Richard Dawkins is the Bible's most well-known populariser for chemists and evolutionists. Here is one of many examples. Dawkins fervently believes that some lucky chemicals have souls. He shows how one such chemical, "the gene", can escape death by resurrecting its soul or identity. He says

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

Here Dawkins explains to us, through a scientific fact, that because genes are chemically connected they can travel across generations, escaping chemical degradation following the death of the individual person or generation that carries them. It annoys many Christians that Dawkins should promote chemical souls over and above people's souls, but that is Dawkins prerogative as a scientist.

[/thread]

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Richard Dawkins is the Bible's most well-known populariser for chemists and evolutionists. Here is one of many examples. Dawkins fervently believes that some lucky chemicals have souls. He shows how one such chemical, "the gene", can escape death by resurrecting its soul or identity. He says

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

Here Dawkins explains to us, through a scientific fact, that because genes are chemically connected they can travel across generations, escaping chemical degradation following the death of the individual person or generation that carries them. It annoys many Christians that Dawkins should promote chemical souls over and above people's souls, but that is Dawkins prerogative as a scientist.

This is a misrepresentation of Dawkins. There is nothing religious in what he says here at all. You say that he "fervently believes" as if he were saying anything over which there is any significant controversy - or over which there should be controversy. But Dawkins is just describing a mechanism, and there is no significant controversy about how that mechanism works.

Are you going to argue otherwise? Are you really going to do something as absurd as suggesting that Dawkins' view of what DNA is, what chromosomes are, how DNA replicates, how chromosomes therefore replicate, how chromosomes can therefore be copied from one generation to the next, and so on... is wrong? Well, I hope so - because you are clearly implying with your "fervently believes" that all this is controversial. Of course, if you are going to do that you will be making an absurd case: the mechanisms being discussed here are now well understood and there is a huge amount of evidence for them - in fact there is commercial use of our knowledge of those mechanisms.

Or maybe it is the case that you accept Dawkins' view of what the mechanisms are doing, but reject some interpretation that you think he has made, or some way of describing it that you think he has used. If that is the case, and if the passage your quoted is evidence to support it, then you are not offering good evidence. When Dawkins says:

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

are we supposed to think that Dawkins is wrong on this - that the mechanisms of DNA and the associated biochemistry do not suggest this idea of chromosomes "travelling through generations"? What is wrong with it? We know that the chromosomes are copied. We know that this copying works over generations. So what is wrong with the idea that chromosomes "travel" through generations? You might argue that Dawkins is claiming that chromosomes literally travel - that the same chromosome - the same physical one out of the DNA molecule - made out of the same atoms - is jumping from one generation to the next. But that would be a stupidly literal reading of Dawkins. Dawkins goes to some pains in the rest of his work to be clear about exactly what he means here - and that he is talking about a copying process.

You seem to be claim that Dawkins says that this is like some sort of "soul" - or that he has said something similar. I'm not aware of Dawkins saying anything like that. He could have in principle I suppose: scientists use all kinds of analogies. However, if he did say anything like this it would not be due to literal belief in a soul, but merely to try to aid understanding.

You have mixed all your criticism in with religious views of immortality for no good reason. If Dawkins has described the mechanisms of life inappropriately, then you should be able to explain why without reference to "upset Christians". If Dawkins' description were wrong then it would be wrong if humans had never heard of religion. You do not seem to have offered any such explanation of why Dawkins is saying things that are wrong.

If you are arguing that Dawkins dismissed religion, while believing in the existence of mechanisms that (according to you) are described by him as having features like those in religion, then that is not Dawkins' problem. What exactly do you think Dawkins should do about this?

Do you think Dawkins should change his view on what the mechanisms of life are, purely because (in your view) his view is too similar to things held to exist by religions?
Do you think Dawkins should change the way he describes those mechanisms in terms of things "travelling" from generation to generation purely because religious people believe in souls?
Do you think that maybe the only way Dawkins could make you happy is by believing in God? (I suspect you of that one, by the way.)

You seem to have a habit of posting really badly thought out arguments that just waste everyone's time. To show how bad this argument is, it could just as easily be directed at the CEO of a photocpopier manufacturing company - if he happened to be an atheist.

Let us suppose that Mr Nogod runs ACME Photocopiers Inc. On the company's website, he describes the advantages of being able to take a document and pass it to hundreds of people, or to take a document, put it in his machine, and make many new versions of that document that can survive the destruction of the original.

Suppose it then turns out that Mr Nogod is an atheist.

At this point, you could come out with the same kind of pathetic nonsense that you have here: you could say that Mr Nogod "fervently believes" that his machine has magical properties that give immortality to documents and blah blah blah blah blah and you could try to suggest some kind of hypocrisy, or some other misguided action on the part of Mr Nogod considering that he is coming out with all these religious ideas (according to you) while rejecting religion.

To make such an argument would be stupid.
Yet that is exactly the kind of argument you have just made.

However, I can think of one failure by Dawkins that you have exposed masterfully:

I think we can safely say that if Dawkins' aim was to enable his readers to understand evolution and the related ideas, then in your case he has failed utterly.

More trolling.

Oh boy. Let's take a look at this shall we?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Richard Dawkins is the Bible's most well-known populariser

Ha ha ha ha ha. The same Richard Dawkins who wrote this?

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror. A naif blessed with the perspective of innocence has a clearer perception. Winston Churchill's son Randolph somehow contrived to remain ignorant of scripture until Evelyn Waugh and a brother officer, in a vain attempt to keep Churchill quiet when they were posted together during the war, bet him he couldn't read the entire Bible in a fortnight: 'Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud "I say I bet you didn't know this came in the Bible . . . " or merely slapping his side & chortling "God, isn't God a shit!"'16 Thomas Jefferson - better read - was of a similar
opinion: 'The Christian God is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.'

Looks like you skimped on the basic fact checking.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:for chemists and evolutionists.

Oh no, it's time for this again ... yawn ...

The "evolutionist" canard (with "Darwinist" side salad).

Now, if there is one guaranteed way for a creationist to establish that he or she is here for no other reason than to propagandise for a doctrine, it's the deployment of that most viscerally hated of words in the lexicon, namely, evolutionist. I have posted about this so often here, that I was surprised to find that I'd missed it out of the original list, but I had more pressing concerns to attend to when compiling the list originally. However, having been reminded of it, now is the time to nail this one to the ground with a stake through its heart once and for all.

There is no such thing as an "evolutionist". Why do I say this? Simple. Because the word has become thoroughly debased through creationist abuse thereof, and in my view, deserves to be struck from the language forever. For those who need the requisite education, there exist evolutionary biologists, namely the scientific professionals who devote decades of their lives to understanding the biosphere and conducting research into appropriate biological phenomena, and those outside that specialist professional remit who accept the reality-based, evidence-based case that they present in their peer reviewed scientific papers for their postulates. The word "evolutionist" is a discoursive elision, erected by creationists for a very specific and utterly mendacious purpose, namely to suggest that valid evolutionary science is a "doctrine", and that those who accept its postulates do so merely as a priori "assumptions" (see [3] above). This is manifestly false, as anyone who has actually read the peer reviewed scientific literature is eminently well placed to understand. The idea that there exists some sort of "symmetry" between valid, evidence-based, reality-based science (evolutionary biology) and assertion-laden, mythology-based doctrine (creationism) is FALSE. Evolutionary biology, like every other branch of science, tests assertions and presuppositions to destruction, which is why creationism was tossed into the bin 150 years ago (see [2] above). When creationists can provide methodologically rigorous empirical tests of their assertions, the critical thinkers will sit up and take notice.

