TopCat wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I claim that how we are different from the great apes, is most practically described in other terms than Diamond's.

Of course you do. That's your theist ideology, talking, and hence, the whole reason you've invented its counterpart in atheist ideology to match up with it; otherwise, you're stuck permanently holding the short end of a stick that no one else is attached to, madly beating the air with it.

Indeed, and the irony is that theist ideology is intended, supposedly, by its adherents at least, to be about truth.

But of course if JayJay was concerned about truth he'd be looking honestly at the evidence for evolution, perhaps even starting by getting some education, rather than obfuscating by erecting this extraordinary smokescreen about ideologies at all.

JJ doesn't mind that his story's not true. From his POV, there are bad consequences to failing to believe in this 'creative agency'. JJ doesn't deny evolution; he just insists that you have to sprinkle some fairy dust on it, or bad things will happen. Chimps will stroll happily on Main Street without fear of reprisal or incarceration.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Fenrir wrote:Seeing as you adroitly managed to completely avoid addressing the point let us revisit. Very slowly.

You (JayJay), in support of your invented conspiracy, posted this:

If I imagined or invented a conspiracy then surely somewhere in the 128 pages of this topic I would have used the word “conspiracy”.

You don't need use a specific word to appeal to the concept Jayjay.

Jayjay4547 wrote: But you will only find that word (and copiously) in the text of ratskep posters . No; I am claiming that you are willing slaves to an ideology;

You are mindlessly repeating bullshit you've already been corrected on. By me, by others and by your own fucking source.

Jayjay4547 wrote: you actually can’t help yourselves from thinking and talking in accordance with its interest. Although you could free yourselves from that bondage even just a little bit, by considering the possibility that an atheist ideology might exist and have influenced how the flagship theory of atheism has been presented. That’s really not asking for much; historians happily use the term “historicity” which deals with that kind of issue, and without individual historians abandoning their political or spiritual beliefs.

Your own source demonstrates that the ideology cannot exist Jayjay. Stop mindlesssly regurgitating your rectal matter.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Fenrir wrote:

JayJay wrote:I said “great apes”. According to Wikipedia disambiguation, Pongidae, or "great apes", [is] a taxon including the gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans, but not humans.

Apparently in support of the contention that humans and apes are intrinsically different by hypocricitally usurping science where you thought you had a gotcha.

If you look over the posts on the quote from Jared Diamond, you will see that my point was never to assert that humans and apes are intrinsically different. It was to make the point that Diamond’s characterisation of how we are different*, was unreasonable and that could be explained as the influence of ideology.

Not atheist ideology as your own source proves that cannot exist.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Fenrir wrote:I then posted the following quote, and as Cali mentioned, the same quote has been provided to you a number of times in the past:

Linnaeus wrote:I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character—one that is according to generally accepted principles of classification, by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none. ...But, if I had called man an ape, or vice versa, I should have fallen under the ban of all the ecclesiastics. It may be that as a naturalist I ought to have done so.

What the Linnaeus quote shows is that, far from an athiest conspiracy, the dialogue over origins has been historically constrained by theological interests, to the point where researchers felt unable to report their results accurately for fear of the consequences.

Do you have the honesty to acknowledge this simple fact?

Like I already said in a response to Cito, there has been a turnaround since the days of Linnaeus. So that today, those who have internalised the theory of evolution, tend to be slaves of an atheist ideology. Partly, because of the way the human origin narrative has been told using the theory of evolution.

Stop lying Jayjay. Your own source disproves your incessant whinging about atheist ideology. That you persist in repeating it will only serve to demonstrate your only interest in this thread is dishonest polemics.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
The truly extreme level of straw man behaviour on this board is exemplified by the popular topic on Mike Spence; the American VP hasn't even come here (has he?) but ratskep posters still endlessly delight in throwing dirt at his effigy.

By the way, the man's name is Pence. Don't ever let any facts get in your way, JJ. Reverence, JJ. Somebody's tossing dirt at reverence because respect has not been earned. What a reverence it is, though, that will not let facts get in its way. Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion, but I don't think Pence quite agrees, and what he's after is back-dooring religion the same way you do. I can't force myself to look at the world in terms of this external agency, but perhaps you'd be happy if I just mouthed the reverent words, no matter what I actually believed. Perhaps you'd simply be happy if people stopped telling you the belief in agency hadn't earned any respect, yet.

