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Darwin's Illusion

Dan From Smithville

The Flying Elvises, Utah Chapter
Staff member
Premium Member
I had a Jewish boyfriend at, Uni
in NYC. We were idly wondering how
far into the past we'd have to go
( he imagined reception lines of ancestors,
in the aftrrlife) before finding a common ancestor.

I think his family line has gone its way, I mine for an awful lot of generations.
I would imagine that the divergence began a long while back. No doubt it was sudden though. Over the course of tens of thousands of years.
 

Dan From Smithville

The Flying Elvises, Utah Chapter
Staff member
Premium Member
Interestingly (and rather tellingly) @cladking has been told that (about rabbits/carrots) several times, right in this thread -- and yet he keeps repeating it. Does that say that he is either not reading what others write, or that he is incapable of or uninterested in learning? I'm sure it's one or the other.
I do recall both of us correcting that error.
 

Dan From Smithville

The Flying Elvises, Utah Chapter
Staff member
Premium Member
The main problem with the theory of evolution, as is, is it cannot make accurate future predictions. It is more like a catalog structure for the past; life forms as function of time, instead of a practical theory that can anticipate the future.

The main problem is the Life science, as a whole, are currently is too dependent on casino math; math of dice and cards. This particular math creates a mindset that the whims of the gods; Lady Luck, rule or decide the future. Evolution is set up similar to a lottery game. We have good records of who won in the past, but we have no clue who will win the lottery, today. This gap in the future, is how you get people to buy tickets; dreams and hopes. The Life Sciences need to leave the casino mentality and advance to their own age of reason; gamblers anonymous.

Darwin's theory of natural selection sounds rational and not interned to be just a lottery. It sort of sounds like Mother Nature making a sober choice; nature is very healthy. I do not interpret national selection to mean Mother Nature spinning the big wheel to pick the daily numbers.

Science was moving along with the rational ideas of Darwin, but it went to the casino one day, and never came out. Darwin did not do or endorse this. This explains why Evolution is the only "science", that "feels the need" to compare itself to religion theory. The battle comes down to the gods of cards and dice, versus the God of Hosts.
Do you mean statistics?
 

Dan From Smithville

The Flying Elvises, Utah Chapter
Staff member
Premium Member
Maybe he thinks everything to the
subatomic level is pre-planned.

There are people like that.
It would be nice to converse with someone that didn't have an unsupported alternate model that is the absolute realest, truest, rightest answer to everything for a change. Someone that was curious, but didn't pretend to know it all. I don't know it all.

For some crazy reason, I like to learn about sound facts and the best explanations based on those facts. I know that seems at odds in someone that holds personal beliefs, but I don't make claims on those beliefs to others as if I can support them either.
 

Dan From Smithville

The Flying Elvises, Utah Chapter
Staff member
Premium Member
Maybe he thinks everything to the
subatomic level is pre-planned.

There are people like that.
I'm not sure what the objection to using statistical models that have served us well in drawing conclusions with data for 100 years. It almost smacks of a reliance on the existence of absolute answers. I'm not sure. I would think that engineers would be familiar with the use of statistics and the value of it.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
I'm not sure what the objection to using statistical models that have served us well in drawing conclusions with data for 100 years. It almost smacks of a reliance on the existence of absolute answers. I'm not sure. I would think that engineers would be familiar with the use of statistics and the value of it.
Some people can't handle the concept of having no absolutes.
It's an emotional issue.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
It would be nice to converse with someone that didn't have an unsupported alternate model that is the absolute realest, truest, rightest answer to everything for a change. Someone that was curious, but didn't pretend to know it all. I don't know it all.

For some crazy reason, I like to learn about sound facts and the best explanations based on those facts. I know that seems at odds in someone that holds personal beliefs, but I don't make claims on those beliefs to others as if I can support them either.
We keep hoping for a sensible creationist,
knowing there never will be one.
 

cladking

Well-Known Member
I like the contradiction that humans, with our sophisticated brains, didn't have a language until, poof, magically we did, but every other thing, even without brains has language.

