Why I am not an atheist.

[John D. Brey]

Nonsense. Variation and natural selection does the job perfectly well without any sort of designer.

Then there's nothing to think about, study, or debate (about that topic). Which I've found is often part and parcel of why people believe and say things that to me appear so ill thought-out, silly, and patently false.


John

 

[Moses_UK]

I find it quite fascinating that you would have such high confidence that I would go through all the trouble of examining every world religion except Islam?

I find quite interesting parallels to the way Jesus seems to be reacting to the hypocrisy of many Jews (in Jesus's mind), the sectarianism, and financial interests of religious authority in Judaism, to that of Mohammad, who also seems to be reacting to the division and sectarianism inherent in the dominant polytheism of the Arabian peninsula of the time, and the financial interests of his own tribe in preserving their control on the Kaaba and the prosperity gained for Mecca by polytheistic pilgrimages to the Kaaba.

Wow, am actually shocked and glad at the same time you have some basic information about Islam. it's refreshing to see your analysis and conclusion.

Both Jesus and Muhammad are advocating the rejection of the authority of the religious elite and their financial interest in the status quo,

Ok, let's look at the life of Prophet Muhammed. in his early days of propagation.

the pagans said to him
"Now we have come to make a proposition to you, and I ask you to think well before you reject it."

"I am listening to you, 0 father of Walid," said the Prophet.

"0 son of my brother, if by this affair you intend to acquire riches, honors, and dignity, we are willing to collect for you a fortune larger than is possessed by any one of us; we shall make you our chief and will do nothing without you. If you desire dominion, we shall make you our king; and if the demon which possesses you cannot be subdued, we will bring you doctors and give them riches until they cure you."

If he wanted power he could have easily taken charge by being king yet he refused


and called for the unification of all believers under a revamped religious belief system. For Muhammad, that meant adopting the Judeo-Christian monotheism yet adapting it to conform to the culture of the Arabian peninsula at the time.

This is simply one of my take-aways from my look at Islam.

 

[ratiocinator]

Nonsense. Variation and natural selection does the job perfectly well without any sort of designer.

Then there's nothing to think about, study, or debate (about that topic). Which I've found is often part and parcel of why people believe and say things that to me appear so ill thought-out, silly, and patently false.

It looks to me like you simply haven't grasped the basic concept of variation and natural selection and just how much explanatory power it has. Frankly what you say seems to me to be ill thought-out, silly, and patently false.

Do you really not grasp the fact that variation and selection can lead to 'design' or the 'appearance of design'? If you really think that it doesn't or can't, you clearly haven't understood it, regardless of whether you think it's what happened or not. It can be simulated on computers and even used as a computational design process itself.

 

[John D. Brey]

It looks to me like you simply haven't grasped the basic concept of variation and natural selection and just how much explanatory power it has. Frankly what you say seems to me to be ill thought-out, silly, and patently false.

Do you really not grasp the fact that variation and selection can lead to 'design' or the 'appearance of design'? If you really think that it doesn't or can't, you clearly haven't understood it, regardless of whether you think it's what happened or not. It can be simulated on computers and even used as a computational design process itself.

For so-called natural selection to work, the organism, or the environment, or the designer, or something, must want to "survive," so that there's an impetus, or value, placed on surviving.

Rocks don't evolve in the sense of using variation to reach a lower, more able to survive, entropic state, since they don't place a value on their own existence.

Living cells place a value on existing that rocks apparently don't. It's this value judgment about existing that seems to be unique to living things, and required for natural selection to use variation to create design characteristics associated with "survival" value.

Admittedly there are accidental mutation, or environmental events, that select some organisms to survive and others to die off. But no fair-minded scientist believes organisms don't adapt for survival sake of their own choice or at least their own in-built design characteristics. Survival is engineered into the engineering of every living cell.

