Do Athiests have morals?

[1robin]

It doesn't matter. It really really doesn't. If all we need to do is get everyone to agree that survival is the goal (which it is engraved in us from birth with few exceptions) then I think that settles your problems with it doesn't it?

I posts do not shorten over time.

The moral goal of mankind is not agreement, it should be truth. We can all agree that murder is good but it will not make it true.

That is a sad way to look at life. I choose to look at life with value despite the absence of god. It is possible. In fact I could even reduce everything to meaninglessness with god if I wanted.

Sad or glad that is the only choice and what almost all our moral duties depend on. I think it far sadder to invent a self interested morality that is not based in objective fact than to do the opposite. How you look at a thing does not determine the nature of a thing. You can value tennis shoes, rocks, or b movies but that is not a moral standard society is in need of. If what we all desired was the foundation then porn, violence, and junk food would be the greatest good.

Empathy is not a choice. Can you choose not to feel someone else's pain? You actually can't. There is process of dehumanization that can occur that can systematically remove your empathy but the actual experience of empathy is simply not a choice. Again. If it is for you then you need to talk to a psychiatrist and ask for a psychopathic test.

Empathy is a choice though it is a very common one. We can not only not empathize with others pain we can love to cause it. But even if it was automatic so is gravity and bad breath. If empathy was some kind of universe absolute why was Hitler's and your ideas about what was empathic so dissimilar?

Yes. If the Christian god exists I suppose it would be a good idea to adopt his morality. Though I still wouldn't agree with many of the "Christian" moral statements such as anti-homosexuality and the like. But again you have to understand that the whole of your argument rests on your single god out of all of the thousands and thousands of gods and goddesses across the world and history that this exact god is correct. And you realize this cannot be verified?

I have tried to avoid unnecessarily complicating this by supplying any specific morality that we should adopt. I have only said that if God exists then morality is not subject to our opinions. If he does not then that is all it is. My argument does not assume my God it proposes my God. I can easily justify faith in that one God but have been trying to keep this simple.

And if we cannot verify it why the hell should we base anything off of it?

I did not say what we could verify. If God does not exist there is nothing to verify, at least with God there exists some truth of the matter. Whatever accusation you make against God based morality it is far worse for Godless morality.

I have no need. I already know what and how you think. I also know that I cannot agree with you on this. It would be wasted effort.

I did not ask for your agreement, I pointed out that a counterpoint exists to the one you mentioned. It takes a whole other level of evil to wipe out millions compared to one, or as we have almost done, wipe out all life in existence. I can condemn but understand a man who kills his wife's lover, I can condemn but never understand a man who wants to wipe out China.

Which is why I don't need it to be objective for it to be functional.

The goal is not functionality it is truth and the functionality of our morality is extremely deficient anyway.

Like I said you're free to be wrong all you want .

I am perhaps wrong but at least my moral foundations have the possibility of being objectively true.

I'm just tired of your empty claims that evolution is some half-cocked theory with no evidence and you keep saying that evolution keeps changing fundamentally and I would like a single example.

I am sure we are both equally tired of what we consider vacuous claims the other makes. However note who lost patience first. You did not ask me if I could produce a fundamental change in evolutionary theory. Now that you have I will give you one. It is an example that justifies all the apprehension I have about theoretical science alone.

Possibly the greatest evolutionary find in history was the burgess shale deposits. It is unique in many ways but I won't get into that aspect of it. The issue is that very slow gradual evolution was the preferred model at the time. However the shale deposits were something like 60,000 exceptions to that model. Did theoretical science embrace this new data. No, the president of the Smithsonian buried every single one of the most important evolutionary fossils ever found in basement drawers and only published it in the least circulated publications he was required to. The same false theory was taught for decades in every classroom that taught biology. It was only by accident that the discarded fossils were discovered by an intern and eventually forced scientists to allow for punctuated equilibrium. The fossils showed that every single major body type exploded in a snap shot of geological time. Yet even that is no where as remarkable as our intellectual leap. A famous military saying goes that defend everything is to defend nothing. The equivalent is a theory that accounts for everything accounts for nothing. No matter ho contradictory a find is someone starches evolutionary theory to fit it. It is as bas a global warming, every symptom proves it. That is not to say evolution did not happen. It is to say there is a huge gap between the evidence and the theory.

