I’ll reply here to one theme in Cali’s double posts, which played out into a 41 page document in Word. That’s on the central topic of hominin weapon use. I’ve also given some thought to the issue of the role of dogma in religion and I’ll come back to that later if I can. Again, I’ll delete Cali’s torrent of traducing and where that leaves no reply to my point I’ll delete my own point as well.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

The article in question is Treves and Palmqvist’s chapter Reconstructing Hominin Interactions with Mammalian Carnivores
http://faculty.nelson.wisc.edu/treves/p ... t_2007.pdf

I know. I saved the paper when you first linked to it

I know you know, I cited the article again so that anyone else wouldn’t be left in the dark about what would look like a private conversation.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Treves and Palmqvist deal authoritatively with predator avoidance by the hominins, including alertness, warning calls, mobbing and staying away from dangerous areas. What they don’t deal with is circumstances where other primates bite and where the hominins were not adapted to bite.

Except that, Treves & Palmqvist explicitly state in their paper, that those other primates have been observed USING DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES for the purpose. And, furthermore, that many of those techniques arise from the models of social organisation extant in those primate species. Which is the data YOU have been ignoring.

successful avoidance of close contact with dangerous, well-armed predators will yield more dividends than head-on confrontation. If members of a species develop a collection of social behaviours that minimise this risk of close contact, and therefore mean that they don't have to resort to combat in order to stay alive, a process that is always risky even for the most well-equipped, then those individuals are going to stand more chance of surviving and reproducing, than individuals who don't develop this collection of behaviours. The latter, quite simply, will end up as lunch for something else. Plus, Treves & Palmqvist provided in their paper, the elementary observation that an organism subject to a surprise ambush attack, will have far fewer opportunities for self-defence, than an organism possessing advance warning of a predator's presence from some distance away. …As McDonnell Douglas said in their advertising blurb for the RAH-66 Comanche stealth helicopter, before it was cancelled:

"If the enemy can't see you, the enemy can't hit you. If the enemy can't hit you, the enemy can't kill you".

Consequently, remaining inconspicuous but vigilant, means you largely avoid the need for combat. If you're part of a group, engaging in this behaviour co-operatively, with appropriate signalling between group members, you're likely to avoid the need for combat even more. Alternatively, if you're dealing with a predator that relies upon surprise, signalling to that predator that it's been spotted, and is therefore wasting its time on you, also pays dividends with respect to avoidance of the need for combat…picking a fight with a lion, equipped with more muscle mass than you, better teeth than you, better claws than you, and the and the motivation of hunger, is a suicide enterprise.

All that was more economically and authoritatively said by Treves and Palmqvist and even more economically summarized by me when I said they deal authoritatively with predator avoidance by the hominins, including alertness, warning calls, mobbing and staying away from dangerous areas.

You accuse me of ignoring that many of antipredation techniques arise from the models of social organisation extant in those primate species. Not so. I’m just saying that for an adequate modeling of hominin-predator relations, one would need to look specifically at the circumstances where other primates bite while hominins weren’t adapted to bite.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I see that issue [in Scientific American] had a article by Ian Tattersall pointing out that Homo sapiens is the sole survivor from a number of sympatric hominins. The monotonic trend I was referring to is different, it’s towards representing our ancestors as active and unforced in their own evolution.

one of the central ideas endemic to evolutionary theory [is that], external influences affect the genetic destiny of populations.

All the more remarkable then, if the narrative of human evolution is told with reference only to how hominin troops adapted by organisation within the troop and in ways common to other primate species.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:That trend is visible in the development of Raymond Dart’s interpretation of Austropithecus Africanus. In 1925 he interpreted the hominin limbs in this way:

“Bipedal animals, their hands were assuming a higher evolutionary role not only as delicate tactual, examining organs which were adding copiously to the animals knowledge of its physical environment, but also as instruments of the growing intelligence in carrying out more elaborate, purposeful and skilled movements, as organs of offence and defence. The latter is rendered more probable, in view, first, of their failure to develop massive canines and hideous features, and, secondly, of the fact that even living anthropoid apes can and do use sticks and stones as implements as and weapons of offence.(“Descent of Man”, p81 et seq.)”

…you're treating an out of date work as purportedly the last word on the subject. You do realise that scientists continued researching this topic after 1925?

I was presenting the case for a trend, by discussing a change in the presentation of human evolution. Dart was my starting point. His analysis of the Taung child is about as pure a case as one could wish for of a scientist focusing on evidence. Thanks to that focus he saw further than his metropolitan critics. But I’m arguing that he was working in an ideological blizzard.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Out of this vision, Dart developed the hunting hypothesis, which was all about offence; an acting on the world under the will of the hunter whereas defence is a forced reaction to the will of the predator.

But … later scientists alighted upon data overturning that idea.