.
Pence, stupid mistake. I was just pointing to the curious spectacle of ratskeps mobbing him, though he doesn’t seem to have come here to answer back.

Cito di Pense wrote: You're promoting this alternative 'story' of 'creation by agency' to promote a sense of gratitude or reverence to whatever agency is specified, by you or whoever's side you're on. To use another word, worship. But why? You won't even get to the punch line until after your audience takes on board the symbolic notion of agency. Why don't you say a few words about that, too? You're essentially preaching the granting of unearned respect for nothing more than a fucking belief. You see clearly there is a conflict, but the denial is all on your side, denial of the basis of the conflict.

I need to do some backtracking regarding “agency” I meant that term in the sense of carrying out some end but I couldn’t find that meaning supported in Wikipedia. The closest meaning I could find was:

“Agency:the abstract principle that autonomous beings, agents, are capable of acting by themselves; see autonomy”

For example. a biome might have created the conditions that caused a particular population to adapt in a particular direction. Two problems come from using the term “agency” for that, one being that biomes are not themselves autonomous rather they are holistically part of a hierarchy without apparent outer boundary. Also, biomes are not beings. So I withdraw that term.

What I did want to mean can be captured by extracting from Darwin’s contrasting of natural and sexual selection, how he saw the former. Here is his original text from The Origin of Species, 6th edition, chapter 4:

“This leads me to say a few words about sexual selection. This form of selection depends, not on a struggle for existence in relation to other organic beings or to external conditions, but on a struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex. The result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor but few or no offspring. Sexual selection is therefore less rigorous than natural selection”

Here is the implied description of natural selection:

Natural selection depends on a struggle for existence in relation to other organic beings or to external conditions. The result is death to the unsuccessful competitor. Natural selection is more rigorous than sexual selection

This extracted interpretation of natural selection has a stronger emphasis on dependence of external conditions, than in Darwin’s famous concluding paragraph in the same work:

“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

In his conclusion, Darwin again used the word “dependent” but here the dependency was depicted as a result of “the war of nature, from famine and death”. In the extracted view the dependence seems more original and I suggest that is more correct.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
Stop lying Jayjay.

So once I responded to Thomas' not claiming I was lying, he went right back to doing it again.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
What I did want to mean can be captured by extracting from Darwin’s contrasting of natural and sexual selection, how he saw the former.

I don't care what you "wanted to mean". We use words to communicate with other people, or else we're talking to ourselves like fucking lunatics. You either say what you mean using words that mean what you want them to say, or you're writing a self-involved fantasy. You can't "want your words to mean something" if they don't mean that to the people you're trying to communicate with. That's what some poor fucker in the grip of psychosis is stuck with, and he's not communicating.

I'm not saying you're in the grip of a psychosis, JJ. You have a very strong desire for your words to be 'true', but unless you can communicate, nobody except you is going to know what you're trying to say. If you lose your grip on the difference between something's being true and your simply wanting it to be true, you're headed for la-la land.

I look at your performance here and chuckle and wonder how the emotional shoot-out you're experiencing has gotten in the way of your having an adult conversation about any of these topics. You've implied there is something that other people have to understand, but now you're saying you wanted to communicate something else. I don't have a duty of care to understand the message within a bunch of self-involved childish chatter, unless I have the duty of caring responsibly for a child, and even then there are limits.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
Stop lying Jayjay.

So once I responded to Thomas' not claiming I was lying, he went right back to doing it again.

That's what generally happens when people with a history of lying, continue to lie when offered a second chance.
All you have to do, is actually start acting with a shred of honesty Jayjay.
You don't get to play the victim.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
What I did want to mean can be captured by extracting from Darwin’s contrasting of natural and sexual selection, how he saw the former.

I don't care what you "wanted to mean". We use words to communicate with other people, or else we're talking to ourselves like fucking lunatics. You either say what you mean using words that mean what you want them to say, or you're writing a self-involved fantasy. You can't "want your words to mean something" if they don't mean that to the people you're trying to communicate with. That's what some poor fucker in the grip of psychosis is stuck with, and he's not communicating.