This idea of objectivity is not required. That is the point I made.

There was no need since that was the second point in my two point original post. Of course we can invent rules without God.

I prefer truth to lies.

Now this is very contradictory. I am only going to give two examples. You said if God exists his morality is true but if it conflicted with your desire to allow homosexuality you would deny truth, and you have adopted a worldview which has no ultimate moral truth possible.

That given a certain context things are "true". A context allows for givens to certain situations and you simply objected by saying "its not objectively true outside of that context" which invalidates the whole reason I included "context" to the argument. So it led me to believe you didn't know what it means. I am not re-typing my argument and if you have a response for it feel free to look for it in the previous posts.

I do not recall what you refer to. I do recall you suggesting I don't know what the word context means which is silly.

I'm not going to convince you that your bible is fake. But you are not going to convince me its true. And even if it is true I really doubt that it is scientific or historical in nature.

It is sad to have such dogmatic views about others and worse still for yourself. I cannot be convinced that the God I have met does not exist but I can be convinced that the bible is mistaken. In fact Christians have identified many places where it is and indicted such in all modern bibles along with the history.

I have stated that if we use the developed social skills that we have obtained from evolution it would not be Socail Darwinism. If thats what you mean.

I will let my definition stand as is.

Everyone has to have a personal code. But the reality of life is that much is uncertain and knowing what is right and wrong is often a grey area when you have all of the facts. If you simply think there is right and wrong in every situation then I don't think we will ever agree on things.

I think there is a right and wrong in every situation as does almost everyone despite not always knowing what it is. The same way there is a scientific explanation for all natural events despite us not knowing most of them.

 

[ArtieE]

I have a survival instinct, we can make laws about human survival, what we cannot do is make human survival morally "right". Cows have the same instincts yet we kill them by the millions just for dinner. Making our survival the moral pinnacle of the planet is not morality is self interested, contrived, speciesm.

Then of course cows will also enjoy eternal happy survival in heaven. Anything else would be "self interested, contrived, speciesm." Right?

And what is more important it is not objectively moral. If were are just picking instincts and making them into laws then lets legalize rape because dolphins do it, or kill alcoholics because bees do so, or how about eating our young because tigers do it.

ROTFL. So you really don't understand that objectively "moral" behavior for dolphins isn't the same as for bees or tigers or humans because... wait for it... we are different species! I bet it never occurred to you but behavior that is good for the survival of one species might not be for the survival of a different species!

If you want to be artificially technical and use only human behavior and the be al end all moral absolute then why don't we kill off anyone who competes with our tribe for resources.

OK, which "tribe" do you belong to and who are the other tribes you want to kill off? I want the specific names of the tribes you speak of.

 

[1robin]

The bolded part from Post #762:

"That is a far more complex issue. Christianity is built to run a believer not a state. I do not make many epistemological arguments because they would take a long time. Let me sum it up this way. Even a bumbling effort at identifying God's moral demands holds every advantage in every category over fumbling to find an objective moral truth that does not exist. Denying God is a total net loss in this context. However I do acknowledge that to identify and apply Godly morality would not be a smooth process for an entire society."

You want to know how the bolded statement is true? To begin with truth is always holds the advantage over non-truth. There is no moral truth to find without God.

 

[1robin]

Unless of course Stalin accepted Jesus as his lord and savior before he died in which case he'd be redeemed and get to spend eternity with god. In which case, justice would not be served.

