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Humans First Arose in Asia?
IZ Reloaded writes "Two archaeologists are proposing the idea that early humans first arose in Asia instead of Africa as previously thought. These early humans then migrate out of Asia to parts of the world. From National Geographic: 'The unresolved status of the intriguing Flores finds attributed to H. floresiensis leaves open the possibility that this species is the end result and last survivor of an ancient migration of very primitive humans, or even prehumans, that formerly existed more widely across Asia ... '"
and humans.
Gorbachev sings tractors! Turnips! Buttocks!
We have tons of data points showing homo sapiens evolved in Africa. So many of the missing links like Lucy and other members of the homo tree have all been found in Africa.
I'm not debating their points (I've not read the article yet), but it would seem to require us to throw out the data that we already have. If homo species migrated to the rest of the world from Asia, then it would have requires Lucy, a relatively primitive human to have gotten to Africa, then start a long series of descendents and multiple branches of evolution there, eventually resulting in homo sapiens.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Does this imply that either -
A. Humans got to North America before we previously thought (I find this unlikely, because it requires an earlier russo-alaskan bridge)
B. Asia just got a massive head start?
So what's the proposed spread of humanity now - Asia => Africa & Europe, then to North & South America?
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You can find that almost anywhere. Like here - browse at -1, for example.
Didn't the first humans migrate from Mars on asteroids? Or was it DC-8's? Whichever one wasn't on SOuth Park.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
You feel that beeing releated to Slashdotter regulars is an improvement?
I just ask that you embrace those around you
Great idea.
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
Amazing, even human evolution is getting outsourced to Asia!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Yes, it is a fact that blood has been spilled over religion. More blood, in fact, than over any other cause. It shouldn't matter why we are good,kind people, whether its the belief in heaven, or just being nice. All that matters is that we are helping people.
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
...was an extrememly hot babe. Hotter than any babe that has existed since. Then a genetic abberation caused geeks to appear and people became less hot. Except for Carmen Electra.
I'm taking bets on how long it will take for (Jesse Jackson|Al Sharpton|Malcom X's ghost) to attack the finsings...
Ah yes, but religion is so CONVENIENT. It means that often the believer needs to make no personal moral decisions (your religion makes absolute moral decisions for you), and everyone's split into two camps: People that are going to Heaven (usually believers) and people that are going to Hell (usually everyone else). Often the sheer convenience and lifelong training in a religion overrides a personal quest for scientific truth.
Furthurmore, in times where science would say to you "Hey man, you're 100% screwed!" religion can give a more optimistic answer. It's easy to decry religion when you're sitting in front of your LCD or CRT, but it's can give hope to the otherwise hopeless if they think that an all-powerful, all-knowing being is watching over their backs ready to send them to paradise when they die.
I have no problem with religion whatsoever. However, I think that religion should stay in churches (for example) and science should stay in schools, universities, etc. Everything has its time and place.
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That's it. They left Africa in search of noodles.
Table-ized A.I.
Let me check with the Flying Spaghetti monster on this... he says no! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_spaghetti_mons ter
He IS a /. regular, you insensitive clod!
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What is means is that humanity first arose in Asia, but the rest of us lazy Westerners were still sleeping. I understand parts of Florida are still asleep.
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Why doesn't the slashdot community glom onto Yoism, the first Open Source Religion?
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Wasn't spaghetti invented in Asia?
I didn't think the human race was indigenous to the planet Earth. I thought men originated from Mars and women from Venus? Maybe Asia has a larger gravitational attraction and as such crafts from both our races managed to crash land there.
If big boobed women work at Hooters do one legged women work at IHOP?
The earliest known pottery, some 20~30,000 years old, is found in Japan and China (every couple of years one side or the other finds an even older one). Pottery indicates civilization, simply because nomadic hunter gatherer type people don't have a lot of time to sit down, find suitable clay, mold it, and build a firing kiln, and pottery doesn't trvel particularly well to boot.
If the first civilization arrose in Asia, then it is not a completely abberational jump to say that humans started around there. Still would need a lot of investigation, of course.
Wow... I'm stunned by such arrogance. Are you blind to the fact that your are just replacing one god with another? You took a story about scientist finding evidence that humans may have originated in Asia and turned it into an anti-God tirade in an attempt to make yourself feel good about your own opinion. Wow...
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
"There is not enough love and goodness in the world for us to be permitted to give any of it away to imaginary things."
-- Nietzsche
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
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Wouldn't it be possible that pre-humans migrated to different locations and finished their evolution separately? Considering Neandrathals are no longer considered in a direct evolutionary line to modern humans, that indicates a separate branch of evolution.
Distinctly different environments, like Asia and Africa, could account for something like this. Multiple evolutionary paths, occurring in multiple physical locations on the planet. Why do scientists seem so attached to the "Eve" theory?
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
If conciensness creates reality as Amit Goswami said,
When I die we ALL are dead.
--ken
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Yeah, I would really like it if churches didn't include science. That would mean they wouldn't include any engineering (physics being a physical science) and they would all fall down or never get built in the first place and it would eliminate much of my objection to organized religion, especially the Jehovah-worshipping types; If God is everywhere, why the hell is a Church a "house of God" and why isn't the money spent on building the church going to a much more modest structure where people can congregate, and then actually helping people? And for that matter, if God created all matter, why is some matter (like "precious" metals and stones) more fit for church decorations than some other matter? Au ain't any more holy than Pb.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For example, science isn't to blame for the atom bomb, that would have been invented by some means or other eventually (unless religious wars killed everyone first). Science just meant America invented it first (because they did the best science). Now everyone hates America even though they're the most benign world power in human history, mostly because they value rationalism and capitalism above religion or quasi-religious politics.
As for religion, it usually accomodates scientific discoveries after opposing them for about 50-100 years. The ID debarcle is unusual and serves as a warning to society that whilst we stive to accomodate a wide range of ideas, we must still be willing to detect and reject bullshit when it lands on our plate.
so the story of the human-like monkey, Goku, travelling west was the oral history of those who stayed behind turned into legend?!?! aaahh. now i just don't know what to believe anymore!
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
Evil Lord Xenu froze all the alien races and dumped them into volcanoes here on earth. Their souls were collected by soul vacuumes and then forced to watch movies and be brainwashed, only to then inhabit the bodies of primitive man. I think that's how it goes, I still have to pay for a few more audit councelings before my thetan levels are capable of truly grasping this profound knowledge
Intelligent Design is something most Christians reject and even a lot of fundamental Christians reject. Intelligent Design was created for political purposes and no religion has publicly supported the theory. You know when Rick Santorum hates Intelligent Design, it is dead. After the Bush clan leaves office, we will never hear about it again.
Most major religions do not reject the idea of evolution. After all God could have created man through evolution. Fundamental Christians (Bible literalists) actually believe God everything in seven days. Most other Christian religions don't interpret the Book of Genesis literally.
To say Christians are against science is nonsense. Some of the greatest scientists of our times were Christians.
On the first day, man created God and he was pleased with what he'd achieved. On the second day, man worshiped God and life was good. On the third day, different men had different ideas about God and their cultures diverged. On the fourth day, men spilt blood over these differences and it has been this way ever since.
Yeah because man wouldn't have wars if it wasn't for religion. All of John Lennon's lyrics are true if you just "imagine". If men were all the same except some people had blue eyes and other brown eyes, there would be wars between brown eye people and blue eyed people.
You seem to have a cartoon view of Christians I won't be able to change but go ahead and live in ignorance.
So an early asian humanoid and a early african humanoid walk into a bar...
What puzzles me is how remote volcanic islands became inhabited. Hawaii for example. Theres no way early man could have sailed there.
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Everything has its time and place.
Religion had its time before science started to explain the natural world phenomena. In the beggining humans attributed the power of thunder, earth and fire to mighty gods, it is on our nature to attribute to an allmigthy deitity the things that we can not (yet) understand.
Science has progressed a lot since those times. Since the inquisition or the Roman or Greek (or Mayan, or any other kind of ) gods. There was a small development from politheist to monotheist religions. And the worshiped books are nothing more than laws used to rule over the people that did not believed (or did not have) an established society
It is because of this that Religion has had its time. Of course, our current society structure is not optimal, it is not the best but it is better. Science might also not explain all things we see in the universe but instead of going backwards and begin to attribute them again the this "deitity" humans should continue to develop knowledge.
I do not have a position as neutral as yours about Religion. For me, religion sucks, all kind of religion is stupid and do not have any fundaments or basis. Religion has been used only as means of control, this can be seen now on your current government (if you are from USA). Your president is seeding terror on you by means of religion. And this is because your politics and your society is deeply rooted on religious grounds.
Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust", how can a country be cosmopolite if there is a predominant religion which I bet your constitution embraces.
I repeat, religion sucks, someone will surely tell me that religion does not sucks by itself but it is men that use it for their own convenience. But, the way I see it, that has been the role of religion since human created it. It is a tool (and very powerful) to control masses of people.
Religion should not be in churches or any other place, it should be erradicated, it should be labeled as a thing for non intelligent minds.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Why can't intelligent design and evolution co-exist? Why does it always have to be either one or the other? Evolution itself may be by design. Perhaps humans came from both Africa, Asia and maybe even elsewhere. As a Muslim, I believe that God created all that exists. However, my faith does not prevent me from believing in scientific facts. I see evolution as something programmed in to life in order to survive. Every so often it may have had a boost here and there.
After all, wouldn't the Flying Spaghetti Monster have reached His noodly appendage to that part of the world where He first created humans to bless them first with the secret of Noodles?
Who knows? It could happen.
so, the theory assumes that 200,000 years is not enough for such a migration?
And, of course, talk of 'migration' is nonsense. It would have been more like 'hey, it is getting a bit crowded here, let's find a cave or tree a bit further away'. A few thousand generations of this and a species can spread a long way!
>science doesn't say "Hey man, you're 100% screwed!".
Well good thing we can ignore global warming, thermonuclear war and eating too much fast-food.
>science isn't to blame for the atom bomb, that would have been invented by some means or other eventually
Atomic bombs don't "fall out of a tree" somewhere. Nothing about it says that it would have "eventaully" been created. I'm sure there is a super-bow-and-arrow invention that just was never discovered.
>mostly because they value rationalism and capitalism above religion or quasi-religious politics.
Seriously, you need review Bush and the role religion played in getting him elected.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Why isn't everyone driving around at 20 mph with their turning signal on?
It seems that the large, flat expanses of Africa are more conducive to the evolution of bipedal locomotion; which is the most effecient form of leg-based movement for endurance and traversing long distances (bepedalism is essentially a pendulum).
;)
Asia does have it's fair share of flat expanses of course, but the amazing flora and fauna of Africa, the diversity thereof and climate change data still seems to point to an evolutionary hotspot on the globe.
Nevertheless, let's not fall into the mindset where alternative theories are tossed aside simply because they don't "feel" right.
Meteor crater in Arizona was once thought to have been caused by lava and steam - but now we know it was created by an intelligent designer
oh I kid, I kid!
We first arose from His Noodly Appendage. It says so here.
Warning: Could be fatal if taken seriously
The thing with religion is that as illogical as it may seem, it is more illogical to not try to believe.
If you renounce all religion for the sake of science, then when you die there is either nothing or hell waiting for you. If you believe then there is either nothing or heaven waiting for you.
> Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust"
*chuckle*
ZOMG TORRENT PLS!!!
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Very well said indeed. I think I may steal that last quote, too...
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
You know when Rick Santorum hates Intelligent Design, it is dead. After the Bush clan leaves office, we will never hear about it again.
You wish.
All those millions of evangelical christians are just going to dissappear just because their man-in-high-places succumbs to term limits? You must be either blind or stupid if you think that's the case. Bush's numbers aren't down because people opposed to the war and his other policies like him less now... They disapproved of him already. His numbers are down because he nominated a Supreme Court justice that wasn't a christian fundamentalist. Those people who are unhappy with Bush and are bringing his numbers down are going to vote for somebody that is more the way you don't like, not less. They're not going to suddenly vote for a liberal democrat. Religion is a powerful force in people's lives, and the numbers of evangelical christians (you know, the ones pushing this crap?) are growing. Didn't you learn anything in the last round of US elections? No? Neither have the media or the minority party. They're all in for a huge-ass shock come the 2006 elections.
It's fine that you're a moderate (sane) christian. Many of us are; perhaps even most of us for now. Take a look at history and tell me how many times over the last 4000 years the moderates have have been the dominant force over fundamentalists. As a species, we're notoriously bad at learning from history, so given the odds, I'd enjoy your freedoms and peacetime while you still have it.
You talk of science and religion as if they were mutually-exclusive things. Most scientists would disagree with you.
Do you honestly think that your god would be impressed by this attitude?
If so, thats not the kind of deity I'd like to worship thankyouverymuch.
It is a myth that science and religion are at odds. Most of the founding fathers of modern science were Christians believers. Evolution is where there is disagreement. That is because all of the known scientific evidence that can be used to show that evolution is a proven fact total up to ZERO.
It is interesting to look at the scientific facts in the scriptures:
The earth is a sphere (Isaiah 40:22)
The earth is floating free in space (Job 26:7)
The oceans contains springs (Job 38:16)
The cyclonic movement of air currents (Ecclesiates 1:6)
Light moves (Job 38:19-20
God? is that like aliens?
>Why can't intelligent design and evolution co-exist? Why does it always have to be either one or the other?
Its not about ID or evolution. Its about hate towards others ideas that are not your own.
Both sides hates the other because they reject the "truth".
Both sides hates the other because their ideas are "the crutch of the weak and stupid".
And both sides think that their ideas make them stronger than the other side.
Logic? Reason? Understanding? Open-mindedness? Just look at these comments and do you really see that here?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Why should I? Based on your thinking why should I be nice to anyone unless it serves my own self-interest. Why should I follow the rule of law, etc? Why shouldn't I just become a totally self-centered anarchist--kill or be killed? Survival of the fittest and all that, right? Where in evolutionary theory does it tell me that I have to or even necessarily should be 'nice' to anyone? Just because you want me to and it might make your life better?
I'm not flaming you, I would just like to find out an atheists opinion on these particulars regarding their stance. Thanks.
I'm turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
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Why don't we dig up everything to find ALL the answers? If you outright believe anything an archeologist says you should read: Motel Of The Mysteries http://www.google.com/search?q=motel+of+the+myster ies
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0395 284252?v=glance
One review:
This book was actually a gift from my Mother who knows I enjoy things archaeological and historical. Since she`s more than a trifle eccentric and has a marvelous sense of the absurd, I've a sneaking suspicion she was poking a little fun at me--which is something I probably need once in a while for my own good.
The Motel of the Mysteries is a wonderful send up of the fields of archaeology and history. It's aim is doubtless to entertain, at which it's vastly successful, but over and above that the book makes quite clear what archaeology legitimately can and cannot do. I think it also points out that what is taken as "The Reality" of the past is often as much a function of current cultural biases and of the personal motives of individual researchers as it is of what actually occurred in the past. (This was made quite clear to me when I saw Knossos on Crete for the first time and realized that a great deal of imagination had gone into the reconstruction of the "Minoan" buildings there).
My favorite parts of Motel were Archaeologist Carson's interpretation of the hotel bathroom as the inner sanctum of a religious structure and the subsequent depiction of his assistant--ala Heinrich Schliemann with the Trojan treasure and Leonard Wooley with the Ur III treasure--wearing bathroom accoutrements as religious paraphernalia.
The author also pokes fun at museums and at all of us, when he includes a collection of "Souvenirs and Quality Reproductions" available for sale at the end of the book. My favorite is the coffee set based on the "sacred urn" (toilet). Goodness knows I've purchased my fair share of quality reproductions on my travels throughout the world!
This should be suggested reading for every college history and archeology major and required for those seeking degrees over BA in these fields!
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Wow you're an idiot..
I'm not religious, not even remotely, yet I need to point something simple out to you.
There will always be a place for God no matter what you say or do. Theres one thing no one can explain and science will never EVER come close to.
"What made the stuff which made us?"
You can't say "It was just there", something had to have made it in some form. After all everything has a reaction, so we must have an action to make it. Yet we have no action which can explain it..
So I leave you with this problem we have. There will always be a hole for God, even in Science there is ultimately one thing which must be "Some super being did it", but then of course we have "what made the super being?"
You also may want to bitch slap yourself for what you're saying. You're acting like religion is some big uber lie. You act like it's eating your barbies and raping your little sister.. Religion fits a nice hole, if people listen to the right bits it's truely a sight to behold. "Everyone is equal, you should be good to others and don't insult someone untill you're perfect" is a damn good out set up for a nice person. But hey lets just ignore the nice religious people who don't force their views on us and just act nicely to us. They're obviously the minority because we all know the news papers don't always report the biggest, loudest and most flamebait style news to get attenction now do they?
The minority screams the loudest because the majority doesn't need to.
I like muppets.
Because evolution still has discrete boundaries. Population A has been separate from population B long enough and changed enough genetically that they can no longer interbreed. Ping! New species.
But, almost certainly, this article completely overstates the findings and theories based on them. Scientists certainly don't think in terms of "find me the square foot of land on which the first homo sapien was born". But questions about where certain traits first developed, and where they migrated to, or perhaps even evolved independently and separately, are subjects of great inquiry.