Proto-humans had proto-language that was eerily similar to Ancient Language except that it had only some 50 scientific words, a couple hundred verbs and fewer than 2000 nouns. But is was a very simple language just like every other animal language on the planet. Every scientist, philosopher, and historian had to start at the very beginning because complex ideas could not be passed down in simple language. This language was sufficient to their needs. They acted and lived like animals.

It is complex language which is the tool with which we climb on the shoulders of giants. There's no such thing as "intelligence". We climb up and see what we see. We now can use the tools of science after we get up to see ever further just as we can use the other tools of human knowledge such as philosophy. We even have instrumentation from telescopes to voltmeters. Our most powerful tool is experiment which unclouds our vision and ultimately defines what we really see.

The first humans spawned by S3.h were able to build on the work of earlier generations to discover things like the nature of fire for which human animals already had an operational mastery. These people enjoyed 40,000 years of science where every individual was a scientist and metaphysician. Did I ever mention there is no such thing as "intelligence" as we define it? These humans shared a universal complex language where every dialect was mutually intelligible. The language was a simple elaboration on the Proto-Human Language. Because it was metaphysical like all animal languages it became increasingly complex as more was learned. By 3200 BC it had become so complex that slower people were having grave difficulty mastering it or becoming fluent. This put them at a severe disadvantage to everyone else and was unfair. Nothing could be done but as time passed numerous pidgin languages arose so these less adept individuals could communicate. The pidgin languages were based on local dialects and could not be translated into Ancient Language. AL could be interpreted into the pidgin language and this gave rise to the need for writing. Laws had to be relayed to the slower people and this was done through writing because anything said in them changed as it was passed word of mouth.

As Ancient Language grew ever more complex more and more people were incapable of using it. By 2000 BC there simply weren't enough speakers to continue to operate the state so official language was changed to the local pidgin language everywhere. This is why P.I.E. arose out of nothing. Language as we know it didn't exist until the official change we know only as the "tower of babel".

But each individual had to acquire these new languages individually because they were not natural. We each still have to develop a region in the brain to manipulate symbolic analog language. This is done in undifferentiated brain tissue in the center of the brain and is called the brocas area. Babies are still born with very rudimentary Ancient Language skills. Each individual must acquire language and we each put this in about the same area of the brain. Just as the visual cortex and other areas of the brain can be repurposed and are usually repurposed the same way by every individual we all develop our brocas area in about the same place.

Hence we are a totally different species than homo sapiens. While we look alike but our aspect is vastly different, our behavior is vastly different, and we think where they could not. We see what we believe instead of what's real. This change has also led to rapid devolution. We no longer do what's right but rather what feels right to each individual. We now speak seven billion different languages and are all pulling in seven billion different directions. We walk on the weak and disenfranchised because... ...well... ...they are less fit anyway. Everything must be purchased from the air we breath to the laws we live under and the science that rules our lives.

Simply understanding these problems would greatly redress them.

Our brain is not so very sophisticated. It certainly is a larger part of our mass but it is complex language that set homo sapiens and homo omnisciencis apart rather than any sort of sophistication.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
Proto-humans had proto-language that was eerily similar to Ancient Language except that it had only some 50 scientific words, a couple hundred verbs and fewer than 2000 nouns. But is was a very simple language just like every other animal language on the planet. Every scientist, philosopher, and historian had to start at the very beginning because complex ideas could not be passed down in simple language. This language was sufficient to their needs. They acted and lived like animals.

And we have pseudo-philology meets pseudo-history.

Do you do anything that’s not pseudo- something?

You are not only incompetent and ignorant in science, but you’re also lousy at history & prehistory, at cultures and at languages.

You are still making fictions.
 

cladking

Well-Known Member
And we have pseudo-philology meets pseudo-history.

Do you do anything that’s not pseudo- something?

You are not only incompetent and ignorant in science, but you’re also lousy at history & prehistory, at cultures and at languages.

You are still making fictions.

The problem is always the same. It makes no sense to ascribe "instinct" or "trial and error" to the invention of highly complex behavior such as agriculture. We tend to ascribe it to "genius" in humans and "instinct" in termites. If we and termites invented agriculture then there must be some common denominator and I'm merely suggesting it is "theory". Such a paradigm suggests many things and chief among them is how did this their arise and from what did it arise. How did ancient man and termites create new species for their own ends?

