Why the need for certainty ?

Religion and Secularism
101

Re. Bryan, part 2.

 

My 2 favorite quotes by William Jennings Bryan:

The human measure of a human life is its income; the divine measure of a life is its outgo, its overflow--its contribution to the welfare of all.
And
The poor man is called a socialist if he believes that the wealth of the rich should be divided among the poor, but the rich man is called a financier if he devises a plan by which the pittance of the poor can be converted to his use.
I think if he got in a time machine and came to today, he would not know what to do with today's Christian Right, and they would not know what to do with him.

But yes. He spent the last 20 years of his life in a crusade against Darwin.

102
"The human measure of a human life is its income; the divine measure of a life is its outgo, its overflow–its contribution to the welfare of all."

“The poor man is called a socialist if he believes that the wealth of the rich should be divided among the poor, but the rich man is called a financier if he devises a plan by which the pittance of the poor can be converted to his use.”


Those are both excellent quotes.

103

I thought you hated anti capitalists 3point?

104

@ Sherlock Holmes

You seem to miss the mathematical nature of the processes of Evolution and Natural Selection. All scientific disciplines are mathematical translations of natural values and functions.

Any concept that natural functions are not mathematical in essence leads to speculation about supernatural causalities, where certainty is completely replaced by faith.

 

 

105

Not at all, Player. Capitalism is fine to a point, but it very quickly falls off a cliff.

I’ll take free education, healthcare/dental/prescriptions/eye-care/etc., and science-based regulations, over unfettered capitalism, any day.

I honestly have no idea why you thought I hated anti-capitalists.

106
Sherlock Holmes said,

The Cambrian explosion is just one example of where empirical observations are not what one would reasonably expect from the Darwinian model, this was a problem even for Darwin himself and nothing has changed since then.


This is where you seem to miss the difference between Darwinian Evolution and Natural Selection. Extinction events do not yield genetic Darwinian Evolution at all. Extinction events are probabilistic catastrophic events and fall under the heading 'Natural Selection".

Learn the difference.

107
I thought you hated anti capitalists 3point?
Player, what was the point of this comment?

I’m not a big fan of Christianity either; Bryan was a Christian and I’m the one who posted his quotes.

Do we all have to hate everybody? Do we all have to be like you?

108

@3point14rat

I don’t recall you hating anticapitalists either.

But it sounds like you’d like Bryan!

109

3 point - but you wouldnt go so far as nationaling essential services or worker cooperatives or eliminating public funding of the private sector e.g. tax money hand out to private schools or hospitals??

110

 

September 3, 2019 at 10:16 am#306588REPLY | REPORT

Sherlock Holmes
Participant
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1551

The Top Ten Scientific Problems with Biological and Chemical Evolution
Casey Luskin


What I shame I don’t have the chance to drop everything today and spend a couple days dissecting Casey Luskin artfully concocted piece of contrived misdirection.

It is well known that if you are allowed to tell both sides of the story and if you do not have any interest in honesty representing one side of that story - then of course, you can write up iron clad arguments all day long, just keep it in your bubble and ignore what scientists are actually saying.

Problem 1: No Viable Mechanism to Generate a Primordial Soup

According to conventional thinking among origin of life theorists, life arose via unguided chemical reactions on the early Earth some 3 to 4 billion years ago. Most theorists believe that there were many steps involved in the origin of life, but the very first step would have involved the production of a primordial soup – a water-based sea of simple organic molecules – out of which life arose.

{this totally ignores many things scientists are aware of that they weren’t just a few decades ago! If you wanted to learn more about that, you gotta spend some serious time learning, you can start here (though there’s more)}

Michael Russell - Emergence, serpentinization engine, electron exchange - What a scientist sounds like.

Jack Szostak - Origins, geochemistry to biochemistry - What a scientist sounds like.

Robert Hazen - Origins, mineral evolution - What a scientist sounds like. }

Assume for a moment that there was some way to produce simple organic molecules on the early Earth. Perhaps they did form a “primordial soup,” or perhaps these molecules arose near some hydrothermal vent. Either way, origin of life theorists must then explain how amino acids or other key organic molecules linked up to form long chains (polymers) like proteins (or RNA).

Problem 2: Unguided Chemical Processes Cannot Explain the Origin of the Genetic Code

{They were not unguided - insisting on that narrative creates a lie about the known science!}

Let’s assume, again, that a primordial sea filled with life’s building blocks did exist on the early Earth, and somehow it formed proteins and other complex organic molecules. Origin of life theorists believe that the next step in the origin of life is that – entirely by chance – more and more complex molecules formed until some began to self-replicate.

250 nucleotides in an RNA molecule by chance is about 1 in 10150

{Origins of life has nothing to do with the invention of DVD - irrelevant distraction!}

Problem 3: Random Mutations Cannot Generate the Genetic Information Required for Irreducibly Complex Structures

{It’s not Random!!!}


 

111
Holmes to @teebryantoo

Tee “Looks like this Casey dude is all about Biblical Creationism. Can you find anti-evolution scientists who are not Fundamentalist Christians?”