>> Rather than living your life through your own self-interest trying to get in to a heavenly place that does not exist I just ask that you embrace those around you, talk to other people, help each other out and in that spirit we can all make the world a little nicer.
Let's pretend there's no god. Religion is false, and science is The One True Way. At that point, why would I care about those f*ckups (everyone else other than me)? After all, they're just animals. I can treat them like animals. I don't need morals or ethics - they're just for those lazy sheep who believe in religion. When you take G-d away from your culture, you take the only real reason to follow silly non-Darwinian rules like helping your neighbor if there donkey falls (if their car won't start), or burying your sewage out of town, or any of the other rules that help populations stay sane. Without those rules, I can do whatever I want, to whomever I want, for any or no reason at all.
There are those who believe it's possible to be ethical and moral without G-d. Of course, on an individual basis, certainly! But on a cultural, a large-number-of-people kind of level, it always fails. Just like communism. (Not that they're really related, although that makes me wonder..)
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
H. erectus that walked to the indonesian island area before the seas rose and then were cut off. After this, they evolved into smaller creatures to survive because a smaller range requires smaller creatures, all of which are present on that island.
I swear, I at first read the'f' as a 't', and, oh, the imagery! What a South Park episode that would make!
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
Religion is a powerful force in people's lives, and the numbers of evangelical christians (you know, the ones pushing this crap?) are growing.
No, I don't think that is the case. I think more of them were motivated to vote in 2004 because of the gay marriage issue. Karl Rove's is an evil genius to use the gay marriage issue to motivate far right Christians to show up for election day. You don't lose any votes by proposing a "Defend Marriage" amendment to the constitution. Most mainstream voters like myself couldn't care less about gay marriage. You might of lost the five gay and lesbian voters who where going to vote Republican. It was kinda funny to see Bush drop the "Defend Marriage" amendment mighty fast after the election. I guess Republicans need to save it again for 2008.
Were they looking for I.T. jobs?
[...]Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust"[...]
;)
I repeat, religion sucks[...]
First Christian rock, now Christian pr0n? We'll soon see Kiss Her Crack 4: In Through the Habit, I know it.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
No, I'm not saying that should be your reason, but if you want a logical reason to follow a religion then there it is.
This is just as ignorant and the religious right saying we're all going to burn in hell for our sins. None of us know anything about what happens when we die. Not you, not them, not anyone. Before you go forcing your views down peoples throats, step back and realise that all of this effort is just useless until it actually happens.
That means it's also logical to believe there is a boogeyman in my closet.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Cyclones? Moving light? A spherical Earth? All of these things are plainly obvious, and did not emerge with the Jews.
Tsk Tsk...
Such a one sided argument. Science ought to have learned by now (as the social sciences have) that things are usually not black and white.
Allow me to present you with LOGIC:
If anybody slanders faith as being a dubious source of knowledge, the believer can reply, for rhetorical purposes, that so are reason and experience. It can be plausibly maintained that experience discloses illusion rather than reality, and that reason merely reflects the working of the human mind with no necessary relevance to objective truth.
>The people who say we're screwed because of these things are not practising science. They are lobbyists
Who is lobbying for/against nuclear war and why would they need to falsify scientific studies?
>You and I would both like less religion involved in US politics, but trust me it's been worse in other places
You do know that Bush supports ID? I this would be considered religous enough.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Religion is much more than "God created the Earth" you know. In fact, Religion has far more to do with laws and morality than it does creation.
Religion should not be in churches or any other place, it should be erradicated, it should be labeled as a thing for non intelligent minds.
Take a look at every civilization that erradicated religion by force. They were just as bad, if not worse, than any country which demanded religion by force. This is why the US has a "freedom of religion" policy. Practice or don't. The government can't make you do either.
FWIW, I'm agnostic (not even baptised). Seeing "In God we trust" on the dollar bill makes me feel no less "free". Our country was founded by christians after all.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
There is, and he saw what you were doing last night.
ID is not a belief. It's a tool put forth because of the particular secular rules in place in the US government, in order to try and remove evolution from school textbooks - so that children can get their education on the origin of life from the church. Fundamentalists don't believe in it, they regard it as a useful hypothetical in the fight against science itself.
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
Since you seem to have it figured out, I'll ask you a couple of questions I've stumbled across:
1. How does justice work? It seems like a lot of people have gotten a way with a lot of bad stuff and it seems like a lot of good people have gotten screwed. Oh well tough luck.
2. What is consciousness? It seems kind of crazy.
3. What's with all of this love and family suff? Those brain chemicals are weird I guess.
4. Speaking of brain chemicals, how does this whole "free will" thing work? Do I have free will or don't I?
Well good luck! (cause I guess what it comes down to anyway, quantum theory and parallel dimension of luckyness and stuff)
JP
"Funny how you gave a ringing endorsement of the teachings of Jesus after that whole speech about how God doesn't exist. FWIW, I'm not any sort of fundie idiot, but let's just say I won't be standing anywhere near you during the next lightning storm. :o"
I'm not sure how you define "idiot" but I don't recall any scientific papers that report on a statistically significant increase in lightning strikes due to ones proximity to a person with different values or beliefs.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
Those scientists just couldn't handle the idea that they descended from black folks! They don't mind being related to the Chinese, but they want no part of us! Anything to keep the black man down! :-)
Hiawatha Bray
Tech Reporter
Boston Globe
We didn't originate from Asia, we originated from the telephone cleaners, hairdressers, and account executives from Golgafrincha. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Restaurant_at_the _End_of_the_Universe
Not believing in any sort of higher being does not prevent one from wanting to do good.
Just because some guy 2000 years ago, who might not have existed at all, said a few good things it doesn't prevent him from being crazy.
Not believing in an afterlive it actually makes more sense to want to turn this world into a better place, there is no second chance if you screw up.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Excellent post. If only I had some mod points.
So that explains why I like eating Chinese food so much...
Actually, I think THIS one ought to be "4: Funny"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Seriously, slashdot is so reactionary. We get this interesting article on ancient humans and it's turned into a whole long uber-sarcastic anti-religious masturbation fest.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
No, I don't think that is the case.
It's not a matter of what you think. It's the hard data, and it's not only happening in the US. A large portion of the Catholics in Brazil have been converting, for example. It's a consequence of the Catholic church's alienation of the youth just about everywhere over the last two decades. People hunger to believe in something, and the evangelical faith is giving them just that in a fun, easily accessable fashion. Not only that, but the first of the people who were teenagers when this all started are starting to hit their 30's now, and are starting to understand the importance of voting. Gay marriage may have been a rallying point, but those people are still out there, and it's not like there won't be something new to rally around every two years.
Huh?? Where did you come with the idea that there are only two possible outcomes in both those cases? I could just as easily state that renouncing religion will result in either nothing or eternal paradise, while accepting religion will result in either nothing or eternal damnation. Oh wait, I forgot, religion and actual logic don't mix.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Thought "'s ghost" was outside the parentheses. Oops.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Oh god...eyes bleeding. WTF?!?!?! Can someone translate crazy for me so this makes some semblence of sense?
The idea that it's better to take a risk - gamble on god, if you will - and follow a religion rather than not follow a religion and run the risk of damnation is best argued in Pascal's Penseés.
Some of my favorites include:
Don't be too quick to judge. Pascal was, after all, a pretty important guy. It's at least worth a glance.
Ethical and moral rules do exist with God. Even chimpanzee societies have such rules, and it's not as if claiming a deity is responsible for rules of conduct means those rules are moral. For nearly two thousand years, abuse and murder of Jews was perfectly legitimate in Christendom, and slavery was the primary basis of the Southern United States' economic system, and even had Biblical apologism to back it up.
All human societies irregardless of religious or mythical background require rules of conduct. We are social animals, and it is part of our very nature to work out dominance hiearchies and appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. What is clear from observing the vast number of societies is that damn few of these rules, or morals if you will, are shared by all societies. It's the existence of rules, not the rules themselves, that count. You seem to operating under this bizarre premise that we are somehow, without the Big Alpha Male in the Sky, essentially no different than some sort of violent lone hunters. Even a cursory understanding of human nature, or of the nature of any social species, would demonstrate just how wrong you really are.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes but without religion what magic, er...holy book would I have to reference to use as my basis for all my own rationalizations? The beauty of holy books is that they were written hundreds or thousands of years ago, often poorly interpreted, and then we each get to decide what they mean for ourselves! (Of course the contradicting information in them really helps with that part.) Voila! Instant rationalizations any time you need them! But wait, there's more! If you're smart you can convince other people in your interpretation and they will send you money. Even better...they will give you power over them. You will get to control them and make them do what you want. Heck, they will even kill people who don't believe what you do!
I don't believe in God, but I believe in Satan. It's really the only thing that can explain regligion.
Feel free to mod me down (-1 flamebait). I don't give a fuck.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Imagine two civilizations. One is more or less cooperative, there is strife and people have to struggle to survive, but in general they have laws and don't attack each other without a very good reason. They live by the golden rule, even when it's not always in their own best interest.
The other civilization, on the other hand, is completely anarchistic; every person will kill their neighbor at the drop of a hat to take their food. The only penalty for doing so it that they may kill you first while you're sleeping and take your food.
Which civilization do you think will survive the longest?
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Where in evolutionary theory does it tell me that I have to or even necessarily should be 'nice' to anyone?
Cooperation and "civilization" are both successful survival mechanisms. You don't have to do anything, but something that helps the race to survive tends to be selected for.
Well, suppose we're genetic castoff, a la Botany Bay. If some/a/the "Guardian" of the Universe decided we're not flotsam, but just needed some protection, then it could be that the DNA and other animals dropped off were scattered.
Then, on the other hand, if we're the descendents of some crashed alien craft, then it might make sense that if it were a SMALL crashed craft, then they'd have all landed (or died) in the same place. But, if it were a LARGE craft (presumably with "escape pods") then they'd have spread out.
But, with all that technology, they'd likely have the ability to regroup, unless there was an inssurection or falling out. Even so, some cataclysm would later on have to happen to suppress all that tech, essentially setting us back as far as we are now, relative to where we COULD have been if environmental carnage and warfare (petty human political greed and so on) were not a big part of the picture.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Exactly, I believe the current theory (based on genetic evidence among other things) is that some (relatively) small group of chimp/human ancestors got isolated from the rest of the population. This group promptly fucked each other a lot and over time became a separate species.
As a result when they finally managed to start expanding into other areas they could no longer successfully mate with the remaining population (ie: the one which wasn't isolated).
As such you can say where this group got isolated and as such where they came from, assuming you have a single point of origin. Some theories claim multiple points of origin, and as such you can't say "we started out here." Although evidence points strongly at a single origin, usually in Africa.
When you take G-d away from your culture, you take the only real reason to follow silly non-Darwinian rules like helping your neighbor if there donkey falls...
:)
This does not follow. Cooperation is also Darwinian. A species survives if it is able to reproduce. If cooperation helps that happen, then cooperation will happen. Other animals form cooperative groups like mating pairs, families, and even small societies. Didn't you watch "March of the Penguins"?
Since when has /. been the "Site of logic, reason, understanding and openmindedness?"?
I must have missed that time over the past 6-7 years.
And both intelligent design and evolution can co-exist. In fact they do that right now. The problem is that ID is not science and therefore shouldn't be taught AS science in a science classroom.
See how easy that is? I personally think ID is the most naïve presumption to arrive in the past few years. But guess what? That is only my opinion, much like almost all of this site and the comments within.
Don't read into things too far, you just end up exposing your own prejudices. Your statements of "both sides" is categorically wrong. I don't reject the truth, but I do reject truth packaged as a belief. Unless I can verify it isn't the truth it isn't worth exploring.
Sorry rant mode off. Someone needs to invent a giant heater so I can melt all this snow that is coming down, although potassium might do the trick. hmmm.
Thanks for proving my point.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Maybe if you're a satan worshiper. I suppose that's technically a religion also.
It's really a horrible reason to follow a religion though. I don't believe that religion and science have to be mutually exclusive. At some point science can't explain everything and that's where religion fits in. The idea that the universe is infinitely big and infinetly small, and has been here an infinite amount of time is beyond me.
The problem is not evolution... It is a very good theory, the problem is ID, its total crap. Just because evolution might not be perfect doesn't mean a bullshit theory has any credibility.
As for your lovely quotes, there is far more nonsense in the bible than scientific facts.
If the bible said apples fall down it would just mean that who ever wrote it wasn't a total nutcase and was atleast somewhat aware of his suroundings.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
My message is simple: Embrace science, reject religion and it's false promises. The afterlife is a lie
Honestly, I don't understand how your atheism argument differs from those who would pit their religion against another's. You're still attempting to make your theories about life, the universe, and everything seem superior to everyone elses'.
I also don't understand why science can't be an avenue to investigate religion further. If science has provided new evidence that indicates mankind actually originated in Asia, perhaps we've been looking for the Garden of Eden in the wrong place for all of these years. Maybe it's in Asia?
Granted, the above hypothesis sounds silly; however, I use it to illustrate a point: science and religion do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Respect It.
People hunger to believe in something, and the evangelical faith is giving them just that in a fun, easily accessible fashion.
I agree that its a lot easier for the youth to move from Catholicism to Evangelicalism. Catholicism involves looking at yourself and making decisions to not go out and do some fun sinning. Fundamental Christianity is more about looking at what those gays are doing and feeling like a better person than those sinners. The 700 club's tape of that same gay rights parade of everyone in leather must be worn down at this point.
I refuse to believe far right Christians are taking over everything. Most Americans watch Will and Grace/Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and don't care if people are homosexual. Moderation will happen. It has happened again and again in the 200 years of American politics. It's like a pendulum that swings back and forth.
Religion fits a nice hole, if people listen to the right bits it's truely a sight to behold.
Raise your hand if you thought he was going into the first original christian rap song ever posted on Slashdot. And for the record, you're screaming even louder Mr. eight paragraph man.
They arose in Asia, but were quickly deemed illegal monopoly and split in several pieces accross the world.
"Science is a religion my friend." Let me guess, you haven't actually been in a laboratory have you?
"...only for it to be disproved when we get better technology and find a better matching pattern." And this is why science isn't a religion, it allows itself to be disproven and continually questions its findings. Religion by neccessity doesn't question the validity of its founding documents, and therefore is the complete opposite of science.
"they fail to understand what science is" but you already told us, it is just a religion. And, hey, you got modded insightful so you must be right about that.
You don't have to believe in God to be a nice person.
Social group are needed for a spieces to continue, and grow. People who behave in the manners you suggested tend to get removed from the group. So there is an evolutionary method for weeding that behaviour out. Bear in mind evolution is an ongoing process, and not something that happened and now is done.
Of course, being nice is required for a society to continue as well, so it is in the interest of th next generation that people are nice.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Science is a religion my friend. The guy seems to misunderstand this.
What a load of crap. Science is based on empirical reasoning and is always held subject to peer review.
Is religion?
Let's argue this another way.
If A=B, as you suggest, than A has all the properties of B and vice versa.
Infact A!=B because B is not subject to empirical reasoning and peer review.
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You are no less ignorant, friend. Your characterization of science as merely blind guessing reveals a deep misunderstanding. Science is not a religion because it's innacurate and old theories are superseded by new ones. This is is built in to science. It is intended to be this way. That's key to the scientific method. Science does not work in absolutisms as does religion. However, it is a pretty safe bet to say that a few things are unlikely to be disproven, and evolution is one of those. We understand its workings fairly well, though this is not to say that we completely do. We're almost certainly wrong on some of the specifics, perhaps even some of the basics. But in general, everything points in that direction. How often will you find someone willing to say that about their religion?
If nobody else famous is attributed to this idea, praise me like the god I am.
Early humans didn't come from ONE singular location. There are specific characteristics from certain geographic regions to this day, along with historic evidence that in my opinion suggests early humans arose in various geographic regions;
Africa
Western Asia/Eastern Europe
East Asia
Northern South America/Southern Central America
People need to start looking at this in a more legitimate sense.
You shouldn't be nice to anyone unless it serves your own interest. The OP asking you to be nice only serves the OP's interests. However, game theory shows that in the short run, it's best to be mean (selfish) all the time. But in longer runs, especially when there are feedback mechanisms like there are in humans, a strategy of generally being nice (unselfish) has the highest overall rewards. See prisoners dillemm, etc. Additionally, in most circumstances, being "nice" and social is really a zero cost behavior with a positive reward, which is why most people behave that way. Some people take advantage of this tendency for people to be nice/trusting (con-men, thieves) which creates different behaviors/levels of trust that are developed over time, etc. etc. The variety of human behaviors is a function of many different types of reinforcements and checks and balances all generally designed to create the greatest possible reward at the least possible cost.
If any of the following questions make sense, you can expect an answer to your own question shortly:
If you're still furrowing your brow over this one, the answer is nowhere. They are laws describing how we see the natural world, and have nothing to do with human morality whatsoever.
the layman's guide to computer science
The holes are indeed unanswered questions, but religion is only filling them with air.
It never gives answers, it just gives fairy tailes to make people feel good.
