addressed directly myself.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
The whole issue of coloured sticks and Mendel was irrelevant to what was under discussion, which was how an all-good creator etc could have made this universe. I don’t have any problem with specific knowledge of the world having increased in the last three thousand years.

Ahem, since the mythology in question erects the very assertions you've just repeated above, about a purported "creator" and the attributes possessed thereby, it IS apposite to note that the mythology in question erects assertions that are known to be wrong, and therefore is suspect with respect to other, untestable assertions. Including assertions that a purported "creator" exists, and possesses a laundry list of attributes. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand? Basically, the mythology you love so much erects a raft of assertions, all of these assertions presented within that mythology as if they constituted established fact. This posturing on the part of your mythology is rendered wholly null and void, the moment any one of those assertions is demonstrated to be wrong. The moment one of those assertions is roundly falsified, this destroys at a stroke any idea that this collection of assertions should be treated as established fact. Do learn this lesson.

I don’t have any problem with specific knowledge of the world having increased in the last three thousand years. The long list of attributes that my faith (I’m an Anglican) makes about God are just working beliefs to gain some spiritual purpose. I don’t use them to prove that the creator exists or can’t exist etc.

So why did you come here to try and tell us all that evolutionary biologists have got it wrong, the way you did over at RDF (that past outing being replete with hilarity)?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:you would have to design better living things yourself before being confident you understand how to do it, that you could do better.

Ahem, if I was "designing" a ground living beetle that had no use for wings, I could do better, by simply ensuring that it didn't have the superfluous wings to begin with. Exactly what part of this elementary notion do you have difficulty understanding again?

I find ID interesting in the echoes that I find with my own understanding

Your "understanding" is manifestly deficient, as was demonstrated when you claimed that Weaver's acceptance of the absence of teleological direction in evolutionary processes was the product of "dogma". How many scientific papers did I present that tossed this assertion of yours into the bin?

The mere fact that ID is consonant with this level of "understanding" that you possess, is enough to tell us that ID isn't worth the paper it's written on. Because like the creationist assertions it acts as a Trojan Horse for, ID has virtually no testable hypotheses (and the few statements from the ID camp that have been testable have been universally demonstrated to be wrong), has no mechanisms to present, and has bugger all in the way of supporting empirical data. On the other hand, evolutionary postulates enjoy massive evidential support from the real world, involve testable mechanisms, and enjoy large numbers of actual empirical tests of those mechanisms, all of them declaring unambiguously that reality gives those postulates and mechanisms a huge thumbs-up.

Jayjay4547 wrote:but I’m no IDist. You yourself couldn’t actually design a beetle.

I probably know a good deal more about insect physiology than you do. Here's a little question that will establish this. What is the smallest scale at which the tracheal system of insects operates? I can answer this off the top of my head. Let's see what you can come up with, without cheating by looking it up on Wikipedia.

While we're at it, what differences exist between insect neurodevelopment, and that of vertebrates? This one you'll have more trouble looking up on Wikipedia.

Jayjay4547 wrote:You could draw a beetle with a pencil. You could make a model out of plasticene. Designers of advanced things spend years learning how the world works in the area of their interest. To speak meaningfully about designing a beetle you would have to know and use the way the beetle form plays out from its genes.

And of course, you think no work has been performed aimed at understanding the mapping between genotype and phenotype in biology ...

Jayjay4547 wrote:One way that works evidently, is a particular beetle with functioning wings that can never open. So, there are many more beetles with wings that do open. You are spitting on nature.

No I'm not, I'm merely recognising the basic fact that any genuinely intelligent "creator" wouldn't produce half-assed solutions such as this. Any genuinely intelligent "creator" would not include superfluous and useless features, in much the same way that aircraft designers don't include bowsprit mascots on the noses of airliners. The fact that these beetles manage to occupy their niche successfully, has nothing to do with the fact that the presence of otherwise fully functional wings, which are rendered useless by fused elytra, is laughable as an instance of so-called "design" of the sort supernaturalists keep insisting takes place. The idea that this is the product of a fantastically gifted entity with marvellous powers is a pathetic joke. Your assertions in this vein are, in effect, a desperate exercise in propping up the unsupportable, by trying to erect the notion that nonsense features such as this, are somehow the product of a gargantuan intellect beyond human comprehension, when it's manifestly obvious to those of us who don't allow our minds to be addled by mythological excrement, that any genuine "creator" responsible for features such as this is an incompetent buffoon. On the other hand, evolutionary processes, which have to work with antecedent systems because of the requirements of inheritance, can reasonably be expected to produce such products, because those processes don't involve any 'mind'.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:There’s a level of hubris in the claim of natural imperfections, that might be directly connected with atheism.

