Comments on The Evolution Killer?

Go to Religion in the Modern World - Add a comment - Go to The Evolution Killer?

Re: Gome, loving the dialogue as always...

mysteria - this was just like the old days.

posted by gomedome on June 19, 2008 at 1:53 PM | link to this | reply

Gome, loving the dialogue as always...

posted by mysteria on June 19, 2008 at 1:13 PM | link to this | reply

I'm sorry Gomedome, but you may delete this from your comments page.

posted by Bhaskar.ing on June 18, 2008 at 5:49 PM | link to this | reply

Maturity is seeing in Ourselves what we would Criticize in Others

The header stolen from Gomedome's comment to Moon.Thanks, big Bro, only you could elicit such a response. Thjis is where it all started http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Comments.aspx/551054#c2512152. arGee got into an unnecessary tiff with me. My response:

arGee, you're nor arGee but Mr. arGue.

You conveniently failed to notice my address to Gomedome, "I'm not justifying" (read again, if you haven't), and picked on me using derogatory terms like "silly groups", "Bhaskar and his cohorts", "these guys" and the like, to which I take exception. Please refrain from attempting to speak from a high pedestal, or qualifying blog members. You seem to be alluding to my parochialism, that’s your right. My thought on this: We often censure people for refusing to accept an idea or blame his parochial nature to be responsible for his being ‘closed’ and unreceptive. Especially in matters religious, intolerance levels are often found to be elevated to the point of fanaticism. One thing to beware of is they are not to be criticized because it is their brain, and not the people themselves, that refuse unconsciously to be acted upon by new ideas. And by the very same token I can prove you to be 'conservative'.

To come to the point: Two of blockbuster books published in the 1970’s, called the Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and the Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukev, were the ones that first started the attempt at integrating the two diametrically opposing belief systems of science and religion to be brought under one umbrella of understanding. To my way of understanding reconciliation of the two will never be possible, because science deals with the investigation of all that is external in nature and is a study of matter to find an operating law that exists behind material principles, called Physics, a word derived from ‘physical’, having form. No matter however much it may have discovered, science can never claim “here it ends”. In the like manner your contention on "modern Liberalism" will stand on soppy grouns, beacuse it hasn't ended in the 21st century. And looking from a futuristic standpoint, all your 'Liberalism' wll turn to 'Conservatism'. This is 'Relativistic', fluid and changing.

I read your link, and it is a great informative read. I would like to add another dimension on Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel laureate and one of the founders of Quantum mechanics. Heisenberg came to India on a lecture tour where he was a guest of another Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore. The two men talked extensively about the ancient Vedic Hindu philosophy and Heisenberg later acknowledged that it had helped him a lot with his work in Physics. He said that it showed him that “a great deal of new developments in quantum physics was in fact not all that crazy (as you say they are) and there was, indeed, a whole culture that subscribed to very similar ideas”.

But a similarity is not the same thing as identical and, so, the two are never to be mixed up was Heisenberg’s observation. Neither did Einstein, who almost turned a mystic in utter wonderment of all that lay before science to be discovered, uttering those famous words, "God does not play dice with the universe". Or, for that matter, Steven Hawking, the world’s leading cosmologist who openly talks of getting to know the mind of God.

A professor of materials science at Cambridge, and a dyed-in-the-wool materialist, Colin Humphreys has used these exact words: Christianity and science are at loggerheads with each other. He has asserted, “I think you can explain the universe without invoking God at all. And you can explain humans without invoking God at all”. Being a staunch apologist of the power of science to explain the nature of matter, he believes that humans - like all other living things - evolved through the action of natural selection upon random mutation. He has said, "I believe that the scientific world view can explain almost anything. But I just think there is another world view as well". This last part appeared quite intriguing to me.

Another emeritus professor of physics at the Open University, Stannard Russell wondered whether it worried him that science - his science – could be about to explain the whole story of space, time, matter and energy without any need for a Creator? "No, because a starting point you can have is: why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there a world? Now I cannot see how science could ever provide an answer." This is the great trouble of science, and between the evolutionist and the existentialist. Christianity, too, seems to have fallen in this trap. (I have never advocated Christianity, but Christ, most definitely yes.)

