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Is Science Better Than Religion?

RossRonin

Member
[Science] works! Planes fly. Cars drive. Computers compute. If you base medicine on science, you cure people. If you base the design of planes on science, they fly...

Dawkins talks about science as if it were an entity in itself. But science is not a thing. It's a method for understanding and interacting with physical reality and it flows from the human mind's capacity for inquiry, observation, data collection, analysis, deductive reasoning, inference, etc.

So it's not science that makes planes fly and cars drive, but human intelligence--intelligence housed in a 170.68 billion-cell* organ of daunting complexity--and science is not responsible for that computer's computing.

Dawkins, like all atheists, makes use of an enormously powerful bioelectric computer system in order to frequently argue against God, when the greatest evidence for God is the very same computer Dawkins uses to argue God out of existence: his own brain.

One can be an atheist, but not believe in - or make claims about - any scientific phenomenon whatsoever...

Maybe so, but it's the rare atheist that sooner or later does not resort to the defense that Evolution is "proven" to be true. Yet nowhere in the world can be found the first example of a random genetic mutation leading even the smallest microscopic organelle to "evolve" into something new and improved: we are asked to take it on faith that once upon a time, mutations and something called 'natural selection' miraculously engineered organelles, organs and organisms of awesome complexity, without the least shred of intelligence employed in the process. Nothing random ever engineered an ox cart, much less an ox.

*Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Instituto de Ciências Biomé́dicas of Rio de Janeiro, The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 2009, 513:532-541.
 
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ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
Evolution has wide appeal because it offers pat answers to hard questions,
I wouldn't say evolution is a "pat answer", especially considering the vast number of those who reject it don't seem to understand how evolution actually works. I've yet to meet a single creationist - aside from those at the very top of their "field" - who really demonstrate even a basic understanding of the fundamental concepts involved. You can hardly accuse it of being an easy or simplistic answer when those who reject it, by and large, find it so difficult to grasp.

besides being a handy excuse for atheism;
It isn't. Granted, it provides more justification to an atheistic position, because beforehand the seeming suitability of life appeared to have no explanation beyond intentional design, but evolution is not an excuse for atheism. Many people, including religious scientists, institutions and universities, have no problem at all reconciling theistic beliefs and evolution theory. There is nothing intrinsically atheistic about evolution theory.

but truth be told, it is an ill-founded and unlikely theory no matter how loudly academia proclaims it. Search high and low inside or outside the laboratory and it is guaranteed that you will never find the smallest bacterium "evolving" a more efficiently designed organelle (much less a brand new organelle).
We have observed many species evolving. Speciation has been directly observed both inside and outside of the laboratory.

A process whereby inherited random genetic mutations in simple life forms become highly complex organisms by the sweep of a magic wand called Natural Selection is more science fiction than fact.
Natural selection is not a magic wand. In fact, when thought about with a reasonable level of understanding, it is simple common sense: the few mutations which improve survivability and/or the ability of an organism to reproduce successfully will tend to propagate more successfully than those that do not (or those that provide a detriment). It's as simple as "If you're more likely to survive and have children, you are more likely to pass on that trait to children". This is not magic, it's logic and biology.

Random mutations never produce positive changes:
Flat-out lie. Mutations produce positive changes just as often as they produce negative changes (that is, very rarely). The vast majority of mutations provided no detriment or benefit. To assert no mutations produce positive changes is blatantly false.

nor can they write code, design cellular structures, engineer highly integrated biological systems, or otherwise accomplish any of the enormously complex tasks involved in sustaining and propagating life. There is no force in nature capable of creating or designing anything.
You've already overlooked natural selection. You're essentially ignoring the process that shapes living systems and then saying "there are no processes that shape living systems".

What passes for "evolutionary forces" at work in the lab environment are increasingly found to be mechanisms associated with transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. A yeast strain gaining resistance to some toxin, for example, is not evolving anything new at all.
Yes it is. It's gaining resistance to toxin. I'm not sure you understand what evolution is.

Its DNA is responding to chemical switches already in place.
But the particular sequence of that DNA thus changes to produce a new combination which didn't exist before which can change the organism in a variety of ways.

What you really need to show us is a saccharomyces cerevisiae cell with a budding flagella. That's about as likely as finding a winged horse.
Why on earth would you expect yeast cells to grow flagella? Does evolution predict that they would?

