It's foolish to think that everyone in Jail deserves to be there
Agreed.
It's foolish to think that... everyone outside of jail is not deserving.
Agreed.
In US society today, how many people are jailed for bribery? How many politicians accept bribes? How many Golden parachute people have been jailed for embezzlement?
I don't know. However I would like to point out that you did not even mention atheism there. If your intent was to argue that atheists are more immoral or that atheism is somehow harmful, then you must have accidentally left something out. As written, you have not even hinted at any evidence or argument that atheists-in-particular commit (or cause) more harm or immorality than non-atheists.
If you would like to present any evidence connecting atheism to any of the above, if you would like to present an argument connecting atheism to any of the above, if you would like to present a theory connecting atheism to any of the above, then I am open to hearing it.
not realistic and very much biased.
I certainly agree that criminal-behavior is far from a perfect or complete measure of harm or immorality. However again, you seem to have left something out of your post. You have not given even the faintest hint why criminal behavior would in any way be a biased measure of harm or immorality. Incomplete does not equal biased.
Criminal behavior measures a significant chunk of harm or immorality. If you want to argue that atheism or atheists are somehow "worse", then you need to present at least some shred of an argument that atheists actually are worse in the unmeasured portion. You made no such argument. You indicated that the measure was incomplete, but not that not was biased. You didn't even bother making an unsupported claim where or how atheists are worse in the unmeasured portion.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
How? Where? I don't see any argument from you giving even the faintest inkling that I am wrong.
It's like you're arguing that there has been more rain in the U.S. this year than last year. I cited rain measurements from a few thousand diverse locations across the U.S. demonstrating the aggregate rain measurement is FAR lower this year. Yes you're right that does not measure every drop of rain in the country, but you have not presented any argument whatsoever that it is biased. You have presented no argument whatsoever even hinting how or why it's wrong. You have presented no argument, not even a blind claim, that there actually was more total rainfall this year that was somehow missed by that broad measurement.
I took Biology in the 9th grade and again as a Freshman in college. In neither did the Professor nor the textbook put forth any explanation of how evolution is an additive process.
A lot of highscools do an absolutely abominable job of teaching evolution. Often it's not taught at all, or the teacher has a degree in education and themselves have little understanding of the science, or the lessons are short and superficial due to fear of social anger against the subject. However I find it very surprising that a College class failed to teach such a critically important point. It's like teaching chemist without explaining atoms - the whole course won't make any sense.
I'll give an example establishing the basic point that evolution can and does create new useful information. It will establish the basic point of how evolution is an additive process. I will generously grant strong anti-evolution assumptions in my example, and for your part I hope you will be understanding that my example is selected for simplicity and clarity and that it grossly under-represents the full creative power and creative mechanisms of evolution.
Many animals, such as dogs, see in black&white. Lets consider the single gene for the protein that detects light. It is going to be sensitive to light centered at a specific frequency - a specific color of light. Lets assume that this gene is already "perfect" - that's assume that it already represents the best possible gene with the best possible information. Lets take is as a given that ANY mutation to that gene represents a "loss" or "degrading" of information, lets take it as a given that any possible mutation to that gene results in degrading that animal's vision. I believe sunlight is strongest in the green range, and I believe that is indeed the color this gene is most sensitive to in actual animals, so lets accept the gene is optimized to green light.
Next I am going to explain two different kinds of mutations. I will say in advance that I will grant the strongest anti-evolution assumptions here - I will grant in advance that NEITHER of these kinds of mutations can create any any increase in information. The gene is already "maximum" information and any mutation is a degradation or (at best) neutral. However I do need to cover both of them before I can, later, establish the undeniable creation of new useful information.
The most common form of mutation is a point-mutation. One letter of the DNA gets randomly mis-copied. It becomes a different random letter of DNA. This can have various effects, depending which letter got hit and what it changed to. In many cases it has absolutely no effect and the vision protein works exactly as it did before. This happens sometimes, but lets ignore it. It's completely irrelevant. If the mutation hits a different spot it could completely destroy the function of the gene. The vision-protein may not work at all. An animal with this mutation would be born blind. Well, in that case we can safely assume that particular animal simply dies. When a mutation happens like that then one random animal dies, but it has no effect beyond that. Other animals of that species continue on, the rest of the world continues on, exactly as if that blinding mutation never happened at all. We can completely ignore it when that happens. However there is another interesting effect a point mutation could have... it could slightly change the protein such that it's sensitive to a slightly different color of light. The animal can still see, but it's seeing in vision tuned to a slightly different color (perhaps tuned to red light or blue light). Note that I have already granted that the original gene is "maximum" or "best" information for best vision. So an animal with this sort of mutation has slightly weaker or inferior vision. We will accept this as a loss of information - we will accept this as a degradation of the vision gene. An animal with this sort of color can still see and live, but it's vision is perhaps slightly dimmer bec
That's quite different then what is being discussed. The "Evolution" in that case is still man made.
We basically have a bunch of people saying that God designs each snowflake by hand - claiming that snowflakes are too beautiful and complex and highly organized - claiming that it's IMPOSSIBLE for "random" natural processes to create that level of order and complexity out of chaos. And we have "man mad" laboratory experiments and "man made" industrial processes providing absolute proof that under simple and reasonable conditions natural processes can and do take chaotic water vapor and does spontaneously create highly ordered and complex snowflakes out of chaos. It provides absolute proff that it can and does work. And those science experiments and that industrial applied science are not doing anything fundamentally different from what already happens in nature. Man merely copied what happens in nature... if you have water vapor under certain temperature and atmospheric conditions in a laboratory and it natural processes spontaneously create order and complexity out of chaos, that is proof that water vapor under the same conditions in nature will produce the same result.... water vapor under the same conditions in a natural cloud are producing complex ordered snowflakes by the exact same process. God may have created the universe, but there is no reasonable or even sane way to persist in arguing that God is engaging in "special creation" and manually inserting hand-crafted snowflakes. God does NOT need to directly handcraft the complexity of each snowflake - God only creates snowflakes in that He wrote the laws of physics in the first place, and those God-written natural laws and natural process can and do automatically convert randomness into the endless variety of beautiful order and complexity of snowflakes.