Everytime someone finds a real answer and fills a bit of those holes people will either have to admit their fairy tailes were wrong or deny the answer. Unfortunatly for most just denying is easier.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
On the fifth day people figured out how dumb they had been, thinking dragons, gods and unicorns existed and simply went about their business being finally free to do things as they saw fit. And things got better.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Not all religions are "We're right END OF STORY!". There are also ones which say "these are the holy text, you can define them how you wish".
I like muppets.
region has been the root of many wars and deaths and tortures, and flying planes into buildings. It is a tool used to leverage a weak mind.
BTW, how can you believe in God(christian view) and not believe that God had a plan?
"After all God could have created man through evolution. "
So it was his design that we evolve. Therefore you DO believe in ID.
"Most other Christian religions don't interpret the Book of Genesis literally. "
All christians interpet the bible in any way possible to get them what they feel is right. And most christians do interpet Genesis literally.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
h tml
I would recommend looking there if you want to see evidence of evolution, and here
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sciproof.
for a general explanation of the workings and philosophy of science.
The fact is that the mitochondrial DNA data is consistent with multiple matrilines as well as. Lots of people have hung their hat on the Out of Africa hypothesis but that doesn't mean their intepretation of the DNA evidence is gospel.
Seastead this.
So? your statement that science is a relegion shows that eaither:
a) You have no idea what the work religeon means; or
b) you have no idea what science is.
I would bet... B
" Not all religions are "We're right END OF STORY!"."
name one.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Relig ious_views
Yea, easier to just deny everything..
Every group has idiots who scream and shout. Pick any group and you will see extreme people wishing to force all into their view point. These people would be just as bad in scientist or religion.
I like muppets.
>Science is based on empirical reasoning
Its based on two things (I'm open to hear of any more)
1. Occam's razor.
2. Falsification.
This is what every scientist should use as their guilding light, their rules, their basic principals that they should follow regardless of any other factor.
And so what is the difference between these two (or any more that you may come up with) and religous rules, say like the Ten Commandments? (The Ten Commandments are the guilding light, the rules, the basic principals that should be followed regardless of any other factor.)
Because one just feels right? Because one is older? Because one doesn't like the background where it orginates? Because you were told one was the "truth" and the other isn't? Because one is more socially exceptable than the other?
>and is always held subject to peer review.
Religons is also. There are multiple major religons and sects existing. Religous history is filled with people reviewing/questioning things.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Spagetti monster :)
I like muppets.
I do believe the parent's conclusion that most people come to after searching for proof there is a spirit, never finding it, then in the end giving in and saying "fuck it, it helps society to believe in it, it helps my job advancement, why not?"
Society could exist on the respect for the mystical energy of life without having to worship some stupid grey beareded fake, couldn't it? Yes, it could. What happens though, is we give birth to stupid people and they can't conceptualize this because there is no individual to focus on, its too abstract for them. So, some Grandpa makes up a story about who God is for his stupid Grandson, hence the intelligent are all fucked for eternity spending a quarter of our lives looking for proof of a spiritual entity because somewhere down the line our parents remembered to tell us Santa was fake, but not God.
And to anyone who replies to this thread with looking to dispute that you actually get something spiritually out of your belief in God, great for you, I get the same thing out of respect for "the mystery energy of life."
"Religion has been used only as means of control, this can be seen now on your current government (if you are from USA). "
no, it ahs been used as a mean of understanding, and development. Also control, but not soley.
" Religion has been used only as means of control, this can be seen now on your current government (if you are from USA)."
I live in the US, I can not see anything the government is doing to indicate it is using religeon to control people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Honestly, I don't understand how your atheism argument differs from those who would pit their religion against another's. You're still attempting to make your theories about life, the universe, and everything seem superior to everyone elses'.
Example:
A: I believe we should all dress as pirates to end global warming
B: Whaaa? You aer teh cox! That makes no sense LOLBBQ. USUK!
A: You are obviously trying to make your theories about life, the universe, and everything seem superior to everyone elses
I also don't understand why science can't be an avenue to investigate religion further. If science has provided new evidence that indicates mankind actually originated in Asia, perhaps we've been looking for the Garden of Eden in the wrong place for all of these years. Maybe it's in Asia?
Example:
A: Life itself proves god exists
B: You aer teh sux!
*picks shit out of own ass*
B: Besidse, we gots all tis fossil evidence 'nstuff.
A: No, LALALALA-LALALALA facts are stupid things and those were put in the ground by god a couple of thousand years ago.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Innan and Nordborg
Seastead this.
While I agree with you that religion and science don't need to be mutually exclusive; I think the rest of your logic is flawed. Allow me to explain:
Hypothesize a God that doesn't like people taking things "on faith", and wants His creations to learn through experimentation and reason, but doesn't care about being worshipped. Would this God put those who blindly follow preachers into hell? And what's to stop Him from putting those who contribute to our scientific knowledge into some sort of eternal paradise?
Speaking of which - why does God want to be worshipped anyway? He's omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent - if he wants people to worship Him, or believe in Him, he can simply cause those things to happen. There are those who says "God works in mysterious ways" - sure, but he if mysteriously created some rocks over my head and let them fall, I'd sure be a lot more likely to believe in him!
--Ender
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
This is the same kind of thinking that many Christians have about things they don't agree with, and I'm not sure why. For instance, many won't even admit the possibility that, had they been born in a Muslim country, they would have adopted Islam. And at church when I was younger I constantly heard things like, "Man, if I hadn't become a Christian, I'd be dead/in jail/drugged out/etc by now." Over half the Christians I knew seriously believed those things, yet curiously the death/incarceration rate of atheists is nowhere near as high as it should be.
It's easy to think that you'd act in some absurd or extreme manner when you're not in a position to do so. If your ideals guide your behavior, great. But don't think that, if your current ideals went away, your behavior would become "unguided" and unethical. Rather, you'd adopt new ideals on a different basis and act according to those instead. Atheism is a lack of a belief in God, not a lack of all ideals and morality. Just because you may view God as the basis of morality (I'm assuming so for the sake of argument), that doesn't mean that others have to.
Well, given a 200 metre expansion per year, that would be sufficient to circumnavigate the globe. So four to eight kilometres per generation should easily accomplish Georgia to mid-Africa.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Your posting is so complex that I can't understand it. That can mean only one thing, are you the intelligent writer/designer?
Actually, that too would be conditional on choosing the "correct" religion, which, in the eyes of nearly every religion is itself. Inevitably, only one (if any) will be "correct" so I find it more convenient to live by my own morals, and not those preached to me by others, and enjoy life while I'm doing it.
Another problem is that most of the "absolute" moralities dictated by religions conflict with one another. This means that anyone who one religion says will go to heaven, another invariably says will not. Only one, if any, will be correct, and there must be thousands, from FSMism to Fundie Christianity, all of which tell you different things. The odds are against you either way, so to me it's more hopeful to just "believe" in nothing, and hope I'm right since my chances of picking the "right" religion are so slim.
According to Cosmologist Carl Sagan, we are all made of starstuff (ie: dust from comets and asteroids that hit earth), which means that Humans and all life on Earth origionated in OuterSpace, thus we are all ET's.
> Too many people have 100% faith in science
The well-informed don't.
Still, it might be worth pausing to consider how much of the technology you rely on to read this post is the result of science, vs. how much is the result of religion, philosophy, or New Age thinking.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
All christians interpet the bible in any way possible to get them what they feel is right. And most christians do interpet Genesis literally.
OK, if all christians interpet the bible how can most believe in Genesis literally? You do realize that Genesis is in the Bible.
Why not? The theory of evolution doesn't state that everything evolves into a dude in every possible location. In fact, as another poster has pointed out, it is commonly believed that a primary catalyst for evolution is that part of a population is seperated from the rest of the population, for several generations.
Not all atheists are geeks. I once knew an aethiest who had a really cool tattoo of a dragon eating a cow. That guy was cool!
Well, the ability to breed with humans is a somewhat reliable indicator. The exception being my mother who had her tubes tied, after I was born. I suppose she's still human...
Asia is a pretty big place...
> Intelligent Design is something most Christians reject and even a lot of fundamental Christians reject. Intelligent Design was created for political purposes and no religion has publicly supported the theory.
I think some of the traditional creationist outlets have been jealous of all the media attention Intelligent Design has been getting over the past few years, and from the post-Dover-ruling editorials I've read, it seems that a number of them are taking the opportunity to rip ID as a compromise on things that oughtn't be compromised.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Kudos to the funny comeback however everything about the human body is needed in order for us to survive except for the appendix it seems. We couldn't have one thing develop without having something else as well, which goes against evolution which implies gradual changes. We need all of our organs and all the capabilities that our cells have to differentiate, multiply, copy dna, etc. is all needed at the same time so gradual changes would not suffice for us to exist based solely on evolution.
Come again? I don't know about everyone else but I've read this three times and can't identify either what point you are trying to make or the logic you are using to arrive at it. Please restate for the slower of us?
People who argue religion are impossible.
They are the same as people who believe Marijuana is bad because it's illegal.
I hear it all the time on radio shows when people call in; it's illegal ergo it's bad. The argument should be: Marijuana's bad because of x (I don't know wtf x is personally), ergo we made it illegal, not the other way around. People don't stop to ask that question.
Same with the bible. The bible tells us we were moulded from dirt, and woman came from our rib, and all the other lame-assed stories like the tower of Babel and Noah's ark, etc. No one stops to question the source of their morality. They just appeal to it as a higher force of reason than their own.
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For example, there are many religions, each have their own concept of "afterlife" or what happens when you die. Many (but not all) have a heaven and hell. Also, many (but not all) claim to be the "one true faith" and everyone else is going to hell. So, let's just expand your arguement a little bit - you aren't looking at a 50/50 chance here, just take the major monotheistic religions common in our time - Christianity, Judaism and Islam (which are all basically the same, but let's not get in to that), plus science. Now you have only a one in four chance of getting to heaven. Things are less obvious now don't you think? Throw in the other religions that consider themselves "the one true faith" and your chances are starting to look pretty slim, probably less than 5%. Nothingness starts to look pretty good compared to the nearly as good chance of hell if you picked the wrong religion.
Your comment is a rationalization of faith, and a simple one at that. It seems there could be some validity to the "it's better to believe in something than nothing" arguement, but it requires a lot more thought than what you are implying, and it seems to me that it would lead to a rather blase style of faith anyway. It's fine to have faith, but faith is by definition irrational - the more you try to rationalize the more likely you end up in a logical mud puddle.
So no, it is not "more illogical to not try to believe". It may be more uncomforable, it may appear hopeless, it may not be your cup of tea, and that's cool, but it takes a big strech to consider any religion more logical than any other religion much less science.
"None of us are as dumb as all of us." - meeting mantra
Dogs don't act like that.
You've never seen a bunch of starving dingos around a dead horse, I'm guessing.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
> Why should I? Based on your thinking why should I be nice to anyone unless it serves my own self-interest. Why should I follow the rule of law, etc? Why shouldn't I just become a totally self-centered anarchist--kill or be killed? Survival of the fittest and all that, right?
What makes you think a totally self-centered anarchist would be fittest?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> I don't know about everyone else but I've read this three times and can't identify [...] the logic you are using
Because there is no logic. His first sentence points out that the crux of his argument is false. The second sentence is false and shows that he doesn't understand the theory he is trying to rebut. Nothing new to see here, move along.
There is no guarantee that any of that will happen properly.
As for empirical reasoning, you are still relying on the reasoning of a flawed human being with their own beliefs and prejudices.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I dunno about western culture. Here in the Northwest region of America, every block there is either Indian, Sushi, Thai, Teriyaki or Chinese food. If you watch movies like the Matrix, you see Asian influenced martial arts. If you play video games you are most likely playing a Nintendo or a Playstation. If you watch cartoons, you are most likely watching a Japanese animated story.
It's a myth that the Chinese didn't use gun powder as weapons. In fact they did. In fact the idea of a Chinese person is also a myth. It's like the myth of an American person. That's why they are successful. They were one of the first places that took disparate groups and held it under one rule as one people, even though quite a few of the inhabitants spoke different languages and were of differerent "races". You might argue that the Romans did that as well, but they failed to hold on to it.
I saw that and thought for a moment I'd happened upon an off-topic thread about regular expressions.
the layman's guide to computer science
Clap, clap, clap!
That was brilliant! Pure gold! I've seldom met an evangelical standup-comedian of your calibre! Great Stuff! Where do you perform?
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
You know, I find it almost amusing when so daft bastard invents a history of science, leaves out 99% of the detail and then uses that to judge modern scientists by alchemists from the middle ages. You missed some key figures on the road to the Enlightenment, my friend, not to mention the development of methodological naturalism. But please, don't let the facts get in the way of your biases.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust", how can a country be cosmopolite if there is a predominant religion which I bet your constitution embraces.
Yes, it also has an illuminati "all seeing eye" symbol called the Shining Delta with the words: "Novus Ordo Seclorum ( which can be translated to 'a new order of the ages')". The eye signifies the Illuminati's "all-seeing" infiltration of government and community. The triangle (or delta) around the eye is the mathematical symbol for change (the Illuminati's ultimate goal was to bring about massive change in the form of a secular New World Order.) And finally, the rays of light shining off the triangle signify enlightenment and illumination (i.e., intellectual freedom from the dangerous "myth" of religion.)
Just goes to show that the church wasn't the only influential group in America's founding fathers.
There's no place like ~/
Actually more people have been killed in the name of atheism in the last 100 years than religion for all of time before that. Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung. Thats over 100 million people.
Why should I? Based on your thinking why should I be nice to anyone unless it serves my own self-interest. Why should I follow the rule of law, etc? Why shouldn't I just become a totally self-centered anarchist--kill or be killed? Survival of the fittest and all that, right? Where in evolutionary theory does it tell me that I have to or even necessarily should be 'nice' to anyone? Just because you want me to and it might make your life better?
So... your viewpoint is that people are incapable of behaving in a moral fashion if they don't think that an invisible man in the sky is watching their every move, preparing to bless them into eternal paradise, or smite them into eternal damnation? Is every kind act you perform, in expectation of some reward, or in avoidance of some punishment? Most people grow out of that when they are toddlers. The rest are sociopaths.
From an evolutionary standpoint, I would say that people who have a moral conscience and a well-developed sense of right and wrong are more likely to mate and have children. Thus, brain structures that support empathy and sympathy are an inheritable survival trait. We are very social creatures, so it's not surprising that we've evolved to live and breed as part of a functioning society.
morality != religion
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Since current orthodoxy is "Out of Africa" any data which is inconsistent with this orthodoxy must be explained in a way that is consistent with the orthodoxy. This is quite similar to much of the activity of intelligent design theorists.
Seastead this.
"Just because you may view God as the basis of morality (I'm assuming so for the sake of argument), that doesn't mean that others have to." I think God is the source of morality, but you don't have to believe in God's existence to be moral.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
I think there is problem some small amount of justification in what the parent says, but not quite the way I think he means it. Religion is a powerful social tool, a means of uniting a people. Most certainly even in early hunter-gatherer societies, kinship, at least in part, could be based upon religious beliefs. People of common beliefs will have a common mythical system, and thus, even where blood ties may be nebulous, some commonality can be perceived. As agricultural societies evolved, religion played an enormous role in binding larger populations together, as well as setting up a dominance hierarchy that allowed for such populations to co-exist peacefully. But later, as city states and kingdoms gave way to empires, the unifying strength of religion was often tested, so that some of the greatest empires were not only multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and even multi-racial, but also multi-religious. Simply put, religion is a powerful tool for social order, but it isn't the only tool. In the post-Enlightenment West, the ideas of democracy and human rights also serve as means for people of diverse backgrounds to find some common purpose, and the idea that laws must ultimately stem from one or more deities is no longer necessary. In fact, if you look at where the great Enlightenment thinkers came from, it was out of the horrific religious wars in Europe which so amply demonstrated that even a common god could not guarantee social order.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"The triangle (or delta) around the eye is the mathematical symbol for change (the Illuminati's ultimate goal was to bring about massive change in the form of a secular New World Order.)"
The pyramid on the bills is an allusion to E. Pluribus Unum: "out of many, one." The base of the pyramid represents all the individual people of the world and as you move up the pyramid towards enlightenment, you realize that we're all in this together. It's actually a very religious symbol, albeit a very universal one that just about every culture can identify with. With all the Star Wars geeks here, you'd think there would be more people that have read Joseph Campbell!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
The article talks quite a bit about fossil evidence, but what about the genetic evidence? If you look at the variability of human genetics, you find that europeans aren't very genetically diverse. Similarly, American Indians aren't very genetically diverse, and Asians aren't either. Africans, on the other hand, are very genetically diverse. What this indicates is that the human race' history in Africa goes back much further than anywhere else. It appears that a subset of Africans left Africa and colonized the rest of the world. Here's a short article that talks about human genetic diversity compared to their location: http://info.med.yale.edu/genetics/kkidd/point.html
http://www.umich.edu/news/?Releases/2005/Oct05/r10 1805
As I always say, anyone who uses "proof" when discussing science has already demonstrated that they don't know what they're talking about. That some people misunderstand science is a given, and you seem to be one of those people.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
After getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden, humans were on God's Double-Secret Probation list, so they went on a road-trip.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"Why should I? Based on your thinking why should I be nice to anyone unless it serves my own self-interest. Why should I follow the rule of law, etc? Why shouldn't I just become a totally self-centered anarchist--kill or be killed? "
Being nice to people is in your self-interest, because usually they will be nice to you. If you are mean to people, your reputation will quickly spread, and people will be mean to you.
