Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

[John53]

Ok have a good one! Bye for now...

And now comes the passive aggressive dismissal because you've decided you're way to clever for us plebs.

 

[YoursTrue]

Gregor Mendel can answer that better than me.

Gregor Mendel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I understand that, did a term paper on that. Where's the SELECTION? Or is it attraction? Or is it rather hit or miss? Remember, and I repeat, I used to believe everything they taught in science.

 

[John53]

I understand that, did a term paper on that. Where's the SELECTION? Or is it attraction? Or is it rather hit or miss?

If you understood your term paper you wouldn't have to ask those questions.

Remember, and I repeat, I used to believe everything they taught in science.

Completely irrelevant. Believing something isn't understanding it.

 

[YoursTrue]

And now comes the passive aggressive dismissal because you've decided you're way to clever for us plebs.

Nope not at all. But it's time to go and perhaps if I am 'functioning' later we can resume this tit for tat discussion. (Oh, and under the circumstances, you'd have to be functional later also...)

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I not surprised by your dishonest approach

My approach is honest and factual. You seem angry and lashing out. Too much caffeine? Or sour grapes because I won't follow you down the rabbit hole?

I'm not going to play games with you or anyone else on here anymore.

What you are doing makes talking with you uninteresting to me. That's just the way it is. Have better fruit and you might get better results.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

If you understood your term paper you wouldn't have to ask those questions.



Completely irrelevant. Believing something isn't understanding it.

Don't go down the rabbit hole man. It's a trap.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Selection is a metaphor.

Like code in genetic code. The usage isn't a claim it is exactly the same as Morse code.

It isn't used in that sense in science to imply choosing from purpose or desire.

Good grief, people will grasp at anything when they are drowning.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Gregor Mendel can answer that better than me.

Gregor Mendel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I still say it is a trap.

Claiming to know science and demonstrating a lack of understanding of natural selection is a dichotomy. An unsustainable contradiction. One of these things is not like the other.

It is to keep the debate alive at all costs. If the debate continues, the tiny doubt that literalist creationists can interject stands as the basis to substitute unsupported views as the default answer.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I find it ironic projection where AIG, Kent Hovind, the Discovery Institute and other religious leaders/peers ascribe dogmatism and intransigence to scientists theistic or otherwise while insisting that the only way to "real science" is to put on your "Bible" glasses and that now evidence can be valid if it disagrees with their view of scripture.

Another alternative since the best known peers are the heads of these organizations that have no product but rely entirely on their followers funding their lifestyles, it looks a lot like grift and they know a good scam when they see one.

Apparently some peers are OK. If they are saying what a person wants to hear.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I just noticed your "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" under your avatar, Googled it, and discovered that that is the title of the eighth episode of the third season of the original Star Trek, which I have been gradually rewatching this year, but have only gotten to near the end of the second season. I reviewed the Wiki link on that below:

For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky - Wikipedia

Why did you choose that phrase to put under your avatar? Nothing in the description of the plot revealed the answer to me. Maybe you just liked the phrase rather than making a reference to Star Trek.

I like it for several reasons. I appreciate the statement it makes about being skeptical and seeking answers through observation and experience. For the defiance of imposed doctrine that is used to control people and keep them ignorant. The benefit of thinking freely and constructively and using what you learn as opposed to doing what some person or group tells you and keeping your head buried and eyes averted.

The people of Yonada think they live on a planet, but it is really a spaceship that was built by their ancestors to save the species and send them to a new world when their solar system was dying. For some reason, it was determined that they should be kept ignorant of this and controlled with pain and death by the computer that runs the ship. Surrounded by technology and living next to a database of the entire knowledge of their people, they revert to a sort of unquestioning worship of the computer and slowly lose or suppress the curiosity that was the foundation for the knowledge that saved them in the first place. Irony.

A boy, now an old man, remembers when he broke the rules and climbed the forbidden mountain to end up touching the sky that should be untouchable as a solid object. His knowledge brought him death. It is very similar in ways to the flight of Icarus. I don't know this, but surely that story was some inspiration for the story of the episode.

Here, today, we have all these people telling us to remain ignorant. Don't touch the sky, it is forbidden. Listen to the words of men and heed them. Don't learn.

I can't abide that. In the end, destruction of the Oracle, or at least the personality of the computer, frees the people and saves them from destruction as they had gone off course and were going to ultimately collide with another planet if they stayed on the path they were commanded to follow without thought.

I see a lot of parallels between that story and these threads.

I also just like the sound and wording of the title. It has this feel that pleases me.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

So it's random. Etc and etc.

No.

I find it hard to believe that you don't understand this.

Is it "random" that the bear whose fur happens to blend in better with the background is more successful at hunting then the bear whose fur doesn't?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

How can you have been posting on these threads so long and still not grasp the mechanisms of evolution?

Pure willful ignorance.

She's also still repeating mistakes that I have been correcting since June 2021 every other week or so.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You dont have to repeat over and over again the same thing, I understand what you are saying…………..what you have to do is support your claim. I know it makes sense to YOU, I know that for you personally causation without time “sounds” absurd…………… but you have to go beyond your feelings and support that claim

Again, this is physics. Not personal opinion.

How do you know that necessarily (in all possible worlds and all possible realities) causation requires time?

By definition of what causality is.

For the sake of simplicity, I grant that in our space-time bubble causation requires time due to the speed of light, but how do you know that anything (physical or nonphysical) beyond that bubble has the same limitation?

Because causes happen before effects.

Besides………..you can´t provide an alternative that doesn’t have to deal with that alleged problem anyway.

I don't require alternatives to point out absurdities.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

lol -- take your time -- The mutations are selected naturally. Somehow they're selected by ?? unconscious nature, I suppose. So unconscious nature selects whatever it wants -- some bad choices (deleterious mutations) and some, according to the theory, that enabled some fish that might have been endangered to crawl out of water and live on land. Or maybe they weren't endangered...they just wanted to get out of the water...or -- I guess nature knows...or doesn't know what it's selecting...

And you claim to understand the basics of evolution theory......

Here's a hint: natural selection.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Even scientists don't "understand" everything about evolution -- keep figuring new things about what might have happened -- nevertheless, semantic changes are occurring (evolving would you say? No -- that can't be -- by "natural selection..." because people can be conscious but nature?? in the form of "natural selection" ain't conscious say some. Nevertheless they select.

Natural selection = what works survives and propagates. What doesn't work, dies and doesn't propagate.

It's not rocket science.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I am talking about the concept of "natural selection." There IS no "selection" because it's RANDOM.

It is not random that a better camouflaged predator is more successful at hunting then his less camouflaged peers.

If you want to call a car smashing into another car as selective -- go ahead.

Nobody said anything remotely like that.

I'm going to assume you are just trolling here by pretending not to understand the simple concept of natural selection.
I feel like I would be insulting your intelligence by assuming otherwise.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Selection implies choice.

Natural selection, does not.

No I am not claiming conscious choice. Nevertheless, selection, natural or unnatural, implies choice.

No.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Ok, I don't disagree with that. But how are things then "naturally SELECTED?"

What works survives and propagates.
What doesn't, dies and doesn't propagate.

What does and doesn't work is determined by the environment at large.


Natural selection.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I understand that, did a term paper on that. Where's the SELECTION? Or is it attraction? Or is it rather hit or miss? Remember, and I repeat, I used to believe everything they taught in science.

It sounds like you didn't have a clue what it is that you were supposedly believing.

 

[John53]

And you claim to understand the basics of evolution theory......

Here's a hint: natural selection.

It's even in the name