Evolution is an applies science - it provides absolute undeniable proof that evolution DOES work. It provides absolute undeniable proof that under very simple and reasonable circumstances new useful complex information is created. It provides a direct demonstration that replication+mutation+unintelligent_selection is sufficient to create new complex useful information. You may certainly point out that "man made"evolution involved someone intelligently putting the initial replication+mutation+unintelligent_selection system in place, but that merely equates to God putting the initial universe in place. It still provides absolute undeniable proof that once replication+mutation+unintelligent_selection is in place, no further intelligence and no further input is required for natural processes to spontaneously create new information and order and complexity out of chaos. God may have created the universe in the first place, but within this universe evolution DOES work. Evolution can and does create new information and order and complexity out of chaos. It's true in lab experiments, it's true as Fortune500 applied science, and it's true in nature.
Your âoerunning backwards experimentâ is only hypothetical and has never been observed in nature.
Of course time doesn't run backwards in nature. I said "Maybe it will be easier if you picture running it backwards". It was merely intended to help you visualize the process. Many of evolution doubters have an inaccurate image of the evolution process. I just thought it might help clarify things.
Dogs have always been dogs.
Of course "dogs have always been dogs", however that is nothing but LINGUISTICS. Before "dogs were dogs" they were wolves! I assume you accept at least that much.
And before wolves were wolves they were carnivores, the very same carnivores that also gave birth to what would become felines and bears.
It has never been demonstrated by fossils or any other means that there were transitional creatures between dogs, cats, bears or other animals.
You either made that up, or someone misinformed you.
Of course they exist. Amphicyonidae is just one of many transitional forms in the well documented chain between bears and dogs. Although that chain is far far from the best example. The chain between reptiles and birds is far more dramatic, and it much easier to see the transition happening step-by-step from reptile traits to bird traits. And in phylum foraminifera we have an absolutely continuous and complete fossil records showing not merely all of the transitional species, but every transitional form ALONG the evolution of each species. That fossil record is so perfect and complete that it's damn near a movie showing every tiny detail of how evolution did happen over a tree of hundreds of species.
You were reasoning backwards - you were starting from a presumption that evolution is false and therefore concluding that evidence establishing evolution correct obviously must not exist, and you are simply ASSERTING that X Y and Z don't exist. Except there are entire science museums filled with the sort of evidence that you baselessly assert "doesn't exist". There are countless biology textbooks and entire libraries filled with the exact sort of evidence that you baselessly assert "doesn't exist". There are entire science labs filled with the exact sort of evidence that you baselessly assert "doesn't exist". There are entire websites filled with the exact sort of evidence that you baselessly assert "doesn't exist".
You can't sit there and basselessly assert X Y and Z don't exist, that's not an argument, not when I've seen it, not when the entire science community has documented that it does exist, not when I can pull up a hundred photos and a hundred websites and a hundred textbooks and countless museum exhibits.
Falsely ASSUMING that no evidence exists is not an argument.
Your example of great danes and chihuahuas requires the intelligent intervention of people, in order for these breeds to exist at all.
What exactly do you think humans did that fundamentally doesn't happen in nature? Are you claiming that people humans have been engaging in genetic engineering to re-write dog DNA for several hundred years to create breeds? No, of course not. The only thing humans have been doing is influencing which males and females breed together. Humans are merely selecting male-female pairings, pairings which certainly could have occurred in nature anyway. There is nothing fundamentally difference in what humans did. Humans didn't create any new DNA that wasn't naturally available. Humans didn't change or rewrite any of the DNA. The only thing humans did was make "interesting" choices in which of the (natural) traits they selected for - not fundamentally different than nature selecting for traits for survival reasons. Humans use in-breeding to create sub-populations that are similar in certain traits, but that's fundamentally not any different than natural in-
The primary (most common) definitions are these: Evolutionist: Accepts evolution is true. Creationist: Rejects evolution, believes god created various "kinds" of life substantially as we see them today. (Some define "kinds" as species, some accept all cat-like species as one "kind" which diversified into species. YEC, or Young Earth Creationist: Creationist as above, believes earth is no more than about 10,000 years old. In most cases they specifically believe it to be ~6,000 years old. Virtually guaranteed to believes Noah's global flood is literally true and literal 6 day creation. OEC, or Old Earth Creationist: Accepts the earth is millions or billions of years old, but god created "kinds" in substantially the forms we see today. Most likely accepts all cat-like species came from one cat-kind. Theistic Evolutionist: God created the universe and evolution is true. Evolution, chemistry, and physics are simply different aspects of how God designed the universe to work. Intelligent Design: Anti-evolution junk-science dressed up to look like science. It was created as a deliberate attempt to circumvent a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Creationism was religion and could not be taught in public schools. It is dressed up to look like science to try and sneak creationism into public school science classes. A U.S. District Court rules that Intelligent Design was still religion and still could not be taught in public schools. It is deliberately ambiguous on the issue of Young earth vs Old earth in order to unify those two creationist groups. In rare cases a theistic-evolutionist will use this term for the idea that God can nudge the course of theistic evolution, however this is a distinctly alternate usage.