No cow evolved naturally.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
I suppose I have to admit to that fatal optimism. I suppose I come the closest.
The essence of it is that no creationist has
fact one to offer.
You can't disprove a theory without facts.

IF someone ever did discover disproof of
evolution the consequence ,woul extend beyond
any reckoning.

And there is zero chance it would be a creationist
who made the discovery.

Best you can hope for would be to find someone
with the education to ask challenging questions.
 

cladking

Well-Known Member
Google is fine, but I'm not motivated to go find the support for your claims.

I understand that and I'm the same way. But I've already done this job dozens of times and it would be ignored again if history is any guide.

Most of the believers here can't even get past the definition of "metaphysics" being the basis of science. No matter how many rtimes I say all observed change in life and nature is sudden they continue to gainsay rather than to provide a single example. I am left to provide examples myself (like colliding galaxies) because most all believers are incapable of even trying to argue except in their own terms and their own beliefs.

You had said, "Since everything we see is consistent with what we believe we mistake this for omniscience." Then this only applied to the closed-minded?

No. this applies to our entire species individually and collectively and virtually in every instance. People who are more open minded (like yourself) can more often see anomalies in more areas of their experience but in point of fact most people only see what the believe. I believe reality exists and everyone makes sense and lo and behold this is exactly what I have found. I believe there is no difference whatsoever with me (homo omnisciencis) but I merely started with true assumptions rather than Darwin's laughable nonsequiturs. One could say it's little more than coincidence that my assumptions are correct and has allowed a new paradigm.

There is as I and most others define it. In short, it's the ability to effect short-term goals, which means knowing what causes lead to what effects and how to make them occur.

That's an unusual definition. I won't quibble with it but I doubt it is accurate. Obviously bright and quick people are usually more able to effect short term goals but this is because we generally have more knowledge nd more tools at our disposal not because there exists condition of being able to effect short term goals. Most actual "intelligence" is actually an event rather than a condition and if you watch nature you'll see such events that put most humans to shame. It's difficult to see because most people don't even believe a sparrow is conscious much less one can be more "intelligent" than many people.

How do you know when a mother who didn't act human produced a son or daughter who did? And I don't know what breeds true means.

"All" people act human. Anyone who does not would have the aspect of an animal along with most unusual behavior. There is probably no human on the planet right now that doesn't act human. He sees what he believes and acts on it in accordance with his beliefs. Many have very odd beliefs.

To "breed true" an individual must have some offspring and these offspring must display the same characteristic that defined the new species. If only half the offspring display this characteristic than (s)he still has effectively "bred true".

What's your metric for determining which genes are human? What makes mom prehuman and sonny human?

This is defined on a case by case basis. I would call it "speciation" only when there is a significant change in behavior and/ or structure.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
You are a much more patient person than I am. My level of tolerance for unsupported claims and wild, unsupported claims is much lower.
Thanks. It's a relatively recent change for me. I was a firebrand poster originally. We might be doing different things here. Like you, I enjoy discussion, especially debate, and I would like to find a way to be of value to whomever I'm disagreeing with, but if I am, there's little evidence of it. I'm also very interested in trying to understand not just what others think, but how they think. I'm trying to imagine what it looks like through other minds that makes their pronouncements seem acceptable to them. I'd like to get to the point where I can say, "I might not agree with you, but I see where you're coming from." It's the cognitive equivalent of empathy, which is trying to feel as others feel, but for thought - thinking as others think.