I’m arguing that wasn’t the case; actually later scientists ignored data which was the lack of hominin fangs.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:By the time we get to Treves and Palmqvist 80 years later, defence has been practically eliminated. The hominins are visioned as merely hiding, staying alert and keeping out of the way of predators

On the basis of DATA. Including a lot of data

Let’s look at the data that Treves and Palmqvist actually bring out.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:the significance of “purposeful and skilled movements” has been forgotten and the lack of canines that could be used for defensive biting and that Dart had carefully noted, hardly gets a mention :

let's highlight relevant parts of the paragraph you're quoting here

”Chimpanzees have pursued and even killed cornered leopards (Boesch & Boesch, 1981; Hiraiwa-Hasegawa et al.,1986). Chimpanzees have attacked stuffed leopard models with sticks and stones (Kortlandt, 1980, 1989). However, healthy lioness-sized or larger carnivores may be too formidable, even for male apes in groups (Tsukahara, 1993). Counterattack with hand weapons may be an especially effective anti-predator tactic in some situations, but we have very little systematic evidence of this. It is doubtful that simple projectiles can deter coursing predators that do not abort pursuit easily or packs of carnivores emboldened by their own numbers[/color=red]. [color=blue]Moreover, a weapon does not provide protection if its wielder is surprised. Therefore, we doubt that hominins counterattacked carnivores in packs or lion-sized carnivores in the Pliocene”.

In short, the authors are saying "where is the DATA to support that hypothesis?"

It should have occurred to those authors that the lack of fangs in australopithecus, paranthropus and homo constituted systematic evidence. Just as one wouldn’t need to find a bone stuck in the teeth of T. Rex to regard those teeth as systematic evidence that it was a carnivore. It should have occurred to them to address that issue. It should have occurred to their book editor to raise it. It’s noteworthy that this didn’t happen.

The passage above shouldn’t be read naively. The authors are out to show that they aware of the prospect that hominins used weapons to defend themselves (“counterattack” as they put it) while dissing that idea as unevidenced. They conclude their discussion of what hominins did after encountering predators, by saying what the hominins didn’t do. And part of this strategy is to “doubt” that the hominins could have defended against the most formidable predators –the same unreasonable approach that you have used.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Although there are records of other primates using sticks as weapons, I don’t know of a record of them injuring predators using weapons. Kortlandt measured the speed at which a chimp struck a leopard and declared that could break its back but his film clip just suggests incompetent use of sticks.

So you want to try and argue that Australopiths used weapons, yet admit yourself that a video clip of an evolutionary relative in action in this mode was not helpful to your hypothesis?

The problem is that chimps have fangs. That they use sticks at all is suggestive of how early hominins might have started defending themselves using hand weapons. But their naïve and incompetent use of sticks shows that their bodies including their nervous system and that including their brains, isn’t adapted into a weapon using habit. But the lack of hominin fangs shows that these human ancestors were so adapted. When primate antipredation comes down to a contact stage its either fangs or sticks-and-hand-axes.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:But other primates do bite highly competently. We know that instinctively. Absolutely no one is going to try to grab a vervet monkey that he has trapped raiding the kitchen. Let alone trying to grab a baboon.

here’s a 45 minute documentary on a special ecosystem in the Rift Valley. One which features lions that eat baboons. The first strike starts at 20:20, and concludes at 20:50. One dead baboon ending up as lion food. Likewise from 43:00 to 44:15 - another dead baboon winding up as lion food.

The fact that lions kill buffaloes doesn’t mean that buffalo horns are irrelevant in antipredation. They restrict the techniques a lion can use, force the lion to learn particular skills against this prey sort. And those horns limit the predator species that dare attack a buffalo. Similarly, the fact that lions kill baboons doesn’t mean that their fangs are irrelevant to antipredation. Here’s (again) a clip of a lone baboon successfully holding off a lioness, until other lions arrived.


Your clip showing how fearsome a tiger is, is irrelevant to picturing the ecology of the hominins. Our ancestors lived in the larder of a range of predators of different threat levels, including these identified by Treves and Palmqvist:



No doubt, the hominins seldom tried to fight off Nile crocodiles and at the other extreme, they didn’t fear suricates but somewhere in the range between and in some circumstances, like all primates, they must have defended themselves at the contact stage of predation. The point of my thought experiment about the vervet in your kitchen was to demonstrate how significant primate fangs are. Instinctively we know not to tangle barehanded with a fanged primate one tenth our own body weight.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Treves and Palmqvists passage above is systematically discounting the significance of hominins using sticks and stones for defence.

Because, … as they explicitly state in their paper, THE DATA DOES NOT SUPPORT THIS FOR PLIOCENE ERA AUSTRALOPITHS.

Yes that’s what they say, while strangely ignoring the data about the lack of fangs in australopiths, and the high importance of fangs in other primates.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:That significance is high: it would have forced hominins to select the best sticks and stones, to have carried them around wherever there was a danger from predators, and use them with purpose and skill equivalent to that by a vervet cornered by a dog in a kitchen.

Except that, wait for it, THE DATA DOES NOT SUPPORT THIS.

See my response above.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Expect a large vet’s bill for the dog.

Guess no one told that lioness in the video clip above

I’m not certain that hominins defended against lions any more than baboons do, at least, in all circumstances. There isn’t evidence about that. There is evidence that the hominins were sympatric with a range of predators, that they didn’t have fangs and that other primates, who do have fangs, know how to use them defensively.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:What isn’t known and is thereby interesting, is that the scientific narrative of human evolution has also been influenced by an opposite ideology.

Bollocks. Once again, this is a bare faced lie you're posting here, and a defamatory one at that. The only thing that affects the scientific view of evolution is DATA. Now drop this disgusting lie you keep posting once and for all.