Unless what? Even if Stalin had accepted Christ (his actual last act was to rise from unconsciousness and shake his fist at heaven then die according to his daughter) every victim he had would receive justice and his sin was paid for at great cost by the only being who could offer atonement. If Christ atoned for Stalin's acts then that is the fact of the matter. God's justice was enacted just not according to Skeptical Thinker's subjective satisfaction.

Sorry but I don't see how your system of moral pronouncements (I wouldn't even call it a moral system in the first place) ensures that justice prevails.

Your world view makes it very easy. I do not have to prove Christianity based moral reality perfect to show it is holds every potential advantage. There is no potential what so ever for eternal righting of wrongs, payment of debts, settling of accounts without God. Even if you could actually identify a Christian deficiency it would pale in comparison to atheism's bankruptcy.

 

[1robin]

Then the Christian moral "system" is not superior to secular morality.

You keep quoting paragraphs but not indicating what you refer to. Then what?
In the land of secular moral bankruptcy the world view with even a single potential objective moral truth is king.

 

[1robin]

Then of course cows will also enjoy eternal happy survival in heaven. Anything else would be "self interested, contrived, speciesm." Right?ROTFL.

What? If cow maximization was true then we are all wrong and will not share heaven with the cows. Do you not see the arbitrariness in the fact the humans prefer human optimizations at the expense of every other creature on earth. A Christian has moral justification for doing so, an atheist is just being selfish and arbitrary.

So you really don't understand that objectively "moral" behavior for dolphins isn't the same as for bees or tigers or humans because... wait for it... we are different species! I bet it never occurred to you but behavior that is good for the survival of one species might not be for the survival of a different species! OK, which "tribe" do you belong to and who are the other tribes you want to kill off? I want the specific names of the tribes you speak of.

Of course I do not, I am the one that has a system that justifies our being morally separate from the rest of the animal kingdom and transcends any arbitrary genetic labels. Your world view is the one that only has nature to look at and no clear distinction between genetic anomalies. BTW the word "species" is an abstract construct and does not determine anything in nature. If your going to justify behavior by looking at nature then at least be consistent and take the bad and good. If your going to just use human history then likewise use both the good and the bad and be consistent. Don't claim to use nature or anything else but only use what parts of it you like and claim your actually basing it on it.

It depends what tribe I belong to by how scarce resources are. Your survival instinct would justify I wipe out all competitors who do not contribute to my survival. That is if any society ever applied that principle to making laws, which they have not, because it is an absurd notion. Asking me what tribe I belong to (I am actually Cherokee) reminds me of the kid in the movie who said "I hate anyone who does not like me".

 

[ArtieE]

Your survival instinct would justify I wipe out all competitors who do not contribute to my survival.

My survival instinct tells me that if I try to wipe out all my competitors I am likely to end up dead because they also have a survival instinct and will defend themselves with all they've got. No, my survival instinct isn't that stupid. It would tell me that if we cooperated instead of wiping each other out we would be much more likely to survive. So evolution and natural selection favors cooperation over trying to wipe out all competitors.

Just see what happened to your favorite Hitler and Nazi Germany. He tried to "wipe out all competitors" and got wiped out himself because he went against evolution and natural selection which favors cooperation over aggression.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Possibly the greatest evolutionary find in history was the burgess shale deposits. It is unique in many ways but I won't get into that aspect of it. The issue is that very slow gradual evolution was the preferred model at the time. However the shale deposits were something like 60,000 exceptions to that model. Did theoretical science embrace this new data. No, the president of the Smithsonian buried every single one of the most important evolutionary fossils ever found in basement drawers and only published it in the least circulated publications he was required to. The same false theory was taught for decades in every classroom that taught biology. It was only by accident that the discarded fossils were discovered by an intern and eventually forced scientists to allow for punctuated equilibrium. The fossils showed that every single major body type exploded in a snap shot of geological time. Yet even that is no where as remarkable as our intellectual leap. A famous military saying goes that defend everything is to defend nothing. The equivalent is a theory that accounts for everything accounts for nothing. No matter ho contradictory a find is someone starches evolutionary theory to fit it. It is as bas a global warming, every symptom proves it. That is not to say evolution did not happen. It is to say there is a huge gap between the evidence and the theory.
.