Furthermore, with respect to this canard, does the acceptance of the scientifically educated individuals on this board, of the current scientific paradigm for gravity make them "gravitationists"? Does their acceptance of the evidence supporting the germ theory of disease make them "microbists"? Does their acceptance of the validity of Maxwell's Equations make them "electromagnetists"? Does their acceptance of of the validity of the work of Planck, Bohr, Schrödinger, Dirac and a dozen others in the relevant field make them "quantumists"? Does their acceptance of the validity of the astrophysical model for star formation and the processes that take place inside stars make them "stellarists"? If you are unable to see the absurdity inherent in this, then you are in no position to tell people here that professional scientists have got it wrong, whilst ignorant Bronze Age nomads writing mythology 3,000 years ago got it right.

While we're at it, let's deal with the duplicitous side salad known as "Darwinist". The critical thinkers here know why this particular discoursive elision is erected, and the reason is related to the above. Basically, "Darwinist" is erected for the specific purpose of suggesting that the only reason people accept evolution is because they bow uncritically to Darwin as an authority figure. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, droolingly encephalitic drivel of a particularly suppurating order. Let's provide a much needed education once and for all here.

Darwin is regarded as historically important because he founded the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology, and in the process, converted biology from a cataloguing exercise into a proper empirical science. The reason Darwin is considered important is NOT because he is regarded uncritically as an "authority figure" - the critical thinkers leave this sort of starry-eyed gazing to followers of the likes of William Lane Craig. Darwin is regarded as important because he was the first person to pay serious attention to reality with respect to the biosphere, with respect to the business of determining mechanisms for its development, and the first to engage in diligent intellectual labour for the purpose of establishing that reality supported his postulates with respect to the biosphere. In other words, instead of sitting around accepting uncritically mythological blind assertion, he got off his arse, rolled up his sleeves, did the hard work, put in the long hours performing the research and gathering the real world data, and then spending long hours determining what would falsify his ideas and determining in a rigorous manner that no such falsification existed. For those who are unaware of this, the requisite labour swallowed up twenty years of his life, which is par for the course for a scientist introducing a new paradigm to the world. THAT is why he is regarded as important, because he expended colossal amounts of labour ensuring that REALITY supported his ideas. That's the ONLY reason ANY scientist acquires a reputation for being a towering contributor to the field, because said scientist toils unceasingly for many years, in some cases whole decades, ensuring that his ideas are supported by reality in a methodologically rigorous fashion.

Additionally, just in case this idea hasn't crossed the mind of any creationist posting here, evolutionary biology has moved on in the 150 years since Darwin, and whilst his historical role is rightly recognised, the critical thinkers have also recognised that more recent developments have taken place that would leave Darwin's eyes out on stalks if he were around to see them. The contributors to the field after Darwin are numerous, and include individuals who contributed to the development of other branches of science making advances in evolutionary theory possible. Individuals such as Ronald Fisher, who developed the mathematical tools required to make sense of vast swathes of biological data (heard of analysis of variance? Fisher invented it), or Theodosius Dobzhansky, who combined theoretical imagination with empirical rigour, and who, amongst other developments, provided science with a documented instance of speciation in the laboratory. Other seminal contributors included Müller (who trashed Behe's nonsense six decades before Behe was born), E. O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr, Motoo Kimura, Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge, J. B. S. Haldane, Richard Lewontin, Sewall Wright, Jerry Coyne, Carl Woese, Kenneth Miller, and they're just the ones I can list off the top of my head. Pick up any half-decent collection of scientific papers from the past 100 years, and dozens more names can be added to that list.

So, anyone who wants to be regarded as an extremely low-grade chew toy here only has to erect the "evolutionist" or "Darwinist" canard, and they will guarantee this end result.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Here is one of many examples. Dawkins fervently believes that some lucky chemicals have souls.

Poppycock. From which part of your rectal passage did you derive this blatant piece of drivel?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He shows how one such chemical, "the gene", can escape death by resurrecting its soul or identity.

Oh for fuck's sake. We have a large body of hard empirical evidence supporting the persistence of genes through replication. Biology textbooks discuss the relevant mechanisms in exquisite detail. Go pick one of those textbooks up.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He says

Cue quote mine in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

Actually,in my searchable electronic version, it's page 197. But this is a minor quibble, compared to the fact that this sentence is taken completely out of context and misrepresented on a grand scale. Here's the full relevant text:

Richard Dawkins wrote:For didactic purposes, I treated genes as though they were isolated units, acting independently. But of course they are not independent of one another, and this fact shows itself in two ways. First, genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations in the company of particular other genes that occupy neighbouring chromosomal loci. We doctors call that kind of linkage linkage, and I shall say no more about it because memes don't have chromosomes, alleles or sexual recombination. The other respect in which genes are not independent is very different from genetic linkage, and here there is a good memetic analogy. It concerns embryology which - the fact is often misunderstood - is completely distinct from genetics. Bodies are not jigsawed together as mosaics of phenotypic pieces, each one contributed by a different gene. There is no one-to-one mapping between genes and units of anatomy or behaviour. Genes 'collaborate' with hundreds of other genes in programming the developmental processes that culminate in a body, in the same kind of way as the words of a recipe collaborate in a cookery process that culminates in a dish. It is not the case that each word of the recipe corresponds to a different morsel of the dish.

Basically, Dawkins was discussing the manner in which the clustering of certain classes of genes on chromosomes tends to be preserved when those chromosomes are replicated, including through meiosis, the mechanism by which those chromosomes are replicated for reproductive purposes in multicellular eukaryotes. All of which is again discussed in exquisite detail in any decent biology textbook. The above being a preamble to the development of the relationship between the processes by which genes are disseminated across generations, and the processes by which ideas are disseminated.

Did you actually bother reading this book properly before posting your worthless, excremental post?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Here Dawkins explains to us, through a scientific fact, that because genes are chemically connected they can travel across generations, escaping chemical degradation following the death of the individual person or generation that carries them.

Pick up a biology textbook, and look up meiosis.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:It annoys many Christians that Dawkins should promote chemical souls over and above people's souls, but that is Dawkins prerogative as a scientist.

Except he isn't talking about fucking "souls", he's talking about empirically documented replication of molecules. Once again, pick up a biology textbook, and look up meiosis.

Fucking hell, I thought I'd seen some droolingly encephalitic posts in my time, but this one deserves its own special category.

Well, you could deal with the OP like Cali:

Calilasseia wrote:Oh boy. Let's take a look at this shall we?

[Reveal] Spoiler: a lengthy smack down

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Richard Dawkins is the Bible's most well-known populariser

Ha ha ha ha ha. The same Richard Dawkins who wrote this?