Bollocks. There's nothing "hubristic" about realising that trapping fully functional wings under fused elytra is a piece of incompetence on the part of any asserted "designer". It's a recognition of basic fact. If a beetle doesn't need wings to go about its daily business, why "design" one that has wings, and moreover, has those wings rendered totally useless under fused elytra? This doesn't make any fucking sense at all. The idea that some hyper-intelligent "designer" possessing vast powers of reasoning was responsible for this, is fucking laughable. A five year old can work this out.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Considering how living things embody piled up levels of competencies, how their study has involved armies of biologists for centuries now with no end in sight, you should logically be more circumspect.

Please, once again, do explain to me how the example I've provided above is anything other than a gargantuan slap in the face for assertions about a fantasy "designer" with mega-powers. I've just explained how I could do the job better if I had the requisite tools.

You don’t have the requisite tools. I’m not sure you could even draw a decent beetle with a pencil.

Oh please, this is fatuous in the extreme. I'm currently toying with the idea of breaking out pencil and paper specifically to rub your nose in this one.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I don’t believe the Bible contains magical anachronistic information.

Ahem, I've just supplied you with a glaring example of this [coloured sticks to control genetic outdomes] . Do you actually READ my fucking posts?

Yes. Like I said, I don’t think the Bible contains information about what can be experimentally determined, but wasn’t known at the time. It’s a book of wisdom.

Please, do explain to us all how demonstrably wrong assertions equals "wisdom". I'm going to enjoy this.

Jayjay4547 wrote:And some of what is said today in the name of science lacks wisdom.

At least science corrects its mistakes. When did mythology ever do this?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:If it did I might suspect it of being written by aliens posing as God. Because the apparent interface between mankind and the higher level would be suspiciously simple.

Actually, there's a far simpler, far more parsimonious explanation, that doesn't involve fabricating ANY superfluous entities. Namely, the Middle Eastern nomads made shit up and treated their made up shit as fact, because they were too backward to do any better. We don't need to invoke fantasy aliens, let alone fantasy invisible magic men in the sky, all we need to do is recognise that pre-scientific humans were capable of letting their febrile but limited imaginations run away with them.

Gosh, pre-scientific humans. I believe we aren’t that different from people of earlier ages, just as liable to invest in ideologies, defend them to the death.

You're establishing that in spades. Some of us, however, dispensed with the very notion that ideology possesses any utility value some time ago. Not least because of the large body of evidence telling us that ideologies are all a joke. Which has much to do with the fact that they're all based upon treating made up shit as fact.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I don’t much like the term “evolutionist” either, I hesitated long before using it. But it’s a practical working term for people who are attracted towards arguing with creationists.

No it isn't, it's a piece of discoursive duplicity, and I explained why it's a piece of discoursive duplicity in the part you snipped out above. Namely, it's a deliberate attempt to misrepresent valid empirical science as a "doctrine" and an "ideology", partly as a smokescreen to hide the fact that creationism is an ideology, and partly for the mendacious purpose of then erecting the apologetic fabrication that said valid empirical science is, by default, the "wrong" ideology, which of course, once again, is merely asserted by stormtroopers for creationist doctrine. Creationism consists of assertions all the way down.

Creationism is interesting as contradiction.

It's interesting as an example of how treating made up shit as fact leads to absurdity. I'm sure we don't have to point to aquarium ornaments in order to establish this.

Jayjay4547 wrote:A bunch of people in the most vital culture on Earth enjoy partaking in it. Instead of swearing at it you could try to understand it.

Actually, I do understand it. It's a refuge for people for whom facing reality head on is either too much like hard work, or beyond their limited mental faculties. It's the only reason people adhere to doctrines full stop, because comfortable, easy pseudo-solutions that tickle human weaknesses will always be preferable to some, over and above the diligence required to face reality as it actually is. It's why politicians get away with selling assorted brands of shit to voters, because quite a few of them can't be bothered to take the time out and analyse the shit, and others simply don't have the time in their busy lives to devote to analysing the shit. Those of us who expend the effort, however, ultimately and inexorably arrive at one overriding and unavoidable conclusion - ideologies are all a waste of time. If your statements about the world and its operation don't enjoy empirical support, they're worthless.

Oh, and you might like to ask yourself one basic question here. Namely, why is it, that all the professional propagandists for this doctrine, routinely peddle known and manifest lies? Some of which I've dealt with head on myself, incidentally. As a corollary, you can then ask yourself what use is a doctrine that requires people to lie on its behalf.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Many aren’t evolutionary biologists.

But, and this is the important part, those of us who aren't, exercise the effort to pay attention to those who are. Which is why we expend the effort required to read the scientific papers. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand?

The 128mm atomic canon, the constant swearing, don’t get me started.

I don't make any excuses for being vitriolic over this, and the reason I tend to be vitriolic I've just given above. Namely, the professional propagandists for this doctrine lie through their teeth about valid empirical science in order to sell their doctrine, and peddle these lies to children, which I regard as criminal.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Many are there to snigger and bully

Bullshit. Exactly how much "sniggering" is involved in demonstrating, for example, that one of your assertions in another thread, about evolution being teleologically directed, is refuted wholesale by numerous scientific papers documenting real world evidence? Speaking of which, got an answer for any of those papers?