In this passage I left your overbearing traducing of me because it shows the extraordinary level of your presumption about the authority of what scientists say. You claim its defamatory for a layman to criticize a published article. It’s implausible to claim as you do that the only thing that affects the scientific view of evolution is data. Brian Switek, the author of several books on evolution, put it this way in his review of “Man the Hunted”:

http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/06/14/book-review-man-the-hunted/

If there is any science that is influenced by our cultural background, expectations, and desires it is anthropology, and we must take care to make sure that what we want to be true doesn’t obscure our vision.

You are way out of line

He's not. Once again you present nothing but blind assumptions and assertions, spinning scientific studies to forcefit your ideology.
Anthropology =/= biology Jayjay. Anthropogoly is the study of cultures and hence by it's very nature highly subjective.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:but I’ve always been scrupulous to say that this pole might be unoccupied for all we know.

When did you do this again?

in the thread on absolute directions in the world, I said these:

April 14th :This story of the virgin birth has to do with the human relation with what is greater than human, what can be said to own us, something to whom or to which we owe loyalty. I don’t deny that this pole or generalisation of what we can’t experiment with, might be vacant..

March 24th :To get the record straight, AGAIN I understand “God” to be the English word for the pole or generalisation of what we can’t experiment with. One glance at the creation should tell you that pole isn’t namby pamby. It might be an empty pole, I’d grant you that.

Oct 3rd 2012: I don’t regard God as fictional, or as my friend. I understand “God” to be the word in English for the pole of what we can’t experiment with- Above all powers /Above all kings/ Above all nature And all created things here might be no one there or there might be someone who is utterly indifferent. But I wouldn't call that pole‘fictional”

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
To my understanding, we will never find evidence that God exists

So why bother introducing this entity into discourse in the first place?

Because of a sense that as cognitive beings, we are not in charge of the world, rather we are part way up a chain of being.

Calilasseia wrote:
We don't introduce fairies into discourse with respect to observable phenomena, we don't introduce unicorns, we don't introduce a whole host of other merely asserted entities into discourse, and claim that they're necessary to make the world run, so why should we do the same with a mythological magic man?

We don’t have a sense that we might be owned by unicorns or fairies. I don’t see God as a magic man.

Calilasseia wrote:
The only time those of us interested in substantive knowledge, bother with merely asserted entities, is for pedagogical purposes, in order to demonstrate how unsupported assertions are useless as a source of that substantive knowledge. Because those assertions will forever retain the status "truth value unknown", which you've just admitted to be the case with the assertion

Like many religious people I am interested in substantive knowledge’ for example, that the australopiths lacked fangs.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Belief comes from something like an intuition.

No it doesn't, it comes from treating unsupported assertions as fact. That's what belief is, which is why the rest of us here simply don't bother with it.

I admit that historically, Christians have treated unsupported assertions as fact; for example, the Noah flood. Then when it became clear(from defeat of the Neptunists)| that there had never been a global flood covering all the earth, that caused a trauma in Christian belief. Western ex-Christian atheism is a fission product of that traumatic impact. But if one looks appreciatively at the image of the Ark in a vast sea with no land in sight and with all the animals dependent of Noah, it seems to speak to the human condition as we understand it today ; the story is numinous. Maybe some Eastern religions don’t rely on mythical narrative so much but I find myself stuck with the Western spiritual tradition; it is the problem of my generation.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

I’m not [treating mythical narrative assertions as fact].

So why are you wittering on about "atheist ideology" in that case,? Why are you erecting a… caricature of the business of NOT treating unsupported assertions as fact, and misrepresenting this as being puportedly "symmetric" with the business of treating unsupported assertions as fact, when they're the exact opposite[/b?]

There might indeed by no pole in what we can’t experiment with but the ideology would still exist as a visioning of the world that makes atheists feel comfortable.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

You are applying three things to me that I reject; supernaturalism, belief in a “magic man” and divine intervention.

So [b]why …are you complaining about atheists DOING EXACTLY THE SAME AS YOU IN THIS INSTANCE,?

I’m complaining about you attributing to me three things that I reject. I have no problem with atheists rejecting the same things; I was an atheist myself for many years and I don’t reject that experience entirely. I just came to appreciate the damage that atheist ideology had done to the understanding and presentation of evolution and to see that atheists placed the speaking aspect of the person above everything else, including other aspects of the personality and the world.

Calilasseia wrote:
The existence assertion is precisely that - an assertion that a given entity exists, end of story. That assertion, by itself, says nothing else about the entity in question. If, however, one subsequently asserts that this entity interacts with the rest of the observable, physical universe, then this is a different assertion. It's a different assertion by definition, because it erects a different claim about the entity in question. I know supernaturalists have a habit of conflating different assertions, because they're so used to treating all of the requisite assertions as purportedly constituting The TruthTM, but since you've just asserted here that you're not a supernaturalist, why …are you behaving like one?

I’m a fellow traveller with supernaturalists of various flavours including many of my fellow Christians and Christian fundamentalists. I have no religious quarrel with them but you should ask them.

Calilasseia wrote:
But there's a problem here ,... namely that the mythology you subscribe to explicitly asserts that the magic man in question is purportedly capable of telling the laws of physics to go and take a hike, whenever it happens to be administratively convenient. The whole "global flood" fantasy being a case in point. But of course, this happens to be another testable assertion, because one of the corollaries of that assertion, is that there would not exist any genuine laws of physics at all, in a world where that assertion was true. Indeed, it would be impossible to conduct science as we know it, in a universe subject to said whim and caprice. Which in turn tells us something important about the likely status of that assertion.