Coming back to the question of reconciliation, Fritjof Capra himself very beautifully says, “Physicists do not need mysticism, nor do the mystics need Physics, but humanity needs both”.

posted by Bhaskar.ing on June 18, 2008 at 12:57 PM | link to this | reply

Re: Dark_Moon - it's not really nonsense

...so entirely true...everytime i get pissed or judgemental towards someone...which would be too many times a day to count...hence my elevated BP...i am always aware that it is my own shortcomings that i am seeing...moon

posted by magic_moon on June 18, 2008 at 9:54 AM | link to this | reply

Dark_Moon - it's not really nonsense

Part of the maturation process is seeing in ourselves that which we would attempt to criticize or change in others.

posted by gomedome on June 18, 2008 at 9:51 AM | link to this | reply

...btw...feel free to ignore that last one as the cryptic non-sense that it is...Moon

posted by magic_moon on June 18, 2008 at 9:15 AM | link to this | reply

..."the eye sees all things but not itself"...Moon

posted by magic_moon on June 18, 2008 at 6:54 AM | link to this | reply

See how I do mine when it comes to 'arguing'.

posted by Bhaskar.ing on June 18, 2008 at 5:15 AM | link to this | reply

arGee, you're nor arGee but arGue. See how do mine when it comes to

Coming back to the question of reconciliation, Fritjof Capra himself very beautifully says, “Physicists do not need mysticism, nor do the mystics need Physics, but humanity needs both”.

posted by Bhaskar.ing on June 18, 2008 at 5:08 AM | link to this | reply

arGee - Re: Here we go again, Gome...

I re-read the post you linked to, I had forgotten how brilliant it is. I will have to revisit this discussion later.

posted by gomedome on June 17, 2008 at 10:43 PM | link to this | reply

Bhaskar.ing - I have to admit that I do not fully understand what you are

"trying to mean"

I'm of the camp that the spiritual world and the supernatural do not exist. All human experience is derived from human perception, an avenue of inquiry that holds a great deal of answers. When it is considered how easily the human brain is manipulated, stimulated and deceived, we begin to understand human experience pertaining to what is referred to as the spiritual world. We have simply accepted popularized speculations that a realm beyond our own physical realm exists but does it exist? I would not go as far as suggesting that we are not subject to the metaphysical, there certainly is a lot that is beyond our human senses and as you re-affirm, beyond our comprehension. It is my belief (I use the word belief here because it is merely my opinion) that there is the natural world and there is nothing beyond the natural world.

posted by gomedome on June 17, 2008 at 10:33 PM | link to this | reply

Here we go again, Gome...

Bashkar is just another “Creationist,” functioning inside his own restricted venue. He belongs to that silly group of believers who have attempted to draw a parallel between the uncertainty of quantum mechanics and the “Relativistic” mindset of modern political Liberalism. I addressed this problem some time ago in my post, THE ABSOLUTE NATURE OF A RELATIVE UNIVERSE. I’m not trying to usurp your very excellent blog, but there is no need to delve deeply into this concept here when I already did so at the link.

The Christian Creationists have built their own belief-based matrix into which they insist on forcing everything they see and hear. If it doesn’t fit, they twist and distort what they see and hear until it fits. You have done an excellent job of shining the light of reason on this nonsense.

Bashkar and his cohorts do exactly the same thing in a different venue. These guys have a belief system that sees reality as an interlocking set of fuzzy elements that regularly change fluidly from one to the other – nothing is at it seems in their relativistic universe. With the introduction of Quantum Mechanics in the early 20^th Century, these guys latched onto the “relativistic” nature, the apparently non-deterministic character of this branch of modern physics, and use physics to “prove” their particular brand of nonsense.

They have been so successful that even some fairly high-powered physics types have been seduced by their BS, attested to by the 1960s popular book on physics, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism by Friedjof Capra. This volume almost singlehandedly shifted young science oriented American youth to a new-age agenda of pseudo science that still underlies a significant part of modern Liberalism.