You will never find me using that word “teleological”. I’ll reply to your post there as I have the time.

I can hardly wait.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:and to be on the “educated” side.

Well if being educated means paying attention to the people who do the hard work of actual empirical research, then I'm guilty as charged and proud of it. Which is a damn sight better position to be in, than the position of ignoring wholesale vast reams of evidence, and pretending that the scribblings of some backward tribal people 3,000 years ago constitutes the last word in knowledge.

I don’t claim the OT constitutes the last word in knowledge. I claim it embodies a valid vision of the human condition or status , as widely understood up till 150 years ago – and that the replacement vision is more reactive than creative.

Oh, so the fact that the past 150 years have seen massive leaps and bounds in the understanding of the human condition, none of which owes anything to mythology, is another piece of evidence from the real world you're going to ignore?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:To some degree, their behaviour determines the colour that sticks to the term.

Bollocks. I've already explained the duplicity behind the use of the term, and you haven't provided anything remotely approaching an addressing thereof, let alone a refutation.

I’m saying that intemperate language and bullying behaviour sticks to the name of its users.

Like I said, I don't mince words. If I see lies, I call them lies. If you have a problem with this, there are plenty of apologetics forums in existence, that engage in faux affectations of decorousness. Frequently whilst breaking out the stilettos for a spot of back-stabbing of doctrinal opponents.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:. I think the author of Genesis , inspired or whatever, was expressing true knowledge of the world in that (a) we along with all life are created beings.

Evidence for this? Where is it? Please, point to the evidence that humans are the product of a cheap conjuring trick with some dirt. I'l have fun pointing you at relevant papers from the world of moelcular phylogeny in return.

It’s about status in the world. A created being doesn’t know the full story how it came to be, some thing or someone else knows more.

Once again, until you or some other supernaturalist provides real evidence for your magic man, this is mere blind assertion, and can be dispensed with as summarily as it was erected.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The atheist ideology

Oh no, not THIS tiresome bullshit yet again .. how often do we see supernaturalists erecting THIS canard here? Yawn, yawn, fucking yawn. Allow me to educate you.

Atheism, in its rigorous formulation, is nothing more than a refusal to accept uncritically unsupported blind supernaturalist assertions. That is IT. In short, it consists of "YOU assert that your magic man exists, YOU support your assertions". Since atheism erects no assertions of its own, but merely expresses suspicion of the assertions of others, it isn't an "ideology".

Jayjay4547 wrote:seeks to make out that isn’t the case.

Once again, you're confusing the scientific method with atheism. Atheism simply waits for supernaturalists to do something other than fail to support their magic man assertions. The scientific method is a tool for determining how various entities and phenomena operate, and if that tool results in there being no need for invisible magic men, then it's fucking tough, because this is what REALITY is telling us. Since there exists ZERO evidence for your magic man, if you want us to treat assertions about this entity as being something other than made up shit, you and all your other fellow supernaturalists had better roll up your sleeves and do the hard work responsible to provide the evidence for this entity, instead of wasting time with apologetic fabrications. If you can't stand this particular discoursive heat, then this kitchen isn't for you.

Jayjay4547 wrote:When we get that monkey off our backs we will make some progress.

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

You mean, the way that supernaturalist assertions "made progress" in 1348? I'll tell you how much "progress" they made. What happened at that point in history, was that the Black Death descended upon Europe, and set up shop for three years. During which time, what did our ancestors do? They wasted those three years, asking an invisible magic man to stop the Black Death. If this invisible magic man existed, he sat on his arse for those three years and did sweet fuck all, whilst 25 million of his followers died a horrible death. Indeed, many of those 25 million unfortunates were unaware that an alternative to your magic man even existed, courtesy of the ruthless suppression of alternative ideas by enforcers of conformity to doctrine beforehand. As a result of thinking that your magic man existed, and possessed the laundry list of attributes contained in your mythology, Europeans saw fully twenty-five percent of their numbers wiped off the face of the Earth.

On the other hand, let's see what happened, when the descendants of the survivors decided to pay attention to reality, instead of mythological mumbo-jumbo. They alighted upon the connection between good hygiene and the reduced incidence of disease. They alighted upon the connection between the Black Death and rats. They thus set about putting in place various hygiene measures, and systems of rodent control. They devised public sanitation. They devised such things as flush toilets. Eventually, they discovered the existence of micro-organisms, and thanks to Koch's Postulates, established a rigorous means of connecting some of those micro-organisms to disease. Eventually, they developed means of combatting those micro-organisms directly, in the form of antibiotics. None of these developments owe anything to mythology, and all of them owe their existence to the basic principle of paying attention to reality, a principle you manifestly despise in your apologetics, despite the massively demonstrated utility value thereof.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:By that I refer to our status or condition . I could say we are spectators of the creation except that may have the power to frustrate it, to turn the planet into a rotten egg..

Oh, you do realise that some of the world's leading physicists are about to toss the whole "creation" myth into the bin? I've presented relevant papers in the past, it won't be hard for you to find them. Just look up "Steinhardt & Turok".