Newton and many others managed to do effective science while believing in a supreme being. The Wikipedia entry on Logos tells how the Christian God is sometimes identified with the World in its logical working. The scientific experimental method was largely a product of Western Christian societies.
My take on magic, supernaturalism and naturalism is that the natural world is creative and there is a mystery about what the agency of this creativity is.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:It may be atheist ideology that rejects the notion of hierarchy, not science.

…Science doesn't "reject" the idea of hierarchies altogether,… , it merely regards the scala natura as what it is, a grand exercise in anthropocentric conceit.

A hundred years ago it would have been easy to call the Great Chain of Being an anthropocentric conceit but not today, where the most important thing to appreciate about the world is that we are in charge here, incompetently. We are driving Dad’s car, its going faster and faster the harder we press on the pedal but we can’t manage the steering wheel or see the road ahead from our low seat..

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:You can read Creeds as tools to enforce or test adherence to doctrine, again, they are about boundaries and pretty useless as a practical starting point for analysing the nature of Christianity or Christians.

But surely the whole point of any religion, is that adherents treat its central assertions as fact? If they don't, then they're not adherents thereof by definition.

One can, of course, adopt a positive view of a given religion, without treating all of its central assertions as fact, but that doesn't make one an adherent. Adherence is defined by whether or not one treats certain central assertions as fact. And its quite hilarious seeing you trying to portray atheist suspicion of this process as purportedly constituting an "ideology".

As I see it, atheist ideology is about positioning part of the human personality above everything else, your attempt to apply “rigorous formulation” to defining any social group isn’t part of that atheist ideology, it’s just your argument.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: The deep problem with your approach [of rigorous formulation] is that it doesn’t make use of time. It doesn’t see Christianity (or atheism) as a shared belief that developed over time. There is no evolutionary sensibility in.

Hilarious to see you, a rejector of evolution, post this.

I accept Darwin’s laws of variation, inheritance and selection as giving populations mobility to adapt but I see those as inadequate; large biomes are creative and we are no more than spectators of that. So I don’t reject evolution, | just look forward to its collapsing into paleontological narrative from the current endless demonstrations of the truth of the theory.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:.

Jayjay4547 wrote:To understand something of Christianity one needs to see it as a social movement existing in time.

So you're saying that the doctrinal assertions of the requisite mythology don't count? You'll find yourself on very shaky ground with that assertion if so, and almost certainly branded as a heretic by several major denominations if you take that position.

When I was in junior high boarding school and obliged for the first time to go to Anglican Church every week, it struck me that almost every sentence of the Nicene Creed was untrue. That didn’t stop me from choosing to be baptised in the Anglican Church. So for me it didn’t count.

During that baptism, were you asked at any time, to accept certain core assertions as fact? Because I'm pretty damn sure you were, having seen a good few Anglican baptisms in my time. Though most of those involved children, and declarations on the part of the surrounding adults rather than the children themselves, the preferred term here in England for a service in which the adherent is asked to provide declarations of commitment to faith being confirmation, which I suspect, given your brief description above, is somewhat closer to what you underwent. Of course, there are regional variations in practice across the globe, so it's entirely possible that the service you attended was given the title of 'baptism', whilst more properly taking on the form of confirmation. If you were asked to provide declarations of faith and commitment in the service, it was more properly a confirmation. I suspect that the procedure in Catholic churches is not significantly different, something that would not surprise me, given how the Anglican church inherited much from the Roman Catholic church, despite breaking from it.

I’ve been baptised and confirmed as an Anglican, in two ceremonies many years apart..In neither of those services was I asked to accept certain core assertions as fact. It seems you misheard. Baptism of adults is preceded by the admission of Catechumens when we affirm that we seek life in Christ,-to want to know the one true and living God, to love, obey and serve him, to be further instructed in the faith of Christ and to renounce the devil and every form of evil . At baptism the adult is asked whether he believes and trusts in God the Father who made the world, in his Son Jesus Christ who redeemed mankind and in the Holy spirit who gives life to the people of God, and promises to live in obedience to Gods laws, as a loyal member of his Church.
Confirmation is preceded by a course of teaching that for me, consisted of a series of talks built around a book called “Following God”. I’m sorry that I wasn’t made to memorise the 144 verses of the Anglican catechism, that includes reciting the Apostles Creed, knowing that the Nicene Creed is recited during the Eucharist service and knowing of the Athanasian Creed as an ancient document proclaiming the nature of the incarnation and of God as Trinity. Those 144 verses seem to me to be the most profound spiritual tools produced in English.

To explain what I mean by “spiritual tool”, Another example of an English-produced spiritual tool is the 14th Century anonymous contemplative advice, to “press oneself into the Cloud of Unknowing” (seeWikipedia). These tools are useless when looking down at that part of the world we can experiment with, they are for looking upwards, they are integrative and intuitive. And the “rigorous formulation” of the Creeds are not used to sort out who believes from who doesn’t. it is used to feed those who already do believe.

So although when I first experienced the Nicene Creed at the age of 12, as a collection of untrue statements, I now see it as a precious spiritual tool, a yoghurt plant that grows in my soul. I envy fundamentalists who don’t need to do any gymnastics with belief – but then they face other aspects of the conceptual chasm running through western society.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:And in my bible study group, we don’t concern ourselves with doctrinal assertions; we look to how to build our comprehension in terms of agreement and friendship.

