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#41
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Sad Christmas Story
Stephen M. Zumbo:
Why not accept that they were suddenly created by God then? Chris L Peterson: Because that isn't supported by the physical evidence. Stephen M. Zumbo: That actually makes more sense, given an omniscient and omnipotent God, than blind chance and vast time scales. Chris L Peterson: That is a _huge_ given, "an omniscient and omnipotent God"! You seem to think that such a given is no big deal. To me, it seems far less likely than the absence of such a creature. In any case, if we accept your given we might as well simply stop thinking completely- there can be no rules in such a universe. FYI, "blind chance" is in no way a component of evolutionary theory. If you believe that, you don't understand it at all. The question that Mr. Zumbo's proposition raises in my mind is this: If the god he describes suddenly created all living things, and if he is the kind of god that he is widely purported to be, why has he lied to us by planting a vast quantity of evidence -- and why did he grant us the intelligence to discover and understand the evidence -- that leads to certain inescapable conclusions about everything from the behaviour of subatomic particles to the evolution of life on Earth to the evolution of the Universe itself? If he wanted to hide from us the knowledge of the nature of reality, why didn't he limit our intelligence to that of, let us say, an lesser ape? Sure, the lesser apes are pretty smart in their way, but in the absence of evolution, the greater apes like us would not be here to figure out how the world started, how it came to be what it is, and what it is likely to become in the future, and then the true God wouldn't have to lie to us. In short, if evolution is untrue, the god you describe is not the true God, for he is a habitual liar. Could it be that we have gotten (read: "evolved") out of control and surprised God with our prodigious intellect? A false god -- and his followers (or his inventors, as the case may be) might be pretty upset about this, but I think that a true God would be quite tickled and very proud of us. But it boils down to this, and I want an answer, and everyone I know who thinks like I do wants an answer. We are in no way concerned with what Mr. Zumbo believes and practices in his church, his home, his private life. Sure, we have a moral and legal obligation to teach Mr. Zumbo's children the truth as best we can in the public schools, but Mr. Zumbo also has the right to tell his children to ignore what we teach. Now why isn't Mr. Zumbo satisfied to leave /us/ alone as well? What drives him to try force his beliefs on the rest of us? Davoud -- usenet *at* davidillig dawt com |
#42
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Sad Christmas Story
Davoud wrote:
snip I think that a true God would be quite tickled and very proud of us. I've always liked this idea. But it boils down to this, and I want an answer, and everyone I know who thinks like I do wants an answer. We are in no way concerned with what Mr. Zumbo believes and practices in his church, his home, his private life. Sure, we have a moral and legal obligation to teach Mr. Zumbo's children the truth as best we can in the public schools, but Mr. Zumbo also has the right to tell his children to ignore what we teach. Now why isn't Mr. Zumbo satisfied to leave /us/ alone as well? What drives him to try force his beliefs on the rest of us? His religion. Sounds flippant but it's not. Part of their obligation as evangelicals is to, well evangelize. Evangelicals are out to save souls. To hell (literally) with whatever science, culture or species gets in their way. It actually has a parallel in evolution, selfish DNA. The gist is that DNA has evolved to prioritize its reproduction through any means. Even the host organism can be sacrificed for reproduction (black widow and some mantid males come to mind). Shawn |
#43
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Sad Christmas Story
See
Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale Circular Reasoning or Reliable Tools? http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.html and http://www.tim-thompson.com/radiometric.html K. Michael M. -------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen M. Zumbo wrote: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/ Thanks for the link. I'll take a look at more of it in future, but I looked at their page on radiometric dating already, and I saw no answer to the basic unproven assumption that the rate of decay has been constant or started at a known amount and was never altered. Without knowing these starting points or changes, dating of rocks or fossils in the rocks is impossible. Basically, the present is NOT the key to the past. This is also implied in the Genesis model, since God rested from and finished creation after six days. The processes in action today are fundamentally different. |
#44
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Sad Christmas Story
wrote in message oups.com...
Stephen M. Zumbo wrote: [...] Where is evolution visible daily? Naturally selected drug resistent bacteria? -- Hilton Evans --------------------------------------------------------------- Lon -71° 04' 35.3" Lat +42° 11' 06.7" --------------------------------------------------------------- Webcam Astroimaging http://mysite.verizon.net/hiltonevan...troimaging.htm --------------------------------------------------------------- ChemPen Chemical Structure Software http://www.chempensoftware.com |
#45
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Sad Christmas Story
Define the magic (or lack of it) in music.