posted by arGee on June 17, 2008 at 7:54 PM | link to this | reply

Gomedome

Loved how you articulated, and I revere your discerning brain. I would love a continued discussion in brotherhood understanding. The only thing that I disagre with you is in your segregation; matter, in itself, would never be matter if it were not to be associated, in ways that are still not understood by us, or, even by science for that matter, with someting higher than matter (Spirit, that science rejects). Dualism or dualistic view is a disease; it prevents us from 'arriving'. It keeps us always unsatiated, unfulfilled, hollow. To digress and yet not digress, an ox's footprints imprinted in mire, becomes concrete when sunrays fall, and during rainfall collects some water and thinks itself to be ocean-like; it does not know that a bit of sunray heat will evaporate its being, but never, whatever be the intensity of the sunray, the ocean. That's what our tiny, puny brain can be likened wth, when it comes to undersatnding vastness. Kant has said that there is a tremendous deadwall called reason, it can never be broken, and the very same Kant, at the time of his dying, to the denial of his entire lifetime dedicated to philosophy, says to all contrainess of philosophy, "I am standing a thousand miles above time". Now how do you connect the illogicity of Time and Distance? Wasn't the great logician most illogical, most unsyllogistic? I question along these lines, if you understand what I am trying to mean.

posted by Bhaskar.ing on June 17, 2008 at 11:17 AM | link to this | reply

Re: creationists parrot the same lines over and over over the decades

Xeno-x - you outline what are the fundamental differences between evolution and creationism, while at the same time exposing the undeniable flaw in creationism. Creationism is an exercise in reconciling the simple existence of the world around us with observations that our primitive ancestors scribbled in a book. There is no mechanism to allow for the input of discovery and new information, there are only further attempts at elaborating upon the reconciliation effort.

Evolution on the other hand is a scientific theory that has been corroborated to an extensive degree and is subject to change as we learn more. Only one of these mindsets can be described as progressive thought.

posted by gomedome on June 17, 2008 at 10:26 AM | link to this | reply

Re: Gomedome, some thoughts your piece evoked. I'm justifying nothing.

Bhaskar.ing - in answer to one of the questions you pose: "With the term ID, isn’t science making a veiled reference to what religion has always recognized as the Spirit or the Life Force that operates behind evolution?" No, I don't think that is the case, the term ID is merely an acronym for the words intelligent design which is a definitive term of a concept that both science and religion agree upon in terms of what it is defining. Where I would suggest the notion you propose is in error is in your combination of two separate areas of thought. The "Spirit" world does not exist in science but the term "Life Force" could be used to describe any ambient energy source, signals or information inherent in the physical composition of living things. The latter all existing in a number of scientific fields of inquiry.

You introduce some interesting thoughts but we must never lose sight of the fact that evolution itself deals only with the natural, physical world. When I referred to others suggesting that evolution is a belief, I am not endorsing that notion. A scientific theory cannot by any stretch of the imagination be relegated to a belief on the same terms as a religious belief. The scientific process at that point loses its integrity, which is of course what those who would object to evolution are attempting to imply.

I don't have time now for the remainder of your comment but will touch on thoughts that it has evoked. Words such as random, "coincidence", chance, indiscriminate etc. etc. are not the words of evolutionary theory. With the primary mechanism of evolution being the natural selection process, to utilize these words is suggesting that they are synonymous with the word selection. The missing link in evolution would therefore be the appearance of the first replicating carbon based cell. The organization of these first cells into simple life forms by the natural selection process would only be a matter of time. When it is considered that we as humans do not fully comprehend vast time spans, it is our natural penchant to discard the notion of much more complex life forms containing billions of organized cells being formed this way.

One thing I do feel worth mentioning is that obviously we do not at this time know how the first replicating carbon based cell appeared. The same can be said of the first particle of hyper condensed matter proposed in the Big Bang theory. Not knowing the starting points does not in any way diminish what we do know and should open the door to a number of other possibilities. I find the notion of a propagating event as the precursor for both of these popular scientific theories an interesting idea.

posted by gomedome on June 17, 2008 at 9:10 AM | link to this | reply

creationists parrot the same lines over and over over the decades

I've heard it all before.

and it doesn't work

this, along with other "reasonings" to demonstrate Creationism's validity, have been demonstrated to be invalid decades ago.

I have received information from the king of Creation Science, Garner Ted Armstrong, whose articles and radio shows in the 60's presented at that time quite good points and questions.

However, they were limited in their scope, and, once understanding Life and all its possibilities at variation, I also understood the beauty of Life's evolving.

Creationism demands a static universe, and traditional Christianity, a static existence, with a definite beginning and ending.