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror. A naif blessed with the perspective of innocence has a clearer perception. Winston Churchill's son Randolph somehow contrived to remain ignorant of scripture until Evelyn Waugh and a brother officer, in a vain attempt to keep Churchill quiet when they were posted together during the war, bet him he couldn't read the entire Bible in a fortnight: 'Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud "I say I bet you didn't know this came in the Bible . . . " or merely slapping his side & chortling "God, isn't God a shit!"'16 Thomas Jefferson - better read - was of a similar
opinion: 'The Christian God is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.'

Looks like you skimped on the basic fact checking.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:for chemists and evolutionists.

Oh no, it's time for this again ... yawn ...

The "evolutionist" canard (with "Darwinist" side salad).

Now, if there is one guaranteed way for a creationist to establish that he or she is here for no other reason than to propagandise for a doctrine, it's the deployment of that most viscerally hated of words in the lexicon, namely, evolutionist. I have posted about this so often here, that I was surprised to find that I'd missed it out of the original list, but I had more pressing concerns to attend to when compiling the list originally. However, having been reminded of it, now is the time to nail this one to the ground with a stake through its heart once and for all.

There is no such thing as an "evolutionist". Why do I say this? Simple. Because the word has become thoroughly debased through creationist abuse thereof, and in my view, deserves to be struck from the language forever. For those who need the requisite education, there exist evolutionary biologists, namely the scientific professionals who devote decades of their lives to understanding the biosphere and conducting research into appropriate biological phenomena, and those outside that specialist professional remit who accept the reality-based, evidence-based case that they present in their peer reviewed scientific papers for their postulates. The word "evolutionist" is a discoursive elision, erected by creationists for a very specific and utterly mendacious purpose, namely to suggest that valid evolutionary science is a "doctrine", and that those who accept its postulates do so merely as a priori "assumptions" (see [3] above). This is manifestly false, as anyone who has actually read the peer reviewed scientific literature is eminently well placed to understand. The idea that there exists some sort of "symmetry" between valid, evidence-based, reality-based science (evolutionary biology) and assertion-laden, mythology-based doctrine (creationism) is FALSE. Evolutionary biology, like every other branch of science, tests assertions and presuppositions to destruction, which is why creationism was tossed into the bin 150 years ago (see [2] above). When creationists can provide methodologically rigorous empirical tests of their assertions, the critical thinkers will sit up and take notice.

Furthermore, with respect to this canard, does the acceptance of the scientifically educated individuals on this board, of the current scientific paradigm for gravity make them "gravitationists"? Does their acceptance of the evidence supporting the germ theory of disease make them "microbists"? Does their acceptance of the validity of Maxwell's Equations make them "electromagnetists"? Does their acceptance of of the validity of the work of Planck, Bohr, Schrödinger, Dirac and a dozen others in the relevant field make them "quantumists"? Does their acceptance of the validity of the astrophysical model for star formation and the processes that take place inside stars make them "stellarists"? If you are unable to see the absurdity inherent in this, then you are in no position to tell people here that professional scientists have got it wrong, whilst ignorant Bronze Age nomads writing mythology 3,000 years ago got it right.

While we're at it, let's deal with the duplicitous side salad known as "Darwinist". The critical thinkers here know why this particular discoursive elision is erected, and the reason is related to the above. Basically, "Darwinist" is erected for the specific purpose of suggesting that the only reason people accept evolution is because they bow uncritically to Darwin as an authority figure. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, droolingly encephalitic drivel of a particularly suppurating order. Let's provide a much needed education once and for all here.

Darwin is regarded as historically important because he founded the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology, and in the process, converted biology from a cataloguing exercise into a proper empirical science. The reason Darwin is considered important is NOT because he is regarded uncritically as an "authority figure" - the critical thinkers leave this sort of starry-eyed gazing to followers of the likes of William Lane Craig. Darwin is regarded as important because he was the first person to pay serious attention to reality with respect to the biosphere, with respect to the business of determining mechanisms for its development, and the first to engage in diligent intellectual labour for the purpose of establishing that reality supported his postulates with respect to the biosphere. In other words, instead of sitting around accepting uncritically mythological blind assertion, he got off his arse, rolled up his sleeves, did the hard work, put in the long hours performing the research and gathering the real world data, and then spending long hours determining what would falsify his ideas and determining in a rigorous manner that no such falsification existed. For those who are unaware of this, the requisite labour swallowed up twenty years of his life, which is par for the course for a scientist introducing a new paradigm to the world. THAT is why he is regarded as important, because he expended colossal amounts of labour ensuring that REALITY supported his ideas. That's the ONLY reason ANY scientist acquires a reputation for being a towering contributor to the field, because said scientist toils unceasingly for many years, in some cases whole decades, ensuring that his ideas are supported by reality in a methodologically rigorous fashion.

Additionally, just in case this idea hasn't crossed the mind of any creationist posting here, evolutionary biology has moved on in the 150 years since Darwin, and whilst his historical role is rightly recognised, the critical thinkers have also recognised that more recent developments have taken place that would leave Darwin's eyes out on stalks if he were around to see them. The contributors to the field after Darwin are numerous, and include individuals who contributed to the development of other branches of science making advances in evolutionary theory possible. Individuals such as Ronald Fisher, who developed the mathematical tools required to make sense of vast swathes of biological data (heard of analysis of variance? Fisher invented it), or Theodosius Dobzhansky, who combined theoretical imagination with empirical rigour, and who, amongst other developments, provided science with a documented instance of speciation in the laboratory. Other seminal contributors included Müller (who trashed Behe's nonsense six decades before Behe was born), E. O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr, Motoo Kimura, Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge, J. B. S. Haldane, Richard Lewontin, Sewall Wright, Jerry Coyne, Carl Woese, Kenneth Miller, and they're just the ones I can list off the top of my head. Pick up any half-decent collection of scientific papers from the past 100 years, and dozens more names can be added to that list.

So, anyone who wants to be regarded as an extremely low-grade chew toy here only has to erect the "evolutionist" or "Darwinist" canard, and they will guarantee this end result.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Here is one of many examples. Dawkins fervently believes that some lucky chemicals have souls.

Poppycock. From which part of your rectal passage did you derive this blatant piece of drivel?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He shows how one such chemical, "the gene", can escape death by resurrecting its soul or identity.

Oh for fuck's sake. We have a large body of hard empirical evidence supporting the persistence of genes through replication. Biology textbooks discuss the relevant mechanisms in exquisite detail. Go pick one of those textbooks up.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He says

Cue quote mine in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

Actually,in my searchable electronic version, it's page 197. But this is a minor quibble, compared to the fact that this sentence is taken completely out of context and misrepresented on a grand scale. Here's the full relevant text:

Richard Dawkins wrote:For didactic purposes, I treated genes as though they were isolated units, acting independently. But of course they are not independent of one another, and this fact shows itself in two ways. First, genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations in the company of particular other genes that occupy neighbouring chromosomal loci. We doctors call that kind of linkage linkage, and I shall say no more about it because memes don't have chromosomes, alleles or sexual recombination. The other respect in which genes are not independent is very different from genetic linkage, and here there is a good memetic analogy. It concerns embryology which - the fact is often misunderstood - is completely distinct from genetics. Bodies are not jigsawed together as mosaics of phenotypic pieces, each one contributed by a different gene. There is no one-to-one mapping between genes and units of anatomy or behaviour. Genes 'collaborate' with hundreds of other genes in programming the developmental processes that culminate in a body, in the same kind of way as the words of a recipe collaborate in a cookery process that culminates in a dish. It is not the case that each word of the recipe corresponds to a different morsel of the dish.