Holmes: What bearing does this have on the validity or want thereof of the scientific analysis? Science is objective (or strives to be) if you truly believe that the legitimacy of a scientific discovery depends on the personal beliefs of the scientist then you’ll need to support that with evidence Tee.


Holmes: “What bearing does (Casey Luskin’s Fundamental Christian Faith) have on the validity or want thereof of (his) scientific analysis?”

Seriously are you asking what bearing does him possessing a fundamentalist faith have? His faith demands that he be blind to all that’s not in accord with his particular fundamental interpretation of his Holy Book.

Holmes, Casey Luskin’s Faith damns that it not be questioned!!! You are asking me what bearing does that have on his objectiveness?

For one, being a fundamentalist demands an extreme level of self-certainty towards one faith.

Most fundamentalists believe that they Understand God’s Will - that is fundamentally crazy, sorry, everyone who has seriously studied spirituality or religions ends up at the same conclusion, the one spelled out in the Book of Job, GOD IS BEYONE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Religions and the gods we create are our attempts to get nearer to that unknowable. Faith in Jesus Christ is supposed to be the intimate personal relationship with the unknowable god that we possess - If god has touch one, that’s your’s alone, non tranferble. Our faith used to be demonstrated by how we live our individual lives. The Fundamentalists are after power not god. but i digress

The real world irony is the ones who most vociferously insist they know "God’s Will’ are the Prosperity Doctrine Preachers and sheep.

Think about it, I sure have. And I’ve figured out the big secret is that they have elevated their own EGO’s to God Status just like them old emperors or Trump in our own time. Now why would I listen to the opinions of someone whom has no conception of Earth and Mother Nature than something to consume fast as possible. What does Casey possibly have to share, his own contrived, dishonest, self-serving interpretation of things he’s never taken the time to learn about in depth?

The crazy part is that you Holmes who comments with that air of superiority - totally dismisses, if not denigrates, serious scientists (and their products) who are all part of a competitive community having spend decades studying and researching and thinking - a community where honest observations and discourse are its foundational golden rule number one.

 

All the while you Holmes continue not to offer a single good faith simple explanation for what this ID of yours is and what it has to offer our intellect and understanding,

 

112
I do not believe that just because something appears in a peer-reviewed journal, it is a proven fact. I do not believe that only scientists are permitted to challenge other scientists, and then only if they’re scientists of the same kind. I do not believe that “scientific consensus” is evidence, even when it exists. I am highly suspicious of scientists who become activists for this or that political policy.
 

Arguments against evolution, and why they’re wrong

 

113

Here is an example of a problem we have here, and why we are having it, IMHO. (I’m very tired so I apologize if this doesn’t make sense.)

First, here is Nancy Pearcy, who “earned a BA from Iowa State University and an MA in Biblical Studies from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri.”

The article below is an excerpt from her book: “Finding Truth: Five Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes.”

...Evolutionists tell us that natural selection has produced all sorts of false concepts in the human mind. Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion — and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value.

So how can we know whether the theory of evolution itself is one of those false ideas? The theory undercuts itself…

https://evolutionnews.org/2015/03/why_evolutionar/
Free will, of course, is extremely important in Christianity, because humans have to be free to accept or reject God.

So, “evolutionists” are bad because they don’t believe in free will.

A Christian website connected with the Discovery Institute says…

Supporter of evolution William Provine at Cornell University argues that “[n]aturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly,” including the idea that “human free will is nonexistent.”

Is Darwinian Evolution Compatible with Free Will? | Faith and Evolution


So again, evolutionism rules out free will and is therefore dangerous.

Sure enough, on the Richard Dawkins website, Steven Cave writes:

Shortly after Darwin put forth his theory of evolution, his cousin Sir Francis Galton began to draw out the implications: If we have evolved, then mental faculties like intelligence must be hereditary. But we use those faculties—which some people have to a greater degree than others—to make decisions. So our ability to choose our fate is not free, but depends on our biological inheritance...
 
Brain scanners have enabled us to peer inside a living person’s skull, revealing intricate networks of neurons and allowing scientists to reach broad agreement that these networks are shaped by both genes and environment. But there is also agreement in the scientific community that the firing of neurons determines not just some or most but all of our thoughts, hopes, memories, and dreams.

https://www.richarddawkins.net/2016/05/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/

 


So for sure, evolution rules out free will!

But wait…

On The Big Think website:

Much of today's debate over freewill hinges on a couple semantic distinctions concerning the nature of causality...

The emergence of freewill in the human species is a result of evolution, not a brute fact. Highlighting a common misconception about freewill, which states that it is the ability to do whatever you’d like, demonstrates that the emergence of human culture requires us to exercise our freewill by obeying cultural norms.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/bigthink.com/how-evolution-explains-the-emergence-of-freewill-in-humans.amp.html


So free will…evolved?

Or perhaps we don’t have free will, but we THINK we do … and THAT is what evolved…

 

Stated differently, evolution deals with the advantages of practical free will, while the illusory nature of free will refers to absolute free will.

An Evolutionary Explanation for Our Experience of Free Will


Here is the thing:

“Free will” is an evolutionary concept, a philosophical concept, a psychological concept, and a theological concept.

