Denial of Evolution VI.

[wellwisher]

Much like biologists will not stress that an organism is breathing air, the need for water in biological functions is so basic it just isn't in question. So, as you fail to mention the gravity that makes it possible for you to walk when you tell someone you are going outside, water is a given in biology. Some things are so basic to a subject that there is no need to constantly mention their importance, you've obviously misinterpreted the lack of emphasis, it is simply that it is as basic as breathing or gravity is to human activity and therefore taken as a given. Water is the medium where life happens, without water there is no life, period. But water is just a chemical compound, you are trying to make it a magical one.

Grumpy

Water is different in that it is part of all cellular structures and plays a role in all cellular reactions. The reaction of ATP to ADP and phosphate requires water, yet you don't see the water in the equation. The beta version of DNA, which is common to life, has the most hydrated water. DNA includes a double helix of water, which is well known, but left out, so we can do magic tricks and appeal to the atheist god of chaos for chance. This is more than oversight.

Air supplies oxygen which is a one trick pony. Life can also work without gravity, as was demonstrated with space flight. If water is left out of the analysis in proportion to its use in life, the current theory of evolution becomes too dependent on emotional appeal in the world public opinion and force of law to stand. Religion goes after evolution since it is another religion using the disguise of being based on the age of reason.

I am always deliberately misrepresented to allow the evolutionists a way to avoid having to deal with cause and effect. I accept a process where life evolves/progresses from basic chemicals and continues to change with time. Where I depart from the current explanation, is that any theory that leaves out water, as an equal partner in the process, is not rational science but is only a stepping stone science. It should be challenged since it is only a dogma not the end. I am not denying the data, but am including an extra variable. There is no energy balance, using only organics without water, which adds up since it takes a lot of energy to displace water. If you violate the conservation of energy then, of course, you need the magic energy of chaos to close energy balances.

 

[leopold]

hey wegs, get a gander at this:

So BAD, MAD or SAD, is it?

It's a useful trilemma and while it may be a false trilemma (analogous to the more common case of false dilemma) it is up to leopold to present evidence and actually argue for a fourth possibility. To do anything else would simply ignore the first law of holes and more firmly cement in the minds of all readers is that leopold is the opposite of a reliable conduit of fact and reasoned argument in biology. Distinguishing between the three hypotheses is largely pointless over the internet where questions of sincerity, intent and identity can't be reliably verified within the bounds of etiquette and each is completely sufficient to explain why leopold presents such trivial falsehoods at the expense of his own reputation.

i must ask:
just what are you ragging on me about now rpenner?
the only thing i can think of are my posts 1072 and 1074 on page 54.

 

[Trippy]

Let me elaborate for you:

You're the person in the hole doing the digging, by the way.

 

[wegs]

Stay true to your beliefs?

wegs, you are endorsing cognitive biases. Science diminishes the effect of cognitive biases. Skeptics are more willing to engage in analytic reasoning. Faith is not a virtue and gullibility is not flattering. When you’re finished tearing pages from the scriptures, creating a personal papier-mâché god, ask yourself, who created who?

It’s not easy becoming an atheist. There is no euphoric feeling that greets this realization. The self-soothing activity of pray will no longer reduce your anxiety. You’ll have to develop new strategies to cope. You’ll realize that at some point you will utterly cease to exist. You’ll become more aware of your insignificance, limitations, and vulnerabilities. You’ll see that there’s a reason why things happen but that things do not happen for a reason.

On the plus side, you’ll have the freedom to think for yourself without the unnecessary guilt. Your sense of wonder will drastically increase. The thoughts of heaven will be replaced with life itself. The future will become your source of hope.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Heb 11:1

This touched me, trooper. I know this came from your heart. That means a lot to me.
I hesitate to take up anymore space in this thread, because I didn't mean for my "beliefs" to derail the topic.
But suffice to say, I'm taken aback by the hospitality everyone has shown me here. Humility goes a long way with me and I don't think any of us "knows" for certain. But thank you (all) for letting me share my views and most of u have shown a lot of generosity in that.

When I apply some thought as to what it might be like to not believe in "a god" anymore, I don't know how one can unlearn that. Lol you know?

Faith can't be unlearned because no one teaches a person to have faith.

Having said that, I don't know any other way "to be."
I'm just keepin it real as they say. And I appreciate your "realness."

 

[rpenner]

just what are you ragging on me about now rpenner?