But at bottom, … there are still core assertions that you treat as constituting the foundations of the religion you adhere to. As a corollary, even if you're not overly concerned with those core assertions, because everyone there implicitly regards said core assertions as being in place and mutually agreed upon, they're still present. Only one of the more hilarious aspects of the history of the Christian religion, is the manner in which it has undergone schisms over far more peripheral assertions.

I am concerned about core assertions, for example the Virgin birth of Christ, as profound elements of our relation with what is greater than us; as the ways my ancestors painted the ceiling of their understanding of the world. So I’m not content with apologetics that Mary was actually just embarrassingly pregnant by some unknown youth; the canonical story is important. Indeed various sects have divided over more peripheral assertions but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Here's a clue for you JayJay ... presenting the evidence that you yourself have made available, isn't "traducing". Do learn this elementary concept before posting even more derisory posts.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
As I see it, atheist ideology is about positioning part of the human personality above everything else, your attempt to apply “rigorous formulation” to defining any social group isn’t part of that atheist ideology, it’s just your argument.

Which part of the "human personality" would that be?
And what do you mean "above everything else?"

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
As I see it, atheist ideology is about positioning part of the human personality above everything else, your attempt to apply “rigorous formulation” to defining any social group isn’t part of that atheist ideology, it’s just your argument.

Which part of the "human personality" would that be?
And what do you mean "above everything else?"

Does it matter?
It fails either way since atheism has nothing to do with human personality.
It's not a positive claim, it cannot be the basis for any ideology any more than not collecting stamps be.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
Does it matter?

Only for the purposes of being entertained by whatever ridiculous conceit JayJay spews forth next.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:It fails either way since atheism has nothing to do with human personality.
It's not a positive claim, it cannot be the basis for any ideology any more than not collecting stamps be.

I know that. You know that. But, JayJay falls into the "wah, wah, atheism doesn't mean what I want it to camp" and I just wanted some lulz by seeing him trip over that.

Why do you try to deny me my lulz?

Sendraks wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
Does it matter?

Only for the purposes of being entertained by whatever ridiculous conceit JayJay spews forth next.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:It fails either way since atheism has nothing to do with human personality.
It's not a positive claim, it cannot be the basis for any ideology any more than not collecting stamps be.

I know that. You know that. But, JayJay falls into the "wah, wah, atheism doesn't mean what I want it to camp" and I just wanted some lulz by seeing him trip over that.

Why do you try to deny me my lulz?

Sorry bit cynical this week due to enrollment problems.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I’ve been doing the same thing for more than twelve years, including some time on RichardDawkins.Net where I first met you. My point isn’t exactly about force-fitting data but rather about selectively ignoring data to build a narrative of self-creation.

Which is arsewater. As has been pointed out to you repeatedly.
Scientist have no interest in creating a story of selfcreation.
There is no such story in evolutionary theory, nor history.
It's a complete fabrication on your part in a desperate attempt to discredit atheism/science.

Does belief in god damage the DLPFC????

Zhu, L., et al. (2014). "Damage to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex affects tradeoffs between honesty and self-interest." Nat Neurosci advance online publication.

Substantial correlational evidence suggests that prefrontal regions are critical to honest and dishonest behavior, but causal evidence specifying the nature of this involvement remains absent. We found that lesions of the human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) decreased the effect of honesty concerns on behavior in economic games that pit honesty motives against self-interest, but did not affect decisions when honesty concerns were absent. These results point to a causal role for DLPFC in honest behavior.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn.3798
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 114230.htm

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
As I see it, atheist ideology is about positioning part of the human personality above everything else, your attempt to apply “rigorous formulation” to defining any social group isn’t part of that atheist ideology, it’s just your argument.

Which part of the "human personality" would that be?

The dreaming part. In my experience on this forum, atheists characteristically treat dreams slightingly or make out that dreams are under control of the waking speaker. That part of the personality is what is privileged in atheism. It is the rational part of the personality, the part that can in the limit become autism.
The dreaming part of the personality might be connected to the muses, inspiration, to our connections with community and in religious terms, with Pneuma, The Holy Spirit and God.

Sendraks wrote:And what do you mean "above everything else?"

Well I meant to include other parts of the personality as above, but also other parts of the supposedly exterior world, society and nature. The “god of the gaps” notion supposes that the rationalist expands his knowledge in all directions, leaving gaps that will be soon be filled in. If there is less deep penetration in the direction of society and ecology, that is held to be because of their complexity not because the observer is an embedded partisan created and owned by these systems.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
As I see it, atheist ideology is about positioning part of the human personality above everything else, your attempt to apply “rigorous formulation” to defining any social group isn’t part of that atheist ideology, it’s just your argument.

Which part of the "human personality" would that be?

The dreaming part. In my experience on this forum, atheists characteristically treat dreams slightingly

If they are used as evidence of something beyond the existence of dreams, of course they are.

Jayjay4547 wrote:or make out that dreams are under control of the waking speaker.

For some people, myself included, they often, largely are.

Jayjay4547 wrote: That part of the personality is what is privileged in atheism.

Stop lying Jayjay.
Atheism is the absence of belief in gods. Nothing more. It has nothing to do with personality.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It is the rational part of the personality, the part that can in the limit become autism.

Word salad.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The dreaming part of the personality might be connected to the muses, inspiration, to our connections with community and in religious terms, with Pneuma, The Holy Spirit and God.