Basically, Dawkins was discussing the manner in which the clustering of certain classes of genes on chromosomes tends to be preserved when those chromosomes are replicated, including through meiosis, the mechanism by which those chromosomes are replicated for reproductive purposes in multicellular eukaryotes. All of which is again discussed in exquisite detail in any decent biology textbook. The above being a preamble to the development of the relationship between the processes by which genes are disseminated across generations, and the processes by which ideas are disseminated.

Did you actually bother reading this book properly before posting your worthless, excremental post?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Here Dawkins explains to us, through a scientific fact, that because genes are chemically connected they can travel across generations, escaping chemical degradation following the death of the individual person or generation that carries them.

Pick up a biology textbook, and look up meiosis.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:It annoys many Christians that Dawkins should promote chemical souls over and above people's souls, but that is Dawkins prerogative as a scientist.

Except he isn't talking about fucking "souls", he's talking about empirically documented replication of molecules. Once again, pick up a biology textbook, and look up meiosis.

Fucking hell, I thought I'd seen some droolingly encephalitic posts in my time, but this one deserves its own special category.

Or, there is the much more succinct, yet synonymous:

Scar wrote:More trolling.

Both approaches have their merits.

The_Metatron wrote:Well, you could deal with the OP like Cali:

Calilasseia wrote:Oh boy. Let's take a look at this shall we?

[Reveal] Spoiler: a lengthy smack down

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Richard Dawkins is the Bible's most well-known populariser

Ha ha ha ha ha. The same Richard Dawkins who wrote this?

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror. A naif blessed with the perspective of innocence has a clearer perception. Winston Churchill's son Randolph somehow contrived to remain ignorant of scripture until Evelyn Waugh and a brother officer, in a vain attempt to keep Churchill quiet when they were posted together during the war, bet him he couldn't read the entire Bible in a fortnight: 'Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud "I say I bet you didn't know this came in the Bible . . . " or merely slapping his side & chortling "God, isn't God a shit!"'16 Thomas Jefferson - better read - was of a similar
opinion: 'The Christian God is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.'

Looks like you skimped on the basic fact checking.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:for chemists and evolutionists.

Oh no, it's time for this again ... yawn ...

The "evolutionist" canard (with "Darwinist" side salad).

Now, if there is one guaranteed way for a creationist to establish that he or she is here for no other reason than to propagandise for a doctrine, it's the deployment of that most viscerally hated of words in the lexicon, namely, evolutionist. I have posted about this so often here, that I was surprised to find that I'd missed it out of the original list, but I had more pressing concerns to attend to when compiling the list originally. However, having been reminded of it, now is the time to nail this one to the ground with a stake through its heart once and for all.

There is no such thing as an "evolutionist". Why do I say this? Simple. Because the word has become thoroughly debased through creationist abuse thereof, and in my view, deserves to be struck from the language forever. For those who need the requisite education, there exist evolutionary biologists, namely the scientific professionals who devote decades of their lives to understanding the biosphere and conducting research into appropriate biological phenomena, and those outside that specialist professional remit who accept the reality-based, evidence-based case that they present in their peer reviewed scientific papers for their postulates. The word "evolutionist" is a discoursive elision, erected by creationists for a very specific and utterly mendacious purpose, namely to suggest that valid evolutionary science is a "doctrine", and that those who accept its postulates do so merely as a priori "assumptions" (see [3] above). This is manifestly false, as anyone who has actually read the peer reviewed scientific literature is eminently well placed to understand. The idea that there exists some sort of "symmetry" between valid, evidence-based, reality-based science (evolutionary biology) and assertion-laden, mythology-based doctrine (creationism) is FALSE. Evolutionary biology, like every other branch of science, tests assertions and presuppositions to destruction, which is why creationism was tossed into the bin 150 years ago (see [2] above). When creationists can provide methodologically rigorous empirical tests of their assertions, the critical thinkers will sit up and take notice.

Furthermore, with respect to this canard, does the acceptance of the scientifically educated individuals on this board, of the current scientific paradigm for gravity make them "gravitationists"? Does their acceptance of the evidence supporting the germ theory of disease make them "microbists"? Does their acceptance of the validity of Maxwell's Equations make them "electromagnetists"? Does their acceptance of of the validity of the work of Planck, Bohr, Schrödinger, Dirac and a dozen others in the relevant field make them "quantumists"? Does their acceptance of the validity of the astrophysical model for star formation and the processes that take place inside stars make them "stellarists"? If you are unable to see the absurdity inherent in this, then you are in no position to tell people here that professional scientists have got it wrong, whilst ignorant Bronze Age nomads writing mythology 3,000 years ago got it right.

While we're at it, let's deal with the duplicitous side salad known as "Darwinist". The critical thinkers here know why this particular discoursive elision is erected, and the reason is related to the above. Basically, "Darwinist" is erected for the specific purpose of suggesting that the only reason people accept evolution is because they bow uncritically to Darwin as an authority figure. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, droolingly encephalitic drivel of a particularly suppurating order. Let's provide a much needed education once and for all here.

Darwin is regarded as historically important because he founded the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology, and in the process, converted biology from a cataloguing exercise into a proper empirical science. The reason Darwin is considered important is NOT because he is regarded uncritically as an "authority figure" - the critical thinkers leave this sort of starry-eyed gazing to followers of the likes of William Lane Craig. Darwin is regarded as important because he was the first person to pay serious attention to reality with respect to the biosphere, with respect to the business of determining mechanisms for its development, and the first to engage in diligent intellectual labour for the purpose of establishing that reality supported his postulates with respect to the biosphere. In other words, instead of sitting around accepting uncritically mythological blind assertion, he got off his arse, rolled up his sleeves, did the hard work, put in the long hours performing the research and gathering the real world data, and then spending long hours determining what would falsify his ideas and determining in a rigorous manner that no such falsification existed. For those who are unaware of this, the requisite labour swallowed up twenty years of his life, which is par for the course for a scientist introducing a new paradigm to the world. THAT is why he is regarded as important, because he expended colossal amounts of labour ensuring that REALITY supported his ideas. That's the ONLY reason ANY scientist acquires a reputation for being a towering contributor to the field, because said scientist toils unceasingly for many years, in some cases whole decades, ensuring that his ideas are supported by reality in a methodologically rigorous fashion.