I reconsidered my use of the term “agency” because I became convinced that it wasn’t appropriate; “dependent” seems better. When exploring ideas it’s sometimes sensible to backtrack.

Cito di Pense wrote: I'm not saying you're in the grip of a psychosis, JJ. You have a very strong desire for your words to be 'true', but unless you can communicate, nobody except you is going to know what you're trying to say. If you lose your grip on the difference between something's being true and your simply wanting it to be true, you're headed for la-la land.

I look at your performance here and chuckle and wonder how the emotional shoot-out you're experiencing has gotten in the way of your having an adult conversation about any of these topics. You've implied there is something that other people have to understand, but now you're saying you wanted to communicate something else. I don't have a duty of care to understand the message within a bunch of self-involved childish chatter, unless I have the duty of caring responsibly for a child, and even then there are limits.

All that is basically an ad hominin dressed up. FYI I think I can do this and that I’m getting better at it. Your bad-mouthing doubtless helps to make me look bad but it also stops me from getting an exalted idea of how well I am putting my case. .

Jayjay4547 wrote:
What I did want to mean can be captured by extracting from Darwin’s contrasting of natural and sexual selection, how he saw the former. Here is his original text from The Origin of Species, 6th edition, chapter 4:
“This leads me to say a few words about sexual selection. This form of selection depends, not on a struggle for existence in relation to other organic beings or to external conditions, but on a struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex. The result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor but few or no offspring. Sexual selection is therefore less rigorous than natural selection”
Here is the implied description of natural selection:

Natural selection depends on a struggle for existence in relation to other organic beings or to external conditions. The result is death to the unsuccessful competitor. Natural selection is more rigorous than sexual selection”

This extracted interpretation of natural selection has a stronger emphasis on dependence of external conditions, than in Darwin’s famous concluding paragraph in the same work:

“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

In his conclusion, Darwin again used the word “dependent” but for him the dependency arose as a result of “the war of nature, from famine and death”. In the extracted view the dependence seems more original and I think that is more correct.

I’m arguing that one way that atheist ideology has messed up the human origin story has been to tell the story from below rather than from above; as driven by selfish genes rather than by God or Gaia. A big strength in telling the story from below is that a child of ten can feel that he understands Darwin’s laws of natural selection, that they are common sense and he can be satisfied with explanations framed using them: e.g. how giraffe got their long necks or why octopus life is so short. But a striking weakness in the laws of natural selection compared with say Newton’s laws that Darwin drew an analogy with, is their lack of predictive precision. It was only after new scientific techniques revealed that the life spans of marine animals cover a vast range, that a natural-selection explanation for that was offered (see “Other Minds” by Peter Godfrey-Smith).

An origin story “from above” might not be any better at prediction but our sense of what is “above” us comes precisely from recognising that quality of creative unpredictability. For example, the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency was not widely predicted by those who thought themselves competent to tell the world, and once that happened they found it very disconcerting. Maybe “the USA’ is like a large and maybe crazy bear waking from a sleep of political correctness and maybe it’s going to kill us all. SO in that way the USA looks greater than human. And for the same reason of being unpredictable, Nature or Gaia or God can be classified as something greater than us.

Jayjay4547 wrote:All that is basically an ad hominin dressed up.

Did you want to convince me you're educated and intelligent enough to be taken seriously? Making mistakes in terminology like this suggests you're capable of getting yourself mixed up.

I've already shown why your complaints do not deserve being confronted by careful avoidance of noting the stupidity or ignorance of science you regularly display. Noting your stupid and ignorant remarks does not constitute insulting you. When you show you can figure that one out, I'll consider making less effort to point out your stupid and ignorant remarks.

Jayjay4547 wrote:FYI I think I can do this and that I’m getting better at it.

No, you're not. You keep making the same sorts of mistakes and keep trying to tell us that's not what you meant to say. There are facts that you could try to recover, but you're stuck trying to say what atheism has gotten wrong, rather than directing us toward anything you've gotten right.