Evolution and the rest of the Universe are progressive, unending. This is much more in line with the omni- qualities of the God I see.

posted by Xeno-x on June 17, 2008 at 7:27 AM | link to this | reply

mothernatu - I almost used one of my earlier comments as proof that man has

descended from apes, with the evolution not nearly complete in some cases.

But I avoided the temptation to do so. I'm not quite sure where your closing sentence fits in.

posted by gomedome on June 17, 2008 at 7:23 AM | link to this | reply

Gomedome, some thoughts your piece evoked. I'm justifying nothing.

There is a growing school of Quantum Mechanics thought, which seem to be convinced that the universe was possibly created not only by random mutation and natural selection, but by an Intelligent Design as well. With the term ID, isn’t science making a veiled reference to what religion has always recognized as the Spirit or the Life Force that operates behind evolution? Here I can understand your saying, 'We've even seen Evolution referred to as a "belief" and scientists reduced to "high priests"' ... Even a single-celled organism, amoeba, is too complex to be created by natural selection alone, say the scientists, because as many as thirty proteins need to be arranged in a specific order of sequence and in right quantitative proportion for it to be living. And, the removal of a single protein makes the cell dysfunctional. For thirty proteins to fall into a particular pattern is too much of a coincidence! If such a microscopic formless amoeba is so intricate a prototype, imagine the involvedness of billion-celled human beings! On the other hand, widespread neuropsychological studies conducted on near-death patients have shown that they experience an expanding consciousness even when they are clinically dead; the machines registering no brain activity at all. Despite this state, a majority of these ‘clinically dead’ could think a hundred times faster and with greater clarity than is humanly possible. Then there are patients with acute Pan Cerebral Ischemia, due to which they become clinically unconscious, but still they can think and feel as clearly as if they were fully conscious. All these empirical evidences have opened up the fundamental question: Does Consciousness have nothing to do with the physical bodily condition – whether healthy, sick, awake, sleeping, unconscious, or even near-death? Then it is logical to question: Is Consciousness dependent on our physical existence or is independent and continues beyond death of the body as well? Therefore, what I feel is that for sciene, the question of evolution is still beyond what they can call, as of now, an undeniable syllogistic conclusion and, I am not here referring to anything philosophical by the word "syllogistic".

posted by Bhaskar.ing on June 17, 2008 at 6:23 AM | link to this | reply

All I Know about Evolution is that we are turning into APES!

Seriously I think people are born smarter and seem to be taller than 100 years ago. Kids teach their parents computer skills while they are preschool. At some point people will be so evolved that they think they are God! Scary HUH?

4u ~

posted by mothernature on June 17, 2008 at 6:16 AM | link to this | reply

Bhaskar.ing - it is hilarious isn't it?

I have yet to have a person who is objecting to evolution in my comments be able to define that which they are objecting to. Instead they all seem to follow much the same pattern. One of utilizing a list of bogus misconceptions that they have been convinced of by others as being proposed by the scientific theory of evolution. And all of this to attempt to advance their belief in religious mythologies as somehow being more valid than a proven scientific theory. Sadly, clubbing them over the head is too easy, it is not even a contest. They are intent in wallowing in their ignorance.

posted by gomedome on June 17, 2008 at 6:12 AM | link to this | reply

Gomedome

I was driven to your comments section from the Home page. What I found here was quite gripping as well as hilarious. Must come back for a read in the evening. Keep it up!

posted by Bhaskar.ing on June 16, 2008 at 11:12 PM | link to this | reply

Re: Excuse Me, Mr. Descendent Of An Ape

There is no excuse for you. You are just a loudmouthed ignorant bible thumping fool that believes any half baked drivel you hear in church.

I know it is tough for a person of your limited comprehension to figure this out but your definition of a theory in common usage is very close to the way I have described it in the previous post. Common usage and scientific usage of the word "theory" are different however, which was the point of the post.