Additionally, just in case this idea hasn't crossed the mind of any creationist posting here, evolutionary biology has moved on in the 150 years since Darwin, and whilst his historical role is rightly recognised, the critical thinkers have also recognised that more recent developments have taken place that would leave Darwin's eyes out on stalks if he were around to see them. The contributors to the field after Darwin are numerous, and include individuals who contributed to the development of other branches of science making advances in evolutionary theory possible. Individuals such as Ronald Fisher, who developed the mathematical tools required to make sense of vast swathes of biological data (heard of analysis of variance? Fisher invented it), or Theodosius Dobzhansky, who combined theoretical imagination with empirical rigour, and who, amongst other developments, provided science with a documented instance of speciation in the laboratory. Other seminal contributors included Müller (who trashed Behe's nonsense six decades before Behe was born), E. O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr, Motoo Kimura, Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge, J. B. S. Haldane, Richard Lewontin, Sewall Wright, Jerry Coyne, Carl Woese, Kenneth Miller, and they're just the ones I can list off the top of my head. Pick up any half-decent collection of scientific papers from the past 100 years, and dozens more names can be added to that list.

So, anyone who wants to be regarded as an extremely low-grade chew toy here only has to erect the "evolutionist" or "Darwinist" canard, and they will guarantee this end result.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Here is one of many examples. Dawkins fervently believes that some lucky chemicals have souls.

Poppycock. From which part of your rectal passage did you derive this blatant piece of drivel?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He shows how one such chemical, "the gene", can escape death by resurrecting its soul or identity.

Oh for fuck's sake. We have a large body of hard empirical evidence supporting the persistence of genes through replication. Biology textbooks discuss the relevant mechanisms in exquisite detail. Go pick one of those textbooks up.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He says

Cue quote mine in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

Actually,in my searchable electronic version, it's page 197. But this is a minor quibble, compared to the fact that this sentence is taken completely out of context and misrepresented on a grand scale. Here's the full relevant text:

Richard Dawkins wrote:For didactic purposes, I treated genes as though they were isolated units, acting independently. But of course they are not independent of one another, and this fact shows itself in two ways. First, genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations in the company of particular other genes that occupy neighbouring chromosomal loci. We doctors call that kind of linkage linkage, and I shall say no more about it because memes don't have chromosomes, alleles or sexual recombination. The other respect in which genes are not independent is very different from genetic linkage, and here there is a good memetic analogy. It concerns embryology which - the fact is often misunderstood - is completely distinct from genetics. Bodies are not jigsawed together as mosaics of phenotypic pieces, each one contributed by a different gene. There is no one-to-one mapping between genes and units of anatomy or behaviour. Genes 'collaborate' with hundreds of other genes in programming the developmental processes that culminate in a body, in the same kind of way as the words of a recipe collaborate in a cookery process that culminates in a dish. It is not the case that each word of the recipe corresponds to a different morsel of the dish.

Basically, Dawkins was discussing the manner in which the clustering of certain classes of genes on chromosomes tends to be preserved when those chromosomes are replicated, including through meiosis, the mechanism by which those chromosomes are replicated for reproductive purposes in multicellular eukaryotes. All of which is again discussed in exquisite detail in any decent biology textbook. The above being a preamble to the development of the relationship between the processes by which genes are disseminated across generations, and the processes by which ideas are disseminated.

Did you actually bother reading this book properly before posting your worthless, excremental post?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Here Dawkins explains to us, through a scientific fact, that because genes are chemically connected they can travel across generations, escaping chemical degradation following the death of the individual person or generation that carries them.

Pick up a biology textbook, and look up meiosis.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:It annoys many Christians that Dawkins should promote chemical souls over and above people's souls, but that is Dawkins prerogative as a scientist.

Except he isn't talking about fucking "souls", he's talking about empirically documented replication of molecules. Once again, pick up a biology textbook, and look up meiosis.

Fucking hell, I thought I'd seen some droolingly encephalitic posts in my time, but this one deserves its own special category.

Or, there is the much more succinct, yet synonymous:

Scar wrote:More trolling.

Both approaches have their merits.

Well... I've never been a man of many words

Cool story brah ...

Paul Almond wrote:

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Richard Dawkins is the Bible's most well-known populariser for chemists and evolutionists. Here is one of many examples. Dawkins fervently believes that some lucky chemicals have souls. He shows how one such chemical, "the gene", can escape death by resurrecting its soul or identity. He says

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

Here Dawkins explains to us, through a scientific fact, that because genes are chemically connected they can travel across generations, escaping chemical degradation following the death of the individual person or generation that carries them. It annoys many Christians that Dawkins should promote chemical souls over and above people's souls, but that is Dawkins prerogative as a scientist.

This is a misrepresentation of Dawkins. There is nothing religious in what he says here at all. You say that he "fervently believes" as if he were saying anything over which there is any significant controversy - or over which there should be controversy. But Dawkins is just describing a mechanism, and there is no significant controversy about how that mechanism works.

Are you going to argue otherwise? Are you really going to do something as absurd as suggesting that Dawkins' view of what DNA is, what chromosomes are, how DNA replicates, how chromosomes therefore replicate, how chromosomes can therefore be copied from one generation to the next, and so on... is wrong? Well, I hope so - because you are clearly implying with your "fervently believes" that all this is controversial. Of course, if you are going to do that you will be making an absurd case: the mechanisms being discussed here are now well understood and there is a huge amount of evidence for them - in fact there is commercial use of our knowledge of those mechanisms.

Or maybe it is the case that you accept Dawkins' view of what the mechanisms are doing, but reject some interpretation that you think he has made, or some way of describing it that you think he has used. If that is the case, and if the passage your quoted is evidence to support it, then you are not offering good evidence. When Dawkins says:

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

are we supposed to think that Dawkins is wrong on this - that the mechanisms of DNA and the associated biochemistry do not suggest this idea of chromosomes "travelling through generations"? What is wrong with it? We know that the chromosomes are copied. We know that this copying works over generations. So what is wrong with the idea that chromosomes "travel" through generations? You might argue that Dawkins is claiming that chromosomes literally travel - that the same chromosome - the same physical one out of the DNA molecule - made out of the same atoms - is jumping from one generation to the next. But that would be a stupidly literal reading of Dawkins. Dawkins goes to some pains in the rest of his work to be clear about exactly what he means here - and that he is talking about a copying process.

You seem to be claim that Dawkins says that this is like some sort of "soul" - or that he has said something similar. I'm not aware of Dawkins saying anything like that. He could have in principle I suppose: scientists use all kinds of analogies. However, if he did say anything like this it would not be due to literal belief in a soul, but merely to try to aid understanding.

You have mixed all your criticism in with religious views of immortality for no good reason. If Dawkins has described the mechanisms of life inappropriately, then you should be able to explain why without reference to "upset Christians". If Dawkins' description were wrong then it would be wrong if humans had never heard of religion. You do not seem to have offered any such explanation of why Dawkins is saying things that are wrong.

If you are arguing that Dawkins dismissed religion, while believing in the existence of mechanisms that (according to you) are described by him as having features like those in religion, then that is not Dawkins' problem. What exactly do you think Dawkins should do about this?

Do you think Dawkins should change his view on what the mechanisms of life are, purely because (in your view) his view is too similar to things held to exist by religions?
Do you think Dawkins should change the way he describes those mechanisms in terms of things "travelling" from generation to generation purely because religious people believe in souls?
Do you think that maybe the only way Dawkins could make you happy is by believing in God? (I suspect you of that one, by the way.)