As this is a science forum on a science board, you should trivially realize that the most parsimonious hypothesis as to the subject of [POST=3090769]post #1480[/POST], a post without any quotes, would be agreement with [POST=3090758]post #1479[/POST] by Rav which calls out for criticism one line of your [POST=3090626]post #1473[/POST]. To do otherwise would be a sign of fundamental incompetence in reading comprehension, some sort of delusion of grandeur that every post mentioning you must be addressed to you, or willful deceit and trolling. (That's SAD, MAD or BAD in my shorthand trilemma hypothesis to explain why you post trivially untrue things.)

At no point was speciation dismissed as a part of macroevolution -- a nonsense assertion since any macroevolutionary change is speciation as per Darwin's title: On the Origin of Species and the definition of macroevolution. You literally are claiming the paleontologists were rallying in the 1980's against common descent with modification when the big news was the tempo of macroevolutionary change in a particular population was more variable than traditionally assumed. That's a refinement, not a rebuttal. A similar refinement would be an analysis of children's books in a library being refined from counting how many times each book is checked out to making the observation that books like "Santa and me", "The Big Book of Ghosts" and "Easter Egg Ideas" have strongly modulated rates of usage in certain times of year. The rhythm changes of stasis (slow change) and punctuation (rapid change) are against a time scale of millions of years or tens of thousands of generations, so the assumption of stepwise change in Darwin's theory and the Modern evolutionary synthesis is nowhere discarded.

But you don't base your claims on the scientific papers accepted today, nor on the totality of scientific papers that came out of one particular conference, nor on the demonstrably unreliable write-up of the conference by one reporter, but only on an alleged memory of a claim that was nowhere in that unreliable write-up. The report did not make the nonsense claims that macroevolution (speciation) was not macroevolution -- no one who understood the factual pattern of common descent with modification could honestly make that claim. But you did make that claim:

the primary question of the conference was can the process of speciation be applied to the grander scale of macroevolution and their conclusion was no, it can't.

Thus the SAD/MAD/BAD trilemma is not an ad hominem fallacious attack on why all your posts are rubbish, but a hypothesis without discussed alternative on why historically so many of your posts have been rubbish. (Like accusing people of re-writing historical documents which didn't match with your claims.) It's pointing to an area where we think you could possibly personally improve.

If your problems allow it, it has been recommended in the past that you read and study the evidence for macroevolutionary change and our current understanding of it so your posts would seem more informed. To date, I've seen no evidence that you took us up on this trivial challenge for someone with college-level reading skills.

If you like, you can even quote any whole paragraph from it and ask further questions. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ (8 pages + Glossary)

 

[Trooper]

When I apply some thought as to what it might be like to not believe in "a god" anymore, I don't know how one can unlearn that. Lol you know?

Faith can't be unlearned because no one teaches a person to have faith.

Do you feel that people are unable to change, acquire new information, or modify their criteria for reasonable belief? Do you believe that once you "feel" there is a god that this feeling is so overwhelming that there is no going back? We don’t have to worry about what we cannot alter, right? Is there a puppeteer? Are we evolutionary puppets?

Cognitive dissonance is unpleasant, isn't it? To eliminate this conflict, are we to ignore or pretend that this so-called all knowing god is only good? Are we to dismiss all the historical, negative aspects of this conception, or do we prefer bad boys?

“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.” ~ Dawkins

Your freedom of thought depends on your tolerance of conflict, wegs.

Even though the scriptures suppress women, women are more religious than men are. Why do you think that is? Are we more gullible, more susceptible to love, or perhaps god’s (superman’s) image of us, which we ourselves create? To have faith, is this some sort of grail hunger, a reciprocation of our own exalted image, or the ultimate erotomania?

“I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God--tender, personal love. If you were there you would have said 'what hypocrisy.'” ~Mother Teresa

If you want love, find a friend, one that's not imaginary. I'm not judgin'......I'm just sayin'.

Enjoy your day, little Missy...

 

[spidergoat]

When I apply some thought as to what it might be like to not believe in "a god" anymore, I don't know how one can unlearn that. Lol you know?

You must have been conditioned from a young age to believe in god. It's sad. I think it's a form of child abuse.

 

[Rav]

I don't think that the concept of God, by itself, should be a target. It's only the harmful theologies that we should be aiming at. You know, the one's that actively seek to propagate gross ignorance and intolerance, or pretty much anything that actively opposes the realization of reasonable secular ideals.