People are interested in fairness, and mostly you will get treated the same way you treat others. If you deal with strangers all the time, it won't matter, but if you might see that person again sometime, or perhaps even every day, you will probably worry about what they think of you and therefore how they will treat you.
"Survival of the fittest and all that, right?"
That's right. We do still live in the jungle. Just step into South Central LA or the middle of the Amazon some time. However, in most places of the world, there is an official gang of tough guys who are called the police. The police are for the most part fair and honest. But they are not afraid to use force and kill people to keep the peace. In LA or the jungle, there are many gangs fighting each other, and none of them are interested in keeping the peace. Most people find that their life is a lot eaier if they side with the police gang instead of any of the others.
" Where in evolutionary theory does it tell me that I have to or even necessarily should be 'nice' to anyone? Just because you want me to and it might make your life better?"
Evolutionary theory says that anyone who can get along with other people will have a better chance of finding food, a receptive mate, and successfully raising children or grandchildren has better reproductive success. If you help someone, that person and everyone else will know about it, and they will help you. Loners who fight everyone and are only in it for themselves die alone, with no children.
Human beings are a group animal. Like ants or prarie dogs, we can't really make it on our own. People who can work co-operatively in groups fare better and therefore have more children than loners. Co-operative groups thereby outperform loners.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Yeah so when you ask where's the garden of eden a priest will tell you it's not on earth because it's a heavenly place.
So other than Lucifer being cast out it was also us.
So exactly which level of hell do we reside on?
In the 20th century man spilled more blood than the previous 10 centuries combined in the name of atheism and naturalism, not God.
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God is a universal force and not connected to religion. Basically, morals are just the path of least resistence for life to continue eternally, and various religions emphasize these morals in their unique ways.
God can even be an intrinsic force in the life of an atheist -- it isn't neccessary for one to externalize God as a personal figment for God to be acting in one's life. For an atheist, it is quite possible that his God is Goodness, his Church is the people he comes in contact with every day, his Religion is Kindness and Compassion, and his Heaven is his Life. God is like the atmosphere to an individual like this: invisible yet vital to his existence. Intrinsic.
This is the kind of "religion" I personally find to be the most natural and instinctual. I tire of people who think the question of God is one of the existence of an intelligence beyond the universe. The real question is, is there a Life beyond the universe? If so, then that would explain why life in the universe tries to defy finity through survival, and why all morals (though not neccessarily mores) seem to map to this idea that life will always try to survive and live eternally.
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As to the multi-regional model, the genetic data, which has been growing in volume over the last two decades, has all but knocked it out of the running. Modern humans are very closely related, indicating an ancestral stock about 150k years ago. Coupled with the fact that sub-Saharan AFrica has the highest genetic variation, it points strongly to a recent origin of modern humans in Africa.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Even though that's better than eternal suffering, it's still a pretty bad thing once you've found out that you could have had eternal life if you'd only believed.
Because of course God would be way too stupid to know that you were only a believer so that you could reap the rewards...
How about this twist: If you are a believer and you turn out to be wrong, you've wasted your whole life (the only one you had) believing in a fantasy and applying all the accompanying restrictions. Essentially, your whole life was based on a lie.
Joel O'Steen! The Bush Family! ENRON! We should start digging immediately.
Most athiests or agnositcs, I'm generalizing form myself, believe at arriving at a set of ethics by themselves. A fair amount of these come from morals we have been raised with, ie: don't kill, don't steal. But others come over time, ie: choosing to believe if drug use/abortion/murder in self-defense should be acceptable to us. So in my mind, any athiest who says its ok to kill someone based on scientific theory is someone who is just looking for an excuse to get away with murder much the same way a religious zealout would kill themselves or others because god said it was ok. A person's true character comes through no matter what they believe.
I don't get it.
Case in point... You wont find many atheists huddled in foxholes. Times like that tend to induce prayer.
And you won't find too many christians in an abortion clinic either.
Not to say that life's desire to live eternally never incorporates death as a tool toward achieving this goal. Many biologists actually view death as a survival mechanism geared for just such a purpose. Extending this parable from nature to our own lives, I believe it is neccessary that we too use death every day as a tool to improve the lives of ourselves and others: by contemplating death, you gain a better appreciation for life; by letting certain desires die which would sap your or another's existence in some way, you allow better desires to live.
I've seen married couples kill each other slowly over the decades. And I've seen couples enliven each other so that life overflowed from them into the lives of others around them.
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Good plan. So when I say that my fingernail contains God, please don't tell me I'm crazy because that would be forcing your views upon me. Afterall, you can't prove me wrong.
Here's a thought...how about we work with what we know rather than live our lives on shit we don't?
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
and everyone's split into two camps: People that are going to Heaven (usually believers) and people that are going to Hell (usually everyone else).
This seems to be highly biased towards one religion (or set of related religions, depending on your POV) and seems an unfair generalization.
Many religions believe that you get your rewards after death based on what you do, not what you believe. Some believe that means you get punishment by getting stuck as a lower form of life and that you must treat even lower creatures with respect. The concept of the afterlife being a Boolean assignment of paradise versus punishment is by no means universal.
Before making sweeping generalizations about religions, have at least a minimal understanding of the variety of ones that exist. Not every religion persecutes and tortures others who don't believe the same.
"However, it is a pretty safe bet to say that a few things are unlikely to be disproven, and evolution is one of those."
Oh so evolution has been proven as a fact now??? If it is been proven then why is there such a debate over the evidence, or lack there of?
"The afterlife is a lie."
Some people have already begun their afterlife. I died about 10 years ago. You may think I'm talking symbolically, but to me, spiritual symbolisms are more real than physical laws.
But yeah, in a way, there is no afterlife. Just Life, and death is the lie of our senses.
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It is flamebait. I was looking forward to read about the anthropological implications of such a theory, but here I am reading yet another tedious "conversation" about intelligent design.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Don't forget the Khmer Rouge, Saddamn Hussein and any other penny-ante dictator around the world. The way dictators stay in power is through fear, and to hold that fear at a high level, you gotta spill blood on a regular basis.
That's true, but OTOH, the big two religions are Christianity & Islam (http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.h tml): Both of these, afaik, put a large amount of stress on belief as well as action. While buddhism, hinduism, etc, put a stress on action taken, these religions aren't as large as Christianity or Islam. Even if you don't believe that, I did add an "often" qualifier - I didn't mean for my comment to involve "sweeping generalizations about religions". Sorry.
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I never said that evolution and belief in a creator deity (or deities for that matter) was incompatible. Evolution is a scientific theory, and like all scientific theory, it has nothing to say on the matter one way or the other. I'm taking issue the idea that modern scientists are somehow nothing more than alchemists in disguise, which is patently absurd.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Ok.. And, my question was based on the stance I replied to--why do I have to be, or why should I be 'nice'?
What is nice? Does nice == good? Were does it fit in the 'survival of the fittest' theory? The only reason to be 'nice' is to get ahead, to survive longer? How bleak... What is a conscience then? A mere survival mechanism?
Africa... Asia... Africa... Asia...
Science seems to require a lot of faith. It must take a lot of faith to be an atheist...
So Christians and atheists can agree: morality is all about the survival of life. The Christian is moral to ensure life continues forever, and the atheist is moral so that life can continue forever (until the universe ends).
"Which civilization do you think will survive the longest?"
I would say a third civilization: one in an alternate reality where a God laughs at time and sees every life as eternal. This is my reality!
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"And most christians do interpet Genesis literally."
h tmlt ml
Quoting from one of the pages noted below, the global percentages for Catholics and Protestants are as follows:
* Catholic & Near Catholic (Catholic, Orthodox, High Church Anglican) - 65%
* Protestant (Protestant, Independent, Low Church Anglican) - 38%
Even the Catholics on their own would disprove your misinformed view on literal interpretation of Genesis.
http://www.geocities.com/richleebruce/churchstat.
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.h
It seems like you're paraphrasing (badly) Pascal's Wager. Google it.
Trolling is a art,
You are absolutely correct that the idea of a single Chinese race is not really correct. One obvious example that I can think of is the difference between northern Chinese and southern Chinese. The two speak different languages, eat different foods, and have somewhat different cultures. Northern Chinese look more like the Mongolians while the Southern Chinese are closer to the southeast Asian peoples. What most Westerners think is the "Chinese" language and culture is actually that of the southern Chinese particularly from the Guangdong region of China. The Chinese written language is what unites all the people in China.
I suggest you read my other posts. Religion can be positive or destructive just as anything else can be. It's just popular to mock it for the idiots who mock science for the same reasons.
I like muppets.
Yes, I agree with your points, there is Chinese culture everywhere, but it hadn't become so widespread say, 100 years ago as it is today. While there were still places in the world to colonize, Western civilization was at its peak. The Chinese Empire pretty much put a stop to colonization to pursue National Interests.
Speaking of which, The Chinese don't have as much Nationalism as say an American does. I've seen this first hand. Since Western culture was able to spread nearly everywhere it made it easier for the entire world to accept Western culture. If you look even in the places that hate us the most, their lives are still affected by Western culture at least a little everyday. Now the Chinese are rising as an economic power house and will probably overtake the US say within the next 50 years. But the American culture will still live on, not just American culture but Western culture. The nice thing about Western culture is that we take aspects from other culture and adapt it to our own.
Most restaurants in the US that are Chinese don't serve real Chinese food. It's American Chinese food, not the stuff your mother would make, but not the stuff my mother in law would make either. (She's Chinese) If she ate at an American Chinese restaurant she would probably call it American food.
Back to the point. Now I'm sure that the Chinese would have ruled the world if it wasn't for the little fact that they closed in on themselves. They completely turned their back on the world for pursuit of what? National Interests, well a few bad rulers took care of that. Now since the way world is connected today, the Chinese people can't keep much to themselves anymore. Sure they try, look at Tiananmen Square, they tried their hardest to keep that a secret, did a pretty good job with their own people, too bad there was a Western reporter there at the time. The Chinese feel that it's best to keep things out of the public eye, the complete opposite of Western culture, absolutely everything reported on. Alright, well it's late, I'm ranting, just wanted to make a few points to show what has caused the rapid expansion of Western culture compared to Eastern.
Like my mother always said "It doesn't matter where you start, it matters where you end up." This being the point of my whole argument.
Physics is imagination in a straight jacket. ~John Moffat
Really? I thought the Intelligent Designer (who we wont name because that would show us up for who we are; fundie idiots) blinked the world in to existance in a single instant. I mean life is too complicated to arise by chance, right? I just don't want to believe I'm related to an animal renound for picking shit out of it's ass. Man was created by God and that's that, these scientist don't know anything.
You aren't related to an animal. Humans appeared in the Garden of Eden, widely regarded to be in the Middle East somewhere (Taurus Mountains?). The Middle East is in Asia. So TFA and Intelligent Design are both correct!
Woo-hoo!
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I tried but she slapped me.
Then I tried embracing my computer, and while it let me, the screen broke.
SO much for that, back to my roots - heavenly father, forgive me? :-)
dang, the screen is still broke :-)
Flamebait? Sheesh! You guys got zero sense of humor!
Hiawatha Bray
Tech Reporter
Boston Globe
the lord giveth and the lord taketh away
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
That the Jews and Christians have had the same story since day one, but it's the scientists that keep changing their story. Who would you trust???
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
You just described one or two religions (albeit a rather large ones with muliple sects)
Not all religions believe the same.
> I think that religion should stay in churches (for example) and science should stay in schools, universities, etc. Everything has its time and place.
Cool! Ecclesiastes! And a neat song too!
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven
Um, that's a very well written post but what does any of that have to do with the story or are you just pandering to the Slashdot collective anti-God/anti-ID collective? In the context of this story how is this "insightful" and not a "offtopic?"
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
I live in the US, I can not see anything the government is doing to indicate it is using religeon to control people.
Then you should stop sticking your head inside your ass:
"I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."
"God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam [Hussein], which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."
We are no longer fighting a great enemy, we are asserting a great principle: that the talents and dreams of average people - their warm human hopes and loves - should be rewarded by freedom and protected by peace. We are defending the nobility of normal lives, lived in obedience to God and conscience, not to government.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
What makes you think a totally self-centered anarchist would be fittest?
Good response! Now I would ask again, why be nice, particularly if you know (or believe) that you would fare better as such? What stops you? Conscience? Where or how does that play a role in the evolutionary theory? Do you feel you should be nice because it's the right thing to do? Did evolution build this circuit into the human system? Again, what if I know I could do really well (individually, and in a materialistic sense overall, at least in the short term) as a self-centered anarchist then what is stopping me (or you)?
Oh so evolution has been proven as a fact now???
Because fossils showing a progression of types of animals and plants have been found in rock strata which have been carefully dated in a range of ways show that life on this planet has changed over billions of years. Because analysis DNA has shown that all species are related, and the way that they are related is by descent from a common ancestor. Because we have actually observed evolution happen, both in microbes and in bird and insect species.
If it is been proven then why is there such a debate over the evidence, or lack there of?
Because evolution (unlike many other types of science) directly contradicts many people's religious beliefs. Without those beliefs many people would feel insecure and that life is without meaning. So, instead of taking a mature attitude and realising that they have to accept facts and come up with new ways to cope with reality, many take comfort from vain attempts to attack the evidence for evolution.
Much of these attacks are based on simple ignorance, but many are from a plain refusal to accept a level of evidence that any rational person would accept in any other area of science, philosophy, or life. For example, some interpretations of the bible imply that the Earth is 'fixed' at the centre of the universe, but I don't see Christians rushing to dismiss the evidence of astronomy...
We're ALL made in China?
No wonder the quality of humanity is crappy and the value is so low. We're made in sweatshops.
Seriously, given the distribution of non-homo-sapien homonid fossils, it seems we evolved all over Africa and Eurasia. Given the enormous timescales, the apes probably walked across continents several times (but never reached the Americas or Antarctica since we havent found ANY fossils there). So we evolved in the Eastern Hemisphere but nowhere in particular. Giving a single location for the evolution of mankind is similar to creationism (THUD, thus fell Adam from the sky).
Another issue is the chromosome study. There are around 1000 variations of the Y-chromosome which is supposed to pass unchanged from father to son. This means the original homo sapiens group was around 2000 people from which we all evolved, unless you can say the Y-chromosome mutated around 999 times and survived in the past 200,000 years.
I think evolution didnt come from a single couple (Adam-type theory) but rather a collection of communities. Its quite possible we have genes from homonids which were distinct species back then from us (Neandertal, Florensis, even Erectus). While the communities evolved on their own in different parts of the world, there was sufficient transfer of genes among them to keep them all interbreedable until a very successful community took over the others. This makes sense during the ice age whereby communities were small and interbred frequently, but all the homonids travelled widely enough to be in contact with each other occasionally.
So did mankind come out of Africa or some part of Asia or Australia? Depends on which homonid ancestor you're willing to label THE ancestor.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
"life is too complicated to arise by chance, right?"
nah, not at all. You see, all we need is that, somehow, millions of "atoms" get together to form a self-replicating molecule and from there on, let the little fucker go on its "survival of the fittest" ego trip.
Luckily, a short while after the Big Bang expanded nothing into something and this into the Universe, these "atom" things were pretty abundant and began combining in the most crazy ways to produce the most crazy things, including humans, their privileged brains and self-conscience...
nothing like letting a little nothing and chaos to do their job...
I don't feel like it...
But of course, science and religion have nothing in common, right?
It's nice to see that you personally know more about the workings of the human body than all of the greatest minds in medicine combined. Could you just humor me a bit, though, and tell me what the deal with introns is? I've really been dying to know. Also, if you have any spare time, what's the deal with mitochondrial DNA? Is it protein synthesis cheat codes? I bet it's cheat codes.
English is easier said than done.
From an evolutionary standpoint, I would say that people who have a moral conscience and a well-developed sense of right and wrong are more likely to mate and have children. Thus, brain structures that support empathy and sympathy are an inheritable survival trait. We are very social creatures, so it's not surprising that we've evolved to live and breed as part of a functioning society.
morality != religion
Where did you find "morality = religion" in any of my posts or the questions that I posed? Nowhere. I am not making any argument for religion in my posts, just asking certain questions of those who propose that we should be nice "just because". Thanks for disregarding my post yet replying anyway...
BTW, I did read your response, FWIW... Where do we come by this "moral conscience"?
Hmm.
Given the general "repent and be redeemed" theme of the New Testament, I think it's more likely that those 144,000 are supposed to be given some special honour. My Christian mythology is a little rusty though.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
My message is simple: Embrace science, reject religion and it's false promises. The afterlife is a lie. When you die that is it, you're dead.
This isn't a very scientific point of view. Science is about doubt, so how can you definitively say that the afterlife is a lie?
Not that I believe in an afterlife, but a true scientist would have an open mind, even about these things.....
