laklak wrote:"Bully" is a good word for it, given his obvious penchant for child abuse. Hey Bobby, wanna take a swing at someone who can hit back, or you only good for beating little kids with a belt? Just ban this asshole and be done with it, he stinks the place up like a suppurating rat's rectum inside a dead skunk that's been shoved up a week-old dead rhino's twat.

We cannot ban someone for what they have done in the past.

The FUA does not apply to a person's private life unless they make their private life forum material.

In particular, you have violated FUA rule 1.2h which reads:

posting personal information about another member(s) unless it is both publicly available and is relevant to the ongoing discussion.

Whether or not he is a child abuser is irrelevant to this thread and even the forum. Which is why Thwoth wrote that mod note.

So if we can please stop the derails and get back on topic that would be nice. I would rather chase Bob away via intellectual superiority than resort to mudflinging.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:"...further the cause of atheism in biology." What does that mean?

It could imply that Dawkins uses biology to push the notion that there is no god

Yawn. Here we go again with another playing of the same broken record you've been peddling ad nauseam.

Oh wait, when did any mythology fetishist provide any real evidence for his pet magic man? NEVER, that's when. We don't need to point to biology to tell us that made up magic men are precisely that, we only have to point to the abject failure of supernaturalists to deliver something other than the usual apologetic shit sandwiches.

When one of them comes up with real evidence, then it's time to start talking.

As a corollary, your peddling the "further the cause of atheism in biology" bullshit is precisely that, because what biologists do, in case you never read the memo, is point to the data, and demonstrate how said data either supports or refutes a given hypothesis. Biologists don't even bother with the irrelevance of made up magic men, because wait for it, no evidence for the existence of made up magic men has ever been presented.

Jayjay4547 wrote:and that in this instance, his efforts misfired.

Well since you're ascribing to Dawkins something that is almost certainly a figment of your imagination, the above assertion is also null and void.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Seems to me Dawkins does do that and he isn't alone; he is in a tradition going back to Darwin, of using biology as a canvas for developing and presenting an atheist vision of the world.

Oh no, it's the "atheist doctrine" bullshit yet again. Yawn, yawn, fucking yawn. Play another record, JayJay, this one's not only broken, it was reduced to its constituent quarks ages ago.

What part of "NOT introducing superfluous and irrelevant entities isn't a 'doctrine', despite the bleating to this effect by mythology fetishists" do you not understand?

We have the empirical evidence telling us a magic man isn't needed, not only in biology, but in every other scientific discipline that exists. Suck on it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Darwin used it when he said "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars."

Oh, and apparently, the inherent contradiction in a magic entity being purportedly "benevolent", and at the same time, purportedly fabricating organisms whose life cycle involved eating other organisms alive from the inside out, isn't manifest to you? Please explain what definition of "benevolence" bestows consistency upon this? Likewise, what definition of "benevolence" makes guinea worm, river blindness, and dozens of other excruciating afflictions of humans, a product of said "benevolence"?

Jayjay4547 wrote:He was taking an opposite tack to that of Richard Paley so we are all heirs to one or other side of a 19th century forking in the understanding of the world.

Actually, it's William Paley. That you can't even present an elementary fact such as this correctly, speaks volumes about the effects of religious apologetics upon discoursive ability.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The god-believing branch may have withered and the atheist branch has become triumphalist but that is just a fashion.

Er, no. It's game over for imaginary magic men. It doesn't matter how much mythology fetishists bleat and whinge over this, they'll have to suck on it sooner or later. Because, wait for it, every supernaturalist pseudo-explanation for vast classes of observable entities and phenomena, has been tossed into the bin, and replaced with a proper explanation in terms of testable natural processes. This has happened precisely because those natural explanations, unlike wibbling about magic men, were testable, and passed the requisite tests. Something that has never happened to "Magic Man did it".

Game. Fucking. Over.

Jayjay4547 wrote:There’s an implicit challenge in Darwin’s position: if God did do that then Darwin will deny God.

Evidence for this entity? Got some?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Or, if Darwin’s conception of what God should be like

Actually, he wasn't referring to any conception he dreamed up, he was referring to what might be termed the "standard supernaturalist model" within the relevant mythology-based doctrine. Which, as he informs us, the evidence tells us is a crock. Unless of course you can square the apologetic circle, and tell us all how conjuring up Onchocera volvulus into the world, constitutes an act of "benevolence" on the part of this entity.

Jayjay4547 wrote:is something that cannot exist then God cannot exist. Either way it boils down to an assertion about the standing of the human intellect, which in earlier ages was thought to be unhealthy.

Oh this is going to be good ...