Wibbeldy, wibbedly, woo.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
As I see it, atheist ideology is about positioning part of the human personality above everything else, your attempt to apply “rigorous formulation” to defining any social group isn’t part of that atheist ideology, it’s just your argument.

Which part of the "human personality" would that be?

The dreaming part. In my experience on this forum, atheists characteristically treat dreams slightingly or make out that dreams are under control of the waking speaker.

You're making no sense here - you seem to be saying that atheists both dismiss dreams as unimportant while positioning them above everything else.

Even assuming that you simply got the wrong end of the stick and that you really are saying that atheists dismiss dreams as unimportant, I don't remember ever seeing anyone here say [sleep] dreams are unimportant (in the sense of dreams together with the sleep processes which give rise to them playing no useful part in brain operation), or that they are typically under conscious control for most people (or for most atheists).
Some people may well be able to be partly-awake while dreaming and have some amount of control, though clearly there are potential issues there with regard to memory, since it might be expected that someone who could be partly-awake for some dreams might be much more likely to remember those dreams than other dreams, so their impression of how much of their dreaming is in a state of at least semi-conscious control might be expected to be naturally unrepresentative of reality.

As far as atheism goes, all one could sensibly say is that atheists are as unlikely to see dreams as being special connections with a deity as to see them as being special connections with Bilbo Baggins.

For the sake of any other readers out there as chronically obtuse as jayjay on this issue, that's simply *another* restatement of the single thing atheism is.

If someone has no belief in deities existing it is not logically possible for them to explain anything in the world as being the product of divine activity.
That's not something extra on top of a lack of belief in deities or an 'extra consequence' of being an atheist, and it's not part of an 'ideology', it's just what a lack of belief in deities is.

Dreams do seem to be an important part of sleep, but sane people don't tend to see them as prophetic, or being some special path to Deep Insight however real the dreams may seem to be at the time.
Sure, it's possible that sometimes dreams dredge up some idea or memory which is useful and which one can remember, but to me that's not an example of Deep Spiritual Insight, but an example of dreams-as-brainstorming, with the important/skilled part being the more rational process which recognises a glint of gold in a passing stream of nonsense.

If there's any divine being behind my dreams, they must be strangely interested in the minutiae of my daily life, as well as being in need of some kind of therapy, since my dreams are classic examples of a mind free-running with the common sense and consistency-checking turned off - one instant I'm about to get into a car, the next I'm inside but it's a plane, then I'm with a group of people who keep changing into different people and changing in number for no sensible reason

Jayjay4547 wrote:That part of the personality is what is privileged in atheism. It is the rational part of the personality, the part that can in the limit become autism.

I think you'll find that being unable to tell dreams and reality apart is one of the classic characteristics of mental illness.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The dreaming part of the personality might be connected to the muses, inspiration, to our connections with community and in religious terms, with Pneuma, The Holy Spirit and God.

See above.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Sendraks wrote:And what do you mean "above everything else?"

Well I meant to include other parts of the personality as above, but also other parts of the supposedly exterior world, society and nature. The “god of the gaps” notion supposes that the rationalist expands his knowledge in all directions, leaving gaps that will be soon be filled in..

Not really, it simply acknowledges that there are gaps, and that those gaps are the only places people can really claim that gods might exist without automatically looking retarded, which is why concepts of deities and their interactions tend to retreat with the advance of knowledge.
It says nothing about expected timescales.

Jayjay4547 wrote:If there is less deep penetration in the direction of society and ecology, that is held to be because of their complexity not because the observer is an embedded partisan created and owned by these systems.

You've consistently failed to even try to defend your idea of 'embeddedness' as some intrinsic barrier to understanding, you just cling to it like a tired mantra.
What kinds of things, for example, would a human be inherently unable to comprehend about the ecology of Earth which an alien observer of similar intelligence would have no such problems with?

I'm still none the wiser.

What the fuck has dreaming got to do with atheism?

About the only connection seems to be that it is something else that jayjay is (or dishonestly pretends to be) quite clueless about, and where he's keen to make sweeping pronouncements about what atheists in general think on the basis of apparent ignorance combined with deeply biased interpretations of what a handful of people might have said.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
As I see it, atheist ideology is about positioning part of the human personality above everything else…In my experience on this forum, atheists characteristically treat dreams slightingly or make out that dreams are under control of the waking speaker.

tolman wrote:
I don't remember ever seeing anyone here say [sleep] dreams are unimportant (in the sense of dreams together with the sleep processes which give rise to them playing no useful part in brain operation), or that they are typically under conscious control for most people (or for most atheists).

Some people may well be able to be partly-awake while dreaming and have some amount of control, though clearly there are potential issues there with regard to memory, since it might be expected that someone who could be partly-awake for some dreams might be much more likely to remember those dreams than other dreams, so their impression of how much of their dreaming is in a state of at least semi-conscious control might be expected to be naturally unrepresentative of reality.

As far as atheism goes, all one could sensibly say is that atheists are as unlikely to see dreams as being special connections with a deity as to see them as being special connections with Bilbo Baggins.

For the sake of any other readers out there as chronically obtuse as jayjay on this issue, that's simply *another* restatement of the single thing atheism is.
If someone has no belief in deities existing it is not logically possible for them to explain anything in the world as being the product of divine activity.
That's not something extra on top of a lack of belief in deities or an 'extra consequence' of being an atheist, and it's not part of an 'ideology', it's just what a lack of belief in deities is.