There is an uncommon but notable usage of people who use "Creationist" merely to mean "god created the universe". In this case they may (or may not) accept theistic evolution. It's a real pain when people use "Creationist" in this way because it's non-standard usage and almost always causes confusion.
I do not think there is any particular term for an atheist who accepts evolution, however as far as I'm aware all atheists accept evolution.
Another notable issue is that some anti-evolutionists have a strange psychological blindness to the very concept of Theistic Evolution. They take a very literalist view of their religion, and it strictly conflicts with evolution. Their view is that they have the One True Religion, and either God did things exactly how they say (in six literal days) or God does not exist at all. They seem unable to process the notion of a God existing that does not conform to their views. Anything other than their EXACT religion apparently equals atheism. They will consistently equate "evolution" with "atheism". They are oblivious to, and mentally unable to process, the fact that the majority of evolutionists do believe in god. They are in complete denial of the existence of the evolutionist half of their fellow Christians, whom they blindly call atheists. It can be a very peculiar experience if you attempt to engage them in discussion or argument on that point. It's like they have physical brain damage - like from a headwound or stroke. Chuckle. Their brain is just dysfunctional, and they don't even realize how the conversation is turning into a nonsensical mess.
Do you happen to be a programmer? If you are I suggest you explore Genetic Algorithms. If you do you'll quickly discover that the "tornado in a junk yard" thing is completely wrong, and that evolution can and does create complex new information, in fact often exceeding your ability to "intelligently design" stuff. Genetic Algorithms are a powerful technique, and they can be used to tackle problems that are effectively impossible to solve with any other programming technique.
Mammals are always mammals, but they diversified and some evolved into Carnivores (other mammals evolved into herbivores or primates or rodents or other things). Carnivores are always carnivores, but they diversified and some evolved into felines (other carnivores evolved into bears or canines). Felines are always felines, but they they diversified into lions and tigers and panthers and cougars and housecats and lynx and leopards and pumas. And in the last few hundred years housecats diversified into all the different breeds of housecat.
Maybe it will be easier if you picture running it backwards. Start with all the cat-like species, and imagine running time backwards slowly diminishing or erasing little differences between them, so that they slowly merge back into one original generic "cat" type. At the same time you run canines backwards, diminishing the differences between dogs and wolves and coyotes and jackals and foxes so they all merge into an original generic "dog" type.
You also merge all bear-types, pandas and polar bears and grizzlies and sun bears and sloth bears back into one original "bear" type.
Then you slowly slowly steadily run backwards more, diminishing or erasing differences between the original "bear"-type and the original "cat"-type and the original "dog" type. They all merge back into the original generic "carnivore" type. And running back further you go on diminishing or erasing differences between that original "carnivore"-type and various other classes of mammal.
Dogs never turn into cats, but an original mammal something like 100 million years ago diversified into dogs and cats and polar bears and lions and squirrels and cows and hippos and dolphins.
Evolution in the trans-species sense has never been observed at any time even once.
Sure it has, but first it helps to clarify how new species arise. First note that it has been only about 600 years since an original set of generic "dogs" diversified into all of the dog breeds you see today. In juts a few hundred years "generic dogs" diversified into bloodhounds with far superior noses, whippets with a unique hinged spine giving them superior speed, sheep dogs with extremely sophisticated herding instincts, pitbulls with unique behavioral and physical combat traits, tiny chihuahuas and huge great danes and hundreds more breeds with a wide variety of novel traits. But for now lets just consider chihuahuas and great danes, and lets imagine we killed off every other breed of dog. Based on sheer physical size difference, chihuahuas and great danes are physically incapable of interbreeding. Merely by killing off all other dog breeds, chihuahuas and great danes wind up being to completely separate populations, genetically isolated from each other. Over time they can only drift further and further apart genetically. Essentially all dog breeds arose in just the last 600 years, if chihuahuas and great danes continued to drift apart for a few hundred thousand years they would evolve significantly far apart, two completely distinct species.
New species arise by a single population diversifying, and then splitting in two. (Or splitting in two geographically, and then diversifying apart.)
There's no magical dividing line going on..... they just slowly steadily spread out over time. Just like dog breeds slowly smoothly arose over time. There's no magical dividing line where one breed splits in two. A single breed just smoothly get more and more different, until *we* arbitrarily decide to give them two different names.
If you research Ring Species, they are examples of natural populations that have become so spread out and diversified so far apart that animals at one end of the ring cannot or do not interbreed with animals at the other end of the ring. It's a single population that is so diversified that killing off the animals in the middle of the ring would instantly split the two ends of the ring into two separate species.
nor is it appropriate to simply tell kids to "accept this, it is fact."
You're wrong.
A science teacher can state that the sun is 93 million miles from earth, and does NOT need to present all of the evidence and experiments backing it up. There simply is not enough TIME to do that for every single thing being taught in a science class. Teaching science (and learning science) is NOT the same thing as doing the science itself.
A lesson teaching the evidence and how we know the sun is 93 million miles away would be interesting and valuable, and that definitely should be done for at least a few of the key concepts for each field of science, but that obviously cannot be done for each and every point being taught.
You either have evidence that supports an idea, or you don't.
Right. And that is how science is PREFORMED. But it is literally impossible to TEACH students in that manner when you need to provide students a basic overview of an vast field of science in a limited number of classroom hours.
