This is just another piece of evidence that creationists are dishonest and not interested in having a real discussion of the issue. No evolution claims that cells just fell together ex nihilo.
Certainly not, but surely you would agree that there is a general hostility toward religion present among the JREF community, isn't there?
I would say it's more of an opposition than hostility.
but grayman's brother brings a perception, evidenced by his words, that is unique.
Actually, his bigotry is quite common.
And that brings me to what I actually find interesting about the topic. Why are so many arguments against ID so unpersuasive? Some will object to that characterization, but it's simply a definition. Many Americans are unpersuaded. The arguments aren't persuading. They are unpersuasive.
So if I am not entertained by the sixth season of 24, would you ask why the show is not entertaining?
You could blame the audience, but I think that's inaccurate. I do not believe that the problem is that people are too stupid or too uneducated to grasp the arguments. I think there is a flaw either in the arguments themselves, or the presentation of the arguments.
Are those mutually exclusive? I would say that the problem largely is that people are too unintelligent, uneducated, close-minded, and intellectually lazy and dishonest, AND that the arguments are flawed in that they often fail to address these factors.
Anyone who does not believe in evolution is uneducated. There's simply no way anyone can understand evolution and not believe in it. Note that I draw a distinction between evolution
as a process, and evolution
as an explantion. One can dispute whether
particular phenomena are the result of evolution, but not evolution itself, must as one can dispute whether OJ knifed his ex-wife to death, but no one in their right mind can dispute that knives exist.
As we have learned since then, his brother has unique qualities that might make it difficult to create understanding. However, his brother isn't representative of most ID supporters.
I disagree.
If this topic interests you, it would by wise to take up the challenge that grayman set, and honestly critique the proposed arguments, and really ask yourself which ones might actually work.
None of them will work. People like grayman's brother can't be reasoned with. You might as well ask what argument will keep a rabid dog from biting you.
Or, you could just say that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid.
This particular person who disagrees with me is. Along with bigoted, vile, and completely undeserving of any respect. He as much as said that he hopes to see me dead, and the feeling is mutual.
I am reliably informed that god comes under a different set of rules and therefore did not need a predecessor or a designer.
To clarify, here are the rules: if you try to include the God hypothesis in your scientific investigations, that is not allowed, because God is supernatural and therefore not within the realm of things that can be rationally investigating. If you do not include the God hypothesis in your scientific investigations, that's not allowed either, as that is preemptively disallowing the possibility of supernatural explanations. The only allowed course of action is to skip the scientific investigation in the first place and just swallow whole everything your pastor tells you.
Randfan cited himself as an example of someone who was persuaded against ID, and in so doing provided valuable insight into what makes a persuasive argument. He noted that the important thing is that the person who persuaded him took him seriously, listened, and made him think. That's really the key, isn't it?
No, the key is that HE was willing to listen.
For now, I think the important element of that observation is that you shouldn't think that evolution is obviously correct, or that anyone who doesn't buy into it must be some sort of uneducated hick.
But evolution
is obviously correct, and anyone who doesn't buy into it
is uneducated.
Really, it's hard stuff. The question is whether it can be simplified to the point of making someone understanding it without a degree in biology or mathematics.
1. There are variances between individuals.
2. Some of those variances are due to properties that pass from parents to offspring. These variances are known as "heritable traits".
3. Some heritable traits affect the probability of an individual passing on those traits. Traits that increase that probability are known as imparting greater "fitness".
4. The prevalance of traits that impart greater fitness will, by definition, increase.
5. There is therefore a tendency of individuals in succeeding generations to have greater "fitness" than those of previous generations, where "fitness" is the property of having a high probability of passing on one's heritable traits.
What's so complicated about that?
The real problem is that the reproduction requires a level of complexity itself.
Reproduction as it is generally known require complexity.
Unfortunately, to make the argument work, you would have to have something that isn't nearly as complex as a watch, but is capable of reproduction.
No, you just need to pursuasively argue that such a thing is possible.
To the best of my knowledge, you can't come up with such a system using today's knowledge of biology.
More precisely, you can't find one that satisfies creationist. And you never will, because it is essentially a "world's shortest giant" argument. There's no clear line between "reproduction" and "creating conditions favorable for things sort of similar to arise". I mean, strictly speaking, humans don't reproduce. They just create beings that are somewhat similar, and share half their genes. So where do you draw the line between that and one protein causing another, somewhat similar protein, to form? Anything able to clearly be "reproducing" is going to be too complicated to have arisen directly from definitely non-living predescessors. That's not a valid argument against evolution, though, because it's possible for things are clearly reproducing to arise from things that aren't clearly reproducing.
As a result, all this argument does is move you to the simplest reproducing cell, and "The Watchmaker" says that the cell is still very much like a watch. Therefore, there's no refutation here.
How can "The Watchmaker" make any claims about the simplest reproducing cell, when no one has seen it?
A noble effort, but ultimately ineffective. Also, the vulgarity is all well and good among friends, but let Randfan's conversion serve as a warning. Anything that makes your contempt obvious turns off a potential convert.[/QUOTE]
They're saying, "I'll believe it when I see it."