Evolution and Natural Selection are not fact at all. The notion that the immense complexity of plant and animal life we see integrated throughout all the ecosystems of the earth are the product of random genetic mutations is almost comical: but it is the next best thing to believing in a Creator.
Both evolution and natural selection are demonstrable facts. I can only suggest you do more research.

Evolution grants you freedom from conscience, and lets you enjoy the illusion of objective morality.
How on earth can it do either of those things? Evolution has nothing to do with conscience or objective morality and, believe it or not, I am a person who accepts evolution and yet I have a conscience. I've never intentionally harmed anyone. I am a clean-living person, having never done any form of illegal drugs or drunk alcohol in my life. If my acceptance of evolution grants me freedom from conscience, how on earth can I be a reasonably well-adjusted person?

Regressive influence? Not in this century. To begin with, Creationism or Intelligent Design as theories impose no moral constraints and no intellectual constraints.
And yet the theory of evolution gives us freedom from conscience and the illusion of objective morality?

The opposite is true, in fact. The paradigm of Creationism gives hi-tech inventors and engineers a wealth of brilliantly designed 'inventions' which they can imitate, replicate, or emulate (one obvious example is flight).
Except those things would still exist, and we can still base designs off of them regardless of whether they were created by some kind of intelligence or not. Nature can be replicated too. Saying "God did it" makes no difference. I can't think of a single possible application of "Creation science".
 

RossRonin

Member
That is evidence of nature not god.

Yeah, it's evidence of nature but nature has no ability of its own. Nature has no capacity to design and engineer anything: nature is a word that refers to things already created, already built and operational. So sure, brains are found all throughout nature. But nature is not a force in itself: it has no way to invent a brain. It only serves as a way to describe everything in reality that works in harmony to propagate and sustain the existence of brains, as well as the creatures that bear them.
 

outhouse

Atheistically
. Nature has no capacity to design and engineer anything

Because its not needed.

nature is a word that refers to things already created, already built and operational.

No it is not.

Nature describes how living beings come to be. And so far not one bit of it has anything to do with mythology.


But nature is not a force in itself: it has no way to invent a brain.

It did not invent a brain. No force was needed.
 

McBell

Unbound
Dawkins talks about science as if it were an entity in itself. But science is not a thing. It's a method for understanding and interacting with physical reality and it flows from the human mind's capacity for inquiry, observation, data collection, analysis, deductive reasoning, inference, etc.

So it's not science that makes planes fly and cars drive, but human intelligence--intelligence housed in a 170.68 billion-cell* organ of daunting complexity--and science is not responsible for that computer's computing.

Dawkins, like all atheists, makes use of an enormously powerful bioelectric computer system in order to frequently argue against God, when the greatest evidence for God is the very same computer Dawkins uses to argue God out of existence: his own brain.



Maybe so, but it's the rare atheist that sooner or later does not resort to the defense that Evolution is "proven" to be true. Yet nowhere in the world can be found the first example of a random genetic mutation leading even the smallest microscopic organelle to "evolve" into something new and improved: we are asked to take it on faith that once upon a time, mutations and something called 'natural selection' miraculously engineered organelles, organs and organisms of awesome complexity, without the least shred of intelligence employed in the process. Nothing random ever engineered an ox cart, much less an ox.

*Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Instituto de Ciências Biomé́dicas of Rio de Janeiro, The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 2009, 513:532-541.
Here again we see someone viciously attacking a strawman they call evolution.

Sad really.
 

RossRonin

Member
Flat-out lie. Mutations produce positive changes just as often as they produce negative changes (that is, very rarely). The vast majority of mutations provided no detriment or benefit. To assert no mutations produce positive changes is blatantly false.

Mutations cannot engineer even minute improvements in the smallest cellular structures of the smallest bacterium. What you call a flat-out-lie was before the 21st century attributed to evolution, because it appears to be evolution. But it is not. Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance mimics mythological "evolutionary forces" by using a framework of chemical switches to turn myriad genes on or off in response to stimuli in the environment; and of course that would include stimuli that produce mutations, and even the effects of mutations themselves.

It's strange how easily most rational people dismiss a complete absence of evidence in the real, modern world. Evolution does not exist in the real world, and what does exist are epigenetic mechanisms at work in all living things, but most easily observable (and most easily mislabeled as 'micro-evolution') in unicellular organisms. Fossil records are hardly a sound witness, if evolution as a process, principle, or force of nature mysteriously ground to a halt about the time (relatively speaking) it was discovered.
 