Their theory that universe pulsates is interesting but irrelevant as a response.

Actually, those papers aren't irrelevant, because, wait for it, they contain an empirical test for the relevant postulates, something that no mythology has ever done. Moreover, if that empirical test is successful, it points the way to us one day being able to perform experiments with respect to the business of fabricating a universe. At which point we won't be mere "spectators" any longer.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The risk our turning this planet into a rotten egg is that we take over and enslave planetary ecology before finding the basis for its generosity. A Borg planet.

Funny how the people most likely to pursue this path are creationists, quite a few of whom think it doesn't matter how we treat the planet, because they think they're going to be Raptured. I also note that the people most likely to want to stop ecological destruction are people informed about evolutionary biology.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:(b) the Creation is good.

Blind assertion. More correctly, a pair of them.

Not blind, it’s an exclamation that comes to many when we look at clouds, the sea, flowers and butterflies. It’s in Genesis as well, its author was inspired by the creation.

Ahem, that the universe and its contents were the product of some conjuring trick by an invisible magic man is the assertion I'm principally referring to. An assertion enjoying ZERO evidential support. Plus, I've dealt at length elsewhere on the absurdity of imposing an ethics upon a universe that exhibits no sign of being receptive thereto, and indeed for much of its existence, was totally bereft of anything resembling ethically aware entities. The idea of an intrinsic "ethics" being embedded in a universe whose startup conditions did not even permit the formation of neutral atoms, let alone complex biological entites with thinking brains, is manifestly absurd. I don't disagree for one moment that there is much beauty to be found in the real world, and indeed I've been celebratory of much of that when presenting various scientific papers here, but the idea that my subjective wonder, or that of any other human being, should be the basis for imposing purportedly immutable strictures upon behaviour, really is hubris on a cosmic scale.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:(c) we have special status in the Creation

Again, blind assertion. More correctly, a pair of them.

No, that one is objective fact. Ours is the one species on Earth that could totally screw up the planet. And we are the one species that could understand a charge laid against us on that score.

With respect to the first, the same could have been said 3.2 billion years ago about cyanobacteria. Whose activity did eventually "screw up" the planet, from the standpoint of many of the other single celled organisms coexisting with them. That "screwing up" of the planet involved filling the atmosphere with oxygen gas, which was a lethal poison to some of the other single celled organisms at the time. However, along came other single celled organisms, that instead of treating this gas as a lethal poison, turned it into a metabolite. We are descendants thereof.

As for the idea that we are the only ethically aware beings on the planet, have a chat with Frans de Waal sometime. He'll tell you that other primates exhibit a degree of sophistication in this regard, that is truly remarkable to those who think mythological assertions dictate to reality. We're not the only ethically aware creatures on the planet, it seems, we're simply the ones that were able to take it further courtesy of that large cerebral cortex. Trouble is, much of that capacity for ethical thought and action, was offset by the business of treating made up shit as fact, which led quite a few enforcers of conformity to doctrine to unleash all sorts of horrors upon their fellow humans.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:though that status is fraught with risk, sin and responsibility.

Again, all assertion piled upon assertion.

All too real, for anyone living consciously in the 21st century.

I don't pretend for one moment that there does not exist such a thing as risk. We have evidence for this. Likewise, I regard decisions that could potentially result in harm being inflicted upon my fellow human beings, as decisions that are accompanied by responsibility to think about them. As for "sin", well I regard that as another of those pieces of made up shit supernaturalists dreamt up. Not least because the whole business of "sin" is manifestly nothing more than a means for allowing the people at the top to exercise power and control over the people at the bottom. Once again, we hardly lack evidence for this, and we also have a fair amount of evidence to the effect, that the people at the top who bleat loudest about this, are frequently the ones with some extremely dodgy skeletons in their closets.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Buss’s overreaching application of “evolutionary genetics” to domestic violence in humans is my example of failure.

Well if he's wrong, we'll soon know, because someone will come along and provide the relevant empirical research demonstrating this. When that happens, we'll move on to a better idea. That's the whole point in case you hadn't worked this out, namely, ideas are disposable entities, and the decision to dispose of a given idea, or collection thereof, is made when reality tells us to. At least, this is how it works in genuine intellectual disciplines. Religion, on the other hand, responds to real world evidence by making up more shit in a desperate attempt to keep failed assertions alive at all costs, including assertions that reality has long since pointed and laughed at.

In the real world professor Buss put on a kind of theatrical show, he realised a popular position in terms that he might not have taken that seriously himself. The discipline of evolutionary psychology will survive so long as a sufficiently large group of salaried academics are drawn towards it. It’s probably pretty robust at present. Schools survive by different rules than individual scientific publications.