What we should be embracing is neither something called 'science' or 'religion' but a mature ability to doubt things, to not accept dogma from anyone and a desire to find things out for ourselves.
If want to see some nationalism, go talk to some Koreans. China didn't close in on themselves, they were one of the more open Asian trading partners. You are thinking of Korea, the hermit Kingdom or maybe Japan. Reason why there were more expansive western expansion rather than eastern expansion, is because China/Asia had stuff that weren't available in Europe like coffee, tea and spices, and the lack of religious freedom in Europe which led to colonists moving on to new territories.
I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Nazism and Communism, and the former isn't atheistic at all. It's kind of hard to kill anyone, or for that matter do anything at all "in the name of" a non-belief. Mao didn't believe in the geocentric model of the solar system; that doesn't mean that he killed in the name of heliocentrism and that we should slander astronomers.
English is easier said than done.
Erm, Hitler was catholic through and through. Making it 50 million each.
I am trolling
You don't have to be anything. As you stated, you could just as well be not nice (and plenty people are).
The rest of us want you to be nice, for our sakes. This may not affect you at all.
You think these ultimate questions --- which have been pondered in some form or another since time immemorial --- will be solved on Slashdot on a Friday night?
Science and atheism are very different things. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are not implying they are the same in the above statement.
Science requires very little faith. Faith in the tools we build for observation; faith in our ability to record data accurately; faith in a universe with some degree of causality. As these are all (apart from the first, maybe) things which people take for granted anyway, science requires little more faith than is required to cross the road unscathed. (We can see and hear that there are no cars coming; we hope that this means we won't get flattened by a silent and invisible truck.)
As for atheism, what do you need faith in to not believe something?
the layman's guide to computer science
Thankfully you are correct. But I am not sure how killing babies has anything to do with where man originated.
Now back to the topic while staying within this thread on religion. If you read the second chapter of Genesis you will discover that man originated in Asia. The river Euphrates is mentioned as is Assyria and "Ethiopia" (which was actually in current northern Iraq, not the current Ethiopia in Africa). So is this a case of science proving religion again?
Interestingly the Bible doesn't deal with any scientific inaccuracies. It doesn't mention any of the common beliefs that were incorrect (such as the three elements of earth, water, and fire which would have been prevalent during some of the time of the writing of the Bible. Nor is a flat earth mentioned anywhere in the Bible. In the book of Job, it mentions that there is nothing at the north pole (Job 26:7). Science has proven this to be accurate. Archeology has found many of the cities and civilizations mentioned in the Bible and shown the Biblical accounts to be accurate as well.
So this just might be on the right track to find the origination of man. Since several have asked what are you going to think if science proves God doesn't exist, I will ask "what if it is proven that the Bible is accurate on the origination of man?"
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
In regards to the influx of Asian culture in the Pacific NW - it's mostly only in Seattle and Portland. Everywhere else in Washington/Oregon/Idaho is pretty damn whitebread.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
...and just to respond to some other post I saw while glancing through and skipping over the inevitable and pointless ID arguments, they're not Filipinos either and not really very oriental (but got some nice looking wimmin).
Besides, if I remember my Geology correctly, back then the Indonesian Archeopelagic Plate was tacked on to ("Land-bridged") the West European Plate. So I'm descended from honkies !!!
Whew.
Nah, you're getting to be an old fart and a few tits don't excite you as they once did.
The two speak different languages, eat different foods, and have somewhat different cultures
It's even more complex than that. Many towns would speak mutually unintelligible dialects, even if they're only 15-20 miles away from each other. Did you know that there are several million natives in Guangdong province that does not speak a word of Cantonese?
What most Westerners think is the "Chinese" language and culture is actually that of the southern Chinese particularly from the Guangdong region of China. The Chinese written language is what unites all the people in China.
This is mostly due to the fact that almost all early migrants from China to the West were from southern Chinese provinces (Guangdong, Fujian, etc.) In most Chinatowns in the West, all of the older people will speak their native Southern (mostly Cantonese-derived) dialect. It has been this way for the last 150-200 years. Of course, this will change as more immigrants from mainland China and Taiwan migrate to the West.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
When people say Pacific Northwest they are usually speaking Seattle, Portland and Vancouver BC. But I agree, other than the I5 corridor, the rest is pretty colorless.
What criteria are you using?
If you just use genes, then humans have largely similar DNA to mice.
Basically, the problem is that your has no standard against which to measure. For example, how about "there is X% as much variation across all humans as across all dogs". It still doesn't tell people too much, since they don't really know how much genetic variation is in dogs. But at least they know dogs do have much more varying appearances than humans.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
It does? Where? You know that how? Instinct? Statistics? Are you a statistician or do you 'just know' that the above is the case? If so, how do you 'just know'? Personal experience? Maybe. Maybe you came to those conclusions for yourself via experience but don't say that it's evolution that makes you act this way because you can't 'prove' it...
It's all subjective isn't it (even 'religion')?
It is all subjective; based upon the individuals own experience (religious, non-religious or otherwise [whatever that may mean]). Hence, I say that it must take a lot of faith to be an atheist--proclaiming science to be the answer to everything, when in fact theories are always subject to change...
The 'belief' in the 'realities' of science are no better or worse then those of the dogmatic religionist...
I know what I believe, but where does that leave you?
Religion should not be in churches or any other place, it should be erradicated, it should be labeled as a thing for non intelligent minds.
Its real simple:
1. Science tells us how things work (present, past, and hopefully future things)
2. Religion tells us how we should act.
In the past there was NO Science and religions had to do both of the above. Now we have Science, which does a better job of item 1 but can NOT EVEN approach item 2. It is not really possible for Science to tell us what is right and wrong.
Religion is still important for item 2..
GSG
BTW, I did read your response, FWIW... Where do we come by this "moral conscience"?
I suspect that it's a behavior that first spontaneously appears when you have brain structures that are capable of self-awareness. In other words, "I see that this creature is suffering. I also see that this creature is like me. Therefore, I could be the one suffering." Of course, once that person has a child, they will try to teach them the same behavior, so the meme becomes self-propogating. Once society arises, there's added cultural pressure to act within certain non-destructive boundaries.
Have you ever noticed that it's almost physically painful to see someone tortured? I think that's because we've evolved with "the golden rule" built right in to our brains. In order to short-circuit that response, the victim has to be dehumanized first. It's hard for us to do bad things to someone we identify with. It's a lot easier when someone looks different, or doesn't speak our language.
Of course, in some people, these parts of the brain aren't properly working. Sociopaths, I think is the clinical term. I doubt they tend to breed well, reinforcing the selective pressure to evolve better-socialized humans.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
An atheist who believes nothing then? Not even science? Tell me how much sense that makes...
I'm not talking about economic closure. I'm talking about exapnsionism closure. Jhong Huh was the last great Chiense explorer. After him, there were none. This is what fueled Western culture to be thrown across the globe. The fact that China just gave up on expansionism. I'm sure if it were the other way around people all over the globe would be using Chinese as the International language. But the fact remains, they stopped exploring, that was their downfall.
Physics is imagination in a straight jacket. ~John Moffat
Everything has its time and place.
Science had its time before religion started to explain the natural world phenomena. In the beggining humans were primitive tool users, usings empirically derived techniques such as using sticks to fish tasty ants from their mounds, before we came up with language and its children, morality and religion.
Religion has progressed a lot since those times. Since the rise of modern metallurgy, there has been little parallel development in the sciences: we learned to mix some different things together in different ways, and construct new shapes that were a little stronger. Well, we've been mixing things together and fitting them into shapes for thousands of years.
It is because of this that Science has had its time. Of course, our current society structure is not optimal, it is not the best but it is better. Religion might also not explain all behaviors we see in terms of local physical law but instead of going backwards and beginning to attribute them again to this "regular statistical behavior" humans should continue to develop knowledge of the grander, more specific purpose of things.
I do not have a position as neutral as yours about Science. For me, science sucks, all kinds of science are stupid, hubritic vanities and do not have any fundaments of purpose. Science has been used only as means of population control, this can be seen now on your current government (if you are from anywhere that uses fertilizers or rotational agriculture). Your president is seeding terror on you by means of empirically devised weapons. And this is because your politics and your society is deeply rooted on humanist, scientific grounds.
Take a look at your dollar bills "E Pluribus Unum", how can a country be cosmopolite if there is such a dependence on one particular branch of knowledge, namely the scientific/mathematic technique of Addition?
I repeat, science sucks, someone will surely tell me that science does not suck by itself but it is men that use it for their own convenience. But, the way I see it, that has been the role of science since human created it. It is a tool (and very powerful) to create and control large masses of people.
Science should not be in schools or any other place, it should be eradicated, it should be labeled as a thing for non intelligent minds. Clearly, our only salvation is to look away from the gross physical and seek the greater meaning of things.
[[A note from the Satirist: I'm not attacking you because of your anti-religious stance. I'm attacking you because your anti-religious stance appears to be based on one fact that is unverifiable at best (the relative dates of the origins of science and religion) and a string of blind assertions that aren't particularly in tune with reality either. You also make the implicit assumption that religion and science are somehow zero-sum and that destroying one will advance the other, which I find highly unlikely.
So, good sir, don't be offended because I object to your stance, be offended because I don't flinch from calling you a fucking idiot on a public forum, and hoping that you never, ever reproduce.
P.S. I'm not an english major myself, but I imagine your second-term english teacher (I'll be charitable as to your level of education in my language) is probably rolling in her grave right now.]]
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Most atheists and agnostics realize this early on, developing a set of ethics that usually makes them a lot better members of society than many/most self proclaimed 'Christians' are. They are good because that's what is right to do, not simply because they fear punishment from some god. That makes them a hell of a lot better people in my book than someone like you who would go on a rampage if your fear of god didn't keep you in check.
"Because fossils showing a progression of types of animals and plants have been found in rock strata which have been carefully dated in a range of ways show that life on this planet has changed over billions of years."
Sadly a lack of transitional forms in this area leads me to doubt the fossil record.
The Radioisotope dating method also has its problems and has widely varying results.
"Because analysis DNA has shown that all species are related, and the way that they are related is by descent from a common ancestor."
It could mean that DNA is the code by which living things are made. Evidence of a Designer who created an information system for encoding life? As you have the ask the question how did DNA evolve, which is about as easy to answer as who did the "complex" single cell first come about.
"Because we have actually observed evolution happen, both in microbes and in bird and insect species."
This is the macro/micro evolution debate. A pug mates with a beagle you get a puggle. But its still a dog. You never get a cat. A Zebra with a Donkey, you get a Zonkey but its still part of the Horse kind. And the lack of transitional fossils suggest that these gradual changes did not occur as Darwin theorizes.
"Much of these attacks are based on simple ignorance, but many are from a plain refusal to accept a level of evidence that any rational person would accept in any other area of science, philosophy, or life."
You can pretty much turn this statement on its head. The problem really is the not the evidence, but how the evidence is interpreted. If you exclude the possibility that there is a God or somekind of intelligence behind what we can observe today, as many scientists do, of course there would have to have to be somekind of Big Bang Evolutionery process to explain all of what we see. However, if, as some equally qualified scientists believe, that there is a God or Intelligent Designer you can interpret the fossil evidence, geological evidence, DNA and all the rest of it to show that we are here by design and that it defies rational thinking to think it could be otherwise.
Also there are some interesting theories from PhD Scientists that show how our galaxy or even our planet could be at the center of the universe. But as per the previous paragraph, if someone is trying to defend an athiestic worldview, then these theories would have to be rejected in favor of models that support the Big Bang (as Carl Sagan devoted an entire book doing). However, as a Christian for example, your worldview allows for the fact that God tells us we are at the center of cosmos, and why not, if he was there when it was created he would know and could tell us. In light of the Christian worldview this is reasonable. If whiteholes, blackholes, general relativity and quantized red shifts are your thing it makes pretty interesting stuff
So as always it gets back to the old chicken or egg situation. I appreciated your response to my question though.
Not 100% sure of the source of this website, as I'm also not sure of your sources. But this is interesting if true:
http://www.geocities.com/chiniquy/Hitler.html
My message is simple: Embrace science, reject religion and it's false promises. The afterlife is a lie. When you die that is it, you're dead.
You think you are a nihilist but your message is confused. If life is without meaning, then why be kind to your fellow man? What does it acheive? Wouldn't it be more clever to out compete or even kill him and get the most out of your life? Your reflex notion of treating your neighbor kindly without a thought of reward is Judeo-Christian. Considering the source, why don't you reject that idea as well? I am glad that many of history's greatest scientists and mathematicians are not like you. Most were motivated by believing the universe to be a place of order, but also beauty and meaning, and approached it with some humility. You embrace their results but reject their methods. Merry Christmas!
an ill wind that blows no good
"Kudos to the funny comeback however everything about the human body is needed in order for us to survive except for the appendix it seems. We couldn't have one thing develop without having something else as well, which goes against evolution which implies gradual changes. We need all of our organs and all the capabilities that our cells have to differentiate, multiply, copy dna, etc. is all needed at the same time so gradual changes would not suffice for us to exist based solely on evolution."
Good point! After all, we can't survive without all of our limbs, eyes, lungs, kidneys, etc. Oh, wait, yes we can.
BTW - evolution isn't based on gradual changes. It's based on genetic mutations that can result in small or big changes. Those changes remain in the gene pool if they aid in the reproductive success of the species.
Also, I can't really understand you intelligent designers. You say life is too complex to have "just happened." Yet, you're happy to believe that your creator, with the power and complex knowledge necessary to create life, has always just existed...
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust",
Yes, the "In God We Trust" was placed on the money in the 50s to show how America was better than the "godless commies." It was a mistake, but one that will never be rectified, because no one wants to be painted as "voting against God."
how can a country be cosmopolite if there is a predominant religion
The same way every other civilized country does. Hate to tell you this, but most people believe in a god.
which I bet your constitution embraces.
The Consititution of the United States doesn't. It doesn't mention gods at all. It specifically provides for freedom of religion and forbids the establishment of one. It was written by deists, agnostics, and athiests. And back in the 18th century it was evangelicals who were pushing for seperate of church and state since they were afraid that episcopalians would force their religion on them. Ironic isn't it?
You don't know what you're talking about here. You should get your facts straight, and then make a more coherent argument than "It sucks." Because you look fool.
I even tend to agree with your general argument, but you're making all athiests look bad. So do us all a favor, and shut up.
You're good! :-)
What compels you to be nice? Experience or conscience? It sounds like you would say experience, if so what is conscience?
> What is nice? Does nice == good? Were does it fit in the 'survival of the fittest' theory? The only reason to be 'nice' is to get ahead, to survive longer? How bleak... What is a conscience then? A mere survival mechanism?
You think these ultimate questions --- which have been pondered in some form or another since time immemorial --- will be solved on Slashdot on a Friday night?
ROTFLOL! But of course, don't you? What a better way to spend a weekend when you're stuck on-call then finding answers to the mysteries of life, or at least asking questions?
> Science seems to require a lot of faith. It must take a lot of faith to be an atheist...
Science and atheism are very different things. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are not implying they are the same in the above statement.
Science requires very little faith. Faith in the tools we build for observation; faith in our ability to record data accurately; faith in a universe with some degree of causality. As these are all (apart from the first, maybe) things which people take for granted anyway, science requires little more faith than is required to cross the road unscathed. (We can see and hear that there are no cars coming; we hope that this means we won't get flattened by a silent and invisible truck.)
As for atheism, what do you need faith in to not believe something?
But do atheists believe in anything? It seems like the 'revelations' of science certainly excite them to no end, and there's no question they certainly use it as a stick to beat down other viewpoints...
Therefore, I remark that it requires a lot of faith to be an atheist--you have to believe in that which can never be proven (theories)...
It would be quite hypocritical to bash others over the head with something you don't even believe yourself, wouldn't it? Or would that type of question even concern the atheist?
So which is it? Asia or Africa? ;-)
Atheists existed long before science. I don't need to make sense of it, it's an observational fact. (I believe that Thales of Mesopotamia is the first one to leave a written record of his justifications...he is said to have asserted that everything was water.)
Observational facts don't need to be justified. They just are. Your theories about WHY they are need justification. (I.e., you need to demonstrate that the theories don't contradict the facts.)
If your theory says that one must believe in science to be an atheist, then your theory apparently is contradicted by an observational fact. At that point the appropriate action is to adjust the theory so that it is no longer in contradiction. When your theories start to get burdensomely complex, look for a simpler one that still fits the evidence.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
t is not really possible for Science to tell us what is right and wrong.
Religion is still important for item 2.
I disagree, Right and Wrong are completely subjective. There is no absolute right and absolute wrong. No system, be it religion, or science, can tell a person how to behave, it is up to the individual to decide how to act. There in lies the problem, religion believes that all people should act and feel the same, whereas human behavior is complex an intricate. Religion is basically one or a select few people who believe they have the absolute answer to a completely relative question, and religious people spend most of their lives living like sheep and convincing others to do the same through fear and coersion. There is no one set of beliefs which is right, each person must choose to act how they feel is the proper way and experiance the consequences, weather those consequences are viewed by ones self as good or bad.