Each science subject really should do that with some of the key points in the field to keep the students connected with how all of the science was established, and a good teacher really should do that as much as possible when students ask specific questions. However the job of a science class is an overview of a field as understood and practiced by professionals in that field. It is sufficient for a teacher to say "This is how the field is understood and practiced by scientists in the field".
Evolution is a bit of a special case in that there is such a vast amount of misinformation out there, and a teacher pretty much needs to make an extra effort to get through to students who may have been tainted by it. Fortunately there is a vast body of powerful and easily presented evidence backing up evolution. A good and well prepared teacher shouldn't have much trouble proving all of the major points of evolution are true beyond any reasonable doubt - easily proving evolution true beyond any remotely sane definition of doubt. And he should be able to do that without diverting too much time from the rest of the lessons.
The evolution denialists generally buy into the propaganda that there's little or no evidence backing up evolution, or that what evidence exists is weak and full of holes. And of course that position comes crashing down comically when a well prepared teacher actually starts showing students the iron-clad evidence that supposedly didn't exist. Anyone trying to deny evolution looks like an absolute clown once you start showing students even a tiny fraction of the evidence. It's like some clown saying it's impossible for heavier-than-air-machines to fly, while the teacher points out the window at a jetliner going by.
However, it does produce a clearer and clearer picture over time. Sometimes it is wrong, and we later learn better. It is not perfect, but it is the best method we have for exploring and understanding our universe.
Whether that clearer and clearer picture is more and more correct depends on whether some basic assumptions are true.
If you want to be more precise, science progresses to enable us to make more predictions and for those predictions more accurate. For example this enables us to build airplanes because we can predict that certain wing shapes will make the plane fly, and this enables us to build computers because we can predict that certain arrangements of silicon will function as a CPU. More accurate predictions are more useful.
For practical purposes, "more accurate" and "more useful" *is* the definition of "more correct". If you want to argue for a different definition of "more correct" you may do so, but that's really only relevant in a philosophy class - not so much in real life.
A proper view of science acknowledges that [god] is untestable and therefore not within the realm of science to confirm or deny.
Right. Science makes no claims either way about things which are untestable.
On the other hand what I commonly see here (though not in your post) is the belief that if science can't find it then it doesn't exist.
(1) If there is no detectable evidence for something it may technically "exist", however if it has no detectable effect then it does not exist in any practical or meaningful sense. There is no possible useful reason to believe it exists.
(2) There are an infinite number of things that could exist and don't, yielding a zero percent chance of a randomly selected thing actually existing unless there is some evidence for it existing.
In philosophy class you can talk about undetectable things which in some sense "actually exist", however in the real world it is absurd to have a positive belief in anything which (1) does not exist in any practical or meaningful way and (2) has a zero percent chance of actually existing.
In my opinion, outside a philosophy class, and in practical-usage English language, it is more than reasonable to sweep things with zero percent chance of existing into the casual category of "doesn't exist". That comes with an implied understanding that it will be moved out of that category if-and-when there is any positive evidence for that thing.
So in a formal and theoretical sense, there *could* exist invisible garden fairies that help turn leaves pretty colors in the fall, but in informal practical language we simply say they don't exist.
I'm not suggesting that one individual's brain is messed up - perhaps it is all of our brains. What does of all of our science ultimately rest on? Logic. Simple logical laws like "If a implies b, and b implies c, then a implies c". Well what if it's wrong?
That reminds me of the question - What if you're just a brain in a jar and no one else actually exists and everything you see and hear and feel is just signals sent to your brain by a computer. And the answer here is basically the same.
To answer it, first lets assume that what you propose is true. In that case NOTHING you could ever say is reliable. NOTHING anyone could ever say could ever be trusted as meaningful. Any attempt at arguing anything would be pointless. Any attempt at communication at all would be pointless.
The very fact that you are making the argument, the very fact that you are bothering to communicate at all, it inherently carries an axiom, an assumption, that it is intended to be meaningful. If we do not take that axiom as a given, if we do not take that assumption as a given, then there is no point in responding.
The act of communicating at all is nonsensical unless it carries an implied axiom that it is meaningful.
My guess is that the class probably VOTED on which side won. Sadly, most people continue to believe (and vote for) what they want to believe, regardless of any evidence which may be presented to them.
I had a teacher split the class into 2 sides, those who believe in God and those who believe in evolution.
Then your teacher was an IDIOT. He may as well have class into 2 sides, those who believe in God and those who believe in chemistry.
In the U.S. about half the population accepts evolution, and only about 4-8% of the population are atheists. Even if you put all of the atheists on the pro-evolution side, that still leaves at least 42% on the evolution side who do believe in god. Or to rephrase, out of evolutionists, something like 8-16% of them are atheists and 84-92% of them believe in god. To a rough approximation, pretty much all evolutionists believe in god. Just like pretty much everyone who accepts chemistry believes in god.
There was me and a very nervous oriental student on the evolution side. I didn't win the debate, but I put up a good fight.
Did you call him on his idiotic god-vs-evolution ploy?
I'm talking about species arising from simple subtractive processes in the DNA/RNA replication process.
You should grab a highschool bio textbook, or maybe just find a decent website on evolution. It's not a subtractive process. Evolution creates new, useful, complex information.
If really want, I can provide an example clearly demonstrating how evolution can and will create valuable new information, although I'll have to keep things relatively simple to fit it in a post. You're really better off finding a textbook or something. It can cover far more than a Slashdot chat.