Which doesn't raise any objections to my previous words on the subject, so why did you post this superfluous text?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Please, drop the naturalistic fallacy. Just because a given phenomenon occurs as a natural outcome of various contributing factors, has no relevance to how we choose to judge that phenomenon from an ethical standpoint. The two are entirely different. Rape occurs in numerous animal species, but no one here amongst the reality defenders will erect apolgetics justifying rape, they will all agree that from an ethical standpoint, it's repugnant, and that it's repugnant because of the measurable harm inflicted upon the victim.

What is deemed to be natural is in practice a powerful implicit justification for it, on the lines of “boys will be boys”.

So the fact that I pre-empted this with my earlier words, is something you're going to pretend never happened? Please re-read that above paragraph of mine.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:And in the twentieth century the Spensarian/Darwinist notion of survival of the fittest did a whole lot of practical damage.

Actually, it wasn't Darwin who erected this notion. It was the product of Francis Galton, who took Darwin's ideas and barked up an entirely wrong tree with them. If you actually read Darwin's own words on the subject, his view was much more sophisticated, namely, survival of the sufficiently competent. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be good enough. Unfortunately, Galton was not only a man with a gift for rhetoric, he was also a part time occupier of the fringes of madness, and a professional racist. Oh, and please, don't try and erect any of the duplicitous lies peddled by the likes of Richard Weikart, trying to misrepresent Darwin as a racist, because I'll happily come back and carpet bomb that bullshit too.

Carpet bombing is a term for trying to obliterate everything at huge cost and uncertain success, for lack or accurate targeting.

It works all too well on apologetics like yours.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It was in fact Herbert Spencer not Galton who coined the term “survival of the fittest”.

So he did. I stand corrected.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Richart Weikart had only complimentary things to say of Charles Darwin.

Oh really? You obviously haven't read Weikart's nasty little screed From Darwin To Hitler, in which he asserts that Darwin's ideas were the warm-up for the Holocaust. A notion that every relevant competent academic treats with well-deserved scorn and derision. Unsurprisingly, Weikart's book was financed by the Duplicity Institute.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Oh, and what about the practical damage arising from creationism? You do realise that creationism was adopted in full by the Ku Klux Klan, who used the "Hamitic races" nonsense in Genesis to justify slavery and oppression of black people? Indeed, arch-charlatan and professsional liar for doctrine Henry Morris continued peddling this in the 1960s, and Ken Ham's concentration camp for the mind in Kentucky still peddles this venomous racist bullshit.

Yes, Creationism has been championed for the aims of venomous racist buillshit like you say. I know that well from my own childhood when my classmates held it as a fact that black people had evolved from monkeys, but whites came from Adam and Eve. But on a larger scale, to understand thes taggering excesses of the twentieth century by Westerners, it is necessary to look at the coupled impact of atheism and the theory of evolution.

Bollocks. Now you're peddling the same canards that Weikart and his ilk are peddling. Please, don't bother erecting the usual canards, because I've given them all the discoursive equivalent of the nuclear shelling before today, and can do so with equal ease tomorrow if need be.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Like I said above, there's a difference between "natural" in the sense of "occurring as a result of well defined and testable processes" and "natural" in the oft-misused colloquial sense of "ethically justified". Once again, drop the naturalistic fallacy. Just because there happens to be a natural explanation for a given phenomenon, doesn't affect ethical judgements about that phenomenon. Oh, and fish aren't the only animal model, I merely chose those because they're the ones I'm familiar with, courtesy of 35 years of fishkeeping amongst other things.

They are linked in practice. What is “natural” has great authority.

Just because lots of people commit the fallacy, doesn't stop it being a fallacy. Next?

Oh, and it's spurious assertions that homosexuality is purportedly "unnatural", that constitute one of the driving forces behind the nasty anti-gay bigotry being peddled by the Christofascist Right in the USA. Not that they're in the least bit worried about being fifth-rate copies of Julius Streicher in this regard, albeit aiming their lumpen, lowbrow venom at a different target whilst peddling their pornography of hate.

Jayjay4547 wrote:In a sane society it can merely keep people from effective remedies- as Darwin’s view on the natural inevitable extermination of “savage races” merely lessened the horror of the English at what they had already done to the Tasmanian aboriginals.

Oh, this was the same Darwin who described slavery as "the great sin". From Volume 1 of The Descent Of Man, pages 94-95

The great sin of Slavery has been almost universal, and slaves have often been treated in an infamous manner. As barbarians do not regard the opinion of their women, wives are commonly treated like slaves. Most savages are utterly indifferent to the sufferings of strangers, or even delight in witnessing them. It is well known that the women and children of the North-American Indians aided in torturing their enemies. Some savages take a horrid pleasure in cruelty to animals,26 and humanity with them is an unknown virtue. Nevertheless, feelings of sympathy and kindness are common, especially during sickness, between the members of the same tribe, and are sometimes extended beyond the limits of the tribe. Mungo Park's touching account of the kindness of the negro women of the interior to him is well known. Many instances could be given of the noble fidelity of savages towards each other, but not to strangers; common experience justifies the maxim of the Spaniard, "Never, never trust an Indian." There cannot be fidelity without truth; and this fundamental virtue is not rare between the members of the same tribe: thus Mungo Park heard the negro women teaching their young children to love the truth. This, again, is one of the virtues which becomes so deeply rooted in the mind that it is sometimes practised by savages even at a high cost, towards strangers; but to lie to your enemy has rarely been thought a sin, as the history of modern diplomacy too plainly shews. As soon as a tribe has a recognised leader, disobedience becomes a crime, and even abject submission is looked at as a sacred virtue.

Jayjay4547 wrote:If it were true that evolution provides a beautiful and therefore complete and adequate explanation for rape then I would hesitate to say, don’t investigate or publicise that. But I don’t for a second believe that it does and the claim is overreaching and dangerous.

So the fact that some researchers are seeking to try and develop an informed analysis of rape and its underlying causes, in the hope of applying that knowledge to seek the extinction of this behaviour in humans, is another inconvenient fact you're going to ignore? Along with the fact that any incorrect ideas about this will be eventually weeded out by the appropriate empirical work?

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’ll just drop in here the little file of abusive terms you sprinkled your post with and that I gathered up as I went along. I left off abusive terms where I happen to agree with you about fascists. For your interest.

gazing at their ideological navels, complete garbage crap apologetics woefully, absurdly wrong, mythology fetishists, farcical nonsense, fucking irrelevance, fucking irrelevance, oft-peddled creationist lie, horseshit. supernaturalist canards. peddling of lies, mendacity, discoursively dishonest, duplicitous fabrication, manifest canards and lies, posturing, apologetic fabrication, Bollocks, any fucking sense at all, fucking laughable. fucking posts, de shit up, scribblings of some backward tribal people, cheap conjuring trick, nonsense in Genesis

So the fact that I choose to deploy invective against bad ideas, is something you're going to erect as a fake excuse for refusing to engage with the substantive issues I present? Where have I seen this approach before? Oh, that's right, it's a frequently observed aspect of the supernaturalist aetiology.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:(c) we have special status in the Creation

Again, blind assertion. More correctly, a pair of them.

No, that one is objective fact.

No, the first counter-factual blind assertion is to refer to Homo Sapiens as a "creation". We evolved, we weren't created.

The second counter-factual blind assertion is that we somehow inherently have a special status. Only in your own head I'm afraid.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Ours is the one species on Earth that could totally screw up the planet.

Yeah how special and wonderful that is. And it's probably not even correct that we're the only one that could, though we're probably the only one that's aware of it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:And we are the one species that could understand a charge laid against us on that score.

Tell that to the messianic bible-belt creotard nutcases who are working feverously to deny man-made global climate change and towards a planetary-scale, nuclear-armed mexican stand-off originating in the middle east, all because they think giving Israel back to the jews will trigger the end-times and the return of their "savior" to run around and kill all the "sinners".

When you come to this forum to sell your guff you're essentially addressing some of the people who love this planet and the countless organisms that live on it the most and who want to preserve it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:though that status is fraught with risk, sin and responsibility.

Again, all assertion piled upon assertion.

All too real, for anyone living consciously in the 21st century.

I think you should dispense with the word sin, it adds nothing of value to 21st century rational discourse. As much as I would agree that we risk fucking our planet up and share a responsibility to prevent this, you're on the wrong forum if you think the people here and their viewpoints constitute an opposition to this. The people you want to address aren't here.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Buss’s overreaching application of “evolutionary genetics” to domestic violence in humans is my example of failure.

Well if he's wrong, we'll soon know, because someone will come along and provide the relevant empirical research demonstrating this. When that happens, we'll move on to a better idea. That's the whole point in case you hadn't worked this out, namely, ideas are disposable entities, and the decision to dispose of a given idea, or collection thereof, is made when reality tells us to. At least, this is how it works in genuine intellectual disciplines. Religion, on the other hand, responds to real world evidence by making up more shit in a desperate attempt to keep failed assertions alive at all costs, including assertions that reality has long since pointed and laughed at.

In the real world professor Buss put on a kind of theatrical show, he realised a popular position in terms that he might not have taken that seriously himself.

Again another argument from "I don't like it" that contains no real qualitatively substantial disagreements, beyond mere blind assertions about the motivations of the lecturer, motivations you couldn't possible have even the slightest fucking insight of. So instead of pissing about how/what/why motivated said lecturer to come up with the idea he has, explain what the fuck is wrong with the idea with substantive evidence from the real world, or shut the fuck up and take this silly crying elsewhere.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The discipline of evolutionary psychology will survive so long as a sufficiently large group of salaried academics are drawn towards it. It’s probably pretty robust at present. Schools survive by different rules than individual scientific publications.