Okay, I've seen you make this claim many times and I'm wondering where you came up with it because I can’t figure out where you’re coming from.


Are you talking about Charles Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1907 to 1927? He spent something like 18 years (along with his family) excavating and collecting fossils and taking panoramic shots of the Burgess Shale. He kept a detailed, day-to-day journal of his findings, complete with diagrams. He sent duplicates of his fossils to other museums, the University of Michigan being one of them. The 65,000 fossils he and his family collected weren’t “buried” anywhere, rather they were organized, categorized and arranged by taxonomic group in drawers at the Smithsonian. It’s not like he just chucked them in some drawers somewhere to hide them from the world so nobody could ever find then. I can look up and view photos of him working away at the Smithsonian in the 1920s. He published more articles on his findings than I can count in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, not to mention the Journal of Geology, National Geographic, Geological Magazine, Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – hardly the “least circulated publications” you claim them to be. He even co-authored a series of lectures entitled “Problems of American Geology: a series of lectures dealing with some of the problems of the Canadian Shield and of the Cordilleras.” That doesn’t sound to me like some who is trying to hide his findings at all.


Why would someone go to all this work and put all that time and effort into his findings, only to ensure that work would never be seen by anyone? The guy died in 1927 and nobody bothered checking out his fossils until 40 years later – so how is that Walcott’s fault? It doesn’t make any sense.


Charles Walcott - Discoveries - History -The Burgess Shale

SIA RU007004, Walcott, Charles D (Charles Doolittle) 1850-1927, Charles D. Walcott Collection, 1851-1940 and undated | Smithsonian Institution Archives

Charles Doolittle Walcott - Wikisource, the free online library



We’ve already discussed your erroneous claim that “every single major body type exploded in a snapshot of geological time” during the ‘Cambrian explosion,” but for some reason you’re still repeating it.

 

[1robin]

My survival instinct tells me that if I try to wipe out all my competitors I am likely to end up dead because they also have a survival instinct and will defend themselves with all they've got. No, my survival instinct isn't that stupid. It would tell me that if we cooperated instead of wiping each other out we would be much more likely to survive. So evolution and natural selection favors cooperation over trying to wipe out all competitors.

However we have been wiping each other out since we have existed. Apparently the rest of us are not so discriminating. However this was a thought experiment so lets say my tribe was the 1945 US nations and within one year we could manufacture and drop enough fissionable material to wipe all other human life out without significant risk. Is your moral foundation so trivial that it includes whether you can get away with an act?

Just see what happened to your favorite Hitler and Nazi Germany. He tried to "wipe out all competitors" and got wiped out himself because he went against evolution and natural selection which favors cooperation over aggression.

My favorite Hitler? How many Hitlers am I choosing from exactly? So your right and wrong is based on your capacity to escape repercussions? Thank God no society has ever adopted such an immoral basis for morality. The fact is human history is full of aggression in spite of risk so it is not even true nor even if it was is it a basis for morality. BTW Hitler did not try to wipe out his competitors in general. Read his diaries and personal letters. He thought that his actions were riding humanity of it's weak so the strong would grow stronger. He, like anyone who was nuts enough to use nature as justification simply decided who was the weak and who the strong by preference. Read all the great appeals used to stop him, not said his actions were inconsistent with nature and he should be stopped for violating evolution. They all appealed to objective moral truths which do not exist without God.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Unless what? Even if Stalin had accepted Christ (his actual last act was to rise from unconsciousness and shake his fist at heaven then die according to his daughter) every victim he had would receive justice and his sin was paid for at great cost by the only being who could offer atonement. If Christ atoned for Stalin's acts then that is the fact of the matter. God's justice was enacted just not according to Skeptical Thinker's subjective satisfaction.