You can argue that Calvinist theology doesn’t allow for free will. You can claim any omnicient Creator rules out free will.

Free will isn’t something you can pour into a test tube and measure. It can be defined various ways in different schools of thought.

But, if your Christian theology makes free will necessary, then it seems important to add the scientific view that we don’t have it to the list of reasons why the theory of evolution is evil.

And if NOT having free will is really important to your secular view, maybe that’s a good reason to support it when found in Evolutionary theory.

However, the possibility of angering a God and possibly burning in hell will usually trump any other consideration.

For the most part, I think, scientists are wary of giving any ammunition to Christians who are too eager to show not just that Darwin may have been wrong, but that he was evil.

 

 

 

 

 

114
Tee Bryan Peneguy said,

The Roman Catholic Church accepted the theory of evolution in its schools and colleges in the mid-1960s. Most Orthodox, mainline Protestants and Jews are fine with it. Buddhists, Hindus etc. have no conflict with it.


Two Popes have declared evolution to be true, based on the findings of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

"The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared.

Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they “require it”.


Pope John Paul II, on the 23rd of October, 1996, while speaking to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences plenary session at the Vatican, declared the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin to be fact, tacitly acknowledging that man evolved from the apes, and reducing the biblical account of Genesis to that of mere fable!
http://www.biblelight.net/darwin.htm

Two small steps for science, One giant leap for Evolution.

Even the Church acknowledges Evolution. What is the problem with Evolution deniers? They know better than the Pontifical Academy of Sciences?

Here we see the results of thousands of years of inculcation of “God is a magician with a magic wand”. Even whenthe source changes the message, it is rejected by the church’s own membership.

 

115

Writeu

 

“declared the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin to be fact, tacitly acknowledging that man evolved from the apes, and reducing the biblical account of Genesis to that of mere fable!”

 

Man didn’t evolve from apes. No biological evolutionary scientist makes this claim

116
Player said,

Man didn’t evolve from apes. No biological evolutionary scientist makes this claim.


Nor did the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. This faux pas was made by the reporter searching for a sensational headline.

This does not in any way affect the message that man evolved from a "common ancestor " with apes.

The Hominidae (/hɒˈmɪnɪdiː/), whose members are known as great apes[note 1] or hominids, are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo, the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan; Gorilla, the eastern and western gorilla; Pan, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo; and Homo, of whom only modern humans remain, with several extinct relatives (e.g., the Neanderthal) and ancestors, such as Homo erectus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae
117

Well, @write4u , with the Catholics it’s better than that.

As I wrote, the Vatican has been good with evolution since way before 1996. I see I wrote the 1960s, but that was a typo. Actually, it was in 1950 that:

...in the encyclical Humani generis, Pope Pius XII confirmed that there is no intrinsic conflict between Christianity and the theory of evolution, provided that Christians believe that God created all things and that the individual soul is a direct creation by God and not the product of purely material forces.
Catholics are not required to believe in evolution. However, the vast majority do, and as I mentioned, it has been taught in parochial schools for decades.
Even the Church acknowledges Evolution. What is the problem with Evolution deniers?
The CATHOLIC church does. Protestantism has a very wide variety of theologies, from very liberal to very conservative. In fact, most Protestant churches also have no problem with evolution.

The issue is really only in the Fundamentalist, Literalist Protestant churches, in denominations that arose in the 18th Century as a reaction against scientific discoveries such as Darwin’s. That was their point. So to expect them to change is kind of like saying, “Why don’t Prohibitionists just relax and have a beer?”

 

 

118

@player @write4u

This is why it helps to have a good understanding of theology before arguing against it!!

@write4u, did you realize that you got this:

“declared the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin to be fact, tacitly acknowledging that man evolved from the apes, and reducing the biblical account of Genesis to that of mere fable!”
...from a website that literally teaches the Roman Catholic church is satanic?
The beast, as I have shown previously, is the Papacy or Roman Catholic Church.

http://biblelight.net/


Here is a hint, LOL … not only is Player right, that evolution does not teach man evolved from apes, but no Catholic would say "the biblical account of Genesis (is) mere fable!”

No, the website you got that from is saying that to show how “evil” Catholics are.

So you really should not use it, if you are trying to show Catholics did a good thing by accepting evolution.

 

 

119
Tee Bryan Peneguy said,

The issue is really only in the Fundamentalist, Literalist Protestant churches, in denominations that arose in the 18th Century as a reaction against scientific discoveries such as Darwin’s. That was their point.

So to expect them to change is kind of like saying, “Why don’t Prohibitionists just relax and have a beer?”


But Prohibitionists did not claim tax free status under the “Establishment clause”, which penalizes all other ordinary tax paying citizens.

Evolution deniers do, merely because they claim science is wrong and ID is fact, even after the Kitzmiller trial which legally established that ID and “irreducible complexity” are false beliefs.

Thus ID proponents should learn to live with paying taxes just like the rest of us. This is not a trivial issue.

 

120

@write4u

I see you commented…

 

This faux pas was made by the reporter searching for a sensational headline.
To be clear, that was no reporter, nor was it a faux pas. The guy's whole website is about how the Catholic Church quite literally worships the devil.