I’m not obtuse. An atheist could see dreams like a movie that “he” (cogito) is usually a spectator of. He doesn’t have to see them as directed by a deity. Everyone can agree that dreams often seem trivial. I’m claiming that atheists characteristically go further than that, to place cogito above the dreamer in all circumstances.

Incidentally it’s also characteristic of atheists and also unhelpful, to equate God (a greater entity) to some trivial entity; Bilbo Baggins or the spaghetti monster.

tolman wrote:
Dreams do seem to be an important part of sleep, but sane people don't tend to see them as prophetic, or being some special path to Deep Insight however real the dreams may seem to be at the time.
Sure, it's possible that sometimes dreams dredge up some idea or memory which is useful and which one can remember, but to me that's not an example of Deep Spiritual Insight, but an example of dreams-as-brainstorming, with the important/skilled part being the more rational process which recognises a glint of gold in a passing stream of nonsense.

If there's any divine being behind my dreams, they must be strangely interested in the minutiae of my daily life, as well as being in need of some kind of therapy, since my dreams are classic examples of a mind free-running with the common sense and consistency-checking turned off - one instant I'm about to get into a car, the next I'm inside but it's a plane, then I'm with a group of people who keep changing into different people and changing in number for no sensible reason

You have demonstrated the truth of my claim about the characteristic ways that atheists see dreams, by your treating dreams slightingly and also making out that they are under control of the waking speaker, both by being sometimes steerable and as being filtered by the ”more rational” process. Theoretically without abandoning atheism, you could have admitted that while dreams are mostly not remembered and sometimes they can be steered, those that make a lasting impression are notably unexpected and assert themselves through their own power.

tolman wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:That part of the personality is what is privileged in atheism. It is the rational part of the personality, the part that can in the limit become autism.

I think you'll find that being unable to tell dreams and reality apart is one of the classic characteristics of mental illness.

Is that so? Maybe it is, if you give a reference we can discuss it further. I was working on a hunch to associate atheism with autism but Google did throw up some links on that, here is an interesting one:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2039690/Atheism-autism-Controversial-new-study-points-link-two.html

Jayjay4547 wrote:

tolman wrote:

Sendraks wrote:And what do you mean "above everything else?"

Well I meant to include other parts of the personality as above, but also other parts of the supposedly exterior world, society and nature. The “god of the gaps” notion supposes that the rationalist expands his knowledge in all directions, leaving gaps that will be soon be filled in..

Not really, it simply acknowledges that there are gaps, and that those gaps are the only places people can really claim that gods might exist without automatically looking retarded, which is why concepts of deities and their interactions tend to retreat with the advance of knowledge.
It says nothing about expected timescales.

I Claim that rather than gaps between fingers of knowledge, there is a front that inhibits deep scientific understanding and that is the front between the sciences and the humanities; between what we can experiment with and what we are are embedded in.

tolman wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:If there is less deep penetration in the direction of society and ecology, that is held to be because of their complexity not because the observer is an embedded partisan created and owned by these systems.

You've consistently failed to even try to defend your idea of 'embeddedness' as some intrinsic barrier to understanding, you just cling to it like a tired mantra.

I’m always happy to discuss the notion of embeddedness. Again, the human observer can be objective about certain parts of the world and partisan about others; he can own one part, but belong to the other. He can create within one, and is created by the other.

tolman wrote:
What kinds of things, for example, would a human be inherently unable to comprehend about the ecology of Earth which an alien observer of similar intelligence would have no such problems with?

If this were a sentient being with an equivalent level of development, miraculously brought here then I guess he would be embedded as we are. If the alien came here under his own steam, he would likely bring a wealth of experience of what happened on other planets like ours and be embedded at a higher level than we are.

But we don’t need such an esoteric thought experiment. As we are carried along by the stream of time, embedded in creative social and ecological systems, we have plenty of practical experience showing that although the future is grossly unpredictable and although we might tell ourselves that it’s unpredictable because its complex, yet we have no problem in explaining what has already happened in terms of cause and effect. We are inherently unable to comprehend the ecology of future Earth. Lovelock predicts than in a hundred years civilisation will be destroyed and only a few tribes will persist in the arctic. Others say hardly anything will be different. You probably have some partisan position on that as I do. I fear we are coming to a fatal choice between enslaving the planet (so becoming ourselves slaves of the devil) and learning again to be its children (and so again children of God). But in a hundred years a child will be able to explain what is now to us so obscure.

Edit: make last choice point clearer

Edit: make last choice point clearer

Please try again.

I fear we are coming to a fatal choice between enslaving the planet (so becoming ourselves slaves of the devil) and learning again to be its children (and so again children of God).

What? How do we enslave the planet? I am really trying to understand what you are trying to say here.

Coastal wrote:
What? How do we enslave the planet? I am really trying to understand what you are trying to say here.

Apparently JayJay thinks atheists are trying to enslave the planet, although he presents neither evidence for this happening or indeed any reasons as to why atheists would want to do this.

Meanwhile, dem "gud auld gawd feerin boys" from the Republican Party and their ilk around the globe, continue to perpetuate in planet rape wherever the opportunity presents itself.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
As I see it, atheist ideology is about positioning part of the human personality above everything else…In my experience on this forum, atheists characteristically treat dreams slightingly or make out that dreams are under control of the waking speaker.

tolman wrote:
I don't remember ever seeing anyone here say [sleep] dreams are unimportant (in the sense of dreams together with the sleep processes which give rise to them playing no useful part in brain operation), or that they are typically under conscious control for most people (or for most atheists).