Maybe he accepted Christ in his private time when no one was looking. Or inside his own mind. It doesn't matter. How are his victims receiving atonement if Stalin accepted Christ and ended up in heaven? Seems more like a slap in the face to me. And hardly justice, in any sense of the word.

Your world view makes it very easy. I do not have to prove Christianity based moral reality perfect to show it is holds every potential advantage. There is no potential what so ever for eternal righting of wrongs, payment of debts, settling of accounts without God. Even if you could actually identify a Christian deficiency it would pale in comparison to atheism's bankruptcy.

Sure you do, if you are claiming that yours is the superior (and only) system of morality. Should it not be perfect if the god you worship is supposed to be perfect?

In my view we can enact justice in the only life we know we have. It doesn’t maybe, possibly occur in some afterlife we have no idea exists in the first place.

 

[SkepticThinker]

You keep quoting paragraphs but not indicating what you refer to. Then what?
In the land of secular moral bankruptcy the world view with even a single potential objective moral truth is king.

I always bold the parts I'm referring to. Check it out.

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

Your responses have been the most absurd posts I have received in over 10,000 examples. Either your not articulating what you are trying to say very well, I have recently had a stroke and don't know it, or you have some very bizarre interpretations of scripture. Your label says Islam and Islam says:

{17:31} And do not kill your children for fear of poverty; We give them sustenance and yourselves (too); surely to kill them is a great wrong.

{16:90} Surely Allah enjoins the doing of justice and the doing of good (to others) and the giving to the kindred, and He forbids indecency and evil and rebellion; He admonishes you that you may be mindful.

{3:104} And from among you there should be a party who invite to good and enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong, and these it is that shall be successful.

{38:24} …. and most surely most of the partners act wrongfully towards one another, save those who believe and do good, and very few are they;

etc.............

The Quran has enough problems on it's own without your saying what it says is evil.

....I already explained, opinion on what is good and evil is allowed, fact not. What part of thou SHALT NOT eat from the tree of KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL is unclear to you?

 

[1robin]

Okay, I've seen you make this claim many times and I'm wondering where you came up with it because I can’t figure out where you’re coming from.

That is funny since you immediately found the exact guy. I have already posted exhaustively the detailed account. I don't want to look it up again.

Are you talking about Charles Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1907 to 1927? He spent something like 18 years (along with his family) excavating and collecting fossils and taking panoramic shots of the Burgess Shale. He kept a detailed, day-to-day journal of his findings, complete with diagrams. He sent duplicates of his fossils to other museums, the University of Michigan being one of them. The 65,000 fossils he and his family collected weren’t “buried” anywhere, rather they were organized, categorized and arranged by taxonomic group in drawers at the Smithsonian. It’s not like he just chucked them in some drawers somewhere to hide them from the world so nobody could ever find then. I can look up and view photos of him working away at the Smithsonian in the 1920s. He published more articles on his findings than I can count in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, not to mention the Journal of Geology, National Geographic, Geological Magazine, Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – hardly the “least circulated publications” you claim them to be. He even co-authored a series of lectures entitled “Problems of American Geology: a series of lectures dealing with some of the problems of the Canadian Shield and of the Cordilleras.” That doesn’t sound to me like some who is trying to hide his findings at all.


Why would someone go to all this work and put all that time and effort into his findings, only to ensure that work would never be seen by anyone? The guy died in 1927 and nobody bothered checking out his fossils until 40 years later – so how is that Walcott’s fault? It doesn’t make any sense.


Charles Walcott - Discoveries - History -The Burgess Shale

SIA RU007004, Walcott, Charles D (Charles Doolittle) 1850-1927, Charles D. Walcott Collection, 1851-1940 and undated | Smithsonian Institution Archives

Charles Doolittle Walcott - Wikisource, the free online library



We’ve already discussed your erroneous claim that “every single major body type exploded in a snapshot of geological time” during the ‘Cambrian explosion,” but for some reason you’re still repeating it.