You seem to have a habit of posting really badly thought out arguments that just waste everyone's time. To show how bad this argument is, it could just as easily be directed at the CEO of a photocpopier manufacturing company - if he happened to be an atheist.

Let us suppose that Mr Nogod runs ACME Photocopiers Inc. On the company's website, he describes the advantages of being able to take a document and pass it to hundreds of people, or to take a document, put it in his machine, and make many new versions of that document that can survive the destruction of the original.

Suppose it then turns out that Mr Nogod is an atheist.

At this point, you could come out with the same kind of pathetic nonsense that you have here: you could say that Mr Nogod "fervently believes" that his machine has magical properties that give immortality to documents and blah blah blah blah blah and you could try to suggest some kind of hypocrisy, or some other misguided action on the part of Mr Nogod considering that he is coming out with all these religious ideas (according to you) while rejecting religion.

To make such an argument would be stupid.
Yet that is exactly the kind of argument you have just made.

However, I can think of one failure by Dawkins that you have exposed masterfully:

I think we can safely say that if Dawkins' aim was to enable his readers to understand evolution and the related ideas, then in your case he has failed utterly.

In my case, replication or copying makes a physical copy. This means that the original does not survive in the copy.

In Dawkins' case, replication or copying makes a physical copy AND a copy of identity. This means that the original survives in the physical copy.

So, I would put it to you that it is I, and not Dawkins, who has understood the nature of replicating or copying. No philosopher, scientist, or layman would assert that an object survives in its physical copy, but Dawkins asserts it. Such an assertion is, at the very least, an assertion of transmigration.

Calilasseia wrote:Oh boy. Let's take a look at this shall we?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Richard Dawkins is the Bible's most well-known populariser

Ha ha ha ha ha. The same Richard Dawkins who wrote this?

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror. A naif blessed with the perspective of innocence has a clearer perception. Winston Churchill's son Randolph somehow contrived to remain ignorant of scripture until Evelyn Waugh and a brother officer, in a vain attempt to keep Churchill quiet when they were posted together during the war, bet him he couldn't read the entire Bible in a fortnight: 'Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud "I say I bet you didn't know this came in the Bible . . . " or merely slapping his side & chortling "God, isn't God a shit!"'16 Thomas Jefferson - better read - was of a similar
opinion: 'The Christian God is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.'

Looks like you skimped on the basic fact checking.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:for chemists and evolutionists.

Oh no, it's time for this again ... yawn ...

The "evolutionist" canard (with "Darwinist" side salad).

Now, if there is one guaranteed way for a creationist to establish that he or she is here for no other reason than to propagandise for a doctrine, it's the deployment of that most viscerally hated of words in the lexicon, namely, evolutionist. I have posted about this so often here, that I was surprised to find that I'd missed it out of the original list, but I had more pressing concerns to attend to when compiling the list originally. However, having been reminded of it, now is the time to nail this one to the ground with a stake through its heart once and for all.

There is no such thing as an "evolutionist". Why do I say this? Simple. Because the word has become thoroughly debased through creationist abuse thereof, and in my view, deserves to be struck from the language forever. For those who need the requisite education, there exist evolutionary biologists, namely the scientific professionals who devote decades of their lives to understanding the biosphere and conducting research into appropriate biological phenomena, and those outside that specialist professional remit who accept the reality-based, evidence-based case that they present in their peer reviewed scientific papers for their postulates. The word "evolutionist" is a discoursive elision, erected by creationists for a very specific and utterly mendacious purpose, namely to suggest that valid evolutionary science is a "doctrine", and that those who accept its postulates do so merely as a priori "assumptions" (see [3] above). This is manifestly false, as anyone who has actually read the peer reviewed scientific literature is eminently well placed to understand. The idea that there exists some sort of "symmetry" between valid, evidence-based, reality-based science (evolutionary biology) and assertion-laden, mythology-based doctrine (creationism) is FALSE. Evolutionary biology, like every other branch of science, tests assertions and presuppositions to destruction, which is why creationism was tossed into the bin 150 years ago (see [2] above). When creationists can provide methodologically rigorous empirical tests of their assertions, the critical thinkers will sit up and take notice.

Furthermore, with respect to this canard, does the acceptance of the scientifically educated individuals on this board, of the current scientific paradigm for gravity make them "gravitationists"? Does their acceptance of the evidence supporting the germ theory of disease make them "microbists"? Does their acceptance of the validity of Maxwell's Equations make them "electromagnetists"? Does their acceptance of of the validity of the work of Planck, Bohr, Schrödinger, Dirac and a dozen others in the relevant field make them "quantumists"? Does their acceptance of the validity of the astrophysical model for star formation and the processes that take place inside stars make them "stellarists"? If you are unable to see the absurdity inherent in this, then you are in no position to tell people here that professional scientists have got it wrong, whilst ignorant Bronze Age nomads writing mythology 3,000 years ago got it right.

While we're at it, let's deal with the duplicitous side salad known as "Darwinist". The critical thinkers here know why this particular discoursive elision is erected, and the reason is related to the above. Basically, "Darwinist" is erected for the specific purpose of suggesting that the only reason people accept evolution is because they bow uncritically to Darwin as an authority figure. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, droolingly encephalitic drivel of a particularly suppurating order. Let's provide a much needed education once and for all here.

Darwin is regarded as historically important because he founded the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology, and in the process, converted biology from a cataloguing exercise into a proper empirical science. The reason Darwin is considered important is NOT because he is regarded uncritically as an "authority figure" - the critical thinkers leave this sort of starry-eyed gazing to followers of the likes of William Lane Craig. Darwin is regarded as important because he was the first person to pay serious attention to reality with respect to the biosphere, with respect to the business of determining mechanisms for its development, and the first to engage in diligent intellectual labour for the purpose of establishing that reality supported his postulates with respect to the biosphere. In other words, instead of sitting around accepting uncritically mythological blind assertion, he got off his arse, rolled up his sleeves, did the hard work, put in the long hours performing the research and gathering the real world data, and then spending long hours determining what would falsify his ideas and determining in a rigorous manner that no such falsification existed. For those who are unaware of this, the requisite labour swallowed up twenty years of his life, which is par for the course for a scientist introducing a new paradigm to the world. THAT is why he is regarded as important, because he expended colossal amounts of labour ensuring that REALITY supported his ideas. That's the ONLY reason ANY scientist acquires a reputation for being a towering contributor to the field, because said scientist toils unceasingly for many years, in some cases whole decades, ensuring that his ideas are supported by reality in a methodologically rigorous fashion.

Additionally, just in case this idea hasn't crossed the mind of any creationist posting here, evolutionary biology has moved on in the 150 years since Darwin, and whilst his historical role is rightly recognised, the critical thinkers have also recognised that more recent developments have taken place that would leave Darwin's eyes out on stalks if he were around to see them. The contributors to the field after Darwin are numerous, and include individuals who contributed to the development of other branches of science making advances in evolutionary theory possible. Individuals such as Ronald Fisher, who developed the mathematical tools required to make sense of vast swathes of biological data (heard of analysis of variance? Fisher invented it), or Theodosius Dobzhansky, who combined theoretical imagination with empirical rigour, and who, amongst other developments, provided science with a documented instance of speciation in the laboratory. Other seminal contributors included Müller (who trashed Behe's nonsense six decades before Behe was born), E. O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr, Motoo Kimura, Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge, J. B. S. Haldane, Richard Lewontin, Sewall Wright, Jerry Coyne, Carl Woese, Kenneth Miller, and they're just the ones I can list off the top of my head. Pick up any half-decent collection of scientific papers from the past 100 years, and dozens more names can be added to that list.