Some people may well be able to be partly-awake while dreaming and have some amount of control, though clearly there are potential issues there with regard to memory, since it might be expected that someone who could be partly-awake for some dreams might be much more likely to remember those dreams than other dreams, so their impression of how much of their dreaming is in a state of at least semi-conscious control might be expected to be naturally unrepresentative of reality.

As far as atheism goes, all one could sensibly say is that atheists are as unlikely to see dreams as being special connections with a deity as to see them as being special connections with Bilbo Baggins.

For the sake of any other readers out there as chronically obtuse as jayjay on this issue, that's simply *another* restatement of the single thing atheism is.
If someone has no belief in deities existing it is not logically possible for them to explain anything in the world as being the product of divine activity.
That's not something extra on top of a lack of belief in deities or an 'extra consequence' of being an atheist, and it's not part of an 'ideology', it's just what a lack of belief in deities is.

I’m not obtuse.

Yes you are being obtuse.
It has been repeatedly explained to you what atheism is, yet you continue to persist trying to attribute all manner of nonsense to it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Incidentally it’s also characteristic of atheists and also unhelpful, to equate God (a greater entity) to some trivial entity; Bilbo Baggins or the spaghetti monster.

Aresewater.
1. This is not shared by all atheists, as you should know by now.
2. It's not comparing god to Bilbo Baggings, it's pointing out the circular reasoning of appealing to the bible as evidence, by making an anology to proving the exitence of Bilbo by appealing to the Hobbit.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a parody religion, yet again an analogy to make clear how vapid most religions are.
That you don't like the analogies doesn't make them objectively unhelpful Jayjay.
Clear appeals to emotion like that won't fly around here.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

tolman wrote:
Dreams do seem to be an important part of sleep, but sane people don't tend to see them as prophetic, or being some special path to Deep Insight however real the dreams may seem to be at the time.
Sure, it's possible that sometimes dreams dredge up some idea or memory which is useful and which one can remember, but to me that's not an example of Deep Spiritual Insight, but an example of dreams-as-brainstorming, with the important/skilled part being the more rational process which recognises a glint of gold in a passing stream of nonsense.

If there's any divine being behind my dreams, they must be strangely interested in the minutiae of my daily life, as well as being in need of some kind of therapy, since my dreams are classic examples of a mind free-running with the common sense and consistency-checking turned off - one instant I'm about to get into a car, the next I'm inside but it's a plane, then I'm with a group of people who keep changing into different people and changing in number for no sensible reason

You have demonstrated the truth of my claim about the characteristic ways that atheists see dreams, by your treating dreams slightingly and also making out that they are under control of the waking speaker, both by being sometimes steerable and as being filtered by the ”more rational” process.

FFS please enroll in logic 101.
One person fitting your stereotype, doesn't prove your stereotype Jayjay.
Again, the only thing all atheists have in common is the lack of belief in gods.
There are probably atheists out there who see dreams as a form of foresight.

Meanwhile tolman has given clear reasons as to why he thinks about dreams the way he does.
Adress and refute them. This pathetic attempt to dismiss it out of hand only reinforces the fact that you have no intention of discussing things honestly.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Theoretically without abandoning atheism, you could have admitted that while dreams are mostly not remembered and sometimes they can be steered, those that make a lasting impression are notably unexpected and assert themselves through their own power.

It's not a theory.
There are very likely atheists who do this, because atheism has nothing to do with dreams!

Jayjay4547 wrote:

tolman wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:That part of the personality is what is privileged in atheism. It is the rational part of the personality, the part that can in the limit become autism.

I think you'll find that being unable to tell dreams and reality apart is one of the classic characteristics of mental illness.

Is that so? Maybe it is, if you give a reference we can discuss it further. I was working on a hunch to associate atheism with autism but Google did throw up some links on that, here is an interesting one:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2039690/Atheism-autism-Controversial-new-study-points-link-two.html

Oh look, the daily fail.
Was there any point you'd like to make?
Did you know that autism is also linked to a higher average intellect?

More bollocks.

JayJay, simply repeating your tiresome and manifestly false assertions about "atheist ideology" and the rest of it, isn't working. No one here who paid attention in the requisite classes, and actually learned something about what it takes to provide genuine support for assertions, treats your posts as anything other than a target for the discoursive minigun. Because all you're providing here is repeat parroting of repeatedly destroyed assertions, and the erection of manifest fabrications to try and prop up those repeatedly destroyed assertions. The level of fail in your posts is quite literally on a cosmic scale.

The idea that scientists are unable to comprehend the ecology of the planet in the future, just one of many blatantly false assertions you've erected above, is laughable. I remember way back in 1981, this book being published, in which the author hypothesised about the possible future inhabitants of Planet Earth 50 million years into the future. Another similar work is this one. A third book devoted to this was reviewed in Nature (a brief description of said review can be found here). Just because the wealth of data makes several options possible, doesn't mean scientists know nothing about those options.

But then you need to misrepresent science in this manner, in order to prop up your own ideology.

Calilasseia wrote:The idea that scientists are unable to comprehend the ecology of the planet in the future, just one of many blatantly false assertions you've erected above, is laughable. I remember way back in 1981, this book being published, in which the author hypothesised about the possible future inhabitants of Planet Earth 50 million years into the future.

Loved that book as a kid!