My source was actually a text not a site. It was a book written by a brilliant modern scientist named Gerald Schroeder. I am not retyping this but here is the same claim from any number of other sites.

Walcott collected these fossils, and when looked at the phyla to which they belonged, he was amazed, because the fossil stratum he had found was so very ancient. No significant life forms had been encountered in any older strata. But this one contained fossils of almost all of the known phyla, as well as fossils belonging to unknown phyla, showing that all the bodily structures in the animal kingdom had emerged all together, in the same geological period.

This represented a lethal blow to Darwin's theory, because Darwin had suggested that living things developed like the branches of a slowly spreading tree. According to the evolutionary tree that Darwin dreamed up, a single phylum should appear first, then different species, and then, different phyla over a very long period of time. Yet Walcott was looking at clear evidence that all of the phyla existing in the present day, and even more, had emerged suddenly and at the same time, around 530 million years ago. This discovery completely did away with the imaginary "evolutionary tree" that presumed that phyla began with one species that branched off over long periods of time. Right at the beginning of the history of life, complex features were displayed with ever-more complex fossil specimens representing a total of 50 distinct phyla, and numerous species.

These approximately 530-million-year-old fossils entirely eliminated the false reasoning of gradual evolution. Yet they were brought out from where they had been stored and presented to the world only after 70 years had gone by. Walcott had decided to conceal the fossils he had obtained rather than making them available up to his fellow scientists.

As the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Walcott was a dyed-in-the-wool Darwinist. According to the theory of evolution, fossils with relatively simple structures were to be expected in rocks of such great age. Yet in terms of complexity, the fossils he discovered were no different from our present-day creatures, such as crabs, starfish and worms. For Darwinists, the alarming aspect of this was that no fossil specimen that might be proposed as the ancestor of these creatures was to be found, either in Burgess Shale or in older rocks.

The fossil record represents one of the most important pieces of evidence to refute Darwinism, but is generally ignored by Darwinists. Fossils from the Cambrian period, belonging to the first complex living things in history ,were secretly hidden away for 70 years, and are important examples of this deceptive method. A similar method is usually employed with living fossils, and any evidence that invalidates evolution is concealed. However, these efforts are all in vain, and science has demolished evolution with the most perfect fossil specimens.

Faced with these dilemmas, Walcott was all too aware that the fossils he had obtained would constitute a major stumbling block for the theory of evolution. Instead of announcing them, he sent them to the Smithsonian, together with a few photographs he had taken and a set of notes. There the fossils were locked away in drawers and forgotten for 70 years. The Burgess Shale fossils were brought to light only in 1985, when the museum archives were re-examined. The Israeli scientist Gerald Schroeder comments:

I found this same information at many sites and several books but closed the window before I copied the specific source I copied. I do need to correct an opinion in this type of response. The fossils did not overturn evolution, they contradicted the evolutionary model.

Whatever the secondary details the fact of the matter is evidence took over 60 years to over turn a cherished model.

 

[1robin]

Maybe he accepted Christ in his private time when no one was looking. Or inside his own mind. It doesn't matter. How are his victims receiving atonement if Stalin accepted Christ and ended up in heaven? Seems more like a slap in the face to me. And hardly justice, in any sense of the word.

I have no position on Stalin's faith worth defending. I don't know what the hold up is, if God exists then this is just a cosmic blink in time, God is not bound by capacity to rectify the wrongs suffered. What is the impediment here? I do not subscribe to it but purgatory would seem to seal any objection you can imagine. I do not need a label like purgatory of a place of that kind justify that an infinite being can accomplish his will. I don't know what to defend because I can see nothing attacked.

Sure you do, if you are claiming that yours is the superior (and only) system of morality. Should it not be perfect if the god you worship is supposed to be perfect?

