Darwin's Illusion

[Subduction Zone]

Darwin's "theories" do not explain all the observation and experiment. It spins off anomalies like a drill bit spins off sawdust.

Really? Bring up your best anomaly. It is more likely a misunderstanding on your part at best.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I think the average post is down to being read by only about 20 people now to to the deterioration of the quality of the thread.

You have only yourself to blame for that.

 

[cladking]

They exhorted people to sneeze onto the ground where the germs were "harmless" rather than to use a cloth and diffuse the germs into the air for everyone.

The cloth was used to wipe their nose so they didn't spread germs around with their hands later.

 

[cladking]

The cloth was used to wipe their nose so they didn't spread germs around with their hands later.

I wonder how many unfit humans experience death by handkerchief each year?

Obviously the fit ones recover because this is what Peers believe.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

All words are relative. "Gradual" means something very different for the movement of a tectonic plate and a plate full of turkey on Thanksgiving.

Yet you say that evolution doesn't occur gradually as if the word had meaning in that context. It doesn't. What does gradual mean in the context of evolving gene pools? As you use the word, it means whatever we want it to mean, which is to say that it means nothing specific. This is also the case with scripture as we will see in a moment.

I understand all about extrapolation and interpolation but am aware of no evidence to support Darwin's claims.

I am. So are the other empiricists posting here. So is the scientific community and most of the rest of the educated lay community.

Scientists and believers in science share some false premises.

If that were correct, you could enumerate some of them and explain how you know they're false and what harm or damage the false belief has caused. If you are incorrect, you cannot. This is how the critical thinker judges truth content - evaluating the evidence that supports or fails to support any given claim.

I would like people to try to parse them as I intend them to be parsed but instead I have to define "metaphysics" (the basis of science) over and over again.

You don't need to mention metaphysics again. It adds nothing, because once again, your use of language is too vague to assign it any specific meaning to consider. And look at your comment. You say you want people to understand you, but you don't want to explain. You want them to divine your meaning. It's not happening, is it? If you wish to be understood, be specific. If you wish to be vague, expect not to be understood.

But the risk of covid is unique to each individual. Some individuals had virtually no risk at all.

Irrelevant to the problem of people thinking that COVID morbidity and mortality data had no significance.

All surgeons once thought washing their hands before an operation was a waste of precious time.

I wonder why you keep coming back to this. Do you see this as a failure of science, or maybe support for any of the vague claims we've discussed such as science being founded on false premises?

Elsewhere, you wrote, "Ironically ancient science was well aware of germs and had procedures to stop their spread. This isn't because they were so smart but rather it's because ancient science was a tool better suited to learning it. This formed the basis of a couple books of the Bible and admonitions about cleanliness."

Nobody knew about microorganisms before the invention of the microscope. There was a concept of contagion. People masked during the Great Plague of the Middle Ages, and Newton stayed home and wrote Principia during another outbreak, but the prevailing hypotheses conceived of some sort of toxic miasma emanating from the mouth that might be amenable to blood letting, or some sort of demon needing exorcism. But there was no concept of microscopic life, and there would have been no sense that it could harm a large animal like man if it did exist.

And good hygiene has long been a virtue apart from any consideration of infectious disease. You don't need a concept of germs to want people to wash their hands of fecal material or to be offended by a bad body odor or breath.

I believe two things and have said so many times. All people make sense and cause precedes effect. I try very hard not to believe anything else whatsoever. I don't believe in "intelligence"

You can't get very far with just those two beliefs. The first is nonspecific - could mean more than one thing. The second is just a definition. We call them cause and effect in part because of their temporal relationship. They also need to be causally connected, that is, the effect reliably follows the cause.

And what could that last sentence mean? Surely not what it seems to mean at face value. Allof these ideas would benefit from fleshing them out with more words. Yes, brevity is a virtue, but there is an optimum number of words where more add nothing of value and fewer words diminish communication. You alluded to it yourself when discussing how context helps define meaning. "I don't believe in "intelligence" just isn't enough language to "parse" a specific meaning.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

If you understood that the damned, doomed, and "unsaved" were burning in hell then you did not understand the Bible. it doesn't mean eternal torture while conscious.

He understood it differently than you. Eternal suffering is the mainstream church's doctrine.

Scripture is like that. If you read my previous discussion with cladking about specificity with language, scripture suffers from both lack of specificity - much reads like poetry - and internal contradiction, so one is able to support any belief using it by assigning specific meaning as you have done. It's a verbal Rorschach test of sorts, where the reader gets to supply the meaning.

I always thought hellfire as considered by many was a bunch of junk. That before I studied it. Another reason why I didn't believe in God until things changed.

It seems like you're saying that you couldn't worship a god that damns souls, so you deleted that doctrine and kept the rest. Atheism is taking that to its logical conclusion. If we can reject some of it, why not all of it? Instead of hellfire being a "bunch of junk," its the claims of gods themselves that are rejected.

it may be adaptation but we don't know.