Not only is evolution an APPLIED SCIENCE in a variety of areas, it is in active use by the majority of Fortune 500 companies. The area of application I am most familiar with is in evolution implemented on computers. The basic idea is that you start with a population of "digital DNA", and you allow it to evolve in a simulated environment. Computers can fun thousands of generations of evolution in a matter of hours. The digital DNA then evolves, creating new and useful information to optimize reproduction in that simulated environment. By careful selection of the environment, and the "natural selection" of that environment, evolution will produce new useful information optimized to solve almost any sort of problem. For example I read about one case where a jet engine design was evolved, one more fuel efficient than any jet engine ever "intelligently designed" by human engineers.
Hell, there's even one company strictly devoted to this sort of digitally applied evolution. They have a super computer doing nothing but running evolution non-stop for years on end, and the entire profit mode is from filing patents on the valuable innovations being regularly generated through evolution.
There were... I think two.... U.S. state legislatures that were floating legislation to define the value of Pi. Neither was remotely recently, and I don't think either passed. It shouldn't be hard to google.
Someone who says they don't believe in god is no more lying than someone who says they don't collect stamps. Even if you think atheists are wrong, it's asinine to call it any sort of lie.
Perhaps you should pick up a decent highschool biology textbook. You clearly don't know much about evolution.
There is no proof at all that one species can evolve to become another.
Of course there is.
100% of the scientists in a field don't randomly buy into a theory without an absurdly huge mountain of evidence proving it true beyond any sane definition of doubt. And yes, rounded off to the nearest full percentage point, 100% of all biologists accept evolution is true. You can claim "many" biologists deny evolution, you can pull of a list of a few hundred people with biology degrees who deny evolution and say that is "many", however but a few hundred crackpots still amounts to ZERO PERCENT of over a hundred thousand actual professional biologists. There are "many" scientists who deny the moon landing, it's still ZERO PERCENT. "Many" means jack-shit when it's a ZERO PERCENT and the other 100% all confirm they are total crackpots.
But to directly answer your question, go learn what a Ring Species is. (Any good high school biology textbook should cover it, or just try Google.) At that point it's blatantly obvious proof of evolution of new species. Simply consider killing off the animals in the middle of a ring species and *poof*, it's blatantly obvious that one species has evolved into two. Q.E.D.
Furthermore we have absolute proof in fossil evidence. Most of the fossil record is very gappy, however in phylum Foraminifera we have an absolutely continuous and complete record spanning several tens of millions of years of evolution linking over a hundred species. We can trace diverse currently existing species back to their common ancestor. It's not merely a continuous fossil record of each transitional species, but a continuous record of transitional forms along each species-to-species evolution.
The reason we have a this perfect record of this portion of the tree of life is because we have an effectively limitless supply of these fossils. Foraminifera are tiny animals that live in the ocean, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. They live in the ocean in gigantic numbers, and as they die they fall down to the deep dark cold sea floor in a slow continuous rain. And they leave behind mineral "skeletons" that make for idea fossils. In the 1970's the oil industry developed deep sea drilling technology for oil exploration, and they started bringing up long seabed drill cores. Each drill cores is loaded with hundreds of thousands of perfectly layered foraminifera fossils.
So yes, not only do we have perfect proof of the evolution of diverse species, it is a hyper-detailed record of exactly how populations evolve into new species over time.
Maybe you should spend less time reading junk claims on denialist websites, and try hitting your local library and picking up an actual science textbook.
When your theory conflicts with reality, it's time to dispose of your theory.
Atheists are more moral on average than theists, as demonstrated by a variety of research. To cite one easy and strong example, atheists are virtually non-existent among the U.S. Federal prison population. Far far below the percentage of atheists among the general U.S. population. Either atheists are all genius criminal masterminds who never get caught (chuckle), or atheists are far less likely to commit criminally-immoral behavior.
No, read it again. It indicates about 200 thousand PEOPLE are sexually assaulted each year.
About 100% of assaulters are men.
Factually false.
If we want to combat sexist prejudiced stereotype bullshit in society, we need combat all of it. And that includes the sexist notion that any man is "lucky" to have sex. The sexist notion that men cannot or do not refuse consent to sex. The sexist notion that men are not raped, and fucked-up definitions of "rape" which categorically deny the possibility of a man being raped (except by another man).
Lets look at a very recent survey done by the United States Center For Disease Control. It defines "Rape" as attempted or competed forcible penetration of the victim as well as drug/alcohol facilitated completed penetration of the victim. It reports lifetime "rape" rates at about 18.3% of all women and about 1.4% of all men. However this report has a brand new section, a category that has been implicitly excluded for pretty much all previous rape research. It's a category called "made to penetrate". I will remind you that "made to penetrate" does is EXCLUDED from the definition of "rape". The report gives a lifetime rate of 4.8% of all men "made to penetrate".
And lets be clear on what "made to penetrate" means. I was recently reading a message board which had nothing to do with sexuality where, out of the blue, someone commented on the stereotype that men cannot be rape victims, and posted a request for men to share their stories if they had ever been raped. A completely generic non-sex-related community with a fairly random sampling of male readers. Unsurprisingly most of the replies were anonymous. They included reports including a man raped at gunpoint, a man walking on campus in the dark being tasered by an unknown woman then handcuffed to a tree raped and tasered again to the rapist could remove the handcuffs and run off, multiple reports of men discovering their drink had been drugged and being unable to fight off their attacker, multiple reports of men being threatened with being accused of rape themselves if they did not submit - including a case where a man walked into his bedroom to find a naked woman demanding sex and when he resisted she deliberately scratched his neck and hands and threatening to claim he tried to rape her. The reports just went on and on. Those are just what I recall offhand.