For instance, scientists have placed poison in a petri dish and shown that the nature of the cell mutations associated with the presence of the poison were exponentially and undeniably some form of cellular attempt to overcome the dangers of the poison. The mathematics involved showed beyond a reasonable doubt that the mutations associated with the presence of the poison were in no way random. The cells experienced the poison and used the engineering of the cell to attempt to vaccinate itself against the poison.



John

 

[MikeF]

You misunderstood my analysis. It was not power that Muhammad was after, rather a means to resolve the perennial conflicts that plagued the peninsula due to the competition between the various tribes. I would argue that he hoped to create one standard of belief and moral code under a unified culture as a means to end these conflicts. Peace and piety and an end to financial gain by an elite were the goals.

 

[ppp]

One of the bugga boos of scientific materialists is "design." They realize that to have design requires a designer.

Not necessarily a sentient designer, though the existence of sentience implies that, but at least some kind of designer able to guide evolution from single-celled organisms to something as stupendously designed as the human brain.

The "stupendously" in that sentence is just narcissism. It is quite literally you admiring yourself and finding yourself wonderful.

And John, if (as you say) a non-sentient designer will do, then it is not a bug-a-boo for methodological naturalists. There is a non-sentient designer already in evidence.

 

[Audie]

One of the bugga boos of scientific materialists is "design." They realize that to have design requires a designer.

Not necessarily a sentient designer, though the existence of sentience implies that, but at least some kind of designer able to guide evolution from single-celled organisms to something as stupendously designed as the human brain.


John

As I said, you figure you know more about evolution than any scientist on earth.

"Design needs a designer" is a cute phrase,
very satisfying to the shallow thinker and the
unlearned. People who think news of the tautological is somehow clever.

" it is what it is" is just as profound as your
design-designer semantic trick.

"Design" is a word, like "create"
that describes human activities.

A less benighted student of biology knows
that what you are pleased to think is design
is actually Jerry- rigged modifications of
structures that originally served different purposes.

No competent designer / engineer would
dream of concocting an ear out of gill arches-
If you knew any anatomy you could list for me
more of the clunky weird structures evolution has given us.

See how calling it ad structure eliminates the
need for calling in a designer?

A waterfall doesn't need a waterfallist
to show it how to go.

And a god above the level of the tinpot
God you are evidently imagining really ought,
being omnipotent and super smart, to be able to
design a universe that can run itself, doesn't need a "designer " to constantly tinker and meddle to keep it working.

 

[Audie]

Nonsense. Variation and natural selection does the job perfectly well without any sort of designer.

Ha. I said that in way more words.

 

[Audie]

Some pretty world renown scientists have said that to have replication, you first need replicators; though they (replicators) can't exist without replication.

Noam Chomsky is no slouch when it comes to science. And he said truisms like that are just a part of reality.

When people asked him how he could believe that replication arose when you need replicators for replication, and replication for replicators, he asked his interlocutors if they believed the theological proposition that man transcends nature? When they said no, he ask them then, why they think man should somehow be capable of knowing all that can be known, or figuring out logical impossibilities, as though he, man, is what the Christians say he is?


John

So let's see, you ride in here telling you
wrote a book, no less, about how science is
flawed from top ro bottom, silly and patently false.

To demonstrate your prowess you give us a
slightly mutated version of "which came first, hen or egg "?


We see it now the great creationust-
Professor confronts a roomful of atheist-darwinists!

They scowl, sneer! The foolish meanies.

Our Hero, though, waits calmly for the
room to become quiet.

Then-

WHICH CAME FIRST THE HEN OR
THE EGG

Stunned silence as the awful realization
sweeps the room!

It can only mean one thing

The HEN was created just like the Bible
says! First the hen then the egg.

Then they all became Baptists.

You figure thats going to work
here just by changing the word from
"egg' to "replicator"?

 

[John D. Brey]

The "stupendously" in that sentence is just narcissism. It is quite literally you admiring yourself and finding yourself wonderful.