 

[Trooper]

I don't think that the concept of God, by itself, should be a target. It's only the harmful theologies that we should be aiming at. You know, the one's that actively seek to propagate gross ignorance and intolerance, or pretty much anything that actively opposes the realization of reasonable secular ideals.

Do you not feel that the moderates enable the fundies?

 

[Rav]

Do you not feel that the moderates enable the fundies?

Maybe to some extent. But there's opposition too. Deism is a good example. You can find many in that camp who are just as opposed to typical religious bullshit as anyone else. And then we have all the people who just have some sort of vague belief in a "higher power" along with a personal philosophy all their own that they typically just keep to themselves unless the topic comes up. I'm guessing we all know a few people like that, right? Even friends? Even spouses?

Anyway, that's the sort of thing I'm talking about.

 

[wegs]

You must have been conditioned from a young age to believe in god. It's sad. I think it's a form of child abuse.

What an unnecessary, mean spirited thing to say.
I have always been kind to you.

 

[spidergoat]

What an unnecessary, mean spirited thing to say.
I have always been kind to you.

I'm not being unkind or mean. That's what I believe.

 

[Trooper]

Maybe to some extent. But there's opposition too. Deism is a good example. You can find many in that camp who are just as opposed to typical religious bullshit as anyone else. And then we have all the people who just have some sort of vague belief in a "higher power" along with a personal philosophy all their own that they typically just keep to themselves unless the topic comes up. I'm guessing we all know a few people like that, right? Even friends? Even spouses?

Anyway, that's the sort of thing I'm talking about.

There are those who avoid cognitive dissonance by believing that science and religion are compatible, and then there are those who take it one step further.

Do you think there is a practical reason to believe in god?

You must have been conditioned from a young age to believe in god. It's sad. I think it's a form of child abuse.

Yes, many people feel that religious indoctrination is child abuse.

 

[wegs]

True, that does happen. The inference was that it happened to me.
I've taken the time to share my views politely, when asked. If ppl just chalk it up to well, she prolly was abused, then whatever. You know? I guess then I don't have a whole lot else to add.

But if I were to infer someone must have been abused or coerced to being an atheist, you would be offended most likely. Seems at times, a double standard. :/

Thanks for your reply up top, trooper.

 

[Grumpy]

wellwisher

Water is different in that it is part of all cellular structures and plays a role in all cellular reactions. The reaction of ATP to ADP and phosphate requires water, yet you don't see the water in the equation.

Because water is only the substrate the reaction occurs within in that case, we don't put petri dishes in our equations either, for exactly the same reason. If a water molecule is actually involved it is in the equation, if the reaction is occurring in water, it is not.

DNA includes a double helix of water, which is well known, but left out, so we can do magic tricks and appeal to the atheist god of chaos for chance. This is more than oversight.

Yeah, that statement is pure bullshit. The DNA molecule is a double helix, water does not form a double helix. The "magic tricks and appeal to the atheist god of chance" stuff is just drivel, non-sense, garbage, the ravings of the wild loon.

Air supplies oxygen which is a one trick pony.

Well, it also supplies CO2 for the plant life, and transports the products between plants and animals, it also insulates the organisms from the extreme temperatures of space, keeps radiation levels to survivable levels, supports the water cycle, the carbon cycle and the weather. That's just a few of the "tricks" air can do.

Life can also work without gravity, as was demonstrated with space flight.

Life can SURVIVE space flight for short periods, we have no evidence it can develop in space(though we do have copious evidence that the precursors and required chemicals of life can develop there)or that long term survival is possible. We've already found that 6 months in space leave you so weak it takes another 6 months to recover.

If water is left out of the analysis in proportion to its use in life, the current theory of evolution becomes too dependent on emotional appeal in the world public opinion and force of law to stand.

It isn't. And nothing you have claimed has affected the fact of evolution, our theories explaining the fact of evolution are not written in stone but the fact that evolution has been occurring on Earth for over 3.5 billion years is undeniable by ...well, sane people.

Religion goes after evolution since it is another religion using the disguise of being based on the age of reason.

Religion has always fought science because science often exposes religious claims as being false, and it does so in a way that anyone can repeat for themselves. Science has lead to the death of many religious ideas, evolution being a good example. The book of Genesis is a myth, not a scientific description.

I am always deliberately misrepresented to allow the evolutionists a way to avoid having to deal with cause and effect.

You are accurately represented by the garbage you post, don't blame others for your failings.