-kaplanfx
Visualize Whirled Peas
If you believe Bush actually said those things, you're dumber than any religious nut.
Oh shit, I'm saying Bush isn't totally evil and stupid! -1 troll for me!
Personally I tend to try to act nice because I want other people to like me. Other people are allowed to have other reasons, but if they aren't nice to me (or if I don't believe that they are likely to be nice to me) then:
a) I won't like them, and
b) I'll be much less interested in being nice to them.
This is probably the basis of tribal cultures, where the members of the tribe tend to be "nice" to each other, in the tribally approved manner, but are likely to be very rude to outsiders...or perhaps not, depending on how they feel towards them.
N.B.: the tribal people MAY be friendly to outsiders, but they feel no OBLIGATION to be so. Obligations apply to how they deal with each other.
N.B.:PS: these comments are probably an overgeneralization, but they are a generally "good first guess" at the tribal rules.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's true, but OTOH, the big two religions are Christianity & Islam [...]
According to the chart you linked to, there are 2.1 billion and 1.3 billion followers of these, respectively. Yet there are about 6.6 billion people in the world, leaving around 3.2 billion people, just under half the planet, who believe otherwise. I'm also sure there are many Christians and Muslims who don't truly believe that non-believers are going to Hell. How many this is, who can say?
In any case, the poster that started this sub-thread seems to believe that religion and science are mutually exclusive. I don't think this is necessarily true. Religions that find themselves threatened by systematic exploration and testing of the world around us would certainly be so, but this is not an inherent property of belief.
"2. Religion tells us how we should act."
Poppycock. Religous morals spring from already established social norms. Read "The Science of Good and Evil".
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
We're not Iran, or Saudi Arabia, nowhere near in fact, but the small "born again" ultra-conservative religious groups do have a disproportiate amount of influence at all level of government in the United States. This small group does not make any bones about what their overall objective is. The abolishment of the seperation of church and state and the creation of government based on their version of Christianity. You can hear it when they remark "There's not such thing as seperation of church and state," or "America was founded as a Christian nation with the Bible as the source of the Consitution." These are... well... lies.
We can see their influence in the funneling of tax dollars to religious purposes ("Faith-Based Intiatives"), the retargeting money away from condom distribution and family planning in international AIDS programs, even though all studies show that condoms and family planning must be used along with abstaince and "being faithful", because condoms "interfere with God's will." We public school boards attempting to teach Christian creationism. That's just two examples that came to head immediately, but there are many many more.
It may be more backhanded than say the Spanish Inquisition, but the goals and the movement are still there.
Note that even in the "Seven Daughters of Eve" series of books, the team admits that the "out of Africa" theory is only a theory, and that there are other possible interpretations of the data.
From what I remember, "Out Of Asia" is a scenario that matches the data.
Pretty interesting.
The ironic thing is that these are the specimens that evolution is ready to dispose of too.
(Yeah, there'll be a few "I'm a balanced slashdot reader with teh girlfriend" posts. I'm talking about the macroscopic average)
Here is a fairly good explination of several different theories of the all seeing eye, including both Joseph Campbell and Illuminati.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_022.html
There's no place like ~/
Summary: Therefore we conclude that we really have no idea. The dates are really guesses. The brain that enabled them to eat meat is still missing. All we have is a tooth or two but that doesn't mean we cannot construct an entire picture of this creatures' friends, neighbourhood, what colors he or she preferred and what they had for breakfast. But that is science Jim ;-)
Karma? Sorry, i don't believe in superstition. http://talk.thinkingmatters.org.nz
I suspect that it's a behavior that first spontaneously appears when you have brain structures that are capable of self-awareness. In other words, "I see that this creature is suffering. I also see that this creature is like me. Therefore, I could be the one suffering."...
And, upon what do you base this hypothesis? Wait, 'hypothesis'? That sounds akin to 'belief' to me. How did you come to this belief (or hypothesis if you wish)? I would chance a guess that it's based upon the 'revelations' of others, probably teachers or articles that you have read, written by knowledgeable folk--scientists? Someone has described to you how the brain develops and you have based your hypothesis or 'belief' on that information. In other words, you're placing your faith in what they've told you. Since you brought up Christianity in the first place (in your first reply), whereas I brought no religion into the discussion, I suppose it is ok that I use that term?
Now, I do not know whether you are an atheist, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, or any of the above. However, I do want to point out that you have created this belief system around something--and I will term that something to be science as it is generally referred to today. If you have no firsthand experience on how the brain develops in a human being, you must be basing your hypothesis on the words and works of others. Therefore you have 'faith' in what they have stated.
How is this different from the Christians that you disparaged in your earlier reply? Fundamentally, it is the same principle--belief in information dispensed to you by others: writings or otherwise...
Sadly a lack of transitional forms in this area leads me to doubt the fossil record. What lack? Check here:h tml
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.
The Radioisotope dating method also has its problems and has widely varying results.
Not when it's used correctly. You establish certain timeframes for a given isotope, and within those it's highly accurate. You cannot used C14 dating for things beyond some 50 thousand years because of its relatively short half life, but you can use potassium/argon dating, and others.
The problem with inserting God into the theories is not that God can't exist. He certainly can, but it's dead weight. It's not a necessary component for the model to exist. Furthermore, if you assume that God has always existed and wasn't himself created, I can equally assume that something, but not a being of any kind, always existed which caused the universe as we know it to come into being.
Also there are some interesting theories from PhD Scientists that show how our galaxy or even our planet could be at the center of the universe.
I'm an astronomy minor and I've never heard of anything like this. What I have heard, however, is that the Universe does not appear to have any center. All galaxies (outside of their respective local groups) are moving away from each other. If you look at our place in the universe and see that everything seems to be receding from us, as Hubble did when he discovered cosmic expansion, he was thrown for a loop. The idea that we were the center of the universe fell out of favor as heliocentrism rose. The solution to this problem is pretty easy though. Imagine yourself in a galaxy a hundred thousand light years from here. Well, the Milky Way is moving away from you, and so is every other galaxy. Is this galaxy also at the center of the universe? No. The universe has no center because everything is moving away from everything else.
As for the Earth, we absolutely know that we are not in the center of our galaxy. We can look through our galaxy and plainly see this. We can also look at the structure of other galaxies and see that the types of stars around us, the orientation of the stars towards each other, are like those in the discs of other galaxies. We can "see" the supermassive black hole in our own galaxy, and at the center of nearly every galaxy. We are nowhere near this.
As I said in an earlier post, there are no absolute certainties in science. It always allows for something to be overturned, but evolution and some of these basic observations about the structure of the universe and our place in it, are about as certain as can come. The precise details of their workings are especially likely to be overturned or in some cases just plain dsicovered in time, but as a general idea, we think we know with a great deal of certainty that evolution and certain features of astronomy are correct.
The problem has always been that there are two sorts of strong evidence: humans are almost all alike, and humans evolved in place. (E.g. early Australians were H. erectus; later they had mixed erectus and sap. characteristics; eventually the erectus features faded and vanished, leaving pure H. sap.) Naturally each had adherents who preferred to discount the others' evidence. The two have certainly seemed contradictory, up until now.
They were both right. What spread out of Africa was not actual populations of H. sap. etc., supplanting H. erectus populations that preceded them. Rather, successful gene complexes that define H. sap. spread out of Africa, upgrading local populations in-place. (Think of them as software patches.) Hardly anybody had to migrate any farther than the next village over. People married into neighboring villages, bringing their genetic advances with them, and the next generation brought them to the next village along. Of course successful genes could spread back to Africa, too, but Africa had the most variation, so produced more of the successful genes, and packaged them with more other, complementary genes.
Contrast this with the spread of agriculture into Europe, where there's evidence of farmers actually supplanting hunter/gatherers; and of course the historical record, with wholesale slaughters and genocides. (No doubt there was plenty of slaughtering earlier, but it takes technology, language, and civilized infantilization for genocides to be conducted efficiently.)
It doesn't seem like there are many other species in which this process would have worked. Bears, maybe.
"It does? Where? You know that how? Instinct? Statistics? Are you a statistician or do you 'just know' that the above is the case? If so, how do you 'just know'? Personal experience? Maybe. Maybe you came to those conclusions for yourself via experience but don't say that it's evolution that makes you act this way because you can't 'prove' it.."
I'm not a statistician, but I have read books written by scholars who study various fields from human biology to evolutionary psychology, even statistics. They do a pretty good job of providing evidence and logical reasons to believe what crazy things they are proposing.
Scientists are the only group of people who regularly say "Go ahead, prove me wrong, and I will believe you." With religious beliefs, the believer will say, "I refuse to believe you, even if you do prove me wrong" (e.g. any miracle listed in the Bible or any other religious text). In science, you really never can prove anything. You can only *disprove*. In religion, you can neither prove nor disprove.
The source of information in religion is called 'revelation'. You can't figure it out yourself; it can only be revealed to you. Science accepts information arrived at through logic, stuff that you can figure out.
I have no problem with religion or revelation. I'm a pretty religious guy myself. I have a few revelations that I believe in, but I prefer to go to the source myself, rather than rely on second-hand information.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You didn't point out a lot of European thinking, art, crafts, history arose in the thousand years before the Dark Ages (of Intelligent Design)+400 years by those Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.
So we had a large amount of development, a millennia bat to the frontal lobes slumber for the Dark Ages, and the rediscovery and finally new innovations.. Makes you wonder what was lost before the Greeks and Egyptians... Of course, this entirely ignores the almost continuous 4K years of Chinese history that should be much more complete than the European tales.
I don't really believe people "started" thinking only 4K years ago considering how fast we can develop with only 400 to 1K years. Makes you really want to believe in Atlantis of 10K years past.
You still have to trust those doing the peer review that they are honest
Those doing the peer review are also subject to peer review.
Researchers argue all the time in scientific journals. One article will come out disagreeing with the results of another. It happens all the time. Pick up a psych or med journal some time and you'll see what I'm talking about.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I can understand Intelligent Design. I think it would be much more understandable if the people pushing it didn't have their bible in their hands while screaming about it.
The way I look at it is there are many things I have started work on and just left there. Let's just say that is how Intelligent Design happened. Something larger than us started this little project called the Universe and got bored and left if to do on it's own. Now we are a few billion years in the future and this is what we got.
Scientists have theories. Many of which can't and won't be proven, but they are taught as gospel. Sadly there are very few humble scientists who will say that they don't know and still need to work things out. They instead say, this is the truth until proven otherwise.
I am fascinated by science, by history, and by what can be learned, but until a new universe develops we will never know how this one began.
But I am not sure how killing babies has anything to do with where man originated.
And I don't see what abortion has to do with killing babies. Last I checked post-natal abortion was illegal (sadly, in the case of Congress).
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Their faith is so unflinching that the scientists they worship do not loose any credibility in their eyes even when they suddenly completely contradict what they said earlier.
You might sound more credible if you could master the basics of English, such as the proper spelling of the word "lose". Here, I'll give you a helpful hint:
"Lose" is what you did with your keys when you can't find them. "Loose" is what your momma was, and why you're here today.
HTH.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
What compels you to be nice?
Nothing does. I choose not to rape, torture, murder or steal because that's not the sort of way I want to behave. It's entirely up to me; no god gets a vote in that decision.
I really don't see what's so hard to understand about this. Every time some religious type asks me this sort of question I get nervous, because the implication is that the only reason HE doesn't rape/torture/murder/steal is because he's afraid of being punished in some kind of mythical afterlife. Who wants to hang out with a guy who only refrains from evil acts out of fear of punishment?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
1. If there is no God there is no standard. Everything is relative.
2. If everything is relative then you cannot prove that one is "alive" other than yourself.
3. You can't prove existance
4. Why exist, if you do, why not live for yourself since in your relative world you are the only one that matters. Reproduction is the sole meaning of life, nothing else, live sex die.
I think most of us would agree that one or more of the above is false. If thats true then there must be SOMETHING other than ourselves.
One either understands the empirical data and the theories which explain them, or one does not. "Belief", like your belief in God, isn't involved.
I find it odd whenever I come across this line of reasoning from the religious who attempt to find fault with a particular field of science, usually evolution. It sounds like you are saying, "Evolution is invalid because it's just like my religion."
/.: why the hell am I here?
You confuse a general trust in the empirical method, which is falsifiable, with faith in things which are inherently unprovable. This is apples and oranges, by any stretch of the imagination. Trying to equate the two makes no logical sense.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
You have two choices in figuring out the origin of the most basic form of life. It either spontaneously arose from some soup of chemicals we haven't quite figured out yet, or it was created by some other form of life, thought, or energy (or whatever).
So, you have a bit of a leap of faith in either case. You either have a single leap, which is that some chemicals could get together and accidentially (a one in billions of years shot) come up with a stable enough reaction to be the basis of life.....Or, you have the other flying leap of faith which requires you to invent an entire mythos, a super-being of a father figure, (and of course beg off the question of the origination of THAT life form -- its Turtles all the way down I suppose).
Personally, I choose the former. If not that, then perhaps its really all about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Maybe the Hokey-Pokey really is what its all about.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I'm just answering one question. > the "complex" single cell first come about. Simple. There was an experiment a while back where someone created life (oil dropplets which absorbed light and spilt). So If you expand his expirement over millions of years and millions of combinations eventualy one must from the cell. correct?
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/12/16/dna_mutation_ account.html
as an aside, if this is true, I wonder what white supremacists say?? (chuckle)
We all know only the Mormons go to heaven.. Everybody else goes to hell.. unless god's armies need beefing up.
Stephen Mansfield, author of The Faith of George W. Bush, goes on to say: "Not long after, Bush called James Robison (a prominent minister) and told him, 'I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for President.' " Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention heard Bush say something similar: "Among the things he said to us was: I believe that God wants me to be president, but if that doesn't happen, it's OK.' "
Source
We are no longer fighting a great enemy, we are asserting a great principle: that the talents and dreams of average people - their warm human hopes and loves - should be rewarded by freedom and protected by peace. We are defending the nobility of normal lives, lived in obedience to God and conscience, not to government.
Source
In Dilip Hiro's book "Secrets and Lies," Hiro quotes the Tel Aviv newspaper Ha'aretz of June 24, 2003, reporting that Bush told Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas: "God told me to strike at Al Qaida (sic) and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did."
Source
Of course, perhaps you can provide some sources that state otherwise?
/.: why the hell am I here?
I heard about those, there is the 1953 Miller Laboratory Experiment with the amino acids and that one recently where scientists think that life may have started in deep space http://web99.arc.nasa.gov/~astrochm/vesicle.html which sounds more like the one you are referring to.
I think there are problems with these types of experiments, because it takes the application lots of intelligence to prove that life started without intelligence.
Then you have the problems of the statistics of just 1 cell coming about by chance and the numbers are obscene, 10 to the 100th power or something like that.
Worse still you have the chicken and egg situation again. Proteins can not form without DNA, DNA can not form with proteins.
On the other hand, God has seeded the earth with all this "evidence" (geological records, useless organs, similar features across species, etc.) that all these things happened on their own. Seems to me that God would rather we not believe in him and that belief in God is against His will. How can you be sure that the non-believers won't be rewarded for making good use of the rational abilities He so kindly supplied us with? Or that believers won't be punished for ignoring the vast pile of consistent evidence before them?
Oh yeah, because that was really religion and all, and totally wasn't caused by people distorting their beliefs to fulfill personal political goals. I think it's silly to describe a nation by it's religion, because it is not universal, no matter how hard it tries to be (take a look at Iran, they've got ba'hais) unless you are saying that the country generally follows a specific religion. In that case, the US is most definitely a Christian nation, as well over half of the nation or more would describe itself as Christian. But I digress. A nation should not in any way, shape or form be governed, judged, or addressed by its religious beliefs, no matter how pervasive.
I am Spartacus
The answer is pretty complicated but I can condense it into a slashdot sentence. You do it because it's in your own self interests to do it.
For more information about the evolutionary reasons for this, I'd suggest reading "The Origins of Virtue" by Matt Ridley.
Because life would be nicer for all of us.
Hey thanks for the link I'll take a read
Here's one for you http://www.trueorigin.org/ca_rh_03.asp
"Furthermore, if you assume that God has always existed and wasn't himself created, I can equally assume that something, but not a being of any kind, always existed which caused the universe as we know it to come into being."
I agree Out of Nothing comes Nothing. Something had to always have existed out side of the dimension of time and space. What you call it depends on your worldview.
"Something larger than us started this little project called the Universe" And even if that was the case how did the something larger come into exsistance ?
Actually, that isn't entirely true about being nice as an evolutionary advantage. Human and primate societies rely on conflict as a means of natural selection. I don't mean they kill each other, I mean they compete for sexual primacy i.e. genetic propagation. From a natural selection prespective, this is the same as killing, it is stopping genetic continuity. While humans have developed a civilization that accepts 'orders' of sexual activity (ugly people meeting each other and having ugly little children) in the 'natural' world, sexual primacy i.e. alpha male status, is a monopoly.
now, about the agnostics/atheists, I totally agree. I was a fundamentalist for a little while, then got into liberal catholic theology, which basically made that exact point, that if you are being good b/c you fear hell, then you are not really being good, you are just being extorted morally. It is interesting, because when a christian morality admits that, it really changes the dynamic of the whole thing.