And John, if (as you say) a non-sentient designer will do, then it is not a bug-a-boo for methodological naturalists. There is a non-sentient designer already in evidence.

Oh. By all means, give us his name?



John

 

[John D. Brey]

So let's see, you ride in here telling you
wrote a book, no less, about how science is
flawed from top ro bottom, silly and patently false.

To demonstrate your prowess you give us a
slightly mutated version of "which came first, hen or egg "?


We see it now the great creationust-
Professor confronts a roomful of atheist-darwinists!

They scowl, sneer! The foolish meanies.

Our Hero, though, waits calmly for the
room to become quiet.

Then-

WHICH CAME FIRST THE HEN OR
THE EGG

Stunned silence as the awful realization
sweeps the room!

It can only mean one thing

The HEN was created just like the Bible
says! First the hen then the egg.

Then they all became Baptists.

You figure thats going to work
here just by changing the word from
"egg' to "replicator"?

You're entitled to your particular, peculiar, interpretation of what's going on in this thread. As are we all. . . And yours adds color and condescending creativity to the thread.

So I thank you for that.



John

 

[Tiberius]

Your point rests on how you and I are using the word "reality." Those who've responded more on point realize I'm discussing two kinds of reality: subjective, versus objective.

A huge problem is when people confuse their subjective reality with objective reality; the latter being the whole of all that really exists whether it's perceived or not.

Bishop Berkeley moved us quantum leaps by revealing that our subjective reality goes with us when we leave a room so that even the chair that we supposed was objective reality doesn't exist in anything like our subjective reality presented it once we leave the room.

Most people would consider Berkeley's argument "impenetrable." But those who got what he said realized it seemed to support Kant's theories, such that they kept devising experiments to see of Kant and Berkeley could possibly be correct that a chair doesn't exist as it does for us subjectively once we leave the room.

For your information and edification, those experiments led to the theory of quantum physics. Which in effect says the chair doesn't exist in anything like the subjective way it does when we're in the room once we leave the room.

Naturally that's a bridge too far, impenetrable nonsense, for the majority of the good people of the world.



John

Of course, "subjective reality" isn't actually reality at all, is it?

 

[John D. Brey]

So let's see, you ride in here telling you
wrote a book, no less, about how science is
flawed from top ro bottom, silly and patently false.

To demonstrate your prowess you give us a
slightly mutated version of "which came first, hen or egg "?


We see it now the great creationust-
Professor confronts a roomful of atheist-darwinists!

They scowl, sneer! The foolish meanies.

Our Hero, though, waits calmly for the
room to become quiet.

Then-

WHICH CAME FIRST THE HEN OR
THE EGG

Stunned silence as the awful realization
sweeps the room!

It can only mean one thing

The HEN was created just like the Bible
says! First the hen then the egg.

Then they all became Baptists.

You figure thats going to work
here just by changing the word from
"egg' to "replicator"?

In Daniel Dennett's, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, page 158, Dennett quotes John Maynard Smith:

One cannot have accurate replication without a length of RNA of, say 2000 base pairs, and one cannot have that much RNA without replication.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

Of course, "subjective reality" isn't actually reality at all, is it?

It is to the person who experience it.



John

 

[Tiberius]

It is to the person who experience it.



John

No, subjective reality may appear to be real to the person experiencing it, but that doesn't mean it is objectively real. It may not be an objective perception of the world they are actually living in.

 

[Mock Turtle]

It's not a matter of life being rare or not rare. It's a matter of how it (life) turns dirt into a human brain, and then using that human brain, turns dirt into an I-phone 12, and a vehicle sent to Mars to send back selfies.

Coal and granite haven't been observed doing those kinds of things. And neither has gold, or diamonds, even though they are rarer kinds of earth.

I've aimed a video camera at a rock for quite some time and all I can tell you is that he's the laziest dammed thing I've ever seen. He don't even seem motivated to mount another rock? He just lies there basking in the sun with a sly grin on his dumb face.



