Honestly, that's not something I believed, it's just a thought that popped into my head is all. I agree with you, but figured it was an interesting notion.TheDoctor455 said:
Poll: Do you support evolution?
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I know. I was just pointing out the obvious problem with treating any kind of 'god' as an explanation for the universe.chozo_hybrid said:
The day a theist can come up with a convincing counter-argument to the counter-argument I presented... well... is the day I eat my metaphorical hat, because they've been trying (as a whole) to come up with a good one for centuries. Still hasn't happened as far as I'm aware.
Religion is to all intents and purposes a philosophical system based on the existence of one or more deities in various forms. Besides that, I don't see that "spirituality" is functionally different to superstition either. Depending on what you mean by spirituality, of course, but I think all forms of it as defined by religion invoke some kind of supernatural concepts.JazzJack2 said:
I don't fully agree with your definition of superstition either, really. I think superstitious people think there is a clear cause, which they may even think of as "natural", but it is in fact a product of their brains' ability to see patterns even when there are none.
To pre-empt a possible response, I would say that A) I'm not convinced that Buddhism is usefully defined as a religion (although I would expect those links do class it as such), but also B) it has definite superstitious elements (karma, for instance).
To play devil's advocate - one could argue that, in fact, a creator does not need to be more complex than their creation. There's no logical reason for this to be the case.TheDoctor455 said:
However, I think that's a slight mis-statement of the argument on your part (if I may be so bold) - I would rephrase it to say that the concept of a god is inherently infinitely complex (a being which is omnipotent, omnipresent etc etc), regardless of the complexity of its creation. The "creator > creation" part is I think a potential target for derailing[footnote]I realise this seems unlikely, and certainly intellectually dishonest, since it's the creationist who first posits the "creator > creation" logic to make their argument in the first place, and you're just turning their own logic on them. But I have seen it done. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq1XvA16-wM at 14:40. The whole video is so full of shit, some of it's worth watching. His first point boils down to "There's this woman who bakes a cake, therefore god created the universe. Also we don't know why she baked the cake unless we ask her, so science will never know the answers."[/footnote] even if it doesn't actually affect the argument's main point.
Superstition usually deals with the interpretation of what's going on around you doesn't it. You can believe in a higher power and divorce that from functional daily life if you're aware of the natural links between things.Six Ways said:
E=mc2 only uses squared c (the constant) as a conversion factor between energy and mass, it's nothing to do with movement as this is the abbreviated formular for the energy of an object in rest. The proper whole formula for motion is E2 = (mc2)2 + (pc)2, where p is the momentum of the object. Of course if the momentum is 0 you get it down to the well-known bit.Lightknight said:
<youtube=mkiCPMjpysc>
Yeah, lazy teachers... the one I had one year nearly electrocuted herself. Thankfully we got a smarter one for the last few years who really managed to get me into it and I actually did my A-levels with her.
If you're interested in physics I can really recommend the <url=http://www.youtube.com/user/sixtysymbols>sixtysymbols channel on Youtube (where I took the two videos I used from), which is a project by the University of Nottingham's physics department. They also have chemistry and math channels run by the respective departments. And one for computers. And one for literature. And one for the bible. And one for food science.
Not much you can't find really.
Huh, I didn't know that one actually, although it took me a few tries until I realized that I made a mistake reading your instructions.Lightknight said:
I wouldn't think this is a site with many creationists, so it wouldn't be all that wise to use this site as a reference, honestly. You'd be better off going around asking random people on the street.
Also, go team science.
Also, go team science.
Then you're talking about a totally non-interventionist deity? And by totally, I mean does not have, never has and never will have any effect on reality whatsoever, and therefore doesn't really in any meaningful way exist in our reality. For example, you cannot claim that god causing the big bang isn't superstition, because the big bang has affected everything in terms of what's going on around you.Shadowstar38 said:
I'm not saying you're wrong in thinking it - just that I don't see a functional difference between it and superstition. It's still a supernatural explanation for something which we have no reason to think won't be answered scientifically.
Must... resist... pedantry.... arrggh...Quaxar said:
[small]p is momentum, not impulse[/pedantry][/small]
damnit
It could never be answered scientifically. The are things to test in most of the natural world. With the universe itself, you can date back for a long time but never find a link to it's origin point.Six Ways said:
I don't believe God is behind evolution, nor does the Catholic church. Evolution is a biological process, living things don't require divine intervention to evolve.Rastelin said:
The reason I find "Team Science" and "Team Religion" offensive is because it seems to imply that people with religious beliefs must be against science. Even the creationist nutjobs try to use some bastardization of science to confirm their beliefs, meaning they aren't against science even if they fail to understand it.
I don't want the two institutions to hold hands, I want them to accept that they exist for entirely different reasons and leave each other alone.
You're really going to bring Galileo into this? Lots of people throughout history have been murdered for theories that defied previous ideas, and not just by religious institutions. After Hippasus proposed the existence of irrational numbers the pythagoreans branded him a heretic, took him out to sea on a boat, and drowned him. let's not get butthurt over the actions of people centuries ago. I don't see the Catholic Church freaking out about dark energy or M theory today.Rastelin said:
Like you said, science doesn't concern itself with unprovable things, and likewise religion generally doesn't concern itself with the specific workings of the physical world.