Jayjay4547 wrote:It is unhealthy if triumphalism is unhealthy.

Excuse me, but if the FACTS tell us that mythology is a crock of shit, then it doesn't matter how much mythology fetishists whinge and bleat about this, or invent bullshit fantasies about "atheist conspiracies", "atheist ideology" and all the rest of it, in a desperate attempt to put off the day when they have to suck on it, because the FACTS are screaming at them to suck on it, the'll have to suck on it. Just as people who think gravity doesn't exist have to suck on it, especially if they're stupid enough to try jumping off tall buildings in the insane belief that they'll simply float in mid air.

Once again, Jayjay, paying attention to the FACTS isn't "ideology". Suck on it.

willhud9 wrote:

laklak wrote:"Bully" is a good word for it, given his obvious penchant for child abuse. Hey Bobby, wanna take a swing at someone who can hit back, or you only good for beating little kids with a belt? Just ban this asshole and be done with it, he stinks the place up like a suppurating rat's rectum inside a dead skunk that's been shoved up a week-old dead rhino's twat.

We cannot ban someone for what they have done in the past.

The FUA does not apply to a person's private life unless they make their private life forum material.

In particular, you have violated FUA rule 1.2h which reads:

posting personal information about another member(s) unless it is both publicly available and is relevant to the ongoing discussion.

Whether or not he is a child abuser is irrelevant to this thread and even the forum. Which is why Thwoth wrote that mod note.

So if we can please stop the derails and get back on topic that would be nice. I would rather chase Bob away via intellectual superiority than resort to mudflinging.

Remember he's the one promoting his public profile here. He's waving his flag high and proud and is fully aware of how is actions and criminal record are perceived. If you're comfortable ignoring the criminal record and somehow separating it from his character then go ahead and engage in a fruitless, bullying, pretentious, condescending, get-nowhere discussion and attack the ideas. For me it's analogous to having a discussion on women's rights with a serial rapist.

Onyx8 wrote:"...further the cause of atheism in biology." What does that mean?

What do you think? Some biologists are religious, and so there is a cause for atheists to argue for. However, if prominent atheists make mistakes, as Dawkins did with eye biology, then atheism is set back slightly.

willhud9 wrote:
So if we can please stop the derails and get back on topic that would be nice. I would rather chase Bob away via intellectual superiority than resort to mudflinging.

So give me a warning or whatever. This guy's a public figure, so as far as I'm concerned the ordinary rules don't apply. He's on here doing his "Hey there xxxxxxxx" bonhomme bullshit in an utterly transparent effort to raise his street cred by bearding the atheist sinners in their own den. He is everything I fucking despise about evangelical christianity, so maybe I need to just stay off this thread or any other that he posts in. We banned Mick and next to this guy Mick is a fucking sweetheart.

Besides, you'll never chase him off through any intellectual efforts, that will fall on deaf ears. Anyone who swallows that vapid creationist bullshit wouldn't know an intellectual argument if it bit him on the ass. If he isn't mind-numbingly stupid, which he doesn't appear to be, then the only other option is he's a calculating, dishonest, shyster. In either case we don't need him here.

So I'll take my warning and let y'all get on with it.

Edit spelling

I think the pigeon might have flown, although I don't think he managed to knock over a single piece.

laklak wrote:

willhud9 wrote:
So if we can please stop the derails and get back on topic that would be nice. I would rather chase Bob away via intellectual superiority than resort to mudflinging.

So give me a warning or whatever. This guy's a public figure, so as far as I'm concerned the ordinary rules don't apply. He's on here doing his "Hey there xxxxxxxx" bonhomme bullshit in an utterly transparent effort to raise his street cred by bearding the atheist sinners in their own den. He is everything I fucking despise about evangelical christianity, so maybe I need to just stay off this thread or any other that he posts in. We banned Mick and next to this guy Mick is a fucking sweetheart.

And some here on this thread think it was a mistake to ban Mick. What rules has Bob broken? He has not preached as of yet, he has not committed a personal attack, and therefore has done nothing to punish via this forum.

If I had received the same treatment, despite the fact that I was a fundamentalist, evangelical, creationist, I would not be who I am today. Furthermore, just because he may be a well-known figure does not mean he is immune from the protections of the FUA. There is no exception clauses to whom it applies to.

Besides, you'll never chase him off through any intellectual efforts, that will fall on deaf ears. Anyone who swallows that vapid creationist bullshit wouldn't know an intellectual argument if it bit him on the ass. If he isn't mind-numbingly stupid, which he doesn't appear to be, then the only other option is he's a calculating, dishonest, shyster. In either case we don't need him here.