Biological evolution is a category or subset of adaptation. It's the adaptation of populations to their environments over generations due to the combination of a dynamic gene pool (genetic variation) and the natural selection of the most fecund phenotype.

the fossil record is not proof.

Agreed. It's a fraction of a compelling collection of evidence, which is all nature ever provides and all we need. The theory is correct. It has been confirmed beyond reasonable by that evidence, but only for those who see it and can interpret its significance.

I was thinking about this in the restaurant bathroom when I washed my hands. That particular restaurant has paper towels rather than that tough blower that might spread germs all around so I was appreciative of that. I need to compliment the management but probably after I do they'll switch to those bursting air blowers.

You needn't worry about the blowers. You aren't sterilizing your hands when you wash them. They remain covered in mostly harmless bacteria.

There's eternal life and there's kind of like the opposite, eternal punishment.

Mainstream doctrine is that the soul is immortal, and eternity will be either eternal paradise or eternal suffering. You've abandoned that, which is to your credit. Worshiping such a god and defining it as possessing perfect love and mercy is as off-putting to many as it was to you.

Has anyone here on the evolutionist side said what creationism is yet?

Yes, I did. For me, anybody who believes that the world was created by an intelligent designer - my definition of a god - is a creationist (synonym supernaturalist). Everybody else would be a naturalist or physicalist, that is, someone who believes that nature might have assembled itself and runs itself every day without intelligent supervision or input.

That is not testing the process claimed of evolution. figuring where a fossil may be found because of date testing does not verify evolution

That's exactly what testing looks like. Science is confirmed when its specific and unlikely predictions are confirmed empirically.

 

[cladking]

Nobody knew about microorganisms before the invention of the microscope. There was a concept of contagion. People masked during the Great Plague of the Middle Ages, and Newton stayed home and wrote Principia during another outbreak, but the prevailing hypotheses conceived of some sort of toxic miasma emanating from the mouth that might be amenable to blood letting, or some sort of demon needing exorcism. But there was no concept of microscopic life, and there would have been no sense that it could harm a large animal like man if it did exist.

I believe you are probably mistaken.

Certainly ancient people lacked microscopes so couldn't see the microorganisms but we "know" of things that exist without being able to see them. Ancient metaphysics would have virtually demanded it was a life form at the root of disease. Some germs can be seen in large numbers or through their behavior.

I don't know. But they knew where disease came from if not exactly how.

You can't get very far with just those two beliefs. The first is nonspecific - could mean more than one thing. The second is just a definition. We call them cause and effect in part because of their temporal relationship. They also need to be causally connected, that is, the effect reliably follows the cause.

You're overthinking this.

"I don't believe in "intelligence" just isn't enough language to "parse" a specific meaning.

This is because of your beliefs and unwillingness to take it literally. Nobody wants to believe that even a moron like myself doesn't believe in intelligence. How can everyone show me how smart they are if I won't kowtow to their omniscience.

"Intelligence" is principally a feeling caused by thinking which is merely a product of language. Every body on earth can learn language so hardly is a sign of a condition you call intelligence. In reality every living thing operates on consciousness but homo omnisciencis operates on it indirectly thereby experiencing "intelligence" that doesn't exist. Every surgeon in 1865 was a genius just as everybody with Siri is today. It is a perception, not a condition. It is an event that is little more common in humans than bees.

 

[cladking]

They also need to be causally connected, that is, the effect reliably follows the cause.

No.

You're thinking in terms of reductionistic science.

Ancient science was not reductionistic. It never knew the cause of anything because in the real world all things affect all other things all the time. But they did know the cause precedes effect.

The principle reason I found ancient metaphysics was its remarkable similarity to my metaphysics I used to become a generalist/ nexialist. It was overlooked principally because it was so complex it required the computer to solve but it was invisible because the premises are wholly different than modern reductionistic science based in analog, abstract, and symbolic language.

That cause precedes effect can not be shown, it is axiomatic exactly the same as the axiom that all people make sense all the time. It is a function of consciousness which is foundational to ALL life and was ignored by Darwin and is still ignored by reductionistic science.

 

[cladking]

That cause precedes effect can not be shown, it is axiomatic exactly the same as the axiom that all people make sense all the time. It is a function of consciousness which is foundational to ALL life and was ignored by Darwin and is still ignored by reductionistic science.

Every bee knows these things. It is as much a part of consciousness as pattern recognition. It is foundational to life and ancient science. This kind of science generates different knowledge than reductionistic science because every tool does unique jobs. But knowledge generated by any means at all has some validity and will correspond to knowledge generated by any other means. It is this correspondence I now seek.

Bees can't get very far in life not because their minds are too small to understand gravity but rather they lack any complex language to pass knowledge generationally. They understand consciousness but have limited words to express it. They even know the birds that pluck them off a meal make sense all the time. They use consciousness to avoid such a fate because they are each equally fit.