I like people like @cladking. I don't think he's arguing in bad faith. I think that he is trying to trade ideas and would like to engage in dialectic, but isn't ready. His opinions don't create a negative emotional response for me. And I want to see if I can make an impact with him in areas like effective debate, rebuttal, and clarity in thought and language.
I like the contradiction that humans, with our sophisticated brains, didn't have a language until, poof, magically we did, but every other thing, even without brains has language.
This is an area where clarity is needed. I'm not sure where the contradictions are since I'm not always clear on what words mean. I don't know what is meant by a language, since I believe that he uses the term to refer to prelinguistic thought. And the Tower of Babble references just add additional ambiguity. I can't help but believe that this all makes sense to him, and I'd like to understand how.
For some crazy reason, I like to learn about sound facts and the best explanations based on those facts. I know that seems at odds in someone that holds personal beliefs, but I don't make claims on those beliefs to others as if I can support them either.
I have also spent time considering how people like you and a few other Abrahamic theists think, why your opinions seem indistinguishable from any atheistic humanist's and yet in this one area, you are willing to depart from the method of thinking you depend on professionally and in your posting. It makes me wonder what would have to be different in me to do the same. I think that I would have needed to grow up in an environment where religion was comfortably familiar and brought me pleasure being around it - what I call a cultural Christian.

I know many Jews who see themselves that way. They're atheists, but drawn to Jewish culture. They like Jewish cuisine, but don't respect the dietary laws. They like to be with other Jews just because of common culture. They use Yiddish expressions, and occasionally go to synagogue, albeit rarely. And they call themselves Jews, but also, humanists. I suspect that many self-identifying Christians fit into this category - humanistic values and a humanistic agenda, but self-identifying with a religion. I'm calling them theistic humanists.

I hope you don't find this kind of speculation offensive. If so, apologies.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
It makes no sense to ascribe "instinct" or "trial and error" to the invention of highly complex behavior such as agriculture.
It does to me. You've been gathering food all day and accidentally drop some seeds near your base and note food you used to have to forage for conveniently growing nearby. So, you plant some seeds deliberately, and get a crop. That's science - observation (the seeds grew), induction (if I plant seeds, plants will grow there), and testing. With further observation and testing, we learn about soils, fertilizers, irrigation, crop rotation, and hybrid vigor.
We tend to ascribe it to "genius" in humans and "instinct" in termites.
Human beings have intellect, the aspect of intelligence that distinguishes them from other intelligent life. Here, I am referring to the ability to think and reason in symbols like words and numbers. Termites not only lack intellect, they seem to have very little evidence of or use for consciousness. Evolution also generates innovation unconsciously.
If we and termites invented agriculture then there must be some common denominator and I'm merely suggesting it is "theory"
Both are communities that benefit from food management, but that's where the similarity ends. Only one developed agriculture consciously and deliberately.
How did ancient man and termites create new species for their own ends?
I don't think I can answer you because I still don't know what a species is to you. I think you mean they become another species when they developed agriculture.
No matter how many times I say all observed change in life and nature is sudden they continue to gainsay rather than to provide a single example. I am left to provide examples myself (like colliding galaxies) because most all believers are incapable of even trying to argue except in their own terms and their own beliefs.
The problem is the same here. I don't what sudden means to you. Here's the first definition I encountered in a search: "occurring or done quickly and unexpectedly or without warning." Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way in a few billion years, and will take millions of years to form a new galaxy. This is what you have called sudden. As I said, I don't know what that word means to you if you'll use it to describe that event, but I do know what it doesn't mean: "occurring or done quickly and unexpectedly or without warning."
That's an unusual definition [for intelligence]. I won't quibble with it but I doubt it is accurate.
The definition I provided was, "In short, it's the ability to effect short-term goals, which means knowing what causes lead to what effects and how to make them occur." That's a distillation. The larger definition also includes the ability to recognize where pitfalls and situations that can be gainfully exploited using that knowledge of how to effect outcomes are, and the evolution of one's data base and method of processing information (learning, becoming more intelligent). In its fullest form, it includes the knowledge of what will make one content, which can also be called wisdom, the most useful intelligence.
"All" people act human. Anyone who does not would have the aspect of an animal along with most unusual behavior. There is probably no human on the planet right now that doesn't act human. He sees what he believes and acts on it in accordance with his beliefs. Many have very odd beliefs.
That doesn't answer the question asked, which was, "How do you know when a mother who didn't act human produced a son or daughter who did?" nor the next question, "What's your metric for determining which genes are human? What makes mom prehuman and sonny human?" You'll need an unambiguous rule in order to decide what the first human was like and how he or she differed from it's parents that makes them nonhuman. Let's jump to the chase: that can't be done in any meaningful way.
 
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