Is music childish nonsense? Reality may well be the true magic. Its hidden secrets lie just a few minutes ahead of us into the far future. Only familiarity and cynicism dulls its sharp edges. Chris.B |
#46
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Sad Christmas Story
On Sat, 24 Dec 2005 00:39:37 -0500, Davoud wrote, in
part: I can't help but imagine what might have happened if Mr. MacRobert had been a budding biologist at age 7: In *that* case, a puppy would have gotten hurt. Being intelligent at a young age is *not* a bad thing. Of course, I'm biased. It was at about that age that I realized that the subject matter of the religion class at the Catholic school I attended, unlike that of the classes in arithmetic and spelling and so on, was of a controversial nature, and was not universally recognized as true by the academic community. Yes. Never mind jolly old St. Nick. The Big Guy in the Sky. John Savard http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html _________________________________________ Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 140,000 groups Unlimited download http://www.usenetzone.com to open account |
#47
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Sad Christmas Story
On 24 Dec 2005 07:25:54 GMT, elaich wrote, in part:
Yet, grown adults disbelieve intelligent design, which is apparent in all we see, and believe the myth of evolution, LOL! It's the lies people are fed from childhood that cause them to take nonsense like "intelligent design" seriously. As intelligent people well know. John Savard http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html _________________________________________ Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 140,000 groups Unlimited download http://www.usenetzone.com to open account |
#48
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Sad Christmas Story
On Sat, 24 Dec 2005 16:28:23 -0800, "Mij Adyaw" wrote, in
part: I believe in evolution. I just believe that God created and directed evolution. I wonder how many folks in this newsgroup share my belief? I believe a *few* things myself. I believe that consciousness is a real phenomenon. Partly, that is because I myself am conscious. If consciousness _were_ an "illusion", as some have claimed, exactly who is it that is perceiving the illusion? Not only is it real, but it is something we haven't yet explained; we don't know how either matter, or energy, or pattern can be conscious. The closest mechanistic analogue to a human mind, though, is none of those - but instead *an executing instance* of a program rather than the program itself. I don't think we need the supernatural - but we need to go considerably farther into the natural than we have done. I believe that right and wrong are real pre-existing things, and like the laws of mathematics and logic, what _is_ right is not something we can decide for ourselves to suit our own convenience. But that's about as far as I go into "religion". Nature, though with much beauty, is uncaring and unethical. It does not value what is right for thinking beings to value. We perceive and understand nature, and we act, with the powers we have, if we act rightly, in a responsible and moral fashion. Let us simply do our duty, and not compose stories to ensnare the minds of others. John Savard http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html _________________________________________ Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 140,000 groups Unlimited download http://www.usenetzone.com to open account |
#49
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Sad Christmas Story
John Savard:
I believe a *few* things myself. I believe that consciousness is a real phenomenon. Partly, that is because I myself am conscious. If consciousness _were_ an "illusion", as some have claimed, exactly who is it that is perceiving the illusion? Not only is it real, but it is something we haven't yet explained; we don't know how either matter, or energy, or pattern can be conscious. I would imagine that yours is the majority view. I don't know if consciousness is real or simulated. Simulated by what? I don't know. Ourselves, maybe? A simulation simulating itself? I do know that there are serious thinkers -- not the kind of fringe scientists who are testifying against evolution -- who wonder if the entire universe might be an illusion or a simulation. That to me is a surreal idea, and I love the surreal, in art and in art's imitator, life. I believe that right and wrong are real pre-existing things, and like the laws of mathematics and logic, what _is_ right is not something we can decide for ourselves to suit our own convenience. I don't think it's that simple. I think that the concept of right and wrong, moral and immoral, evolved along with homo sapiens because good behaviour provided an evolutionary advantage. At a certain point in our evolution, however (quite a few thousand years ago) we achieved a level of intellectual development at which we could make conscious, often arbitrary, decisions about right-wrong and moral-immoral to suit our own purposes. Our judgements on right and wrong are often laughably wrong (if that makes sense). In 2001 bad people launched a heinous and cowardly attack on our country, killing over 3,000 people. We went to war, spent billions, and killed (so far) over 35,000 people ourselves in the name of fighting these bad people. Yet over 400,000 Americans are killed by tobacco products each year (CDC, Univ. of Penn.) at a cost of $150 billion (lost productivity, health care) and another 42,000 (D.O.T.) are killed in automobile accidents. That's 110 9/11's per annum. Where's the war on tobacco and auto accidents!? But that's about as far as I go into "religion". Nature, though with much beauty, is uncaring and unethical. It does not value what is right for thinking beings to value. This is the hardest concept for people to grasp. Personally I am stimulated by the idea that we're on our own, that the universe doesn't care one whit about us. There is, I think ample evidence for this on earth, where we believe that the laws of nature are the same as in the rest of the universe. Yet I'm not an atheist. Nearly everyone I know who describes himself as an atheist is an evangelist for atheism with an ax to grind -- is trying to prove the unprovable as much as the religious fundamentalist. Stephen Hawking falls into this category, as do some of the denizens of SAA My own belief, to the extent that it can be put into words, appeared on this web page of mine http://www.davidillig.com/roofsthatopen.shtml [Our Creator is] "...the Great Goddess That Created Everything and then Promptly Left for Parts Unknown." I wasn't entirely joking. I'm told that some people call this "Deism," but I'm really not up on all these terms and their meanings. Davoud -- usenet *at* davidillig dawt com |
#50
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Sad Christmas Story
I know several intelligent folks at Fermi Lab that have PhDs and believe in
ID. Your statement is therefore incorrect and without basis in facts. "John Savard" wrote in message ... On 24 Dec 2005 07:25:54 GMT, elaich wrote, in part: Yet, grown adults disbelieve intelligent design, which is apparent in all we see, and believe the myth of evolution, LOL! It's the lies people are fed from childhood that cause them to take nonsense like "intelligent design" seriously. As intelligent people well know. John Savard http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html _________________________________________ Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 140,000 groups Unlimited download http://www.usenetzone.com to open account |
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