John

You seem to neglect the fact that many other species show intelligence. That humans display vastly more might be unusual, and the fact that H Sapiens were the ones to top out as the 'winners' over the many other similar species, but that is what happened. Perhaps some other related species would be typing all this given different circumstances. Intelligence does seem to have a habit of building on the past (and the knowledge gained), and why wouldn't it - what is the alternative - no such thing as intelligence?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Some pretty world renown scientists have said that to have replication, you first need replicators; though they (replicators) can't exist without replication.

Noam Chomsky is no slouch when it comes to science. And he said truisms like that are just a part of reality.

When people asked him how he could believe that replication arose when you need replicators for replication, and replication for replicators, he asked his interlocutors if they believed the theological proposition that man transcends nature? When they said no, he ask them then, why they think man should somehow be capable of knowing all that can be known, or figuring out logical impossibilities, as though he, man, is what the Christians say he is?



John

Oh my! Is this supposed to be an argument against evolution? It is far from it. In fact it is in effect an admission that evolution is a fact. Sadly what you did hear is a logical fallacy called "moving the goalposts". And you moved them all the way out of evolution. The only reason that one moves the goalpost is because they have not answer to the actual argument and if one moves them totally out of the scope of the argument that is in effect an admission that one is wrong.

In case you did not understand it your error was to move the argument out of evolution and into abiogenesis. Evolution does not rely on abiogenesis. Scientists only state that abiogenesis was the most likely cause for first life. It is another argument all together. Evolution works whether the LUCA was a product of evolution, visiting aliens, or poofed into existence by a magical god.

Now if you want to discuss abiogenesis that is fine. But you will not find that some anonymous "pretty world renown scientists" can refute it. You would need to find scientists that were experts in the field. Not any scientist off the street no matter how famous.

 

[ratiocinator]

For so-called natural selection to work, the organism, or the environment, or the designer, or something, must want to "survive," so that there's an impetus, or value, placed on surviving.

Well there's the heart of your misunderstanding. You've mistaken a metaphor for the real situation and totally failed to grasp natural selection.

Most simple organisms, of course, do not literally want anything at all. However, those that exhibit variations that produce characteristics and behaviours that aid their survival (and hence reproduction) in the context of their environment, (surprise, surprise!) tend to survive and reproduce more in their environment than those that have characteristics and behaviours that are less suited to their survival and reproduction. Hence the former will tend to spread through the population.

Organisms that appear to 'want to survive', are the natural and inevitable result of natural selection. Of course this becomes a literal survival instinct in creatures with more advanced brains because those who don't have such an instinct will tend to leave fewer offspring.

This is why natural selection is such a powerful idea - it actually explains the origin of purpose and value. A trait that is passed on in more cases to the next generation will probably have done so for a particular reason. It served some purpose that aided survival and reproduction. You don't need a mind to comprehend that purpose - it's what Daniel Dennett refers to as a "free-floating rationale" - it spreads through the population exactly because it is useful for survival.

 

[ppp]

Oh. By all means, give us his name?
.


John

Natural selection, John

 

[ratiocinator]

In Daniel Dennett's, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, page 158, Dennett quotes John Maynard Smith:

One cannot have accurate replication without a length of RNA of, say 2000 base pairs, and one cannot have that much RNA without replication.

You're quoting Dennett's 1995 book who is in turn using a quote from 1979 in a chapter called "Molecular Evolution" in which he is talking about what was then the current thinking about how that 'problem' can be overcome.

Here's something a bit more up to date - a self-replicating strand of RNA:

NNNNNNUGCUCGAUUGGUAACAGUUUGAAUGGGUUGAAGUAU–GAGACCGNNNNNN

It's called R3C. N is "don't care" and the other letters are standard. From: Creation: The Origin of Life / The Future of Life by Adam Rutherford.