Exploring Atheism

[camanintx]

Great..the question now is why ?..why beauty is considered a sign of fittness ?..how such a supereior Value became a trend in life , out of the chaos and coincidence ?.....I can digest that natural selection randomly chose the strongest "physically " to survive...but from where the trend towards beauty arise in nature ?

If the only measure of fitness is whether we pass our genes on to the next generation, wouldn't appearance play an important role in this process? Unless we're in a position to judge someones qualities without knowing what they look like, don't we all take appearances into consideration when choosing a mate? Again, the strongest are not always the fittest to survive.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

If the only measure of fitness is whether we pass our genes on to the next generation, wouldn't appearance play an important role in this process?

Good grief ...

 

[Magic Man]

Good grief ...

Good grief what? If someone's not attractive to others, there is less chance of them being able to pass on their genes because others are less likely to reproduce with them. Which part don't you understand?

 

[maro]

Ah... so God did design the mosquito to transmit malaria, and even though the disease causes horrible suffering and death, it is in fact good... we just don't know why it's good. Right?

Right..Suffering ,diseases ,wars and diability occurs for a reason...for a wisdom...This life is only an intermediate stage..a test...one chapter of the story....

Wouldn't that sort of thinking lead to the conclusion that every single thing that happens does so with God's consent, is part of God's perfect plan, and is therefore moral?

Of course eveything happens with the consent of god ...but that doesn't mean It's moral because God didn't program humans to act morally...He granted them Free will...They are free to act morally or not...to believe or to disbelieve....However , the disbeliever disbelieves after his consent..nothing in his universe can happen without his consent...We will then have to face the results of our choices in the after life....
As muslims , we thank god for the good and for the bad because we know everything happens for a reason..we know that this life is only a test...so when we face troubles and suffering..it's not an excuse to rebel against our lord , but a motive to submit and repent to him..

The only bearing that evolution has on theology is that it implies that divine intervention was not necessarily required for life on Earth to go from its initial forms to us and what we see around us now.

life went from its initial statge to us rationally with evolution ,Right ?

by that certainity , i conclude that all the fossils of the intermediate species have been found ? i conclude that the sudden appearance of a taxon ,by what is called the Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is a myth ?

No... they did not come into existence by random chance. Mutations may be random, but natural selection is not.

but the superior qualities that was naturally selected was first produced by random mutations ,Right ?

There is a trend toward traits that are positive in an organism's immediate environment. For example:

- ability to attract a mate

So , you are saying that since the mate is being attarcted to the more beautiful , the trend went to the more beautiful ? Is that what you are saying ?

 

[maro]

Mosquitos start off with a range of nest-building strategies, and children tend to use the nest-building strategy of their parents.

Some strategies are more successful than others. The mosquitos using poor strategies died more often, or had fewer eggs hatch. The mosquitos using good strategies survived more often, and had more eggs hatch. With each generation, the proportion of mosquitos using the good strategies increases, until finally, the number of mosquitos using the poor nest-building strategy dwindles until they disappear altogether.

So ,you are saying that living organism learn the best strategies by trial and error...and that one intelligent mosquito figured out how to make its eggs floating on the water ,and thus it was the one whose offspring survived....
Are you saying that the original mosquito was aware of the facts and not programmed to act benefecially ,like some other posters said ?

 

[maro]

Darwinism was popular at the turn of the 20th century, and has long been discarded.

Darwinism was discarded ? then why some fellows felt irritated when i said : The fall of darwinism ?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Right..Suffering ,diseases ,wars and diability occurs for a reason...for a wisdom...This life is only an intermediate stage..a test...one chapter of the story....

As a side note (and off-topic), this is one of my major problems with several forms of religion: its ability to claim that what is bad is actually good.

In some ways, many religions are benign: their individual adherents may get some benefit from them and they don't do anything bad to anyone else, so (at least to me) whether they're based in truth or not, no harm is done by them.

However, in the case of things like this, especially if, say, a person is persuaded not to do anything about malaria because he considers it to be the will of God and not actually bad, then that person's religion has done humanity a horrible disservice... unless, and only unless, his beliefs are rooted in truth.

Of course eveything happens with the consent of god ...but that doesn't mean It's moral because God didn't program humans to act morally...He granted them Free will...They are free to act morally or not...to believe or to disbelieve....However , the disbeliever disbelieves after his consent..nothing in his universe can happen without his consent...We will then have to face the results of our choices in the after life....
As muslims , we thank god for the good and for the bad because we know everything happens for a reason..we know that this life is only a test...so when we face troubles and suffering..it's not an execuse to rebel against our lord , but a motive to submit and repent to him..