They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!
You live in Gainesville? You wouldn't happen to be on the Charter Review Commitee, would you?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Certainly I would agree: If the only reason you DON'T do those horrendous things is for fear of punishment, then I would not want to hang out with you either!
Still, something in your understandings and beliefs compels you to act civily, what is it? What has lead you to choose not to commit the atrocities you mentioned? My point can't be so tremedously difficult to see can it? You didn't form your concepts of 'nice' (as everyone has so kindly put it) in a vacuum did you? Of course not...
Conscience, knowledge imparted to you, and experience has lead you to certain beliefs, have they not?
Right, because alleged vested interests always imply falsehood:
I have a vested interest in diamonds, and I think diamonds are harder than steel, therefore diamonds are not harder than steel.
http://outcampaign.org/
It's trickier than that. It's highly unlikely that there was only one woman. (Your post doesn't explicitly make that claim, but a lot of people misunderstand the subject to mean that.) It's possible for there to have been lots and lots of women, but because mitochondria are only passed from women to children, and because roughly half the kids are boys, it's possible to have, over a fifteen or twenty generation sequence, only one woman's mitochondria passed through. I'm working from "Patterns In Evolution" by Roger Lewin here, and, as a demo, he posits 16 couples, each of whom have two children, and tracking those through 15 generations.
"At each generation, one quarter of the mothers will have two male offspring, one quarter will have two females, and one half will have one of each. The mitochondrial lineages of mothers that have only males will come to an end and eventually one lineage will dominate the entire population."
In other words, the Eve hypothesis shows the region of origin of modern humanity, which is pretty clearly Africa, and tells us roughly when, assuming mitochondrial DNA information drift is relatively constant. It does not require a big population bottleneck. People probably assumed a bottleneck from an incomplete understanding of genetics and a certain wish to have a correlation with a well-known story (in the West) about a single mother of all humans.
The dude who did the original research, Alan Wilson, estimated there were probably over 10,000 women in the breeding community that contained the ancestral Eve. Other critics of the theory say you can't even make THAT claim.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Blood has rarely been spilled over religion. its spilled over stupid people that coop religion for their own purposes. Just like they coopt everything else.
Still, something in your understandings and beliefs compels you to act civily, what is it?
The ability to empathize with other human beings. It's actually hardwired into the brain, a fact that was established decades ago. People without this particular wiring (about 2% of the population) are defective in this regard and grow up as sociopaths. A PET scan can identify if the area of the brain we identify as governing ethical conduct is working correctly or not.
If we have normal brains, we're born with the ability to empathize with other human beings, which motivates us to (at least some of the time) act in ways that minimize harm to them. Most of us see wanton cruelty as a bad thing for this very reason.
You didn't form your concepts of 'nice' (as everyone has so kindly put it) in a vacuum did you? Of course not...
I didn't get them from religion, either. Growing up I thought the religious were full of shit, especially concerning all that "god will punish you" crap. It seemed to me (and still does) that the religious are far more likely to use their faith as an excuse to do evil to others rather than good for them. I initially came to this conclusion at the ripe old age of 3, when a priest proclaimed that my parents were sinful and would go to hell, upon which I tried to bean the bastard with one of my shoes before the entire congregation.
Conscience, knowledge imparted to you, and experience has lead you to certain beliefs, have they not?
Being human is enough, assuming you don't have a miswired brain. Humans aren't blank slates, not even close.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Seriously, this is one of the worst trolls I've wasted my time reading here on Slashdot. Your ideas are not new and have been debated for ages. You think you are brilliant and full of insight, but you're just rehashing the questions philosophers have asked for ages. Here's a little news: you're not smarter than they are. Spirituality and sociology are a little more complicated than the lyrics to "Imagine" portray them.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
That phrase does not appear in the Bible.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
An Atheist Apologist? Interesting... Surprised you don't have a blog linked for such banter...
Sorry, I disagree entirely--just because you say you're right, doesn't mean that I am wrong...
"General trust"? A careful choice of words that, but it doesn't quite make your case does it now? How would you define "faith" and "belief"?
If I say I believe such & such based on so & so, and you say you believe the opposite based on this & that--what is the difference?
Whether or not evidences 'prove' anything to you is quite a subjective matter isn't it?
Sorry to disappoint you but nothing is ever proved by the scientific method. Either it strengthens a theory and adds to it's credibility or it does not. But, you already knew that didn't you? Of course you did...
Can you be 'nice' without being a 'believer'? Of course! I guess my position has been too childish for the oh so clever /. denizens... A conscience is a very real thing. People know the difference between right & wrong (no quotation marks needed), whether they choose to ignore it or not. How can evolution explain this phenomena? A person can go his or her whole life without hearing the theory of evolution and still know that it's wrong to kill someone else to take their bread from them--even though 'survival of the fittest' would dictate otherwise... They could also go their whole life without 'religion' of any kind and still know the same thing. Can you really explain that away?
The fact that institutions like the Roman Catholic Church waste resources on baubles does not devalue the Word. Citing fancy churches as evidence against God demonstrates your ignorance of the Bible and Christianity in general.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It says, "Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion."
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
That is a complete logical fallacy. You cannot logically prove a negative.
In science all you can really do is present evidences to bolster your theory, you can never 'prove' it.
Can I 'prove religion' to you? Nope.
Asia... Africa... Asia... Africa...
What do you believe?
I honestly don't know.
Since no one can scientifically prove how we came into existence, I'm cool with thinking that billions of years ago someone, somewhere started a petrie dish experiment that ended up being the universe we live in now just as I am believing that the universe began with a cosmic big bang.
Is that truly any odder than string, or superstring theory?
I'm not a religious person. But science, with its "proof" has a lot more to prove to me before I just jump on the bandwagon of 1) how the universe was created and 2) how life began on this (and any other) planet.
Religion is very easy to dismiss. The idea that we are not all knowing and will not know all is pretty painful to accept and I am pretty sure the fight will still be raging on way past my decay in the ground.
"That is a complete logical fallacy. You cannot logically prove a negative."
You misunderstand me. All I'm saying is that in science, if someone says "The Earth is flat", you can come up to them and say "Sir or Ma'am, you are mistaken; here is evidence that contradict your belief. If you cannot find anything wrong with this evidence, I have proven you wrong."
"In science all you can really do is present evidences to bolster your theory, you can never 'prove' it."
Nobody is saying that you can prove anything in science. All we have in science are theories that have not yet been disproven. You are right, you cannot prove anything in science.
"Can I 'prove religion' to you? Nope."
No you can't 'prove' religion. Nor can you 'disprove' religion. That's the difference between science and religion. Science has a method for disproving. Religion doesn't.
" Asia... Africa... Asia... Africa...
What do you believe?"
What in the hell are you talking about?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
A person can go his or her whole life without hearing the theory of evolution and still know that it's wrong to kill someone else to take their bread from them--even though 'survival of the fittest' would dictate otherwise...
You don't have the first fucking clue about evolution, do you? Try again when you've decided to educate yourself on the topic.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Ha...forgot about Vancouver. I should know since I go there quite a bit. Please excuse my Muriken-ness.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
You cannot dictate the end of the search for truth. The truth is what it is, regardless of what you think it should be.
Thanks for phrasing your post in an authentic question instead of just a flame like it could have been. I'll try to give you at least some of the reasons why a society full of people like the GP wouldn't just degenerate into violent lawlessness...
Even if you want to take a purely "immediate self-interest" viewpoint, kill or be killed will get you killed at some point, whereas live and let live tends to keep you alive. In other words, we voluntarily choose to live in societies based on law, because we are personally much better off living in such a society. We get a benefit (very few people do bad stuff to us) by consenting not to do bad things to other people on a whim. If you often go an extra step to be nice to people, you become known for that, which might carry its own benefits as well depending on your society.
However, you are making a false assumption that atheism (or lack of afterlife) implies a lack of morals. Someone can practice a strict moral code for reasons other than religion, such as a personal sense of honor and pride in upholding a higher standard, or a wish to be remembered for something even after they die. Many practitioners of belief systems like Buddhism or Shinto don't describe themselves as "religious," because they aren't concerned as much with the spirituality of those beliefs as with their implications to secular life and everyday human behavior.
Also, note that there are ways for evolution to select for traits which are bad for the individual who has them, but better for the whole society. I won't get into it, but if you're interested you can read up on Evolution and Altruism, for example at the Wikipedia entry on Altruism or a bit more in depth here.
Ah yes, but religion is so CONVENIENT. It means that often the believer needs to make no personal moral decisions (your religion makes absolute moral decisions for you), and everyone's split into two camps: People that are going to Heaven (usually believers) and people that are going to Hell (usually everyone else). Often the sheer convenience and lifelong training in a religion overrides a personal quest for scientific truth.
Please, call it what it is: Christianity! There are other religions with quite different outlooks, even if you, living in a christian country, have never heard about them.And for religion staying in churches: I tend to think one of the christan religion's problems was exactly this, it's members liver their religion in the church and don't let the rest of the world intrude on their thinking
Just because I like presents doesn't mean I believe in Santa.
I'll take a look at your stuff as well in the morning. To clarify my position on God, I believe a God or many Gods could exist, but I see a complete lack of evidence for them. Combined with generally working naturalistic theories, I lean towards atheism. The problem with atheism, though, is the same as religion: it makes claims that cannot be tested.
"I think it would be much more understandable if the people pushing it didn't have their bible in their hands while screaming about it."
No, it would not. It is no more than a cover for trying to slide religion into the science class. It is NOT science. There is no hypothesis and no testing going on.
"Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust", how can a country be cosmopolite if there is a predominant religion which I bet your constitution embraces."
I'll put $10 on that bet.
No. That would be your opinion. Reality is that which does ont disappear when you quit believing in it. Reality is not a personal thing.
Sadly a lack of transitional forms in this area leads me to doubt the fossil record.
There are plenty of transitional forms. For the evolution of purely aquatic fish to land-based amphibians is very clearly illustrated, with each step obvious.
Sorry, but saying 'there is a lack of transitional forms' is simply wrong.
The Radioisotope dating method also has its problems and has widely varying results.
In a very few cases there are interpretation problems, but in almost all others it tells the same story.
This is the macro/micro evolution debate. A pug mates with a beagle you get a puggle. But its still a dog. You never get a cat. A Zebra with a Donkey, you get a Zonkey but its still part of the Horse kind. And the lack of transitional fossils suggest that these gradual changes did not occur as Darwin theorizes.
There ARE plenty of transitional fossils, and there never has been a macro/micro evolution debate amongst those who study evolution. Again, saying there is a debate is simply false.
DNA and all the rest of it to show that we are here by design and that it defies rational thinking to think it could be otherwise.
No. There are plenty of ideas about how DNA could have arisen. Just because you don't understand it does not mean it defies rational belief.
Even as a scientist, I still look up at several hundred tons of plane in the sky and part of me thinks 'that is impossible', but that does not mean it is impossible - just that I don't understand how it happens.
You have to be humble and accept you simply are ignorant about things.
Then you have the problems of the statistics of just 1 cell coming about by chance and the numbers are obscene, 10 to the 100th power or something like that.
But don't you see that that isn't a problem? Have you any concept of how many molecules could be trying various combinations of reactions over the surface of an entire planet for hundreds of millions of years?
Also, you don't need to get an entire cell - just replicating molecules that catalyse other things. We have already seen that evolve by itself in the laboratory, using short RNA strands (which can form naturally). If we can get RNA reproducing, mutating and evolving (these RNA strands showed that the could evolve to protect themselves against certain chemicals) in a test tube in a few days, just imagine what could happen over the entire surface of the Earth over hundreds of millions of years.
Actually we don't have to imagine - we see it all around us - it is life.
Not really, the only "belief" in science is that of the empirical method of gathering knowledge: That laws of nature are not randomly changing and that experiments have repeatable outcomes. And because laws of nature don't change randomly (or by "god's will") experiments can tell us about the laws of nature.
Let's take for example gravity.
If you do an experiment, for example take a rock, lift it up and let it go, it falls down. If you do that experiment often enough, the empirical method says that ALL rocks will fall down when lifted up.
This is the basic principle of science, all knowledge in science was gathered using the empirical method.
Science and religion are not necesserily mutually exclusive. For example it is quite possible to believe in the scientific (empirical) method and still belief in god creating the big bang. (The scinetific method cannot tell us anything about what caused the big bang and never will)
What indeed is incompatible with science is to believe in Hercules' tales or Zeus causing lightning.
Also, science cannot tell us what will happen to you when you die (it's pretty much the same as with the big bang: It just is impossible to do scientific analysis) so you might belive that you go to heaven to meet 70 virgins there or go to hell to meet the devil or whatever you want to believe. That's a subject in which science doesn't interfere.
I agree Out of Nothing comes Nothing. Something had to always have existed out side of the dimension of time and space. What you call it depends on your worldview.
No it doesn't. There is no comparison between come vague principle of existence and an 'interfering' God who creates each species. The latter is simply not needed, so to assume He exists is pointless.
The tone was flaming, but I'll answer you as an athiest anyway.
"Why should I?"
It increases the odds of your living longer.
"Based on your thinking why should I be nice to anyone unless it serves my own self-interest."
You don't, I don't, don't nobody don't. Just don't narrow the definition of 'best interest' too severely.
"Why should I follow the rule of law, etc?"
See response one.
"Why shouldn't I just become a totally self-centered anarchist--kill or be killed?"
See response one.
"Survival of the fittest and all that, right?"
Just be sure you don't overly relax the definition of 'fittest'.
"Where in evolutionary theory does it tell me that I have to or even necessarily should be 'nice' to anyone?"
Kinda the definition of a community or social group. You're in one from which you can always leave or become ostracised.
"Just because you want me to and it might make your life better?"
Yes, but let's be perfectly frank. The only people who would want a chatoic environ are those who think they could profit by cruel behavior if they believed retaliation beyond the moment was removed.
It's also a self-limiting affair, this chaotic state you promote. The actual 'fitter' don't want their environ disrupted any more than you or I. They tend to terminate those who don't cooperate with their wishes.
Most people don't fit the definition of 'fittest', and the laws are actually in place to limit those people (the fittest), not you or I. So, yes, I want you to be 'nice' like I will be, it prevents heavy-duty confrontation.
That simple.
The anti-Christian quotes are all very much in dispute, the source is rather weak. He was certainly publicly very Christian and acting in the name of Christianity.
I am trolling
Yeah, because those theories serve us pretty well.
Let's take gravity again.
The most primitive form of the theory of gravity is "all things fall down". (This theory is primitive, yet still scientific) That theory was very useful for cavemen and it actually still is for us to this day, because it essentially says that things will stay where you put them and not magically float away.
Of course one day someone invented the balloon and the "all things fall down" was obviously disproven. So you will probably say that "science was wrong!" - Well, yes it was, however the "all things fall down"-theory still serves us pretty well in most day-to-day situations and the new theory (that air also falls down and therefore can push up a balloon) doesn't really contradict the old theory, it's more an enhancement.
Then, humans found out about how planets move around space. Again, the scientific theory was shattered to pieces because scientists found out that things didn't "fall down", they just attract each other. You might say: "Science was wrong AGAIN", but actually the theory doesn't really contradict earlier theories: The "things fall down"-theory is merely a special case of the "matters attract each other"-theory, so the theory just got expanded again.
Then, Einstein postulated the theory of relativity which solved one remaining gravitional mystery (Mercur's motion). Again the theory got expanded, and it remains the most accurate theory to this day.
Do you know understand how science works?
OK, now let's go back to some caveman atheist who believes in the "wrong" "all things fall down"-theory and his neighbour, who believes that things may float away when the moon is up.
Who do you think has a more accurate picture of reality?
Both beliefs are wrong, not all things fall down and things don't float away when the moon is up.
However the first belief is scientific (no experiment contradicted the belief when cavemen lifed, but you can disprove it with an experiment), the latter isn't (no experiment contradicted the belief, but you cannot disprove the theory because it contains the word "may float away").
So which is it? Asia or Africa? ;-)
That exactly is the beauty of science, it's honesty. In science, there are a lot of fields in which scientists will say that they just don't know or that one possibility is more probably than the other but not certain. Actually in many cases (like what caused the big bang or what happens after you die) science will say that it cannot and can never answer this question.
But to answer your question: Probably Africa, but not without doubt.
its ALOT easier to believe in 1 big miracle for the world/plants/animals/people to be here
than trillions of "evolutionary" miracles.
What miracles? Evolution is not a miracle, it is trillions of trial-and-errors with the best of those trials having more offspring. What on Earth is miraculous about that?
Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_Dilemma
"The best deterministic strategy was found to be "Tit for Tat", which Anatol Rapoport developed and entered into the tournament. It was the simplest of any program entered, containing only four lines of BASIC, and won the contest. The strategy is simply to cooperate on the first iteration of the game; after that, do what your opponent did on the previous move."
Actually that's a pretty good summary of what most ethics, morals and religions suggest: Be nice by default, but you may defend yourself when being attacked.
And that strategy won the contest, so it has an evolutionary advantage.