Not a single one of those incidents qualifies as "rape" in the CDC survey, not a single one of them constitutes "rape" under virtually any rape survey ever done. They fall under the brand new category "made to penetrate"..... because somehow forcible penis-in-vagina sex is not rape when a woman does it. All men are sex-obsessed animals without the ability or right to decline sex. Because any man who gets raped is "lucky" he got to have sex.
And one notable fact is that not a single one of them reported their rape to the police. The rate of women reporting rape is abysmally low, but it doesn't remotely compare to the effectively ZERO rate of men reporting rape. The social stigma, victim blaming, shaming, and rape-denialism against women is an abomination, but it is as bad or worse for any man attempting to report being raped. Not a single one of the male rape victims reported it to the police.... but there was one case of a male rape victim who tried calling a rape-support hotline. And you know what happened? The person who answered the phone (presumably female) CALLED HIM A LIAR and told him to stop making prank calls. Seriously, how fucked up is that? A fucking RAPE SUPPORT LINE calling a rape victim a liar, saying no you weren't raped and stop fucking calling. Solely because the victim was male. Pure unadulterated sexist ideology and prejudi
Why is it only now, when computers get involved that people are having issues with the basic concept?
It's hard to make a news story out of "nothing happened today, today is the same as yesterday".
What was happening yesterday was grossly offensive, but unfortunately the world of yesterday was not as global-aware and globally-active as it is today. The world of yesterday was not as pro-humanrights as it is today. The world of yesterday was not as anti-sexist as it is today. The unfortunate fact is that the people of yesterday never made an issue out of it. So today we inherit a world where this sort of behavior in Saudi Arabia is not "news".
The fact that they are "upgrading" their systems with modern technology does not in itself make it any better or worse. HOWEVER, it is indeed an excellent opportunity to turn this into a headline news story. It can be "Heay look! They've got some new computer system to oppress women". Yeah they were oppressing women yesterday, but now were have something new, something today's-news newsworthy. We have something new to draw fresh and active attention to the issue. The computerization of the system is in itself meaningless, but it is an excellent opportunity/excuse to shout headline news stories. Headline news stories to inform the uninformed. Headline news stories to motivate those who knew about it but who reluctantly accepted "that's the way the world is" and who felt no realistic ability to do anything about it.
Big changes require big movements to push them through. The fact is that we need rallying cries and banners to bring people together. If computerizing the system can be a rallying cry, if it can be a banner, then so be it. Don't blame a righteous messenger for using meaningless detail to hoist a much needed banner.
500 DIMMs is maybe just enough to make mail armor one chest piece only, but it's plenty for 8 suits of femail armor complete chest, bottoms, gauntlets, and a dozen keychains to boot.
You misunderstood me.I wasn't talking about exclusionary in terms of who they are willing to help. I mean exclusionary in their membership, or even just exclusionary in identification of who the people helping supposedly are. If your first priority really is to feed hungry children or help battered women or cure cancer, then founding a charity named "Lefthanded Redheaded Lutherans for X" is a really BAD way to actually achieve X. That makes the entire organization about Lefthanded Redheaded Lutherans, and any minimal charitable-X you actually manage to achieve is obviously secondary.
You were arguing, or at least strongly implying, that theists are superior or "better" people because there are almost no charities specifically labeled as "atheist".
Seriously, who is the better person if an atheist volunteers helping kids at the local YMCA? The atheist who considers religious affiliation completely irrelevant and who's only priority is helping kids, or the Christians who placed an exclusionary title on a youth organization to take credit for the good works that the atheist does under their label?
Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby. When atheists create charitable organizations they don't put some asinine "atheists only" label on the name. It's like there's "Stamp collectors against cancer" and "Baseball card collectors against cancer" and "Coin collectors against cancer", and you're saying people who don't collect stuff are inferior because they don't have any charities. You're saying that "secular" groups like the American Cancer Society don't count because it's not labeled "Americans who don't collect random crap Cancer Society".
You're using "delusion" in the broad sense, which is fine. And just like a new ager uses "energy" or "vibration" in a broad sense
Expanding the application of a word from the individual level to a societal level is hardly equivalent of making up arbitrary woo.
I gave an example of a cultural-norm belief with an objectively pathological nature. Do you dispute that extinction is pathological, and that any suicidal belief and practice which directly results in extinction is inherently pathological? An individual may be physically healthy and and "sane" in the sense of normal and well functional within a society, while that society exerts pressure (potentially highly coercive pressure) beginning in infancy to impose objectively pathological false beliefs. Do you seriously claim that using the word "delusion" in a broader societal level context is the equivalent of random new age woo?
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It's foolish to think that everyone in Jail deserves to be there
Agreed.
It's foolish to think that... everyone outside of jail is not deserving.
Agreed.
In US society today, how many people are jailed for bribery? How many politicians accept bribes? How many Golden parachute people have been jailed for embezzlement?
I don't know. However I would like to point out that you did not even mention atheism there. If your intent was to argue that atheists are more immoral or that atheism is somehow harmful, then you must have accidentally left something out. As written, you have not even hinted at any evidence or argument that atheists-in-particular commit (or cause) more harm or immorality than non-atheists.
If you would like to present any evidence connecting atheism to any of the above, if you would like to present an argument connecting atheism to any of the above, if you would like to present a theory connecting atheism to any of the above, then I am open to hearing it.
not realistic and very much biased.
I certainly agree that criminal-behavior is far from a perfect or complete measure of harm or immorality. However again, you seem to have left something out of your post. You have not given even the faintest hint why criminal behavior would in any way be a biased measure of harm or immorality. Incomplete does not equal biased.