Jayjay4547 wrote:An origin story “from above” might not be any better at prediction but our sense of what is “above” us comes precisely from recognising that quality of creative unpredictability.

If you keep producing word salad like this, it becomes plain that you're making no effort to recover any facts with your critique of evolutionary theory. It's worse than that, JJ: An origin story "from above" hasn't been shown to recover any facts at all.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m arguing that one way that atheist ideology has messed up the human origin story has been to tell the story from below rather than from above; as driven by selfish genes rather than by God or Gaia.

You have this so fucked up ass-backwards it is hard to see how you did it. When we climbed from the trees, and shortly after inventing gods, gods was the answer to EVERYTHING.

Very very very gradually we pierced things together and gods started to disappear as we found actual answers. So far that probably the only places gods still hide, is the origin of life (although we have viable hypotheses) and what happened before the Big Bang (if the question even makes sense)

So no atheist ideology that messed anything up; just a gradual coming to our collective senses.

Jeez! Are we still going on about atheist 'Ideology', JJ? It doesn't and cannot exist.

cyghost wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m arguing that one way that atheist ideology has messed up the human origin story has been to tell the story from below rather than from above; as driven by selfish genes rather than by God or Gaia.

You have this so fucked up ass-backwards it is hard to see how you did it. When we climbed from the trees, and shortly after inventing gods, gods was the answer to EVERYTHING.

Very very very gradually we pierced things together and gods started to disappear as we found actual answers. So far that probably the only places gods still hide, is the origin of life (although we have viable hypotheses) and what happened before the Big Bang (if the question even makes sense)

So no atheist ideology that messed anything up; just a gradual coming to our collective senses.

The aim of science is not to have an answer for everything. That's the aim of theology. If you want to turn science into a substitute for theology, you do it on your own watch. You're not in some kind of competition with theists to see who has the best answers. This isn't a philosophy classroom.

cyghost wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m arguing that one way that atheist ideology has messed up the human origin story has been to tell the story from below rather than from above; as driven by selfish genes rather than by God or Gaia.

You have this so fucked up ass-backwards it is hard to see how you did it. When we climbed from the trees, and shortly after inventing gods, gods was the answer to EVERYTHING.

Very very very gradually we pierced things together and gods started to disappear as we found actual answers. So far that probably the only places gods still hide, is the origin of life (although we have viable hypotheses) and what happened before the Big Bang (if the question even makes sense)

So no atheist ideology that messed anything up; just a gradual coming to our not-so-collective senses.

FIFY

aban57 wrote:

cyghost wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m arguing that one way that atheist ideology has messed up the human origin story has been to tell the story from below rather than from above; as driven by selfish genes rather than by God or Gaia.

You have this so fucked up ass-backwards it is hard to see how you did it. When we climbed from the trees, and shortly after inventing gods, gods was the answer to EVERYTHING.

Very very very gradually we pierced things together and gods started to disappear as we found actual answers. So far that probably the only places gods still hide, is the origin of life (although we have viable hypotheses) and what happened before the Big Bang (if the question even makes sense)

So no atheist ideology that messed anything up; just a gradual coming to our not-so-collective senses.

FIFY

Our senses are really pretty similar. No one's bending any spoons. Where we differ is in our emotional maturity.

To put this in perspective, it's a tautology to say that atheism is right because it means you've come to your senses.

Want to know why apologists keep coming back here? They want a chance to take apart some numpty answer to theism.

Cito di Pense wrote:

cyghost wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m arguing that one way that atheist ideology has messed up the human origin story has been to tell the story from below rather than from above; as driven by selfish genes rather than by God or Gaia.

You have this so fucked up ass-backwards it is hard to see how you did it. When we climbed from the trees, and shortly after inventing gods, gods was the answer to EVERYTHING.

Very very very gradually we pierced things together and gods started to disappear as we found actual answers. So far that probably the only places gods still hide, is the origin of life (although we have viable hypotheses) and what happened before the Big Bang (if the question even makes sense)

So no atheist ideology that messed anything up; just a gradual coming to our collective senses.

