Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

[blü 2]

Try clicking the little arrow at the top of the post three times.

It's the post we've been talking about. The one you ignored before ignoring the next two.

Just state the number of your relevant post ─ the one that (you say) sets out the evidence for your assertion. That will help to temper the impression that you're ducking and weaving and worse.

 

[cladking]

Habit? You mean ingrained habit? I am sure they are clever.

I shouldn't have said that. It is habit but calling it that is misleading. I don't believe in intelligence in animals or people. Cavemen effectively had a very low level of intelligence but that statement might be misleading as well.

Beavers now are wired to build dams but it's repetition and experience that makes any individual good at it. It's cleverness that helps them find shortcuts and maximize the aid of the forces of nature. Beavers are a product of their consciousness and not their "species". Just as their brains are wired logically they are also wired to create water sources for their needs.

 

[cladking]

Just state the number of your relevant post ─ the one that (you say) sets out the evidence for your assertion. That will help to temper the impression that you're ducking and weaving and worse.

[sigh]

All you have to do is click the arrows.

#1721

I predict you still can't find what you're looking for.

 

[gnostic]

Exactly! It's more habit than intelligence. Beavers are also clever sometimes and will invent new means of building or overcoming problems. This cleverness is one of the gifts of nature/ God (smoke 'em if you gottem) that is just one aspect of consciousness. They see patterns and can make deductions and inferences from these patterns.

People don't observe animals enough to see this ongoing cleverness. We expect crackpots on the internet and beavers to be stupid and this is what most people see. No matter how "intelligent" a beaver behaves people look right past it and never notice the real miracles that occur all of the time with all consciousness. Instead they believe in miraculous science that now knows everything there is to know.

The only crackpots I have seen, in past threads, is you who made stupidly ignorant claims about beavers, that beavers farm fishes when they created dams. You actually thought beavers ate fishes.

Here is one of your earlier posts about beavers building dam to farm fishes, from the Darwin’s Illusions:

If the fox succeeds because he were lucky then all foxes would be lucky and "luck" might be something that could be studied. If it's strength then all foxes would be strong. If they are simply smarter than rabbits they could farm rabbits like a beaver farms fish.

Beavers don’t even eat fishes, as they are herbivores.

They built their home in the water courses, as their lairs provide them some securities against predators. Their lairs may block streams or rivers, but it was never intention “to farm fishes”,

I have never seen you acknowledged the errors you have made, in regards to beavers and their so called dam-building…as they never intend to farm fishes, nor eat them.

No one said beavers are stupid…that strawman. What is stupid, were your incorrect assumptions about farming fishes, and that your hubris in thinking that your faulty assumptions were correct.

 

[YoursTrue]

I shouldn't have said that. It is habit but calling it that is misleading. I don't believe in intelligence in animals or people. Cavemen effectively had a very low level of intelligence but that statement might be misleading as well.

Beavers now are wired to build dams but it's repetition and experience that makes any individual good at it. It's cleverness that helps them find shortcuts and maximize the aid of the forces of nature. Beavers are a product of their consciousness and not their "species". Just as their brains are wired logically they are also wired to create water sources for their needs.

So much is unknown anyway, so it's kind of hard to define everything. Not sure what you mean by beavers are a product of their consciousness. Although you could be right. I am sure sure sure whatever they have in their habits they didn't need to go to school to learn, but have been bestowed upon them by God, a higher power. However, it's amazing when you look at their "habitats..." (A little joke there...)

 

[YoursTrue]

I shouldn't have said that. It is habit but calling it that is misleading. I don't believe in intelligence in animals or people. Cavemen effectively had a very low level of intelligence but that statement might be misleading as well.

Beavers now are wired to build dams but it's repetition and experience that makes any individual good at it. It's cleverness that helps them find shortcuts and maximize the aid of the forces of nature. Beavers are a product of their consciousness and not their "species". Just as their brains are wired logically they are also wired to create water sources for their needs.

Speaking of intelligence, or lack of it, I was also seeing something about ants literally amputating limbs of other ants that were hurt. Again, I am sure they didn't learn these things. You know, like going to medical school. But it's surely amazing that they "know" how to do these things.

 

[cladking]

Speaking of intelligence, or lack of it, I was also seeing something about ants literally amputating limbs of other ants that were hurt. Again, I am sure they didn't learn these things. You know, like going to medical school. But it's surely amazing that they "know" how to do these things.