So, anyone who wants to be regarded as an extremely low-grade chew toy here only has to erect the "evolutionist" or "Darwinist" canard, and they will guarantee this end result.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Here is one of many examples. Dawkins fervently believes that some lucky chemicals have souls.

Poppycock. From which part of your rectal passage did you derive this blatant piece of drivel?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He shows how one such chemical, "the gene", can escape death by resurrecting its soul or identity.

Oh for fuck's sake. We have a large body of hard empirical evidence supporting the persistence of genes through replication. Biology textbooks discuss the relevant mechanisms in exquisite detail. Go pick one of those textbooks up.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He says

Cue quote mine in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

Actually,in my searchable electronic version, it's page 197. But this is a minor quibble, compared to the fact that this sentence is taken completely out of context and misrepresented on a grand scale. Here's the full relevant text:

Richard Dawkins wrote:For didactic purposes, I treated genes as though they were isolated units, acting independently. But of course they are not independent of one another, and this fact shows itself in two ways. First, genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations in the company of particular other genes that occupy neighbouring chromosomal loci. We doctors call that kind of linkage linkage, and I shall say no more about it because memes don't have chromosomes, alleles or sexual recombination. The other respect in which genes are not independent is very different from genetic linkage, and here there is a good memetic analogy. It concerns embryology which - the fact is often misunderstood - is completely distinct from genetics. Bodies are not jigsawed together as mosaics of phenotypic pieces, each one contributed by a different gene. There is no one-to-one mapping between genes and units of anatomy or behaviour. Genes 'collaborate' with hundreds of other genes in programming the developmental processes that culminate in a body, in the same kind of way as the words of a recipe collaborate in a cookery process that culminates in a dish. It is not the case that each word of the recipe corresponds to a different morsel of the dish.

Basically, Dawkins was discussing the manner in which the clustering of certain classes of genes on chromosomes tends to be preserved when those chromosomes are replicated, including through meiosis, the mechanism by which those chromosomes are replicated for reproductive purposes in multicellular eukaryotes. All of which is again discussed in exquisite detail in any decent biology textbook. The above being a preamble to the development of the relationship between the processes by which genes are disseminated across generations, and the processes by which ideas are disseminated.

Did you actually bother reading this book properly before posting your worthless, excremental post?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Here Dawkins explains to us, through a scientific fact, that because genes are chemically connected they can travel across generations, escaping chemical degradation following the death of the individual person or generation that carries them.

Pick up a biology textbook, and look up meiosis.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:It annoys many Christians that Dawkins should promote chemical souls over and above people's souls, but that is Dawkins prerogative as a scientist.

Except he isn't talking about fucking "souls", he's talking about empirically documented replication of molecules. Once again, pick up a biology textbook, and look up meiosis.

Fucking hell, I thought I'd seen some droolingly encephalitic posts in my time, but this one deserves its own special category.

It's strange how someone can fail to see that they are arguing against their own beliefs. If you want to believe that chemicals survive their own physical degradation then that's fine with me. But your belief in chemical souls that survive or chemical transmigration does look very quasi-religious, you must admit.

Dawkins applauds esoteric religion, btw. He says in the God Delusion that "If only such nuanced, subtle religion predominated, the world would surely be a better place" (p.15) Make of it what you will, but if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Richard Dawkins is the Bible's most well-known populariser for chemists and evolutionists.

What? Dawkins insn't mentioned in the Bible. Dawkins doens't believe in the bible. Nobody gives a shit about the bible. Also, there's plenty of "chemists and evolutionists" who disagree with Richard Dawkins on a whole host of points.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Here is one of many examples. Dawkins fervently believes that some lucky chemicals have souls.

No he doesn't. In fact, Dawkins reject the concept of the soul.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He shows how one such chemical, "the gene", can escape death by resurrecting its soul or identity. He says

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

Yes, through copying. It is a metaphor. You know the concept of a metaphor right? It's not meant to be taken literally. What is passed on is the ability of the "gene" to make copies of itself while adapting to it's environment. That's what the metaphor is trying to get across. And make no mistake, it's a metaphor and that's all it is.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Here Dawkins explains to us, through a scientific fact, that because genes are chemically connected they can travel across generations, escaping chemical degradation following the death of the individual person or generation that carries them.

Yes, by using a metaphor. It's still not meant to be taken literally. What is really passed on is a copy of a gene, sometimes lightly modified through mutation.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:It annoys many Christians that Dawkins should promote chemical souls over and above people's souls, but that is Dawkins prerogative as a scientist.

Nobody gives a shit about what annoys christians. If they can't grasp the concept of a metaphor, then christians should go back and take their elementary schooling all over again until it sinks in.

Your post is among the dumbest ever submitted on this forum. It's so dumb I'll have to think about how dumb it is and whether you had to engineer that level of stupidity in to it on purpose, or whether it came to you naturally, for several days now.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:It's strange how someone can fail to see that they are arguing against their own beliefs.

Another incomprehensively stupid utterance. Nobody here, including Dawkins, believes in literal souls, or any kind of life after death. Dawkins is employing a metaphor. That's it, full stop. Your opening post and your defense of it, is just plain wrong. And stupid. To the extend that in some circles, having submitted such drivel could be taken as evidence of severe encephalitic subnormality.

Not here of course.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:If you want to believe that chemicals survive their own physical degradation then that's fine with me.

Except that nobody here believes that, and that much was made clear to anyone without a cerebral aneurysm. The only thing that is really passed on is the ability of the genes. That is, their ability to do well in their environment. Not the gene itself lives on, but an almost identical copy of it. That's it. All you said is therefore wrong.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:But your belief in chemical souls that survive or chemical transmigration does look very quasi-religious, you must admit.

Nobody confessed to believing this anywhere. To contend otherwise is tantamout to libel, I will take moderator action.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Dawkins applauds esoteric religion, btw.

No he doesn't, he prefers it over fundamentalism.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He says in the God Delusion that "If only such nuanced, subtle religion predominated, the world would surely be a better place" (p.15)

Yes, he contrasts it with fundamentalism and says he much prefers the nonliteralist interpretations because they're less likely to engage in barbaristic rituals and traditions in comparison to the fundamentalist ones.

He's stated, many times since writing the god delusion, that he much prefers a world without any religious superstition at all. So, you're talking demonstrable bullshit.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Make of it what you will, but if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

Good, then, that it looks like atheism to everyone who can read, see, hear and comprehend.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:In Dawkins' case, replication or copying makes a physical copy AND a copy of identity. This means that the original survives in the physical copy.

No. Making a copy of an identity does not entail that the copy has now taken over and become the original identity. Neither is this implied in anything Dawkins writes.