 

[gnostic]

*tries to imagine @Subduction Zone turning into basalt*

I'm missing a word…

 

[cladking]

You're thinking in terms of reductionistic science.

Scientists (and to a lesser extent believers in science) model all of reality in terms of theory. They see all of reality not as it exists but in terms of these models. In reality everything is both a cause and an effect. Everything is an effect of an infinite number of other things and all of these effects become the cause of everything in the future. But cause always precedes effect. It is observational truth in nature as seen through the eyes of its many consciousnesses and types (species) of consciousnesses. It is axiomatic to consciousness itself. It is a also defining characteristic though quite possibly too complex for most single cell organisms. Life is necessarily individual and all individuals are conscious. Consciousness in addition to all the other characteristics I've previously listed ad nauseum is principally pattern recognition. It is the result of each "species'" wiring.

Reductionistic science would probably have discovered this in time and there are other short cuts to this knowledge.

 

[cladking]

But knowledge generated by any means at all has some validity and will correspond to knowledge generated by any other means.

This is why science and religion resonate to so many individual. Science is based on reality as seen through its effects on experiment and religion is largely the results of ancient science which was the mathematical logic of observation. Of course they correspond and this correspondence is perceived as resonation by many.

 

[sayak83]

Will this thread get the longest ever non-joke thread award?

 

[metis]

Will this thread get the longest ever non-joke thread award?

Wait! This is a "non-joke" thread?

 

[exchemist]

*tries to imagine @Subduction Zone turning into basalt*

At the risk of making a nerdy response, more likely andesite. That is more typically what one gets in island arc volcanoes, from the melting of the subducted slab.

 

[YoursTrue]

The blowers are getting less popular. I've never used one.

One of the biggest problems with them for me is that after you get your hands clean and dry how do you get out of the room?

Lol. True.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Will this thread get the longest ever non-joke thread award?

I'm having a good time and learning just a little bit more about how minds different from my own work.

This is because of your beliefs and unwillingness to take it literally. Nobody wants to believe that even a moron like myself doesn't believe in intelligence.

I don't consider you a moron. I know that you believe that what I call intelligence exists. My problem with understanding you is your lack of specificity. What is your definition of intelligence and how does one decide whether something or someone is intelligent? I think that if I knew those things, I could understand what you actually believe enough to agree or disagree.

"Intelligence" is principally a feeling caused by thinking which is merely a product of language.

That's not my definition. In a nutshell, intelligence is a quality in conscious organism that allows them to identify and solve problems.

That cause precedes effect can not be shown

I think it can, but here we go again wondering just what you mean by those words to put them together that way. Most people would say the opposite.

Scientists (and to a lesser extent believers in science) model all of reality in terms of theory. They see all of reality not as it exists but in terms of these models.

That's how all brains and minds work perforce. Learning is building that model or map, adding new beliefs or modifying older ones as new evidence is evaluated.

Everything is an effect of an infinite number of other things and all of these effects become the cause of everything in the future.

Yet we can still predict many outcomes with limited knowledge of those other collateral causes and effects.

Reductionistic science

Is it too much to ask for you to define and critique that phrase? I think that you mean the term pejoratively like some do materialism and scientism.

Here's my version of those answers. Reductionism, or the attempt to understand the whole in terms of its parts, has been profitable in science and elsewhere. Heredity is understood in terms of chromosomes, which are understood in terms of genes, which are understood in terms of nucleic acids and nucleotides, and down to smaller and smaller subunits. But it's also understood in more macroscopic, holistic scales as in the theory of evolution at the scale of populations, habitats, and their interactions, and the tree of life considered collectively (common descent, common ingredients in living things, families of families, etc.).

 

[YoursTrue]

Some here profess to believe in God and evolution, but refuse to answer questions.

 

[cladking]

I don't consider you a moron. I know that you believe that what I call intelligence exists. My problem with understanding you is your lack of specificity. What is your definition of intelligence and how does one decide whether something or someone is intelligent? I think that if I knew those things, I could understand what you actually believe enough to agree or disagree.

Homo omnisciencis considers "intelligence" to be a condition that principally affects man. Most people if asked to define the term speak in terms of conditions. IQ tests measure, attempt to quantify, things that are typically conditions or achievement within some field of learning. But these are all related more closely with things like memory or learning than they are with any condition. I believe most of what we call "intelligence" can be broken down into several hundred different characteristics like visual acuity which bear surprisingly little similarity to a condition we call "intelligence".

"Intelligence", true intelligence, is much more accurately described as an event and those who experience these events most often are 'clever". By this standard some dogs, crows, and whales are more "intelligent" than many humans. There really is no intelligent life on earth but many consciousnesses are more prone to cleverness than others. The existence of "intelligence" is an old wives' tale passed down through language and the experience of thinking that arose at the tower of babel.

 

[cladking]

I don't consider you a moron.

You may be in a class by yourself though frankly I've had a few people tell me "You're really not stupid".

Then they get to know be better.