I've seen so many amazing things that I wonder why everyone doesn't see them. I once saw a female cardinal precariously balanced on a hosta stem eating the seeds at the top. Her mate who was standing guard swooped down and clasped the stalk near the bottom to another one thereby stabilizing it for her.

I don't interpret this as intelligence but rather awareness that demonstrates knowledge of the physics of the situation. It was highly clever. This is seen throughout the plant and animal kingdoms but it goes overlooked by Darwin et al who think only humans are intelligent and conscious. The reality is far from it. Animals are much closer to nature/ God/ reality than humans are because we see what we believe instead of what we know. Animals often try to communicate with me (maybe I have that kind of face) but I rarely understand anything more complex than "feed me", "bug off", "change the water", and 'thank you". I keep trying and I know the formatting of their languages but rarely the meaning. They all think I'm stupid. I'm sure they aren't too far wrong. I'd like to explain to them that all my machines prove I'm a genius who knows everything but I lack the words. It's not quite as bad as talking to your average "skeptic" though.

Nature is infinitely complex and life is this same complexity on steroids. I don't know how consciousness came to be but those who believe it's just eating, breathing, and moving matter are missing everything in both the physics and biology. Some force, some thing gave it to life that it might survive and procreate. Without consciousness the world would be a very dead place. There'd be no one to claim that life exists through survival of the fittest.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

What we call "intelligence" doesn't really exist

What most of us call intelligence is evident continually. I wonder what it is you mean by that word if you never identify its existence.

New ideas, new insights, and new observations are just about the only things that aren't habit and every one of those is an event and not a condition

But that's not intelligence to you, which you say doesn't exist. What is intelligence to you that what you see around you doesn't qualify as intelligence?

We are all much more a collection of beliefs than of understanding.

I'd say that I and many others are both. I have beliefs vetted by critical analysis, which is my method of understanding.

Sure I see some cleverness in most of your posts which is why I converse with you. But I still don't believe that what you call "intelligence" exists.

Thanks, but what I call intelligence exists. You say that what YOU call intelligence DOES'T exist. We must be calling different things by that same name.

I've already done it. If I believe the building is on fire and yell "Fire!" then in my mind I believe everyone should run for his life. This is simply true whether the building is on fire or not. Run for your life! If the building is not actually on fire because of perhaps a smoke bomb then I was still right in terms of my premises even if people were alarmed needlessly and some were hurt in the evacuation.

That doesn't reconcile what I have called contradictions. It doesn't even refer to either of them (I don't believe anything/I believe and Darwin's assumptions right/ all wrong). I'm looking for you to acknowledge that they appear to be contradictions and explain why you think that they are not.

Beavers are also clever sometimes and will invent new means of building or overcoming problems. This cleverness is one of the gifts of nature/ God

This is intelligence as most people use the word. Even in animals, problem solving exemplifies intelligence.

Maybe you mean innovative symbolic reasoning (original thought), like Einstein. If so, that exists, too.

Anxiously awaiting your definition of intelligence, which you also say doesn't exist.

 

[John53]

I don't interpret this as intelligence but rather awareness that demonstrates knowledge of the physics of the situation. It was highly clever. This is seen throughout the plant and animal kingdoms but it goes overlooked by Darwin et al who think only humans are intelligent and conscious.

Can you show me where Darwin claimed only humans are intelligent? I've read some of his work and don't recall it.

 

[YoursTrue]

I've seen so many amazing things that I wonder why everyone doesn't see them. I once saw a female cardinal precariously balanced on a hosta stem eating the seeds at the top. Her mate who was standing guard swooped down and clasped the stalk near the bottom to another one thereby stabilizing it for her.

I don't interpret this as intelligence but rather awareness that demonstrates knowledge of the physics of the situation. It was highly clever. This is seen throughout the plant and animal kingdoms but it goes overlooked by Darwin et al who think only humans are intelligent and conscious. The reality is far from it. Animals are much closer to nature/ God/ reality than humans are because we see what we believe instead of what we know. Animals often try to communicate with me (maybe I have that kind of face) but I rarely understand anything more complex than "feed me", "bug off", "change the water", and 'thank you". I keep trying and I know the formatting of their languages but rarely the meaning. They all think I'm stupid. I'm sure they aren't too far wrong. I'd like to explain to them that all my machines prove I'm a genius who knows everything but I lack the words. It's not quite as bad as talking to your average "skeptic" though.