Wait a minute - there's a contradiction in what you're saying:

- if in giving us free will, things happen that God does not approve of, then everything does not happen with the consent of God.
- if everything happens with the consent of God, then God approves of all actions, even those that we would consider sinful or even downright evil.

life went from its initial statge to us rationally with evolution ,Right ?

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

by that certainity , i conclude that all the fossils of the intermediate species have been found ?

Not all, but many.

i conclude that the sudden appearance of a taxon ,by what is called the Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is a myth ?

The Cambrian explosion is not a myth. Why would you think that I would consider it to be one?

but the superior qualities that was naturally selected was first produced by random mutations ,Right ?

Yes.

As an example, think of some wild species: offspring will be around the same size as their parents (when they grow to adulthood, anyhow), but some will be smaller and some will be larger. If the environmental conditions are such that larger size is a positive trait, then natural selection will select for it - maybe it allows the animal to hunt larger prey, and therefore have more food. If the environmental conditions are such that smaller size is a positive trait, then natural selection will select for it - maybe it would allow the animal to require less water, and therefore be better able to survive droughts.

Random mutation creates the "raw material" for evolution, and then natural selection filters out the bad changes from the good ones.

So , you are saying that since the mate is being attarcted to the more beautiful , the trend went to the more beautiful ? Is that what you are saying ?

No, I'm saying that all sorts of factors influence an animal's appearance, and whether we consider it beautiful is just a coincidence.

 

[McBell]

Darwinism was discarded ? then why some fellows felt irritated when i said : The fall of darwinism ?

Because it shows your fundamental lack of understanding what evolution actually states.

 

[maro]

However, in the case of things like this, especially if, say, a person is persuaded not to do anything about malaria because he considers it to be the will of God and not actually bad, then that person's religion has done humanity a horrible disservice... unless, and only unless, his beliefs are rooted in truth.

No.no..Who said we are not supposed to do anything against malaria..or wars..or hunger..or disability ? ...We are here To act ...All those misfortunes are our test....we should accept the questions willingly and then start acting...
My religion by no means supports negativity..i guess clarified that point before when i was explaining the concept of distiny in another thread...i may find the link for you

Wait a minute - there's a contradiction in what you're saying:

- if in giving us free will, things happen that God does not approve of, then everything does not happen with the consent of God.
- if everything happens with the consent of God, then God approves of all actions, even those that we would consider sinful or even downright evil.

Ok ,let me put it simply for you

God (by his consent ) granted us free will...He showed us the right path and the wrong one...he asked us to follow the right path....So ,following the right path is his will for us...however ,he is not going to force that will on us...We have free will , we are free to follow the wrong path , we are free to go against the will of God.........But who granted us the free will at the first place.....God granted us the free will ,by his consent...We didn't steal it from him as some greek myths portray......

So ,when we do Evil stuff...we are acting against the will fo God....by his consent...Is it clear now ?

Random mutation creates the "raw material" for evolution, and then natural selection filters out the bad changes from the good ones.

If the raw material was just created randomly..that means it could possibly not occur...So,when i say "by chance " ,i am not mistaken

No, I'm saying that all sorts of factors influence an animal's appearance, and whether we consider it beautiful is just a coincidence.

again coincidence ?..does everything happen randomly and by coincidence ? i guess people don't go far when they say that coincidence is the diety of darwinism

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

So ,you are saying that living organism learn the best strategies by trial and error...and that one intelligent mosquito figured out how to make its eggs floating on the water ,and thus it was the one whose offspring survived....
Are you saying that the original mosquito was aware of the facts and not programmed to act benefecially ,like some other posters said ?

No, I'm not saying that at all. Mosquitos are dumb - they're mosquitos. Their actions are almost completely based on instinct.

If it helps you, mentally replace the word "strategy" in my last post with "instinct".

Darwinism was discarded ? then why some fellows felt irritated when i said : The fall of darwinism ?

Personally, I've found that when someone uses the term "Darwinism", most of the time it's a signal that the person is mischaracterizing evolutionary science as the quasi-religious following of Charles Darwin as some sort of prophet.

 

[maro]

No, I'm not saying that at all. Mosquitos are dumb - they're mosquitos. Their actions are almost completely based on instinct.

If it helps you, mentally replace the word "strategy" in my last post with "instinct".

What is instinct ? why they are able to act benefecially by instinct ? Is it some sort of tacit knowledge in the genes ?

Personally, I've found that when someone uses the term "Darwinism", most of the time it's a signal that the person is mischaracterizing evolutionary science as the quasi-religious following of Charles Darwin as some sort of prophet.

that may surprise you , but i don't have a problem with the evolutionary science as long as it knows its limits....

 

[McBell]

that may surprise you , but i don't have a problem with the evolutionary science as long as it knows its limits....