But, then, when they see it, they don't believe it.
They're very selective in applying skepticism, but they are applying skepticism.
No, merely denying, and refusing to acknowledge evidence, is not skepticism.
This whole line of argument makes perfect sense....if there is no God.
It's not an "argument". It's a clarification. There is an implied argument, but the implied argument is in response to the claim that evolution is too unlikely. And that argument proceeds from the assumption that evolution is true and purports to calculate probability from that, so it is perfectly valid to continue with the premise of evolution (that the creationists introduced). Finally, evolution being true is not the same as there being no God.
We know it because we are here, so we must have struck it lucky. Unfortunately, that isn't a valid argument.
And it's not the argument being made.
I think that needs to be a part of any argument. On a related note, that's why I brought up Michael Behe. He's a main promoter of Intelligent Design, and he believes in evolution.
Then that'sa a rather limited form of belief in evolution. It's like saying "Yeah, I believe in gravity, but I also believe that there are fairies that can make anything float any time they want to." What's the difference between that and not believing in gravity at all?
I thought about crystals, but in context, I think it was clear that crystals don't fit the bill as self-replicating molecules.
Of course not. Anything that replicates is rejected as an example, for whatever excuse they can think of.
ID makes a slightly different claim, and asserts it as a hypothesis. Its claim is "Godhaddadoit". (God had to do it.) It's easy to refute that the hypothesis has been confirmed, but it's much harder to refute the hypothesis itself.
"God had to do it" is logically equivalent to "there is some known principle that would be violated if God didn't do it". And that's quite trivial to refute.
You can demonstrate that they haven't proved that the probability is really 0. However, you can't easily demonstrate that the probability is not 0.
They amount to pretty much the same thing. To say that the probability is zero is to say that we have a way of accurately calculating the probability. If there is no such method, then the probability cannot be zero. If you just say "I find it incredibly unlikely", you're not talking about probability, you're talking about your personal opinion.
I agree with your conclusion but not your reasoning. What if you found the watch in a shop containing hundreds of timepieces? Would it seem "natural" then?
You're proceeding from the premise that cells and watches are equivalent, which in turn means that cells are designed, which means you're begging the question.
He offers an opinion on the condition of the world. Again, that's subjective, but surely you must agree that the trend toward atheism has been growing, and it has shaped the world, so the core of the statement, that atheists have contributed greatly to the current state of the world, is correct.
You seem to be deliberately distorting his statement to come up with something that's true. He didn't merely state that they had contributed to the state of the world, but that they had "f-ed" it up. And actually, most of what's attributed to atheists is actually due to secularists, but of course people like him have absolutely no interest in paying attention to such distinctions.
He then says that many who contributed their thoughts would side with Elton John when Sir Elton said that he would ban religion. As it turns out, there is a thread on that very subject, and no one seems to be rushing to condemn Sir Elton, although one or two have suggested that perhaps he shouldn't have gone quite so far.
Link?
However, in this particular case, it's hard for me to have sympathy for someone as a victim of hate speech, after he called for banning religion. For him to be the target of hate speech seems in this case more like "Karma" than anything else.
First, just because someone calls for something to be banned, that doesn't make it "hate speech". Is calling for banning steroids "hate speech"? Second, it was directed against
an abstract concept Grayman's brother engaged in hate speech against
people. Third, it's rather hypocritical to call this "Karma", since Elton John's "hate speech" is is response to a lifetime of being subjected to
actual hate speech. And fourth, I see nothing wrong with engaging in hate speech against someone because of their ideology. I do see something wrong with it when it's based on orientation.
There's also a thread on JREF about the people in California who banned the pledge of allegiance.
No one's banned the Pledge of Allegiance. The addition of the phrase "under God" has been declared unconstituitional, and only a vile bigot like grayman's brother could disagree.
The core of his statement is that the people on JREF are intensely anti-religion, and their hostility toward religion colors their perception. Can anyone dispute that he is correct?
His idea of "anti-religion" is not allowing Christians to act like jackasses. And his idea of having one's perception "colored" is not uncritically accepting the crap that spews from bigots like him.
Grayman's brother is being mocked, somewhat deservedly, for spewing a bunch of personal attacks laced with profanity. Ossai did the same thing, but he is not being mocked or attacked.
No, he didn't.
First, Ossai is more articulate, including being a better speller. Second, Grayman's brother was right on those things which can be measured objectively, whereas Ossai was wrong.
Ossai said that you are. You aren't claiming to not exist, are you? This is the sort of mental gynastics you went through to defend Grayman's brother. You can't objectively prove anything Ossai said is wrong.
Either way it is a difficulty. Either way seems to be turtles all the way down, whether supernaturalistic or naturalistic ones.
The difference is that the Christians claim that science must be rejected, because it has no ultimate explanation, but then fails to produce an ultimate eplanation.
Actually tihs is an outdated view. People used to think they were just simple blobs of goo. Now we know even single celled organisms are highly complex molecular machines.
How about actually responding to what people say, rather than presenting strawmen?