The aim of science is not to have an answer for everything. That's the aim of theology. If you want to turn science into a substitute for theology, you do it on your own watch. You're not in some kind of competition with theists to see who has the best answers. This isn't a philosophy classroom.

cyghost wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

cyghost wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m arguing that one way that atheist ideology has messed up the human origin story has been to tell the story from below rather than from above; as driven by selfish genes rather than by God or Gaia.

You have this so fucked up ass-backwards it is hard to see how you did it. When we climbed from the trees, and shortly after inventing gods, gods was the answer to EVERYTHING.

Very very very gradually we pierced things together and gods started to disappear as we found actual answers. So far that probably the only places gods still hide, is the origin of life (although we have viable hypotheses) and what happened before the Big Bang (if the question even makes sense)

So no atheist ideology that messed anything up; just a gradual coming to our collective senses.

The aim of science is not to have an answer for everything. That's the aim of theology. If you want to turn science into a substitute for theology, you do it on your own watch. You're not in some kind of competition with theists to see who has the best answers. This isn't a philosophy classroom.

Don't laugh so readily, cyghost. The joke might be at your expense.

When you so spectacularly miss the point I have no other recourse

Solid gold, Cito

cyghost wrote:When you so spectacularly miss the point I have no other recourse

Solid gold, Cito

Want someone not to miss your point? Don't mistake yourself for a brilliant rhetorician if you're not one, and make an effort to make your point clear enough so you don't have to weasel out of your mistakes later.

cyghost wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m arguing that one way that atheist ideology has messed up the human origin story has been to tell the story from below rather than from above; as driven by selfish genes rather than by God or Gaia.

You have this so fucked up ass-backwards it is hard to see how you did it. When we climbed from the trees, and shortly after inventing gods, gods was the answer to EVERYTHING.

Very very very gradually we pierced things together and gods started to disappear as we found actual answers.

That’s the origin narrative of atheism: hugely general and projecting inevitable progress towards right thinking. Actually the growth of atheism has actually been clearly structured and connected with national politics, as demonstrated by this map from Atheist Republic:

cyghost wrote:So far that probably the only places gods still hide, is the origin of life (although we have viable hypotheses) and what happened before the Big Bang (if the question even makes sense)

That’s the Deist conception of what “God” means; a great being who set things going and then stepped back to let them work by themselves. That conception was helped by discovery of Newton’s laws and Darwin invoked it when he wrote “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. Genesis also has God creating the world but the rest of the Torah has him continuing to interact intimately with human goings on. And that’s how Jews, Christians and Moslems conceptualise God today: an Immanent God. We aren't on top; We are inside.

While Newton’s laws have enabled very precise predictions, the human experience is just as radically unpredictable as in the earliest times and that’s because we are inside evolving society and Nature. Both are capable of springing big surprises and both have ultimate power over us.

cyghost wrote:So no atheist ideology that messed anything up; just a gradual coming to our collective senses.

There’s nothing “doh” about ideologies. They have to do with how society grapples with our minds and to not inhabit ideologies, as Jung pointed out from an earlier quote, would be to be less than human. To deny that there could be an atheist ideology is a frightening limitation.

Jayjay4547 wrote:There’s nothing “doh” about ideologies. They have to do with how society grapples with our minds and to not inhabit ideologies, as Jung pointed out from an earlier quote, would be to be less than human. To deny that there could be an atheist ideology is a frightening limitation.

Don't you understand yet, JJ? The phrase "how society grapples with our minds" is only meaningful to you unless you do a lot of preliminary exegesis of the wording. The wording of "inhabiting ideologies" is similar gibberish that you likely got from reading some kind of post-structuralist tripe. It's not obviously a concept that is meaningful to anyone but you and the author you got it from. So now you see the problem with scripture in general.

This is because "inhabiting" can refer to inhabiting territory or some address, and starts to turn into wibble when you use "inhabiting" to refer to constructs, where it's just a word that has one more syllable than 'adopting'. It's OK with me if you recognize the role of constructs, but you obviously do not fully do so. Adopting is funny, too, because of its use in reference to abandoned children.

You should really start announcing your perspective as post-structuralist, if you want to use language in that way. It implies that the language you use doesn't refer to anything, inside your head or out of it. Il n'y a pas de hors texte!