Does not surprise me in the least.
your posts in this thread is a clear indication of it.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

No.no..Who said we are not supposed to do anything against malaria..or wars..or hunger..or disability ? ...We are here To act ...All those misfortunes are our test....we should accept the questions willingly and then start acting...

So... even though things happen by God's will and even though evil-seeming things are actually all good in ways we don't understand, we should work against what we see as evil as if it's evil, and not treat it as if it's actually good, like we know it is, even if we don't understand why?

That makes no sense.

If people dying of malaria is actually a good thing that happens because God wills it, why would we want it to stop, even if we don't fully understand it?

Ok ,let me put it simply for you

God (by his consent ) granted us free will...He showed us the right path and the wrong one...he asked us to follow the right path....So ,following the right path is his will for us...however ,he is not going to force that will on us...We have free will , we are free to follow the wrong path , we are free to go against the will of God.........But who granted us the free will at the first place.....God granted us the free will ,by his consent...We didn't steal it from him as some greek myths portray......

So ,when we do Evil stuff...we are acting against the will fo God....by his consent...Is it clear now ?

As clear as mud.

If the raw material was just created randomly..that means it could possibly not occur...So,when i say "by chance " ,i am not mistaken

You said you're in medical school, so hopefully you're familiar with the concept of diffusion: take a beaker of water and put a drop of water-soluble dye in it. The dye will diffuse through the liquid until the dye concentration is the same through the whole thing.

Hopefully you're with me so far. Now ask yourself: why does this happen?

It's because of the random motion of the liquid. Even though each movement of dye and water is purely random and may or may not happen a particular way, the net effect of all these random events is predictable.

In the same way, random genetic mutations will follow a distribution. If you look at any particular trait, you will have variation around some central trend: some children grow up to be taller than their parents, some shorter, some the same height. When you look at an entire population, the idea that, say, no person will ever be born who is exactly 197.5 cm tall is nonsensical.

again coincidence ?..does everything happen randomly and by coincidence ? i guess people don't go far when they say that coincidence is the diety of darwinism

There are many creatures in the world. We consider some beautiful and others ugly, but our opinion of a creature's aesthetics has no bearing whatsoever on whether its appearance is a positive or a negative trait in terms of natural selection. That's why I say it's a coincidence.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

What is instinct ? why they are able to act benefecially by instinct ? Is it some sort of tacit knowledge in the genes ?

No, not at all.

Analogy time! Imagine a group of very stupid farmers. None of them know what will grow well, so to begin with, each picks a different crop at random: vegetables, wheat, sugarcane, grass, and rocks.

The rock farmer dies of starvation almost immediately, but the others survive long enough to have children. The children (who are pretty dumb themselves) don't know what will grow well either, so they just keep doing what their parents do. When the children grow up, they have stupid children of their own, who do what their parents did, and so on, and so on.

After a while, the grass farmers have major problems with malnutrition. They're barely scraping by: only one child in three lives to adulthood, and none of them are very healthy. The sugarcane farmers are doing better than the grass farmers, but still not very well themselves: they're showing signs of malnutrition themselves, and they keep dying from infections caused by rotting teeth.

The wheat and vegetable farmers are doing okay. They're generally healthy, their kids generally live to adulthood... things are good. They're still dumb as posts, but they're faring well.

In the end, the rock, grass and sugarcane farmers have dwindled down to nothing, and the wheat and vegetable farmers and their descendents now make up most of the population of our little fictional region.

Their success wasn't because they were smarter than the others; it was just from the luck of the draw that the crop they picked randomly ended up being better than the others.

Now - does that help?

that may surprise you , but i don't have a problem with the evolutionary science as long as it knows its limits....

As do I... in the case of evolutionary science, its limits are those where it is unable to make testable, falsifiable predictions. So far, it seems that the entire history of life on Earth after abiogenesis is within those limits.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

If the only measure of fitness is whether we pass our genes on to the next generation, wouldn't appearance play an important role in this process?

Good grief ...

Good grief what? If someone's not attractive to others, there is less chance of them being able to pass on their genes because others are less likely to reproduce with them. Which part don't you understand?

Whenever you want to instruct me on evolution, please feel free. I'm always up for a little humor.

The problem with the maro-camanintx dialog is that it's an exchange of ignorance. Our fundamentalist maro asks:

Also , if according to evolution life is automatically proceeding towards the Strongerst and the more skillful , as Survival will always be for the strongest...How can it explains the proceeding towards the more beautiful ?

The fact is that evolution has nothing to do with "proceeding towards the more beautiful" - as if "more beautiful" has any standing whatsoever as a scientific characterization. So ...