Ahahaha, it's "the persistent survival of evolution is driven by money and peer-pressure"-argument all over again. You really have zero clue how science actually works do you?
Here I'll give you a hint: Evolutionary psychology already has it's fair share of detractors with the scientific community, people who are qualified to critically examine how the theory of evolution is used to explain observations. This internal scientific debate will ultimately be settled by the merits of the theory, in the form of it's ability to explain observations and survive attempts at falsification.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Please, drop the naturalistic fallacy. Just because a given phenomenon occurs as a natural outcome of various contributing factors, has no relevance to how we choose to judge that phenomenon from an ethical standpoint. The two are entirely different. Rape occurs in numerous animal species, but no one here amongst the reality defenders will erect apolgetics justifying rape, they will all agree that from an ethical standpoint, it's repugnant, and that it's repugnant because of the measurable harm inflicted upon the victim.

What is deemed to be natural is in practice a powerful implicit justification for it, on the lines of “boys will be boys”.

That's funny, I've heard this very excuse used by creationists and other christo/islamo-fascist religious fanatics to justify tings like sexual harassment, fighting/violence, slutshaming and misogyny.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:And in the twentieth century the Spensarian/Darwinist notion of survival of the fittest did a whole lot of practical damage.

Actually, it wasn't Darwin who erected this notion. It was the product of Francis Galton, who took Darwin's ideas and barked up an entirely wrong tree with them. If you actually read Darwin's own words on the subject, his view was much more sophisticated, namely, survival of the sufficiently competent. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be good enough. Unfortunately, Galton was not only a man with a gift for rhetoric, he was also a part time occupier of the fringes of madness, and a professional racist. Oh, and please, don't try and erect any of the duplicitous lies peddled by the likes of Richard Weikart, trying to misrepresent Darwin as a racist, because I'll happily come back and carpet bomb that bullshit too.

Carpet bombing is a term for trying to obliterate everything at huge cost and uncertain success, for lack or accurate targeting.

Or when there's sufficiently large volumes of obstructive and worthless shit lying around, such as what you're presenting here.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It was in fact Herbert Spencer not Galton who coined the term “survival of the fittest”. Richart Weikart had only complimentary things to say of Charles Darwin.

Irrelevant. What matters is whether the theory of evolution is true, not who happens to think highly of Charles Darwin.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Oh, and what about the practical damage arising from creationism? You do realise that creationism was adopted in full by the Ku Klux Klan, who used the "Hamitic races" nonsense in Genesis to justify slavery and oppression of black people? Indeed, arch-charlatan and professsional liar for doctrine Henry Morris continued peddling this in the 1960s, and Ken Ham's concentration camp for the mind in Kentucky still peddles this venomous racist bullshit.

Yes, Creationism has been championed for the aims of venomous racist buillshit like you say. I know that well from my own childhood when my classmates held it as a fact that black people had evolved from monkeys, but whites came from Adam and Eve. But on a larger scale, to understand the staggering excesses of the twentieth century by Westerners, it is necessary to look at the coupled impact of atheism and the theory of evolution.

Is that why the fucking vatican is so wealthy? Is that why we observe this ridiculous and disgusting alliance between extremely rich, private mega-church pastors and filthy-rich rethuglican politicians and corporations in the US for example? Why is it that we always find these disgusting alliances? Taken a look at the Russian Orthodox church lately?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Like I said above, there's a difference between "natural" in the sense of "occurring as a result of well defined and testable processes" and "natural" in the oft-misused colloquial sense of "ethically justified". Once again, drop the naturalistic fallacy. Just because there happens to be a natural explanation for a given phenomenon, doesn't affect ethical judgements about that phenomenon. Oh, and fish aren't the only animal model, I merely chose those because they're the ones I'm familiar with, courtesy of 35 years of fishkeeping amongst other things.

They are linked in practice. What is “natural” has great authority. In a sane society it can merely keep people from effective remedies- as Darwin’s view on the natural inevitable extermination of “savage races” merely lessened the horror of the English at what they had already done to the Tasmanian aboriginals.

And in what revisionist screed did you pick up this fantastic lie again?

Jayjay4547 wrote:If it were true that evolution provides a beautiful and therefore complete and adequate explanation for rape then I would hesitate to say, don’t investigate or publicise that. But I don’t for a second believe that it does and the claim is overreaching and dangerous.

Oh look, we're finally getting at the substance of the matter here. Not a single argument for how the theory of evolution is wrong, it's all just an appeal to consequences.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’ll just drop in here the little file of abusive terms you sprinkled your post with and that I gathered up as I went along. I left off abusive terms where I happen to agree with you about fascists. For your interest.

gazing at their ideological navels, complete garbage crap apologetics woefully, absurdly wrong, mythology fetishists, farcical nonsense, fucking irrelevance, fucking irrelevance, oft-peddled creationist lie, horseshit. supernaturalist canards. peddling of lies, mendacity, discoursively dishonest, duplicitous fabrication, manifest canards and lies, posturing, apologetic fabrication, Bollocks, any fucking sense at all, fucking laughable. fucking posts, de shit up, scribblings of some backward tribal people, cheap conjuring trick, nonsense in Genesis

... and?

Jayjay4547 wrote:We humans have some cheek, a hundred thousand years into sharing language on one planet around one sun in one galaxy, to pontificate about the qualities of creator of the universe.