I accept a process where life evolves/progresses from basic chemicals and continues to change with time. Where I depart from the current explanation, is that any theory that leaves out water, as an equal partner in the process, is not rational science but is only a stepping stone science. It should be challenged since it is only a dogma not the end. I am not denying the data, but am including an extra variable. There is no energy balance, using only organics without water, which adds up since it takes a lot of energy to displace water. If you violate the conservation of energy then, of course, you need the magic energy of chaos to close energy balances.

You really have no clue what you are talking about, this is a phony "controversy" of your own construction(IE a strawman). You should have stopped with the first sentence "I accept a process where life evolves/progresses from basic chemicals and continues to change with time.", as that is what evolution is, it is an observed fact. It's the only thing you have said of any value in your last post. The rest is basically word salad.

Grumpy

 

[leopold]

At no point was speciation dismissed as a part of macroevolution -- a nonsense assertion since any macroevolutionary change is speciation as per Darwin's title: On the Origin of Species and the definition of macroevolution. You literally are claiming the paleontologists were rallying in the 1980's against common descent with modification when the big news was the tempo of macroevolutionary change in a particular population was more variable than traditionally assumed.

i can only assume WHY their conclusion was no, and i assume it was because of the state of the fossil record.
this assumption is apparently valid because gould asserts essentially the same when he speaks of "functional disparity" in the record.

The rhythm changes of stasis (slow change) and punctuation (rapid change) are against a time scale of millions of years or tens of thousands of generations, so the assumption of stepwise change in Darwin's theory and the Modern evolutionary synthesis is nowhere discarded.

speciation wasn't discarded but they had no conclusion on how much of this speciation applied to macroievolution.
again we come back to gould and his comment about the record in general.
he said that this disparity occurs throughout much of the record.

. . . nor on the demonstrably unreliable write-up of the conference by one reporter, . . .

and you know this how?
i suppose you have a transcript of the conference on hand.

(Like accusing people of re-writing historical documents which didn't match with your claims.)

where have i done this, show me the post.

 

[iceaura]

But if I were to infer someone must have been abused or coerced to being an atheist, you would be offended most likely

The inference was not that you had been abused or coerced into theism. The post was that raising a child to believe in God - in the ordinary way, Sunday school, church, that kind of thing - is itself abuse.

There was no inference of hidden or unadmitted bad stuff - you freely claim to have been raised to believe in God, which was the only "inference".

Myself, I don't agree with that post, although I do recognize the justification for it is based in reality and accurate observation. But I see no reason for you to be personally offended by it - any more than there was reason for you to take posts critical of fundies and reactionaries personally, when they are not addressed to you and you do not identify yourself with their addressed group.

 

[spidergoat]

True, that does happen. The inference was that it happened to me.
I've taken the time to share my views politely, when asked. If ppl just chalk it up to well, she prolly was abused, then whatever. You know? I guess then I don't have a whole lot else to add.

But if I were to infer someone must have been abused or coerced to being an atheist, you would be offended most likely. Seems at times, a double standard. :/

Thanks for your reply up top, trooper.

I'm not saying you were coerced or abused to believe in god, only that you might be conditioned so, it's very common. I call this a form of non-physical abuse, especially when it includes an element of fear (of hell). I think it's abusive to condition children that there is a being watching you all the time, who will send you to a very bad place if you behave wrongly.

 

[wegs]

The inference was not that you had been abused or coerced into theism. The post was that raising a child to believe in God - in the ordinary way, Sunday school, church, that kind of thing - is itself abuse.

There was no inference of hidden or unadmitted bad stuff - you freely claim to have been raised to believe in God, which was the only "inference".

Myself, I don't agree with that post, although I do recognize the justification for it is based in reality and accurate observation. But I see no reason for you to be personally offended by it - any more than there was reason for you to take posts critical of fundies and reactionaries personally, when they are not addressed to you and you do not identify yourself with their addressed group.

We will have to agree to disagree.

 

[wegs]

I'm not saying you were coerced or abused to believe in god, only that you might be conditioned so, it's very common. I call this a form of non-physical abuse, especially when it includes an element of fear (of hell). I think it's abusive to condition children that there is a being watching you all the time, who will send you to a very bad place if you behave wrongly.

I understand and I'm glad you clarified.
It was important to my dad. He taught me to pray.
And he died when I was nine.
I won't lie. I sometimes feel closer to him through following what he taught.
But, he was all about love and not teachings about hell.
Fire and brimstone though, yeah, not a good teaching method to me either.

But just understand how a statement like that can seem dismissive to someone like me.

Walk a mile in someone else's shoes and all that jazz...