Not again, I had two propositions with two sources of morality. I even defined them both with why one needs God and the other does not. I have already exhaustively defended why moral laws based on even the potential of moral truth is better than laws based on no possible moral truth. I have explained why subjective morality is the default setting, but my primary point was the conditional nature of morality not it's quality.

In my view we can enact justice in the only life we know we have. It doesn’t maybe, possibly occur in some afterlife we have no idea exists in the first place.

You cannot even define justice on any objective basis without God. Nature does not have a just property. You can invent one based on preference or with God you can perceive one.

 

[1robin]

I always bold the parts I'm referring to. Check it out.

I did not see anything in this:

And I have responded to this before. I am not discussing which group is the most moral for every specific moral aspect of behavior. That is impossible to do with secular folks because they do not grant many moral failures are failures. I was discussing what moral statistic correlate wit secular swings in culture. I concede Christians in many ways do not obey God but that is what we claim about ourselves to begin with. We are a group who gained entrance to the group by failing to uphold the principles of the group. I have exhaustively explained both Christian moral failures and our unequalled moral exceptionalism. Both fit perfectly with biblical explanations. I should find exactly what I do if the bible is true. Humanity in need of forgiveness but only a portion that admit it. Nothing about any of that changes the implications of the statistic I referred to. I think me and you have already discussed everything relevant to both arguments here.

that was bolded.

 

[SkepticThinker]

That is funny since you immediately found the exact guy. I have already posted exhaustively the detailed account. I don't want to look it up again.




My source was actually a text not a site. It was a book written by a brilliant modern scientist named Gerald Schroeder. I am not retyping this but here is the same claim from any number of other sites.

Walcott collected these fossils, and when looked at the phyla to which they belonged, he was amazed, because the fossil stratum he had found was so very ancient. No significant life forms had been encountered in any older strata. But this one contained fossils of almost all of the known phyla, as well as fossils belonging to unknown phyla, showing that all the bodily structures in the animal kingdom had emerged all together, in the same geological period.

This represented a lethal blow to Darwin's theory, because Darwin had suggested that living things developed like the branches of a slowly spreading tree. According to the evolutionary tree that Darwin dreamed up, a single phylum should appear first, then different species, and then, different phyla over a very long period of time. Yet Walcott was looking at clear evidence that all of the phyla existing in the present day, and even more, had emerged suddenly and at the same time, around 530 million years ago. This discovery completely did away with the imaginary "evolutionary tree" that presumed that phyla began with one species that branched off over long periods of time. Right at the beginning of the history of life, complex features were displayed with ever-more complex fossil specimens representing a total of 50 distinct phyla, and numerous species.

These approximately 530-million-year-old fossils entirely eliminated the false reasoning of gradual evolution. Yet they were brought out from where they had been stored and presented to the world only after 70 years had gone by. Walcott had decided to conceal the fossils he had obtained rather than making them available up to his fellow scientists.

As the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Walcott was a dyed-in-the-wool Darwinist. According to the theory of evolution, fossils with relatively simple structures were to be expected in rocks of such great age. Yet in terms of complexity, the fossils he discovered were no different from our present-day creatures, such as crabs, starfish and worms. For Darwinists, the alarming aspect of this was that no fossil specimen that might be proposed as the ancestor of these creatures was to be found, either in Burgess Shale or in older rocks.

The fossil record represents one of the most important pieces of evidence to refute Darwinism, but is generally ignored by Darwinists. Fossils from the Cambrian period, belonging to the first complex living things in history ,were secretly hidden away for 70 years, and are important examples of this deceptive method. A similar method is usually employed with living fossils, and any evidence that invalidates evolution is concealed. However, these efforts are all in vain, and science has demolished evolution with the most perfect fossil specimens.