Criminal behavior measures a significant chunk of harm or immorality. If you want to argue that atheism or atheists are somehow "worse", then you need to present at least some shred of an argument that atheists actually are worse in the unmeasured portion. You made no such argument. You indicated that the measure was incomplete, but not that not was biased. You didn't even bother making an unsupported claim where or how atheists are worse in the unmeasured portion.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
How? Where? I don't see any argument from you giving even the faintest inkling that I am wrong.
It's like you're arguing that there has been more rain in the U.S. this year than last year. I cited rain measurements from a few thousand diverse locations across the U.S. demonstrating the aggregate rain measurement is FAR lower this year. Yes you're right that does not measure every drop of rain in the country, but you have not presented any argument whatsoever that it is biased. You have presented no argument whatsoever even hinting how or why it's wrong. You have presented no argument, not even a blind claim, that there actually was more total rainfall this year that was somehow missed by that broad measurement.
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I took Biology in the 9th grade and again as a Freshman in college. In neither did the Professor nor the textbook put forth any explanation of how evolution is an additive process.
A lot of highscools do an absolutely abominable job of teaching evolution. Often it's not taught at all, or the teacher has a degree in education and themselves have little understanding of the science, or the lessons are short and superficial due to fear of social anger against the subject. However I find it very surprising that a College class failed to teach such a critically important point. It's like teaching chemist without explaining atoms - the whole course won't make any sense.
I'll give an example establishing the basic point that evolution can and does create new useful information. It will establish the basic point of how evolution is an additive process. I will generously grant strong anti-evolution assumptions in my example, and for your part I hope you will be understanding that my example is selected for simplicity and clarity and that it grossly under-represents the full creative power and creative mechanisms of evolution.
Many animals, such as dogs, see in black&white. Lets consider the single gene for the protein that detects light. It is going to be sensitive to light centered at a specific frequency - a specific color of light. Lets assume that this gene is already "perfect" - that's assume that it already represents the best possible gene with the best possible information. Lets take is as a given that ANY mutation to that gene represents a "loss" or "degrading" of information, lets take it as a given that any possible mutation to that gene results in degrading that animal's vision. I believe sunlight is strongest in the green range, and I believe that is indeed the color this gene is most sensitive to in actual animals, so lets accept the gene is optimized to green light.
Next I am going to explain two different kinds of mutations. I will say in advance that I will grant the strongest anti-evolution assumptions here - I will grant in advance that NEITHER of these kinds of mutations can create any any increase in information. The gene is already "maximum" information and any mutation is a degradation or (at best) neutral. However I do need to cover both of them before I can, later, establish the undeniable creation of new useful information.
The most common form of mutation is a point-mutation. One letter of the DNA gets randomly mis-copied. It becomes a different random letter of DNA. This can have various effects, depending which letter got hit and what it changed to. In many cases it has absolutely no effect and the vision protein works exactly as it did before. This happens sometimes, but lets ignore it. It's completely irrelevant. If the mutation hits a different spot it could completely destroy the function of the gene. The vision-protein may not work at all. An animal with this mutation would be born blind. Well, in that case we can safely assume that particular animal simply dies. When a mutation happens like that then one random animal dies, but it has no effect beyond that. Other animals of that species continue on, the rest of the world continues on, exactly as if that blinding mutation never happened at all. We can completely ignore it when that happens. However there is another interesting effect a point mutation could have... it could slightly change the protein such that it's sensitive to a slightly different color of light. The animal can still see, but it's seeing in vision tuned to a slightly different color (perhaps tuned to red light or blue light). Note that I have already granted that the original gene is "maximum" or "best" information for best vision. So an animal with this sort of mutation has slightly weaker or inferior vision. We will accept this as a loss of information - we will accept this as a degradation of the vision gene. An animal with this sort of color can still see and live, but it's vision is perhaps slightly dimmer bec
That's quite different then what is being discussed. The "Evolution" in that case is still man made.
We basically have a bunch of people saying that God designs each snowflake by hand - claiming that snowflakes are too beautiful and complex and highly organized - claiming that it's IMPOSSIBLE for "random" natural processes to create that level of order and complexity out of chaos. And we have "man mad" laboratory experiments and "man made" industrial processes providing absolute proof that under simple and reasonable conditions natural processes can and do take chaotic water vapor and does spontaneously create highly ordered and complex snowflakes out of chaos. It provides absolute proff that it can and does work. And those science experiments and that industrial applied science are not doing anything fundamentally different from what already happens in nature. Man merely copied what happens in nature... if you have water vapor under certain temperature and atmospheric conditions in a laboratory and it natural processes spontaneously create order and complexity out of chaos, that is proof that water vapor under the same conditions in nature will produce the same result.... water vapor under the same conditions in a natural cloud are producing complex ordered snowflakes by the exact same process. God may have created the universe, but there is no reasonable or even sane way to persist in arguing that God is engaging in "special creation" and manually inserting hand-crafted snowflakes. God does NOT need to directly handcraft the complexity of each snowflake - God only creates snowflakes in that He wrote the laws of physics in the first place, and those God-written natural laws and natural process can and do automatically convert randomness into the endless variety of beautiful order and complexity of snowflakes.
Evolution is an applies science - it provides absolute undeniable proof that evolution DOES work. It provides absolute undeniable proof that under very simple and reasonable circumstances new useful complex information is created. It provides a direct demonstration that replication+mutation+unintelligent_selection is sufficient to create new complex useful information. You may certainly point out that "man made"evolution involved someone intelligently putting the initial replication+mutation+unintelligent_selection system in place, but that merely equates to God putting the initial universe in place. It still provides absolute undeniable proof that once replication+mutation+unintelligent_selection is in place, no further intelligence and no further input is required for natural processes to spontaneously create new information and order and complexity out of chaos. God may have created the universe in the first place, but within this universe evolution DOES work. Evolution can and does create new information and order and complexity out of chaos. It's true in lab experiments, it's true as Fortune500 applied science, and it's true in nature.