The scientific theory of evolution is not dependent on the discovery of the missing link to remain valid. The missing link is still a hypothesis and may in fact not have ever existed, at least in terms of a half man and half ape. There are a number of reasons why it has diminished in importance in terms of validating Darwin's initial speculations. First off, evolution is omni-directional, meaning that apes may well have descended from man. Secondly, so many other aspects of the scientific theory have been corroborated including our common ancestry with apes: HERE

This will be our last attempt at dialogue. You are in way beyond your depth and I'm not about to dumb it down to accomodate your limitations. If you want to continue to make a fool of yourself speaking about evolution from a position of nearly total ignorance, I view that as entirely your problem. You simply do not have the foggiest friggin clue of what you are attempting to refute . . . by why would that stop you now?

posted by gomedome on June 16, 2008 at 10:52 PM | link to this | reply

Timelines

Give me a timeline that delas with evolution. Tell me when apes became man, I need years, numbers, a timeline please!

posted by RedStatesMan on June 16, 2008 at 7:45 PM | link to this | reply

Excuse Me, Mr. Descendent Of An Ape

Which came first? Theory or Man?

Again, I must remind you:

In common usage, the word theory is often used to signify a conjecture, an opinion, a speculation, or a hypothesis. In this usage, a theory is not necessarily based on facts; in other words, it is not required to be consistent with true descriptions of reality. This usage of theory leads to the common incorrect statements. True descriptions of reality are more reflectively understood as statements which would be true independently of what people think about them.

You live by speculation, you live by opinion, you live by hypothesis, you live by conjecture, you live by something that is NOT fact nor the truth. You do not live in reality but in a fact, logic and scientific world. How sad! Wanna a banana?

posted by RedStatesMan on June 16, 2008 at 7:24 PM | link to this | reply

Permit me, Gome...

To take a slightly different tack on your fundamental question and ask: What is a chicken? And then answer that a chicken obviously is an egg's way of making another egg. And with that profound insight, the whole discussion has to change, right?

posted by arGee on June 16, 2008 at 4:17 PM | link to this | reply

Transcendental_Child -that's ultimately the point, scientific knowledge is

subject to change with new discovery.

Religious beliefs on the other hand have no such mechanism for invigoration. Instead we find ourselves with what is happening today. Where the ancient mythologies that religious beliefs are based upon withstood the test of time to a certain degree over a number of centuries, today they have become to a great extent redundant within the accelerated pace of discovery. At least in terms of literal translation. So what we have ended up with is an orchestrated effort by believers to reconcile what they want to insist are universal truths with a modern world that is no longer willing to comply. The believer's traditional exercise of looking for signs of the existence of God in all things that exist, or in all outcomes, has "evolved" (had to use that word) into an exercise of re-writing reality to fit an irreconcilable religious chronicle.

posted by gomedome on June 16, 2008 at 11:42 AM | link to this | reply

Re: Transcendental_Child - I've heard the chicken and the egg argument far too

Gomes... here is a bit of (r)evolutonary news. Notice how science can admit it did not have all the facts... and now that there is new data... yet????

I don't buy into the creator theory - for obvioius reasons.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080610/ts_afp/sciencedinosaurspaleontologygeology;_ylt=Ajmpnqm4glwYO.kkCZpeRvYPLBIF

posted by Transcendental_Child on June 16, 2008 at 11:26 AM | link to this | reply

Transcendental_Child - I've heard the chicken and the egg argument far too

many times lately.

The people that use it as if it is some profound insight seem to actually believe what they are saying and that part is scary. They are effectively arguing against something that they have invented while calling it evolution. Then as if their display of ignorance is not enough, they insist that the 100's of thousands of people in this world working in the scientific disciplines have simply adopted a set of erroneous beliefs, or are a part of a grand conspiracy to eliminate their God from this world. Obfuscation or denial of facts, the popularizing of demonizing those who are involved in scientific study and the general spreading of dumb like peanut butter are all tactics they have no qualm employing. We should all be concerned when such a large segment of our societies are insistent on reverting to primitive thought processes, while obscuring facts and real science with religious mythology. . . . . haven't these knuckleheads ever heard of the Taliban?

Then as if their insidious agenda is not enough of a weight impeding real science and learning, the most ridiculous aspect is that it does not have to be a choice between evolution and creationism. If someone believes that an omnipotent creator being willed everything into existence, who is to say that evolution was not the mechanism this being used to complete the job?

posted by gomedome on June 16, 2008 at 11:19 AM | link to this | reply

Gomes...

what came first... the peanut or the peanut butter? The potato or the potato chip? The larvae or the fly???? Butterfly or the caterpillar...

Why... I could hurt myself trying to figure these things out!!!!

posted by Transcendental_Child on June 16, 2008 at 10:58 AM | link to this | reply