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outhouse

Atheistically
Mutations cannot engineer even minute improvements in the smallest cellular structures of the smallest bacterium.

Fallacy on your part. Mutations do not need to engineer :rolleyes:

What you call a flat-out-lie was before the 21st century attributed to evolution, because it appears to be evolution. But it is not.

Evolution Is fact and not up for debate

It's strange how easily most rational people dismiss a complete absence of evidence in the real, modern world.

Describes creationist.
 

outhouse

Atheistically
Fossil records are hardly a sound witness,

Why?

Your not stating a credible problem here.

It only takes one fossil to throw the scientific theory of evolution out the window, if we had that one fossil you would hold on to it with both hands tightly and preach the opposite.
 

jonathan180iq

Well-Known Member
It only takes one fossil to throw the scientific theory of evolution out the window, if we had that one fossil you would hold on to it with both hands tightly and preach the opposite.

Yep.
All Creationists have to do is supply us with a human skeleton (or any modern complex remains) found in the Cambrian layers. If they can do that, then all talk of universal common descent will be thrown out the window.
 

ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
Mutations cannot engineer even minute improvements in the smallest cellular structures of the smallest bacterium.
Again, this is just plain false. Beneficial mutations DO occur - we have directly observed them. Here is a quickly googled list of scholarly articles which mention or reference the existence of beneficial mutations:

beneficial mutations - Google Scholar

And here is a page listing many examples of observed beneficial mutations in animals and bacteria:

Observed Evolutionary Changes

What you call a flat-out-lie was before the 21st century attributed to evolution, because it appears to be evolution. But it is not. Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance mimics mythological "evolutionary forces" by using a framework of chemical switches to turn myriad genes on or off in response to stimuli in the environment; and of course that would include stimuli that produce mutations, and even the effects of mutations themselves.
Are you seriously suggesting that genes "alter themselves" to fit the environment, and that the genes we are born with cannot carry in them mutations which are beneficial? Are you serious?

It's strange how easily most rational people dismiss a complete absence of evidence in the real, modern world.
What's more amazing is the total ignorance of people who refuse to accept when there are mountains of evidence in front of them, and just spout garbage they've cribbed from creationist websites.

Evolution does not exist in the real world, and what does exist are epigenetic mechanisms at work in all living things, but most easily observable (and most easily mislabeled as 'micro-evolution') in unicellular organisms. Fossil records are hardly a sound witness, if evolution as a process, principle, or force of nature mysteriously ground to a halt about the time (relatively speaking) it was discovered.
Then you clearly do not understand evolution. Evolution is still occurring and is still observed today.
 

Ben Dhyan

Veteran Member
Really? What they said was extremely clear. You're asserting that atheists make claims about "big bang theory, zero point energy, dark matter, quantum vacuum", but these claims are neither required of nor exclusive to atheism. They are not claims atheists necessarily make, and thus are a separate issue as to whether or not atheism itself requires the making of a claim. One can be an atheist, but not believe in - or make claims about - any scientific phenomenon whatsoever, while theists of all kinds exist who understand and make claims about all manner of scientific inquiry. Atheism and an understanding of science are not exclusive.
You have not understood the exchange....though I can understand why....in any event it had nothing to do with you except your wanting to pile on...
 
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Sapiens

Polymathematician
Mutations cannot engineer even minute improvements in the smallest cellular structures of the smallest bacterium.
That is simply not true.
What you call a flat-out-lie was before the 21st century attributed to evolution, because it appears to be evolution. But it is not. Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance mimics mythological "evolutionary forces" by using a framework of chemical switches to turn myriad genes on or off in response to stimuli in the environment; and of course that would include stimuli that produce mutations, and even the effects of mutations themselves.
It seems clear that there are some epigenetic phenomena, but by no means does it replace evolution as the prime mover of phenotypic diversity, to maintain that it does is sheer foolishness.
It's strange how easily most rational people dismiss a complete absence of evidence in the real, modern world. Evolution does not exist in the real world, and what does exist are epigenetic mechanisms at work in all living things, but most easily observable (and most easily mislabeled as 'micro-evolution') in unicellular organisms. Fossil records are hardly a sound witness, if evolution as a process, principle, or force of nature mysteriously ground to a halt about the time (relatively speaking) it was discovered.
You are grossly exaggerating the contribution of epigenetics, substituting it for all of evolution is even more bizarre than rejecting epigentics out of hand because it carries a whiff of Lamarck.
 
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