You'll never chase him off with mudflinging either. In fact, he will turn around and use it as ammunition as to why atheists are nothing more than cruel and malicious sinners that cannot hold a rational argument and must resort to ad hom attacks. Again, I would rather take the intellectual high ground than to resort to bullying tactics.

So I'll take my warning and let y'all get on with it.

Edit spelling

I mean whatever floats your boat, but its awfully silly to risk being suspended all to insult a man who claims to be Bob Enyart.

ElDiablo wrote:

willhud9 wrote:

laklak wrote:"Bully" is a good word for it, given his obvious penchant for child abuse. Hey Bobby, wanna take a swing at someone who can hit back, or you only good for beating little kids with a belt? Just ban this asshole and be done with it, he stinks the place up like a suppurating rat's rectum inside a dead skunk that's been shoved up a week-old dead rhino's twat.

We cannot ban someone for what they have done in the past.

The FUA does not apply to a person's private life unless they make their private life forum material.

In particular, you have violated FUA rule 1.2h which reads:

posting personal information about another member(s) unless it is both publicly available and is relevant to the ongoing discussion.

Whether or not he is a child abuser is irrelevant to this thread and even the forum. Which is why Thwoth wrote that mod note.

So if we can please stop the derails and get back on topic that would be nice. I would rather chase Bob away via intellectual superiority than resort to mudflinging.

Remember he's the one promoting his public profile here. He's waving his flag high and proud and is fully aware of how is actions and criminal record are perceived. If you're comfortable ignoring the criminal record and somehow separating it from his character then go ahead and engage in a fruitless, bullying, pretentious, condescending, get-nowhere discussion and attack the ideas. For me it's analogous to having a discussion on women's rights with a serial rapist.

Um? He simply said this is who I am. He was not waving anything until someone brought up his wiki page. His character is also meaningless to be on this forum. There are members here whom I think are inconsiderate jerks from the things they have said they have done. That does not mean I go ahead and fling mud at them when posting.

And again, it is the intellectual high ground. I have no desire to resort to ad hom fallacies just to make a point. That is intellectually lazy as well as unethical.

DavidMcC wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:"...further the cause of atheism in biology." What does that mean?

What do you think? Some biologists are religious, and so there is a cause for atheists to argue for. However, if prominent atheists make mistakes, as Dawkins did with eye biology, then atheism is set back slightly.

What has atheism got to do with any kind of biology, let alone eye biology?

willhud9 wrote:

ElDiablo wrote:

willhud9 wrote:

laklak wrote:"Bully" is a good word for it, given his obvious penchant for child abuse. Hey Bobby, wanna take a swing at someone who can hit back, or you only good for beating little kids with a belt? Just ban this asshole and be done with it, he stinks the place up like a suppurating rat's rectum inside a dead skunk that's been shoved up a week-old dead rhino's twat.

We cannot ban someone for what they have done in the past.

The FUA does not apply to a person's private life unless they make their private life forum material.

In particular, you have violated FUA rule 1.2h which reads:

posting personal information about another member(s) unless it is both publicly available and is relevant to the ongoing discussion.

Whether or not he is a child abuser is irrelevant to this thread and even the forum. Which is why Thwoth wrote that mod note.

So if we can please stop the derails and get back on topic that would be nice. I would rather chase Bob away via intellectual superiority than resort to mudflinging.

Remember he's the one promoting his public profile here. He's waving his flag high and proud and is fully aware of how is actions and criminal record are perceived. If you're comfortable ignoring the criminal record and somehow separating it from his character then go ahead and engage in a fruitless, bullying, pretentious, condescending, get-nowhere discussion and attack the ideas. For me it's analogous to having a discussion on women's rights with a serial rapist.

Um? He simply said this is who I am. He was not waving anything until someone brought up his wiki page. His character is also meaningless to be on this forum. There are members here whom I think are inconsiderate jerks from the things they have said they have done. That does not mean I go ahead and fling mud at them when posting.

And again, it is the intellectual high ground. I have no desire to resort to ad hom fallacies just to make a point. That is intellectually lazy as well as unethical.

To me, the high road for this specific member with his specific history (which I find atrocious) is to tell him to go pedal his shit elsewhere.

DavidMcC wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:"...further the cause of atheism in biology." What does that mean?

What do you think? Some biologists are religious, and so there is a cause for atheists to argue for. However, if prominent atheists make mistakes, as Dawkins did with eye biology, then atheism is set back slightly.

What do I think? Well, I didn't know, that is why I asked.

Why is atheism set back slightly if a biologist makes a mistake about biology? How can 'atheism' be set back slightly? Did someone start believing in a god somewhere because Dawkins made an error?

redwhine wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:"...further the cause of atheism in biology." What does that mean?