So you're just. plain. wrong.

campermon wrote:

This one is more fitting, I imagine him saying something like this if he was confronted with gibberish like the op in person:

It's so sad to see someone present a case so boldly and selfconfident, yet so wrong and blind.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:In my case, replication or copying makes a physical copy. This means that the original does not survive in the copy.

In Dawkins' case, replication or copying makes a physical copy AND a copy of identity. This means that the original survives in the physical copy.

So, I would put it to you that it is I, and not Dawkins, who has understood the nature of replicating or copying. No philosopher, scientist, or layman would assert that an object survives in its physical copy, but Dawkins asserts it. Such an assertion is, at the very least, an assertion of transmigration.

No, the only problem is that you are deciding to understand other people's language in a particular - and unusual way. If I were going to be generous, I would simply say that you have a problem with language - that you don't understand abstraction and take everything extremely literally - that you subject everything you read to an autistic reading. (Note: I am absolutely not suggesting that you are autistic here - merely that a generous view of your posting behaviour would be that you understand everything in the literal way typical of autism.)

But that would be too generous. There are openly autistic people on here who would find the understanding you have of what Dawkins says laughable - and who would find the semantic arguments you have tried to use in other threads similarly laughable. But what makes it obvious that we need not be so generous is this:

You are not globally having problems understanding language. Instead, you are applying this weird, excessively literal way of understanding language as and when it suits you. It does not seem to have any impact, for example, on your own use of language. Let's look at an example:

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Richard Dawkins is the Bible's most well-known populariser for chemists and evolutionists. Here is one of many examples. Dawkins fervently believes that some lucky chemicals have souls. He shows how one such chemical, "the gene", can escape death by resurrecting its soul or identity. He says

"genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations" (Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228).

Here Dawkins explains to us, through a scientific fact, that because genes are chemically connected they can travel across generations, escaping chemical degradation following the death of the individual person or generation that carries them. It annoys many Christians that Dawkins should promote chemical souls over and above people's souls, but that is Dawkins prerogative as a scientist.

How can Dawkins popularise the "Bible"? Do you really think that Dawkins is popularising the original manuscripts written by ancient people? Because that is what you are saying here. Do you think Dawkins has ever even seen those ancient manuscripts? Of course not. This seems to imply that you subscribe to the same kind of belief you are attributing to Dawkins - that you believe that when a book is copied, it is physically the same book in the strongest sense, so there is this thing called the "Bible" and when it is copied and recopied and so on, it actually passes on by some process like tranns-substantiation - that it retains its indentity. If you don't believe this, why would make a claim as stupid as the one that Dawkins has had anything to do with the "Bible"? Shouldn't you have said that Dawkins has discussed copies of the Bible? How can it make sense to talk of anyone "popularizing" the Bible? Are we seriously supposed to think that because the Bible is "popularized" more people will be reading the same ancient manuscripts that were produced by ancient people?

We can also see it in the way you have attributed your quote to Dawkins. You say:

(Dawkins, The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, p, 228)

Really? Dawkins wrote that book? Which one? The one from which you quote-mined your argument? Do you really think that you have even seen anything written by Dawkins? I think you will find that Transworld Publishers is not in the business of publishing books. They are in the business of publishing copies of books. Of course, you would respond to this by claiming that you really mean that Dawkins wrote the original manuscript of that book, that those words in the mansuscript are what you are attributing to him, and that you have become aware of those words not by reading a book he wrote, but by reading a copy of a book he wrote.

Nobody will believe that. It is obvious from the way you talk about books that you apply the same kind of everyday language to them as everyone else. When you were quote-mining that text from Dawkins' book, as far as you were concerned you were reading a book by Dawkins: you were not even thinking about copies and identity. Deny all you want: nobody will believe you.

All this means that you have no problems understanding language. You can grasp the way we talk about things like this and what is really meant. You are fully aware of how we talk about copies of things in a more abstract way. You do it yourself. You merely start to apply this narrow way of understanding language as and when it suits you - when you think you can use it to make semantic arguments - and semantic arguments are all you have really - to demonstrate what will look like a profound philosophical or scientific point.

I think I have a good understanding of what your modus operandi is and I find it disingenuous.

I'm reminded here of the old maxim "when in a hole, stop digging" ...

Arthur Methoxy wrote:It's strange how someone can fail to see that they are arguing against their own beliefs.

In case you haven't bothered reading any of my past output, I don't bother with "beliefs", and I've explained at length why this is so. There's a little homework for you to do before continuing. Won't take long for any reasonably diligent search to alight upon the requisite posts.

Once again, pick up a biology textbook, and learn about meiosis. Which is the process by which genes are passed on to future generations.. Or, more correctly, copies thereof are disseminated. Which, given that Dawkins enjoyed the requisite scientific education in his youth, which included learning about meiosis, is implicit in his own accounts of this. Indeed, starting on page 27 of my electronically searchable edition of The Selfish Gene, a book he wrote way back in 1976, Dawkins gives an accessible account of meiosis. This account includes reference to terms such as copying fidelity. But pelase, don't let inconvenient facts such as this get in the way of your peddling fatuous, rectally extracted assertions that bear no connection to reality, will you?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:If you want to believe that chemicals survive their own physical degradation then that's fine with me.

The mere fact that I mentioned meiosis on multiple occasions in my post renders your above assertion not only null and void, but utterly fatuous.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:But your belief in chemical souls that survive or chemical transmigration

Is a figment of your imagination. Once again, go pick up a biology textbook, and learn about meiosis.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:does look very quasi-religious, you must admit.

Only toi anyone foolish enough to think that what goes on in the television inside your head bears any connection to reality, which, as has been repeatedly demonstrated here, it doesn't. Once again, pick up a biology textbook, and learn about meiosis.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Dawkins applauds esoteric religion, btw.

Oh look. Another quote mine in the offing? Like the previous one you presented, and which I exposed as such?

Arthur Methoxy wrote:He says in the God Delusion that "If only such nuanced, subtle religion predominated, the world would surely be a better place" (p.15)

Oh look, another quote mine taken completely out of context. Let's find out what Dawkins actually says in context, shall we?

Richard Dawkins wrote:The next criticism is a related one, the great 'straw man' offensive.

You always attack the worst of religion and ignore the best.

'You go after crude, rabble-rousing chancers like Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, rather than sophisticated theologians like Tillich or Bonhoeffer who teach the sort of religion I believe in'.

If only such subtle, nuanced religion repdominated, the world would surely be a better place, and I would have written a different book. The melancholy truth is that this kind of understated, decent, revisionist religion is numerically negligible. To the vast majority of believers around the world, religion all too closely resembles what you hear from the likes of Robertson, Falwell or Haggard, Osama bin Laden or the Ayatollah Khomeini. These are not straw men, they are all too influential, and everybody in the modern world has to deal with them.

In other words, once again, Dawkins was addressing a completely different argument with his words, namely, the accusation that he was purportedly cherry-picking the worst that religion could offer, and ignoring anything supernaturalists presented as purportedly 'positive' in favour thereof. An accusation which, when taken in proper context as done above, those words address.

Arthur Methoxy wrote:Make of it what you will, but if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

Only if blatantly quote mined as you have done above.