How old are you mball? Are you married? I am. Is your wife more beautiful than mine? Is mine more beautiful than yours? Do you have kids? I do. Are yours more beautiful than mine? Are mine more beautiful than yours?

And, worse, what about race. Is one "more beautiful' than another? Yes? How is that established scientifically? No? How is that determined scientifically?​

And so we slide dangerously close to the discredited drivel of social darwinism.

The correct answer to maro's pitiful "How can it explains the proceeding towards the more beautiful ?" is to point out again and again that the question rests on a flawed premise exposing a fundamental ignorance of the thing she wants so desperately to debunk.

 

[McBell]

The correct answer to maro's pitiful "How can it explains the proceeding towards the more beautiful ?" is to point out again and again that the question rests on a flawed premise exposing a fundamental ignorance of the thing she wants so desperately to debunk.

Gee that sounds familiar.....

 

[little_monkey]

Darwinism was discarded ? then why some fellows felt irritated when i said : The fall of darwinism ?

You would need to ask these people. However, to clear up some misunderstandings, "Darwinism" is often referred as social darwinism, and it was to that my earlier post was speaking of. Now, perhaps the people you were talking to equated the word `darwinism`with the theory of evolution. But that is a misconception.

Darwinism = social theory, Darwinism is not the scientific theory of evolution, tho' the social theory does use the theory of evolution as its premise.

See Social Darwinism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[maro]

So... even though things happen by God's will and even though evil-seeming things are actually all good in ways we don't understand, we should work against what we see as evil as if it's evil, and not treat it as if it's actually good, like we know it is, even if we don't understand why?

That makes no sense.

If people dying of malaria is actually a good thing that happens because God wills it, why would we want it to stop, even if we don't fully understand it?

I said everything ,the good and the bad ,happens for a reason ,for a wisdom...

let me clarify that ,
I see muslims being persecuted everywhere , i see islam being distorted , Is that a good thing ? no ,certainly it's not...then why God is allowing it to happen ?..so that everyone can reveal himself....everyone who claims to be a muslim should be tested and reveal his faith...the hypocrite should reveal his hypocrisy... even ,The psycho who causes the death of thousands people out of greed should have the chance to freely express himself...It's a test
Does that mean muslims shouldn't fight back ? muslims should stay at home saying :it's god's will...why should we act ?
No, Muslims accept everything allah do as wise ,and then start acting, because WE ARE HERE TO ACT...
The concept of distiny in islam was never an excuse for negativity...

I did my best to explain that to you ,if you still can't get it ,you may check those threads...

Destiny

My gift or your fault: Quran 4:78-79 revisited

In the same way, random genetic mutations will follow a distribution.

So ,from the primary forms of life , Random mutstions kept following a predictible distribution around a central trait ,untill a human being with all the complexity of its cells,organs ,and systems was eventually made ?..I bet Random mutations should have some creativity to create such a miraculous system

There are many creatures in the world. We consider some beautiful and others ugly, but our opinion of a creature's aesthetics has no bearing whatsoever on whether its appearance is a positive or a negative trait in terms of natural selection. That's why I say it's a coincidence.

Aha..so natural selection has no serious appreciation of what we call "beauty" ? It was just a coincidence that not all organisms arise to be black or brown or black and white...The fascinating beauty that captures our eyes in nature is not meant to be..but another big coincidence..I see

 

[maro]

And, worse, what about race. Is one "more beautiful' than another? Yes? How is that established scientifically? No? How is that determined scientifically?

Beauty is not something that can be measured scientifically..It's a superior value as i said before...however ,i guess we all tend to agree it's out there in the diversity ,colours ,and harmony of nature....I am merely asking where this came from ?

... is to point out again and again that the question rests on a flawed premise exposing a fundamental ignorance of the thing she wants so desperately to debunk.

I understand how it's hard for you to express your point without being rude....don't you know the ethics of debate ?

 

[maro]

Their success wasn't because they were smarter than the others; it was just from the luck of the draw that the crop they picked randomly ended up being better than the others.

Now - does that help?

so the luckier who randomly followed the right strategies are the ones who survived ?..It was only luck..It was only a random choice...it was neither an aware choice ,nor some tacit knowledge in the genes..

although ,i am really tired of the words random ,luck ,coincidence...but i still have a question for you : do we see the members of the same species acting differently..don't they agree on one strategy to follow ?

As do I... in the case of evolutionary science, its limits are those where it is unable to make testable, falsifiable predictions. So far, it seems that the entire history of life on Earth after abiogenesis is within those limits.

Can Evolution fill all the gaps between the so called common ancestor and human beings ,can it explain everything so far without making untestable unfalsifiable predictions ? are the Mutation-natural selection mechanism a measurable scientific fact..or just an unmeasurable assumption ?