Nature is infinitely complex and life is this same complexity on steroids. I don't know how consciousness came to be but those who believe it's just eating, breathing, and moving matter are missing everything in both the physics and biology. Some force, some thing gave it to life that it might survive and procreate. Without consciousness the world would be a very dead place. There'd be no one to claim that life exists through survival of the fittest.

I agree that without consciousness the world would be a zombie world, a horror story. I believe it's like a horror story now, but God is going to change things.

 

[blü 2]

And how many times have I told you that these communication problems exist but people don't see them? How many? If you don't believe something I say then why not challenge it rather than ignore it? How can I communicate ideas that you've never seen before if you just dismiss the damn definitions I provide and the point of every word? Why does anyone even talk to me except to lecture me about their own beliefs and to suggest that I must be wrong because I don't talk just like them?

This is just a rant.

How many times have I used the term "chinese telephone" to prove there is always an ongoing problem with all communication. It's not better in science because it is more exact but rather it is worse because it is more complex. You can see this problem in peoples' models as well. How many times have I pointed out that 3% of cosmologists incorrectly answer the question of whether or not an airplane can take off from a conveyor belt moving in the opposite direction? All that schooling and they misapply their models to a simple question most 4th graders could answer. It's easy to do. the real world is complex and confusing and we each tend to rush to judgement. But this is still the state of the reality for homo omnisciencis circularis rationatio. We are so confused we don't even know we are confused and can't tell we are confused because we see what we believe. We think we are intelligent but "intelligence" as we define it doesn't even exist. We think intelligence underlies science and that Peers are each intelligent but if the human race needed intelligence we'd still be swinging in the trees with the monkeys.

And that is not evidence of anything, It's just a series of assertions,

These are ideas are not complex. But you are still ignoring them or feigning an inability to parse them. How many times have I defined "metaphysics" as "the basis of science". Do you think I somehow changed every time I use the word!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, you et al, want an excuse to ignore the evidence I cite. You want to ignore the logic and the experiments it ties together. You want to believe Darwin had it right all along despite his lousy assumptions and his even lousier methodology.

You refer to "evidence you cite". It's clearly not in this post, so where is it?

So I get word games and then I get blamed for your own word games. You can't address the points I raise and frankly I suspect they are so foreign to what you believe that they are invisible to believers in science and believers in scientific miracles. If you admitted seeing them you might also need to admit that those here with a religious perspective often make far better points than those who can do nothing but cite Peers and texts.

You've lost the argument but like a dead snapping turtle you're still clamped to the stick.

Just more rant.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

What most of us call intelligence is evident continually. I wonder what it is you mean by that word if you never identify its existence.

I'm fascinated how man doesn't have intelligence, but caveman (also H. sapiens) had intelligence. I wonder about many things. How can man have no intelligence and intelligence at the same time? How was cavemen intelligence assessed?

But that's not intelligence to you, which you say doesn't exist. What is intelligence to you that what you see around you doesn't qualify as intelligence?

I'm curious to find out, but with no expectation that I ever will.

I'd say that I and many others are both. I have beliefs vetted by critical analysis, which is my method of understanding.

I would say that humans in general are a mix understanding and belief.

Thanks, but what I call intelligence exists. You say that what YOU call intelligence DOES'T exist. We must be calling different things by that same name.

It is indeed a puzzling dichotomy and another example of re-defining recognized terminology and assigning some purely personal, secret meaning that is different from the widely recognized meaning. I see it as a methodology opposite of what occurs achieved in support of science. And replacing that of science with one that breeds unnecessary complication and confusion.

That doesn't reconcile what I have called contradictions. It doesn't even refer to either of them (I don't believe anything/I believe and Darwin's assumptions right/ all wrong). I'm looking for you to acknowledge that they appear to be contradictions and explain why you think that they are not.

It would be a boon to future participation and clarity.

This is intelligence as most people use the word. Even in animals, problem solving exemplifies intelligence.

And, like beavers with dams, spiders with webs, birds with nests, animals also have innate, genetically wired behavior that supports the building of those structures without learning. Animals exist with a mix of learned and innate behaviors.