Because your belief still has a "false claim" to it.Silk_Sk said:
If you haven't noticed, that drives atheists nuts.
Chalk me up for go team science. While I feel people have the right to believe anything they want provided it brings harm no one else, seeing creationists try to discredit years of factual evidence with pseudoscience is to me a bit disgusting.
I agree with comedian Tim Minchin who made the comment "Their argument is always that Evolution is just a theory, which is correct, and it gives me hope that maybe they feel the same way about the theory of Gravity and they might just float the fuck away."
I agree with comedian Tim Minchin who made the comment "Their argument is always that Evolution is just a theory, which is correct, and it gives me hope that maybe they feel the same way about the theory of Gravity and they might just float the fuck away."
OK, I have more time now to do this properly. First:
What you're arguing--that a bird or a tortoise must become something other that a bird or a tortoise for it to be evolution--is based on Creationist concepts about biology and evolution, and not the actual science. According to creationists life can be divided up into "created kinds". Exactly what a "kind" is depends on who you ask, but the idea is that changes can occur within kinds (a bird can become a different kind of bird) but not beyond that (dinosaurs could not change into birds). There is no scientific basis for this claim. It is not based on an understanding of evolutionary theory, but on a desire to deny evolutionary theory. But since it's pretty much impossible to deny that changes happen at all, they instead pretend "evolution" means something different and then argue against this straw man definition.
First, the idea of a "single complete fossil". I assume you mean a complete skeelton, correct? Complete skeletons are hard to find. Fossils are rare--you need the right kind of critter (it has to have hard parts) in the right kind of environment, under the right kind of circumstances. Most things that die are not fossilized. SO getting a fossil is hard, and getting an entire skeleton is even harder.
Second, every fossil we have is a "missing link". They are all transitional forms (well, unless we have fossils of individuals that were the last of their lineage). We have thousands of "missing links".
When people talk about the "missing link" what they actually want is a complete record of every generation from the dawn of life until now, which is an unreasonable request (see the first problem).
*I somehow mixed up "frequency" and "expression" this morning. Yet another reason I really should not try to post in a hurry
Here's the thing: your definition, on it's own, is fine as a layman-speak way of explaining things. The problem is that the rest of your post makes it clear that when you say "one form of life becoming a different form of life" you are talking about changes at the Class level or above. The reality is that evolution is simply the change in allele frequency* in a population over time.Bluestorm83 said:
Natural selection is the mechanism by which evolution occurs. If natural selection is occurring then evolution must be occurring, because how can you have natural selection without a change in allele frequency in the population? If, say, all of the blue bugs of a particular species get eaten while the green bugs survive to get their groove on, then that's natural selection. But the result of this is that you have more green bugs being born that blue ones--that's a change in allele frequency in the population. You could potentially have a change in allele frequency without natural selection (direct gene manipulation isn't natural selection) but the only way to have natural selection without a change in allele frequency is if the selection process wipes out the entire population.Bluestorm83 said:
I tried once, but they made me give them back
What you're calling specialization is evolution. Evolution is any change in allele frequency in a population. That includes small changes, like from one beak size to another.
What you're arguing--that a bird or a tortoise must become something other that a bird or a tortoise for it to be evolution--is based on Creationist concepts about biology and evolution, and not the actual science. According to creationists life can be divided up into "created kinds". Exactly what a "kind" is depends on who you ask, but the idea is that changes can occur within kinds (a bird can become a different kind of bird) but not beyond that (dinosaurs could not change into birds). There is no scientific basis for this claim. It is not based on an understanding of evolutionary theory, but on a desire to deny evolutionary theory. But since it's pretty much impossible to deny that changes happen at all, they instead pretend "evolution" means something different and then argue against this straw man definition.
This is another Creationist argument. Nothing in the theory of evolution says the number of genes needs to change. Creationists like to argue that you need to constantly add genes in order to get changes/more complexity, but that's because they ignore large chunks of information (like the idea that a gene can be present but not expressed).
There are several problems with this.
First, the idea of a "single complete fossil". I assume you mean a complete skeelton, correct? Complete skeletons are hard to find. Fossils are rare--you need the right kind of critter (it has to have hard parts) in the right kind of environment, under the right kind of circumstances. Most things that die are not fossilized. SO getting a fossil is hard, and getting an entire skeleton is even harder.
Second, every fossil we have is a "missing link". They are all transitional forms (well, unless we have fossils of individuals that were the last of their lineage). We have thousands of "missing links".
When people talk about the "missing link" what they actually want is a complete record of every generation from the dawn of life until now, which is an unreasonable request (see the first problem).
*I somehow mixed up "frequency" and "expression" this morning. Yet another reason I really should not try to post in a hurry
Well, to be fair, that depends on the exact phrasing of the question, and we've not yet been at all rigorous on that. Either way though, I don't see how going from "We can never know" to "I'll assume it's an all-powerful supernatural being" isn't superstition.Shadowstar38 said:
