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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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Breezy,
Your resistance to reasoning and the inane an uninformed objections you possed to evolution, together with your clear good educational level made me think that there might be something else at play more than just ignorance or misunderstanding of evolution but I did not want to prejudge back then. Now I can see that your position stems from your deeply religious approach to understanding everything. Only a religious foundation and conviction will make an otherwise smart and educated person fail to understand (better still resist to understand) a scientific theory like evolution when so much material is available and to offer so many wrong critical comments about it in a kind of frenzy defense of your beliefs.
You ignored my question because you wanted to be looked as impartial and detached ("scientific') but it was evident from your stubborn resistant than something more than real doubt was at work. You were trying to shore up a world-view that you think would be shattered by accepting evolution. That's is why you just gave only two choices about macroevolution and a divine being, totally ignoring the third one. You are a theist of the creationist persuasion, who thinks a divine being created the "kinds". I am sorry to tell you that today your theory does not have a leg to stand on against the mountain facts supporting evolution theory.
Thanks for clarifying your beliefs albeit in an indirect and kind of convoluted way. It is OK to show yourself a believer in the Bible narration of how the diversity of nature emerged but I do not think it is OK to try to pose as scientific and reasoning if your start point (even when undisclosed) is the Bible. Do not feel ashamed of your beliefs. Honesty is the best way in any discussion.
"Your resistance to reasoning and the inane an uninformed objections you possed to evolution"
That's funny, I do recall you mentioning in response to my objections, that their mechanisms haven't even been theorized. That implies they haven't been tested, and that implies there are no conclusions.
Solve this riddle for me: How can someone be uninformed, about information that isn't available yet?
Breezy,
I am afraid you are losing it and not reading well despite all of your studies on learning and reading comprehension. When I talked about "mechanisms that have not being even theorized" I was referring, if you read correctly, to mechanisms that would stop evolution from happening after a certain degree of differentiation. Mechanisms that you implied when rejected "macroevolution" could be a simple extension of "microevolution" and which do not exist.
Read again. You are still resisting reasoning and making uninformed affirmations and on top, cloaking all that in empty pseudo philosophical verbiage and attempts at derailing the argument.
@Breezy
Eh, I been MIA to this thread, I will play:
Do you believe Darwin got it mostly right or mostly wrong when he proposed the theory of evolution?
If you believe Darwin got it mostly wrong, do you believe in something else? What is that something else, and what evidence done in a scientific manner supports the theory you believe?
I am sure you are well aware, the evidence that supports darwin's theory of evolution done in a scientific manner is overwhelming, and the alternate theory faces a very daunting prospect of over turning all this evidence.
"If you want to understand my position on evolution, the best I can do is mention that even if I were an atheist my objections wouldn't change."
Is that why you decided an atheist forum was the best place to discuss them?
John you can avoid and evade all the posts and questions you want, but as Cyber and others have pointed out, people will infer things from such dishonesty. Insisting the questions are valid and your evasion is dishonest is not spamming. Would you prefer everyone ignored your BS on evolution completely?
Bottom line any theists who takes their objections to the scientific fact of evolution to an atheist forum, rather than a forum filled with experts on evolution can't really expect people not to point this out John.Again these questions would cease if you showed a little integrity here, and either stop pretending your objections to the scientific fact of evolution are not entirely based on religious belief, or publish them and get them peer reviewed,, and I promise you when the scientific world acknowledges your claims I'll post a humble acknowledgement.
I'll still be an atheist who views creationism as no different to people who claim the earth is flat.
"Would you prefer everyone ignored your BS on evolution completely?"
You know, when a child is born they have more neural connections than necessary. They undergo a pruning process in which dendrites die off. To the unexperienced person, this reduction of connection may seem like a bad things. However, such reduction increases efficiency and brainpower. In fact, not pruning the connections can lead to things like autism.
Likewise, my comments tend to attract flies, which scare away the members I would much rather spend my time in dialogue with. Much like the pruning of the brain, it is unquestionable that being ignored by the less productive members (such as you), would greatly increase the efficiency and value of the discussions.
Unfortunately, such a pruning will not take place, and the forum will remain rather autistic.
"John, I may not be very well educated and possess a middling intellect..."
What you have is a lazy intellect, not a poorly educated one. My friends tell me I'm the only one they know that will read a textbook for fun. Sometimes when there is a course I want to take, but can't afford or it doesn't align with my curriculum, I'll just get permission and go sit in for lectures.
Do you know where we're talking on right now? The internet. This little tool makes every single person on earth accessible. When I have question about something, or an idea I want someone more knowledgeable than me to look at, guess what I do? I email them. My favorite person to correspond with is Steven Pinker, he responds with interest and passion. I have teachers in my own school, that are half as smart, half as busy, and they barely respond to their own students questions.
So forgive me if I view your lack of knowledge as a willful choice, and do hold it against you. Because there is no excuse for having a middling intellect in this day and age.
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@johnny "the vivid mind" wheewee
science is constantly proved all the time, you see if we take something like any fiction and any holy book and destroy it. in a thousand years times that would not come back just at it was. but if we took every science books and every fact and destroy them all, and in a thousand years they will all be back. cause all the same test will be the same result, so i don't need faith in science.
~RICKY GERVAIS
Ricky Gervais lol
Ad hominem fallacy, lol.
I'll ignore your petty ad hominem, as it's quite amusing alongside your grandiloquent self aggrandising rants, because you're no more offering valid objections to an established scientific theory than the nut jobs who insist they know the world is flat. As for wilful ignorance, once again you seem to not see the irony of the claim when it is you that's denying well established scientific facts.
"When I have question about something, or an idea I want someone more knowledgeable than me to look at,"
So you brought your religious objections to evolution to an atheist forum, because that's where you find the most knowledgeable people on evolution? Oh dear...
Have you told Steven Pinker you think you've falsified species evolution? What did he say when you told him?
John, how high has your intellect climbed if you cannot recognize one of the greatest breakthroughs in human thought--Darwinian evolution? Unless you believe in a world-wide conspiracy, in which case we can classify you with the nut jobs, it is rather hard to explain away the massive scientific consensus on the subject.
In an effort to expand your intellect, maybe you should read a textbook on evolution and do so with the intent of learning. Look at the major lines of evidence and see if you have a better, non-evolutionary explanation for each. Study the distribution of plants and animals and understand why that strongly supports evolution. Study vestigial organs and ask yourself if there is a better explanation than evolution. Get into the details where truth may be found. Ask yourself why bats, rats, horses, whales, and people have uncanny skeletal similarities which trace back to the origin of mammals in the fossil record. Ask yourself where the clumsy "design" comes from in plants and animals--that borrowed, Jerry-rigged design that cries out "evolution." (Unlike a real engineer, evolution must modify parts already on the shelf. Unlike a real engineer, evolution has no plans for the future. Adaptation is to the present environment.)
Understand the several ways that scientists have derived the "evolutionary bush" (or "tree") from diverse evidence (DNA, fossil record, certain other molecules like cytochrome c, anatomy, cladistics) and note their uncanny similarity. See if you can come up with some alternate, credible, unifying factor for the derivation of evolutionary bushes from such unrelated data. Evolution gives a straightforward, natural explanation for the fact that we get similar "evolutionary bushes" from such diverse, independent data.
Maybe you are a theistic evolutionist who actually accepts the scientific findings, only that you violate Occam's Razor and stick God at the beginning. If your use of God doesn't intrude on good science, then we don't have a scientific dispute.
As is often the case, God is mentioned more by everyone else than by me. Which is interesting considering the things I'm accused of.
Give me the name of the evolution textbook you studied then, I don't mind getting it.
Waste of time, you'll only mangle it through the lens of your religious beliefs then deny it, maybe even to yourself. Every contribution you ever make follows the same pattern, you deny facts, and try and limit the narrative to exclude anything that doesn't support your claims. How many times have we seen it, and the sad thing is you genuinely seem to think you're having an intellectual discussion. No text book on evolution is any use to you until you stop trying to distort the facts so they don't refute your religious beliefs that you try and make everything conform to.
As I have said innumerable times, how many scientific facts do you deny that don't in any way refute any part of your religious beliefs? Why are you claiming to want share your "ideas" with the most knowledgeable people yet take a discussion on an established scientific fact to an atheist forum, and not to where there are experts on evolution? How many experts on evolution have validated your objections to it?
You're not an expert on evolution, and your claims are at odds with all the experts in the scientific world. Now why should anyone think you have done what no other scientist has managed in over 150+years of scientific endeavour, and even Darwin himself failed to do, and found flaws or objections to species evolution through natural selection? All the while sharing it on an atheist forum, and denying religion plays any part in your claims. I'm not a scientists but I'm not quite as stupid or ignorant as you seem to think.
"I'm not a scientists but I'm not quite as stupid or ignorant as you seem to think."
I only think you're as ignorant as you've admitted to being.
Nice evasion again, nice ad hominem again, you're proving my point with every response. Look at my post above and now look at your one line ad hominem response.
It's your dishonest slavery threads all over again, you want to limit the discussion to a narrow narrative you think supports your absurd claims. When people point out that your claims are at odds with the entire scientific world you ignore it, and all related questions. Then when when it became clear I wasn't going to let you dishonestly ignore questions you knew you couldn't answer without showing your claims to be absurd, you attacked me and tried to get my posts censored.
You'll notice I repeated some salient question in my last post, and your response yet again was an irrelevant ad hominem, mean while the questions go unanswered by you yet again, but as Cyber said yesterday by behaving like this you're answering them unwittingly.
This is your MO, ignore and evade all questions you don't like, while limiting the discussion to only things you think support your claims. You can't however ignore the fact that the entire scientific world maintain as a scientific fact what you are denying. So you can post all pseudoscientific claims you like, and attack me when I point out they're not scientifically valid, but as I said yesterday you might as well be denying the rotundity of the earth.
I've told you before that attempting to answer your questions is like trying to divide 2 by 0. Take your recent example:
"how many scientific facts do you deny that don't in any way refute any part of your religious beliefs"
It's like me asking a straight man hey, have you told your wife that you're gay yet?
To answer your questions is to immediately demonstrate I don't have a brain.
We’re trying to answer the questions I asked you (twice) like trying to divide two by zero? Or was the reason only because I’m not chatty enough?
"John, do you think evolution is the cause of all speciation? If not, what other cause(s) do you think there were?"
Your question was backwards, and I didn't feel like correcting it. Speciation would be the cause of evolution (macro), not the other way around.
FFS, John, do you think there are different species because they came about via evolution? If not, what other cause(s) do you think there were?
That's much better; I'm very eager to answer your question, and your post count went up to eleven, keep it going.
So no answer again then, quelle surprise. Again your duplicitous obfuscation is all the answer any objective person needs. You know you can only give one answer, and you know it will show that you've already lied implying your denials of evolution are nothing to do with your religious beliefs.
i bet this would be more fun to watch if mykcob4 is around...hahah...hahah....
i guess he feels honest about what he's saying shelly...well at least he feels honest, but do his god take that as a good deed?
i know deep inside of him just can't deny the facts about evolution.. he's just arrogantly enough to deny it...
well i guess it's ok being arrogant as long as you're on the right track...but nahh...!! i can see you're enjoying this shelly..
well can't blame him for being that way...
glad you have that kind of attitude john, you're a work of art....god really made you for a reason....wow magic.
no science just pure magic....
I don't think anyone is enjoying this more than me at the moment, from a behavioral standpoint.
Ah....okay...that explains things. Now I understand.
It does, keep an eye on David Killens, he has stalk-ish tendencies and I completely forgot about it lol.
I'm not sure this has shown the behaviour of religious apologetics in any new light to be honest, this level of self denial and duplicity is pretty much what I've come to expect over the years. This also includes the pseudoscientific stance that makes grandiose claims without any pretence at proper scientific validation.
You could simply say there are none, or you could list them. What you can't do is tell others what they may infer from the answer, or what they may infer from your refusal to answer. Your analogy is absurd as we already know you're religious, so asking a straight man if he's gay is a demonstrably dishonest analogy.
NB John you have yet again evaded my question (s), and of course ignored the other questions completely. In my post I pointed out that you always try to dictate to others what they may say, what they may ask, and what can be discussed, and you have various ploys for doing this. You want to limit the discussion to things you think support your claims. So telling us that the only scientific fact you deny is evolution which refutes part of your religious beliefs roundly contradicts your claim that your denials of evolution are not motivated by those beliefs. I also asked you how many experts on evolution you'd offered your objections to, and how many had validated your objections. Again since science has strict methods of validation we can only infer your claims are pseudoscientific nonsense until or unless they are properly validated. It should be obvious to anyone who understands that process that it can't happen here.
Your MO is no different ot any creationist I've ever met in their attempts to deny the scientific fact of species evolution, you may be a little more polished but it's basically the same.
John 61X Breezy,
If you want a fairly comprehensive book that doesn't require too much specialized background, you might try "Evolution: The First Four Billion Years" which is edited by Michael Ruse & Joseph Travis, with a forward by Edward O. Wilson. If you want something that is more fun to read but still useful, you might try "Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea" by Carl Zimmer. There is even "The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's Search for Its Origins" by Richard Milner, with a forward by Stephen Jay Gould. It's a fun book and the encyclopedia format makes it handy for looking up many topics that are tangent to the religious controversy over evolution.
John, I didn't catch your reason for ignoring the huge, scientific consensus regarding evolution. Do you have some special knowledge, unavailable or not understood by the world's most brilliant biologists and paleontologists but available to yourself, knowledge that overthrows the last 150 years of research? Is there a reason why this fabulous knowledge has not been published in Nature or Science which are among the top scientific journals of a general nature?
John, I didn't catch your reason for ignoring the huge, scientific consensus regarding evolution. Do you have some special knowledge, unavailable or not understood by the world's most brilliant biologists and paleontologists but available to yourself, knowledge that overthrows the last 150 years of research? Is there a reason why this fabulous knowledge has not been published in Nature or Science which are among the top scientific journals of a general nature?
----------------------------------------------
I have asked him that very question, and he has ignored it completely, for fairly obvious reasons I think. My favourite part of his repertoire is when he ignores something long enough he tries to claim you're spamming when you repeat it.
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