Maybe you mean innovative symbolic reasoning (original thought), like Einstein. If so, that exists, too.

A good point. I agree.

Anxiously awaiting your definition of intelligence, which you also say doesn't exist.

I'm not as optimistic as you are and I've discovered that it is more profitable to talk with you and others that are interested in evidence and rational interpretation of it and not pontificating what I consider a complicated and difficult to pin down syncretic belief system.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Can you show me where Darwin claimed only humans are intelligent? I've read some of his work and don't recall it.

That is probably in Darwin II, The Revenge. At a theater near you.

 

[Valjean]

Mutations are the basis for evolution. And the only way evolution happens.
"Mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation, providing the raw material on which evolutionary forces such as natural selection can act." Mutation - Wikipedia.
"Mutations are essential to evolution; they are the raw material of genetic variation. Without mutation, evolution could not occur." DNA and Mutations.

No. When a dog has puppies they're not all the same, there's variation -- without mutation. These non-mutant variants are then sorted by natural selection.

 

[leroy]

Recall that claims are not evidence. Rejection of a claim that is unsupported and apparently will not be supported is not rejection of evidence.

Recall that claims are not evidence

Yes claims , at least sometimes, are evidence. For example some people adkowlege that @YoursTrue is female because she made that claim in the past (in her profile information) ....... I would say that in this case her claim is good and strong evidence that she is a woman.

Sorry yourstrue , this is not a" Deja Vu " we literally are having this conversation again.



And thanks, this is a perfect example of "rejecting" just because you don't like the implications........ You do want to admit that claims are sometimes are evidence..... Because it is very easy and convenient to repeat the meme "claims are not evidence" instead of dealing with the argument

 

[leroy]

I have seen some theists in these discussions claim to reject valid science, because they cannot personally see how it could be. This is in effect, the unwarranted and fallacious elevation of their personal incredulity to be equivalent to expert conclusions based on knowledge, understanding and reasoning.

Do you consider such elevation to be a valid means of drawing a conclusion to reject a theory?

No, it is not valid ...... And both theist and atheist do it

 

[leroy]

Many other options, naturalism as a philosophical belief involves many things and sometimes even belief in gods such that then a naturalist would not be an atheist. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in gods though some may state an active disbelief.

You may say you are not implying equivalence, but your comment implies otherwise.

The problem is again, our inability to use your language because it may or may not mean to you what it means to us and so asking these questions which you think are clear to us is just a muddle and as with your interpretation of a common idiom that seems the same in Spanish, you come up with an interpretation that no-one else would even have considered or at least asked for clarification. You assume that you know far more than you do and are seemingly unwilling to do any further study when people say your conception/definition is not correct.

These differences in understanding are why we we will not "affirm" your statements, not because we assume you are wrong, but we do not know even what they mean to you. Your requesting "affirmation" all the time is evidence that you do not understand how this situation is handled amongst the educated where the question is better posed as "this is what I think you mean, do you agree? If not, how and why?"

That said, you are by no means the worst here or you would be on a lot more ignore lists.

Bla bla bla

But you haven't shown that my question is a false dichotomy....... What you have to do is show that there is a third option that would exclude the other 2 options.

 

[leroy]

Natural selection is not just random mutation.

There is text that I can quote where you said or implied that:

1 NS doesn't act just upon random mutations (implying that there are other mechanisms )

2 organisms evolved just by these 2 mechanisms (RM and NS)


So obviously there is a contradiction in your words.........which one is it 1 or 2,?

 

[leroy]

There are several modifiers commonly applied to atheists: Strong, weak, agnostic, positive, negative, &al.
A definition involves a single feature common to all examples or sets. The one single feature applying to all varieties of atheism is lack of belief.
Lack of belief is the definitive feature. Unmodified, "atheist" means one who lacks belief. Subsets require modifiers if clarification is needed.

Ok so how should I call a person who thinks that the evidence supports atheism (there is no God) over Theism (there is a God) ? ...... I would call him and atheist but if I am using the wrong word please let me know

Are you that type of person (however you want to call it)

 

[cladking]

So much is unknown anyway, so it's kind of hard to define everything.

Indeed!

But when one of the only things known about consciousness is that it has the property of pattern recognition why do we define it as "awake" or "the product of mind"? We're using 14th century definitions in a 21st century world.