What do you think? Some biologists are religious, and so there is a cause for atheists to argue for. However, if prominent atheists make mistakes, as Dawkins did with eye biology, then atheism is set back slightly.

What has atheism got to do with any kind of biology, let alone eye biology?

Evolution. Eye evolution was an issue played up by creationists, who claim that it requires a god to arrange for something as complex as an eye to be created. Dawkins' answer to them was poor, because it was based on bad evolutionary biology.

Onyx8 wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:"...further the cause of atheism in biology." What does that mean?

What do you think? Some biologists are religious, and so there is a cause for atheists to argue for. However, if prominent atheists make mistakes, as Dawkins did with eye biology, then atheism is set back slightly.

What do I think? Well, I didn't know, that is why I asked.

Why is atheism set back slightly if a biologist makes a mistake about biology? How can 'atheism' be set back slightly? Did someone start believing in a god somewhere because Dawkins made an error?

In a sense, yes, if the public debates between atheists and theists are of any significance at all.
If atheist arguments are seen to be wrong, then fewer boreder-line religious people will be prepared to abandon their god i favour of atheism.

Well I certainly hope he doesn't make any more mistakes, I would hate to start believing in gods.

redwhine wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:"...further the cause of atheism in biology." What does that mean?

What do you think? Some biologists are religious, and so there is a cause for atheists to argue for. However, if prominent atheists make mistakes, as Dawkins did with eye biology, then atheism is set back slightly.

What has atheism got to do with any kind of biology, let alone eye biology?

DavidMcC has always had a bee in his bonnet about the inverted retina being used as an example of bad design. I suppose that atheists do use this argument against creationism thus supporting the atheist argument against gods being involved in the design process could be seen to "further the atheist cause". However, using "atheism in biology" is at least a peculiar turn of phrase if not downright misrepresentative as countering the assertion of "design in biology" is not strictly an atheistic pastime as I would suggest that most people who actually understand biology and it's evolutionary underpinnings would be up for countering this assertion even though they may not be atheists.

Of course evolution has produced an extremely marvellous kludge and you can marvel at the way in which the eye functions so well in this strange configuration. However, to go so far as to suggest that Dawkins made a mistake with the biology of the eye is just wandering straight into the creationist's playing field.

Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:

crank wrote:The octopus has the circuitry on the backside, so does that mean that there must be a deficiency in that design?

Hi Crank, and others here at RS. Thanks for the welcome. ADParker, hi! Yeah, like everyone, my life is hectic and I already participate in various forums (which makes the time pressures really insane). I hope to reply to a couple other posts (which I haven't read yet but am eager to).

Crank, consider that the octopus and we humans have different functional requirements. When someone takes our photograph using flash photography, we've all noticed that we can't see well for a second or so. This is directly related to the "wiring" of our retinas. After the intense light of a flashbulb, your body needs to regenerate your photoreceptor cells. (Well, like the OPer, I'm not an expert in eyes either, so without looking up the terminology, I might get the vocabulary or a detail wrong, but I'm confident that the concept is correct.) An octopus doesn't have much of a chance of grabbing a quick look at the sun. And that's good for the octopus, because it doesn't have that direct blood supply on the side of its retina that it would need to rapidly regenerate those cells. So that octopus might be blind for an hour or more while its body struggled to transport to the receptors the nutrients needed for their regeneration.

We humans have both 1) an upright posture which causes us to gaze over the horizon without even trying, and we have 2) a mind that often brings us to override basic instincts, so that while we are wired to breathe, eat, to not stare at the sun, etc., humans can (and sadly, many have) overrode such an instinct and indeed, stared at the sun. If they do so for just an instant, they may loose their sight, but only for a second or so while the rich blood supply to the photoreceptor-cells side of the retina provides the nutrients for their rapid regeneration. If our retinas were wired like an octopus, that momentary blindness that we've all experienced, by necessity, would last longer, because the rich blood supply used for that regeneration would not be directly available. Blindness for minutes or hours after glancing at the sun might be sufficient to bring about a functional tradeoff of a blind spot, which most people are unaware of and we have to work to notice, as compared to a vulnerability, intermittent temporary blindness, which could even lead to death.

So Crank, with the engineering tradeoffs that are common in a physical universe, one can see that the functional spec of an octopus eye could call for wiring it in the opposite way of a human eye, without either being considered a deficiency.

- Bob Enyart

You're starting from a conclusion and then trying to 'explain' everything else so that it fits that conclusion.
Engineering, at least in the concious sense, isn't common in the physical universe.
The only example we know of are monkeys and maybe 1 or 2 other species.