Other than from a purely philosphical perspective, basic core "Rights" and "Wrongs" are absolutely not subjective; but in the ultimate twist, we can thank evolution for them. All cultures carry a certain set of values which are pretty much universal (there are always individual exceptions in chaotic systems), and these values are those which are in harmony with socialization and reproduction. In higher order mammals, socialization is a key survival trait (esp. when you're a weak little simian w/ no super-speed, mandibles-of-doom or other physically superior attributes).
In other cases, these values exist to overcome a specific limitation of the species. For example: pair-bonding ("marriage"). Homo Sapiens requires a significant post-gestational period before offspring is fully viable and self-sustaining. Simultaneously, unlike almost every other mammal, human females tend to be considerably weaker physically (strengh, not endurance) than the male of the species. These two facets do not mesh well for the purposes of reproduction quality and yield; e.g. the typical mammalian sole-female-caregiver is insufficient in a primitive competitive environment. Pair-bonding helps solve this issue, while simultanously dampening same-gender competition thus allowing larger and more closely knit social groups to form (many other mammals commonly have one gender in a nearly continuous state of isolation due to extreme reproductive competition).
The best way to understand "morality" is to watch canine behavior. While much less sophisticated than human, it is quite apparent that similar underlying urges are at work.
That someone made the watch, or that it spontaneously self generated via some chance conglomeration of gears and springs
Check out The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins.
Trolling is a art,
That really doesn't make sense, the way you worded it. But I just figured out what you were trying to say. My problem is your choice of the words "random" and "average." There is no average human. That doesn't make sense. You can't compare an individual with a population, but you can compare two populations with each other.
Let me try: There is such a wide degree of variance within human subpopulations (communities, races, ethnicities, whatever) that there is no statistical difference between human subpopulations. I.e., we have to accept the null hypothesis that there is no genetic difference between races.
Unfortunately, the differences that do exist (recessive genes in certain ethnicities) are pretty important. Otherwise there would be no Tay-Sachs, sickle-cell anemia, or any other genetic disorders caused by people marrying within their own isolated groups. To be fair, you should really look at the DNA that matters, the 1% or so that distinguishs us from other primates. And also realize that not all DNA is equally important. What if most of the variation in DNA is due to noncoding repeat units? Should that be counted? What if there was once much greater variation between ethnic groups, but that diversity was destroyed by, say, smallpox? Only those individuals with certain genes survived, regardless of ethnicity. In other words, an American Indian alive today is certainly not genetically representative of the "average" American Indian pre-conquest, given that at least 90% of all indigenous people in North America died from European diseases.
Esa joya, esa mina y esa finca y ese mar, ese paramilitar son propiedad del Señor Matanza
Slippery slope, that species boundary. Is it certain humans and chimps couldn't have fertile offspring? They have a different number of chromosomes, but apparently that doesn't always preclude baby makin'. But I'd never say humans and chimps were the same species, even if they did have fertile, very ugly, humpanzee babies.
Esa joya, esa mina y esa finca y ese mar, ese paramilitar son propiedad del Señor Matanza
Then why do so many people think God doesn't exist just because they don't believe in God?
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
You don't have the first [expletive] clue about evolution, do you? Try again when you've decided to educate yourself on the topic.
How 'nice'. I guess that means we're done here, huh?
Well, don't fume over my supposed ignorance. I wasn't trying to upset you, just attempting to have a conversation. Have a safe and happy New Year.
> What do you believe?"
What in the hell are you talking about?
That was a reference to the original story--"Two archaeologists are proposing the idea that early humans first arose in Asia instead of Africa as previously thought."
Thanks for seeing it for what it is, although I see some folks didn't take it as it was intended. I appreciate your comments and viewpoints, and I do agree, you can be an atheist and be a 'nice' person. Just as you could be a 'religious' person and be utterly un-'nice'.
The various threads generated from my questions have been interesting. As one person put it, "You think these ultimate questions --- which have been pondered in some form or another since time immemorial --- will be solved on Slashdot on a Friday night?"
I guess not. ;-)
FWIW, I do appreciate those that focused on the questions at hand and who replied clearly and concisely as to their positions on the issues raised. Those replies made for interesting/informative reading, whether I may have agreed with them or not.
It's because they spend all their time talking to Microsoft powered robots.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
I feel that I'm gonna worry about this idea - especially if I eat too much this evening.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
In Korea only old people do culture. They get it from talking with their robot companions.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
In Korea only old people do expansionism. And they really do it too - my nanny weighed-in at 254 pounds; she was the most expanded person in Argentina, since she weighed only 94 pounds when she arrived. What were you saying about Jhong Huh?
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
I love that quote. Show me any evidence at all that the book you mention (which, by the way, is a mistranslation for political reasons of a mistranslation for political reasons of a bunch of documents compiled over hundreds of years by many different hands -- and that's just the New Testatment) has any supporting facts to indicate it was in fact written by the creator of our planet (why must there by a creator of our planet, by the way?) and I'll eat my hat.
By the way, "Because a lot of people believe it to be true" is not in fact proof of anything other than the fact that a lot of people believe it.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --Einstein, Albert
Exactly. His campaign against the Jews was to punish them for killing Jesus. Granted, if Christianity were to be at all true, the Jews would have no sin upon them for the act because Jesus himself asked God to forgive them.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
*sigh* Phillip Johnson was a legal-beagle with an interest in protecting his mythology from science. Virtualy everything he's writing has been proven wrong by the scientific community. Of course you won't hear that from the Creationist money launderers.While we're trading links, here's one on Johnson.
Trolling is a art,
And you're trying to claim that those who support Darwinism don't have a similar interest in protecting thier theories? Given that there is no real proof for evolution on the scale that would be required to result in the diversity of life what makes Darwin's claims any more valid? The naturalist movement started pretty much with some folk who were looking for an explanation of our existace that precluded the existance of God. And the best they could come up with was that it just happened. Things don't just happen. Everything has a root cause. Many times that root cause isn't apparent but it's there none-the-less. Just because the all knowing scientist can't find it doesn't mean it isn't there.
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." --Pericles
Gods are make believe. Grow up.
Trolling is a art,
...You're using the text with its own quotes, as testaments to itself!
I get emails all the time and they swear in thier own text that they are not spam. Oddly, many are in fact spam. Imagine that.
Look, I'm pleased as can be that you've found comfort for whatever ails or worries you in a belief system that if followed in a reasonably enlightened manner represents a generally good way of behaving toward others. So does the rule book of most of the other faiths with which I am aware.
I once had a conversation about the need for this with a Minister at a church in Waco where my sister was married. Of course, I was on my best behavior and wasn't tossing rude little bombs as I am here. It was my sister's wedding and they people had been good to her. She'd also warned them of the futility and the scene which would likely result if they pushed me with attempts to bring me to their belief system - as a result we all got along just fine. In any case, we had both been a little surprised that of all the toasts and advice being given, his and mine were the most similar. In fact, the way we both lived our lives with respect to how we treat other people and our own responsibilities were very similar. He asked me, then, why I didn't take the next step and believe as he does. My answer was quite simply that I do not need an entire mythos as a reason to behave well and do good things. It was enough for me to do good things because they are good things. To define them as good things (in other words, a source for moral direction) was simply that they were at worst harmless and at best helpful without being an imposition on those around me. By that definition, my morals mostly matched his. The problem, however, is that to accept his belief system I had to accept a great deal of what I find to be contradictory definitions of right and wrong, and a belief system enforced by rules and consequences which are themselves contradictory to those very rules. All of which, of course, is entirely superfluous. The very rules which govern the physical universe, whether you believe them to be predetermined by a supreme being or simply a result of random action, are such that simplicity is favored in all rules and explanations. The more simple the rule or law of nature, the more likely it is correct. The requirement for an entire mythos to explain its creation, and the very complexity of that explanation is itself a violation of those rules.
As long as you do good things and hurt nobody, please enjoy your belief system and if in the end you are right and I am wrong; I suppose you'll have the last laugh as I burn eternally in hell as retribution for not believing as you do -- regardless of how I've lived my life.
Of course, if you're having that laugh, it would be a "sin" under your belief system -- and if I'm burning forever in hell, I believe that whosoever made that happen would also be guilty of several "sins" under that same system. Perhaps those or He or makes those rules are above or better then them.
In the mean time, I'll continue to raise healthy, safe, and kind children; to volunteer my time as a firefighter; and to live my life in a manner which at worst hurts no one, and at best helps a few.
AP
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
But science, with its "proof"...
Seriously folks, we need to kill this meme. Math has proofs, science does not. Math != Science. They play in two totally different realms. Nothing in science will ever be "proven", that's not how it works.
In science, we make observations and then propose a postulate than tries to explain why/how we saw those observations. At any point in time, a new, conflicting observation can come in, showing the postulate to be a poor explanation of the actual world. That's called falsifiability. If your postulate isn't potentially (even if improbably) falsifiable, then it isn't scientific. That's why ID isn't scientific. If the postulate is that "God created the universe", what observation could possibly be made to falsify that postulate?
Getting back to your statement:
But science, with its "proof" has a lot more to prove to me before I just jump on the bandwagon of 1) how the universe was created and 2) how life began on this (and any other) planet.
As stated, science is not concerned with "proving" either of these explanations. But postulates have been made to explain the observations we have regarding topic #2. There aren't really any serious proposals to explain topic #1, since there can be no observable data from before the existence of the universe. Don't confuse Big Bang Theory, which desribes what happened after the matter came into existence, with an exaplanation of where that matter came from. Regarding #1, if you have a beef with the scientific theories about the origin of life on Earth, all you have to do is state that there is some observable data that's a counterexample to the prevailing theories. Since these include postulates like "all life decended from a common ancestor", that could easily be falsified by finding an organism that does not appear to be related to the other organisms on the planet. However, despite a century and a half of looking (post-Darwin) and, more recently, decades of research doing genetic sequencing on every organism we can get our hands on, we have yet to find any critter, no matter how strange, that is not somehow related to everything else. Maybe you need more evidence than the 100 Gigabases sampled from over 165,000 organisms, but in my book, that's withstanding a pretty rigorous challenge.
"There is a thin line between ignorance and arrogance, and only I have managed to erase that line." - Dr. Science
I find your lack of reading comprehension skills disturbing.</VOICE>
Please reread my statement. It begins "Yeah, I would really like it if" and that phrase is followed soon after with "That would mean". If. Would. Not the current state of affairs. You are stupid. Please go away.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Offtopic? Did you bother responding to what I said? No. I realized that i made a mistake "after" hitting the submit button. Did pointing out my error make you feel like more of a man?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Did you mods not get the memo? You are supposed to concentrate on promoting rather than demoting.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Researchers argue all the time in scientific journals. One article will come out disagreeing with the results of another. It happens all the time. Pick up a psych or med journal some time and you'll see what I'm talking about.
You still have flawed, lazy, dishonest human beings involved. Do you remember how it was in high school? Do you remember the cliques? Don't you find it odd that there is very little independent research into cold fusion and any claim made by a smaller team is rapidly discredited before the public is able to see it? When money and ambition are involved, you will not get unbiased peer review.
I am sceptical of scientific research in general because it has become a pursuit of money and glory.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
And I never said that phrase was, but to go on to say that there is no seperation is to fundamentally misunderstand the intent of the Constitution. In 1802, Thomas Jefferson -- then president -- wrote of a "wall of seperation between church and state." Madison also wrote, "Strongly guarded...is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States." When it comes down to it, "seperation of church and state" is merely a convient term for a deeply ingrained principle held by the vast majority of Americans and by the Constitution. The terms "fair trial" and "religious liberty" do not appear verbatam in the Constitution either, yet no one denys that these principles are in the Constitution.
I always find it interesting that the very people that argue against the seperation of church and state are always advocating that their narrow brand of evangelical Christianity be the prefered religion. The same people that argue for government sponsored prayer are the same ones that would cry out if someone would lead their children every day in a prayer that said "My thy vedic law propegate through out the world," or "I bear witness that Muhammed -- may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him -- is the Messenger of Allah." Hell, they'd even become upset with "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at hour of our death."
Their main goal is to coerce as many people to their own belief system as possible. Their actions show that their faith is weak, since truly strong faith and belief has no need for a government stamp of approval, and no need to for a government propagation. Their personal actions should be enough to spread their faith, yet for some reason they feel that they are not strong enough witness, and need the stong hand of the government for help. When I see them, I'm always reminded of Matthew 6:5-6, which says, "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you." Even as a child, I was struck by that passage and how it is a direct rebuke of their actions.
No. No one can possibly translate that shit into anything that makes any kind of sense.
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"The idea that we are not all knowing and will not know all is pretty painful to accept"
As the other poster pointed out science does not pove things, maths does within the confines of it's own axioms. You may be depressed to hear that maths has shown that the Universe is "unkowable".
Q2: Science is very ceratain about the fact we are all made from "star stuff", it is also very ceratin that the "star stuff" self orgainsed sufficiently to discuss philosophy. One day we may work out the complete sequence of steps from hydrogen to human but I doubt if it would be much use by itself. We will never know where or how often life has arisen in the Universe but the question answer is only useful as historical triva.
Q1: Now where did the hydrogen for the stars come from, "big bang" is the leading contender. Big bang is reasonably strong because of it's predictive power, I have not yet heard anyone propose a practical experiment to test string theory, for now it's just a mathematical curiosity.
Like God, the big bang "just is". However the big bang does a lot less moralising and there is always the possibility it can be explained with something deeper (infinite spacetime seems obvious but it cannot be "proven").
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"As the other poster pointed out science does not pove things, maths does within the confines of it's own axioms. You may be depressed to hear that maths has shown that the Universe is "unkowable" [miskatonic.org]. "
Thank you all for showing me the difference between mathematics and science and proof and truth. Maybe it is because I didn't start to enjoy or pay attention to science until after my formal education (I much preferred languages and writing) that I missed that very important point.
"Like God, the big bang "just is". However the big bang does a lot less moralising and there is always the possibility it can be explained with something deeper (infinite spacetime seems obvious but it cannot be "proven"). "
With this I certainly agree and don't think I said anything to the contrary, but I do think your statement goes very well with my point that scientists are about as humble as the local preacher and as a secular layman, the lack of humility (on both sides) can be very off putting.
Please review your data about this.
Most modern antropologists think that we came from Africa (earlier species went out of Africa and evolved elsewhere until they reached extinction, our branch evolved in Africa to finally spread to Europe and elsewhere).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The strongest evidence supporting our species' African origins comes actually from South Africa.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
A safari in any African country (I recommend Etosha in Namibia) would put to rest these silly ideas of yours.
Or you could read a book about Africa, human evolution and watch a few doumentaries about African wildlife. Hint: no animals are ever eating fruits, not even the chimps (ok, they do some times).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have been to Africa (Namibia, South Africa) and have seen the effects that unfair competition is having in African farmers.
It is killing the bussiness of the few farmers that managed to get capital to invest on their farms.
If this was fair competition I would say they have to suck it up and deal with it, but the immorality of it all is not justifiable in the terms you explain it.
Several African countries were perfectly self sufficient and the farms were providing badly needed employment. Unfair agricultural subsidies are only creating a dependency that was not there, very handy in term of geopolitical dominance and appeasing a vocal minority of voters back in Western developped countries, disastrous for the economic independence of African nations.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Come on, when you're trolling, at least TRY!
His very first sentence...
> > > verything about the human body is needed in order for us to survive
contains its own counterargument!!! Need me to draw you a fucking picture???
> > > except for the appendix
> forgetting entirely that your audience does not necessarily share your belief
It is not a belief that the appendix does nothing, IT IS AN ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC FACT!!! If you are going to try arguing stuff like that, you have no business using phrases you don't understand, like "a priori."
Ad hom attacks do not constitute sound arguments, either.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"With this I certainly agree and don't think I said anything to the contrary, but I do think your statement goes very well with my point that scientists are about as humble as the local preacher and as a secular layman, the lack of humility (on both sides) can be very off putting."
Yes, narrow-mindedness is a human trait often found in authority type figures. It is a pity philosophy is not taught at school along with art, science and language (OTOH: I dropped out of high school at 16 beliving Uri Geller could bend spoons and I was pronounced "good at science"!!!). I was not trying to be argumentative, I am saying science has an overall answer to your Q2, philosophy and maths are still working on Q1.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I've noticed that the stupid and unobservant often whine about ad hominem attacks. It reminds me of "The Rock", in which Sean Connery says to Nicolas Cage something to the effect of Losers whine about doing their best, winners go home and fuck the prom queen. Well, losers whine about ad hominem attacks, winners read the fucking comment and reply appropriately. As I am doing now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"There is no hypothesis and no testing going on."
Sounds like 10th grade biology, to me:
We memorized a limited amount of classification nomenclature.
Raised maggots (which, incidentally, left fruit flies all over the school for a while).
We collected flowers.
We developed no hypotheses, nor did we test anyone else's.
And yet, virtually anyone would still classify the class as a "science class."
Then again, maybe the instructor tried to get us to hypothesize and test, but we were as self absorbed as most other people and didn't notice.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
...which still doesn't say where the stuff came from.
I'm happy to (tentatively, like a good scientist) believe in an infinitely old universe, big-bangs going back forever, but I don't see how people think this is very different from believing in an infinitely old Creator.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.