Faced with these dilemmas, Walcott was all too aware that the fossils he had obtained would constitute a major stumbling block for the theory of evolution. Instead of announcing them, he sent them to the Smithsonian, together with a few photographs he had taken and a set of notes. There the fossils were locked away in drawers and forgotten for 70 years. The Burgess Shale fossils were brought to light only in 1985, when the museum archives were re-examined. The Israeli scientist Gerald Schroeder comments:

I found this same information at many sites and several books but closed the window before I copied the specific source I copied. I do need to correct an opinion in this type of response. The fossils did not overturn evolution, they contradicted the evolutionary model.

Whatever the secondary details the fact of the matter is evidence took over 60 years to over turn a cherished model.

Well first of all, he's got the timeline wrong. It was 40 years later, not 60 or 70. Secondly he refers to people as "Darwinists" so I'm now getting the sense that he's some sort of creationist whose got a bone to pick with evolution. Thirdly, he trivializes the amount of work Walcott put into excavating and documenting the Burgess Shale by referring to it as, "a few photographs he had taken and a set of notes" when in actuality it was a great deal more than that. Fourthly, he ignores the fact (as you did) that Walcott published his findings a great many times in a great many places. So the assertion that he didn't "announce" or share his findings appears to be a completely baseless claim. And lastly, where does he come up with the assertion that Walcott hid anything? Who's going to do all that work only to hide it all? Sounds like pure speculation to me. And poor speculation at that.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I have no position on Stalin's faith worth defending. I don't know what the hold up is, if God exists then this is just a cosmic blink in time, God is not bound by capacity to rectify the wrongs suffered. What is the impediment here? I do not subscribe to it but purgatory would seem to seal any objection you can imagine. I do not need a label like purgatory of a place of that kind justify that an infinite being can accomplish his will. I don't know what to defend because I can see nothing attacked.

Not again, I had two propositions with two sources of morality. I even defined them both with why one needs God and the other does not. I have already exhaustively defended why moral laws based on even the potential of moral truth is better than laws based on no possible moral truth. I have explained why subjective morality is the default setting, but my primary point was the conditional nature of morality not it's quality.

You cannot even define justice on any objective basis without God. Nature does not have a just property. You can invent one based on preference or with God you can perceive one.

The hold up is that you are asserting that your system is not only just, but the only system that can produce any kind of justice when in actuality it is unjust.

Nature does have properties. Measurable ones. You already know this.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I did not see anything in this: that was bolded.

Then I was referring to the whole paragraph.

 

[1robin]

....I already explained, opinion on what is good and evil is allowed, fact not. What part of thou SHALT NOT eat from the tree of KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL is unclear to you?

The Quran nor the bible says to obey our opinion about what is right or wrong. They both constantly demand we defy our own opinions of what is right and wrong and instead obey what God has put forth as right and wrong. Since you will ignore the simplistic statement from your own "Holy text" I cannot grant that you understand the more complex Christian doctrines in our text. God had already told them to do what was right and not what was wrong before they ate of the tree, they did not suddenly become aware what they could and could not do. They suddenly became aware of why they were or were not suppose to do things. God told them not to eat of the tree. They as you are doing said the heck with what they were told so their eyes were opened to the full ramifications and inherent shame and separation that wrong actions result in. The original sin was to prefer their opinions about what is right over God's and that is what your repeating now.

BTW what did you do with the few (of the hundreds) of your own verses that I provided. Ignore them? They emphatically and point blank contradict exactly what your saying. You ignore the thousands of perfectly clear verses in the bible and Quran that emphatically state for us to do what is right as God has given it, and avoid what is wrong in his eyes, yet defy them all and suggest we do what got us in this mess to begin with and use what we prefer and you justify all this by a single verse you apparently do not understand from one of the oldest and most obscure stories in the bible? I do not agree with Muslims most of the time and find the Baha'i to desperately distort scripture more than anyone else but you are rapidly outstripping them all. Can you even find a single Islamic scholar that agrees with you, even a bad one?

 

[1robin]

Then I was referring to the whole paragraph.

Was not that the original problem? Sorry, I don't know how to answer your question.