Yeah.

Isn't it amazing that theists make all of those pronouncements about God and what he wants without having even the least bit of evidence that there even exists a creator of the universe. It is amazing how arrogant they are.

And as Susan B. Anthony presciently observed over a century ago, all those pronouncements invariably amount to "my magic man wants what coincides with my desires, wishes and prejudices" ...

Calilasseia wrote: Oh, and please, don't try and erect any of the duplicitous lies peddled by the likes of Richard Weikart, trying to misrepresent Darwin as a racist, because I'll happily come back and carpet bomb that bullshit too.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Richart Weikart had only complimentary things to say of Charles Darwin.

Calilasseia wrote: Oh really? You obviously haven't read Weikart's nasty little screed From Darwin To Hitler, in which he asserts that Darwin's ideas were the warm-up for the Holocaust. A notion that every relevant competent academic treats with well-deserved scorn and derision. Unsurprisingly, Weikart's book was financed by the Duplicity Institute.

Turn to page 3 of “From Darwin to Hitler” and share the last two sentences of paragraph 2 with this board. Turn to the back cover and read what Dr Richard Evans , Regius professor of modern history at Cambridge had to say of Weikart’s work. Evans is the author of the best-selling trilogy The coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power and The Third Reich at War.

...just a snippet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Darwi ... nd_summary

Discovery, the hub of the intelligent design movement, "provided crucial funding" for the book's research.[3] Prominent historian and critic of the intelligent design movement, Barbara Forest, states that the book is tied to the DI's 'wedge strategy' of attacking Darwinian science as morally corrupting.[4] This strategy aims to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Darwi ... _reception

Various professors of history, philosophy, biology etc:

distorts the history of Darwinism and anti-Darwinism in Germany in ways that reflect theocratic agendas in present-day American politics

insufficient attention to historical change-leaving out political, social, and economic factors as well as the role of new knowledge in genetics-make his overall argument unconvincing

the defense of genocide, infanticide and "eugenics" by creationists actually has a very venerable and lengthy tradition that precedes Darwin

fails to follow the rich nuances of the discourse/practices and institutions that have preoccupied the contemporary generation of intellectual historians, who have paid attention to the continuities and ruptures within systems of thought. So his presentation of racism, for example, reiterates a rationale that does not stand up to the critical scrutiny of intellectual history

Weikart doesn't actually show any direct connection between Darwin and Hitler. In fact, Weikart has responded to my criticisms by admitting that the title of his book is misleading, since he cannot show any direct link between Darwin's ideas and Hitler's Nazism

It can only be a tendentious and dogmatically driven assessment that would condemn Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis

Hitler was not a Darwinian

a desperate tactic to undermine evolution

There's not the slightest shred of evidence that Hitler read Darwin

ideas that are attributed to Darwin (such as natural selection makes might right in social policy) were actually not advocated but repudiated by Darwin and his immediate colleagues

No wonder you have such a warped perspective on history if this is where you get your 'facts'.

Has everyone just forgotten that The Origin of the Species was on Nazi ban lists? The reason: Darwin presents, explicitly, that all mankind comes from a single source. This would obviously imply a level of equality and kinship that directly opposed the Nazi ideology.

Hitler believed in the idea of a "superior race"... which the scientific theory of evolution directly contradicts.

Really, even if the boldfaced lie that Nazis loved Darwin as true, it wouldn't make the theory of evolution untrue. It would still just be another case of humanity misusing information. The information they were using wasn't true, though, because the Nazi scientific ideals were rooted in outdated and false interpretations of debunked theories.

Indeed, as we learn from this website, textbooks on evolutionary biology were placed on the list of seditious books by the Nazis. Viz:

6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufklärung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (Häckel)

Translation:

6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel).

This was one of the guidelines in Die Bucherei, the list of seditious books published by the Nazis, and disseminated to librarians throughout the Third Reich. Textbooks on evolutionary biology were removed from libraries and burned. So much for Hitler being a "Darwinist".

Even more telling, is this little passage from Mein Kampf (pages 245-246 in my searchable electronic copy):

Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law - one may call it an iron law of Nature - which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the field-mouse with the field-mouse, the house-mouse with the house-mouse, the wolf with the she-wolf, etc.

Deviations from this law take place only in exceptional circumstances. This happens especially under the compulsion of captivity, or when some other obstacle makes procreative intercourse impossible between individuals of the same species. But then Nature abhors such intercourse with all her might; and her protest is most clearly demonstrated by the fact that the hybrid is either sterile or the fecundity of its descendants is limited. In most cases hybrids and their progeny are denied the ordinary powers of resistance to disease or the natural means of defence against outer attack.

Well would you look at that? It's the creationist "kinds" nonsense we've seen disseminated on numerous occasions, both on creationist websites and in posts by creationists here!

As for hybridisation being "forbidden" by nature, I have several papers flushing that idea down the toilet in the collection. including one nice paper in which hybridisation was the antecedent event leading to a speciation event, one that was then replicated in the laboratory.