DavidMcC wrote:

redwhine wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:"...further the cause of atheism in biology." What does that mean?

What do you think? Some biologists are religious, and so there is a cause for atheists to argue for. However, if prominent atheists make mistakes, as Dawkins did with eye biology, then atheism is set back slightly.

What has atheism got to do with any kind of biology, let alone eye biology?

Evolution. Eye evolution was an issue played up by creationists, who claim that it requires a god to arrange for something as complex as an eye to be created. Dawkins' answer to them was poor, because it was based on bad evolutionary biology.

What has that got to do with atheism?

Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:Hello THWOTH! Yes, there are plenty of writings from creationists, and evolutionists, that explain the vital role that bacteria play in a typical multicellular organism's cycle of life as indeed in the world's entire interrelated ecosystem. So you ask "from a creationist... justifications as to why [God] made human survival necessarily dependent on bacteria." Our physical life is dependent upon algae and phytoplankton in the oceans producing oxygen, on much of the plant kingdom in fact and its photosynthesis, etc. A robust economy has redundant services provided by a multitude of farmers and miners, redundant manufacturers and distribution systems, etc., whereas a vulnerable economy can have many points of failure where removal of one service devastates the whole enterprise. Likewise, a robust ecosystem has many redundancies in services provided by a million species. Likewise, the reliability of your heart to beat millions of times is linked to the fact that it is made out of hundreds of millions of cells that exist to do nothing other than contract and expand, so far superior to a car's engine, the "cardiac cathedral" has billions of machines (literally, billions, of discrete molecular machines) which exist to keep that organ beating. Likewise, bacteria in your body, like in your appendix, intestines, everywhere, perform vital functions. That's the justification. Bacteria are a vital part of the circle of life and because they are microscopic, they can pull their load and work, by the quadrillions per human being, as with our blind spot, without usually even being noticed.



THWOTH, you ask about creationists:

THWOTH wrote:...have they not stopped and asked themselves why <nominated supernatural agent> would give humans an eye inferior in every regard to that of the mantis shrimp, for example?

The mantis shrimp can generate enough heat (hotter than the sun) to stun or kill its prey, while preserving its own life long enough to enjoy the meal. Other functional requirements for that shrimp included a vision system to operate underwater in murky environments. A bloodhound has a huge snout and hundreds of millions of sense receptors (we have, what, a few million?) and two olfactory passages to its brain (whereas we have one, if I recall correctly) and a huge proportion of its brain dedicated to deciphering, per millisecond, the gigabits of incoming data from all that hardware (so to speak). So, there's a design tradeoff. The human anatomy could have been designed with a big nose, but then what proportion of our brain circuitry would you be willing to trade off for better smell? (I wonder if Dawkins would be willing to trade his blind spot for intermittent temporary blindness?) I seem to recall that a falcon's brain, and a bloodhound's, each have an enormous portion dedicated to processing their incoming vision and olfactory inputs, respectively. Most of us, I presume, enjoy our advantage of being able to ponder such matters, rather than simply being able to smell them.



Thanks THOTH for bringing up functional issues like the role of bacteria in a complex ecosystem and the various biological niche tradeoffs evident in anatomy.

Talk about cherry picking.
How about all those bacteria that are harmfull to human beings and indeed most animal and/or plant life on the planet?
What about organs that serve no useful functions and in some cases can even lead to life threatening situations?

halucigenia wrote:

redwhine wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:"...further the cause of atheism in biology." What does that mean?

What do you think? Some biologists are religious, and so there is a cause for atheists to argue for. However, if prominent atheists make mistakes, as Dawkins did with eye biology, then atheism is set back slightly.

What has atheism got to do with any kind of biology, let alone eye biology?

DavidMcC has always had a bee in his bonnet about the inverted retina being used as an example of bad design. I suppose that atheists do use this argument against creationism thus supporting the atheist argument against gods being involved in the design process could be seen to "further the atheist cause". However, using "atheism in biology" is at least a peculiar turn of phrase if not downright misrepresentative as countering the assertion of "design in biology" is not strictly an atheistic pastime as I would suggest that most people who actually understand biology and it's evolutionary underpinnings would be up for countering this assertion even though they may not be atheists.

Of course evolution has produced an extremely marvellous kludge and you can marvel at the way in which the eye functions so well in this strange configuration. However, to go so far as to suggest that Dawkins made a mistake with the biology of the eye is just wandering straight into the creationist's playing field.

Atheism is a lack of belief in god/s.

I do not understand the relevance of your reply.

Has peanut butter and the 2nd law come up yet?