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On review, I think I jumped to the wrong conclusion about where you were trying to go with your post. Chuckle.
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Your âoerunning backwards experimentâ is only hypothetical and has never been observed in nature.
Of course time doesn't run backwards in nature. I said "Maybe it will be easier if you picture running it backwards". It was merely intended to help you visualize the process. Many of evolution doubters have an inaccurate image of the evolution process. I just thought it might help clarify things.
Dogs have always been dogs.
Of course "dogs have always been dogs", however that is nothing but LINGUISTICS. Before "dogs were dogs" they were wolves! I assume you accept at least that much.
And before wolves were wolves they were carnivores, the very same carnivores that also gave birth to what would become felines and bears.
It has never been demonstrated by fossils or any other means that there were transitional creatures between dogs, cats, bears or other animals.
You either made that up, or someone misinformed you.
Of course they exist. Amphicyonidae is just one of many transitional forms in the well documented chain between bears and dogs. Although that chain is far far from the best example. The chain between reptiles and birds is far more dramatic, and it much easier to see the transition happening step-by-step from reptile traits to bird traits. And in phylum foraminifera we have an absolutely continuous and complete fossil records showing not merely all of the transitional species, but every transitional form ALONG the evolution of each species. That fossil record is so perfect and complete that it's damn near a movie showing every tiny detail of how evolution did happen over a tree of hundreds of species.
You were reasoning backwards - you were starting from a presumption that evolution is false and therefore concluding that evidence establishing evolution correct obviously must not exist, and you are simply ASSERTING that X Y and Z don't exist. Except there are entire science museums filled with the sort of evidence that you baselessly assert "doesn't exist". There are countless biology textbooks and entire libraries filled with the exact sort of evidence that you baselessly assert "doesn't exist". There are entire science labs filled with the exact sort of evidence that you baselessly assert "doesn't exist". There are entire websites filled with the exact sort of evidence that you baselessly assert "doesn't exist".
You can't sit there and basselessly assert X Y and Z don't exist, that's not an argument, not when I've seen it, not when the entire science community has documented that it does exist, not when I can pull up a hundred photos and a hundred websites and a hundred textbooks and countless museum exhibits.
Falsely ASSUMING that no evidence exists is not an argument.
Your example of great danes and chihuahuas requires the intelligent intervention of people, in order for these breeds to exist at all.
What exactly do you think humans did that fundamentally doesn't happen in nature? Are you claiming that people humans have been engaging in genetic engineering to re-write dog DNA for several hundred years to create breeds? No, of course not. The only thing humans have been doing is influencing which males and females breed together. Humans are merely selecting male-female pairings, pairings which certainly could have occurred in nature anyway. There is nothing fundamentally difference in what humans did. Humans didn't create any new DNA that wasn't naturally available. Humans didn't change or rewrite any of the DNA. The only thing humans did was make "interesting" choices in which of the (natural) traits they selected for - not fundamentally different than nature selecting for traits for survival reasons. Humans use in-breeding to create sub-populations that are similar in certain traits, but that's fundamentally not any different than natural in-
The primary (most common) definitions are these:
Evolutionist: Accepts evolution is true.
Creationist: Rejects evolution, believes god created various "kinds" of life substantially as we see them today. (Some define "kinds" as species, some accept all cat-like species as one "kind" which diversified into species.
YEC, or Young Earth Creationist: Creationist as above, believes earth is no more than about 10,000 years old. In most cases they specifically believe it to be ~6,000 years old. Virtually guaranteed to believes Noah's global flood is literally true and literal 6 day creation.
OEC, or Old Earth Creationist: Accepts the earth is millions or billions of years old, but god created "kinds" in substantially the forms we see today. Most likely accepts all cat-like species came from one cat-kind.
Theistic Evolutionist: God created the universe and evolution is true. Evolution, chemistry, and physics are simply different aspects of how God designed the universe to work.
Intelligent Design: Anti-evolution junk-science dressed up to look like science. It was created as a deliberate attempt to circumvent a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Creationism was religion and could not be taught in public schools. It is dressed up to look like science to try and sneak creationism into public school science classes. A U.S. District Court rules that Intelligent Design was still religion and still could not be taught in public schools. It is deliberately ambiguous on the issue of Young earth vs Old earth in order to unify those two creationist groups. In rare cases a theistic-evolutionist will use this term for the idea that God can nudge the course of theistic evolution, however this is a distinctly alternate usage.
There is an uncommon but notable usage of people who use "Creationist" merely to mean "god created the universe". In this case they may (or may not) accept theistic evolution. It's a real pain when people use "Creationist" in this way because it's non-standard usage and almost always causes confusion.
I do not think there is any particular term for an atheist who accepts evolution, however as far as I'm aware all atheists accept evolution.
Another notable issue is that some anti-evolutionists have a strange psychological blindness to the very concept of Theistic Evolution. They take a very literalist view of their religion, and it strictly conflicts with evolution. Their view is that they have the One True Religion, and either God did things exactly how they say (in six literal days) or God does not exist at all. They seem unable to process the notion of a God existing that does not conform to their views. Anything other than their EXACT religion apparently equals atheism. They will consistently equate "evolution" with "atheism". They are oblivious to, and mentally unable to process, the fact that the majority of evolutionists do believe in god. They are in complete denial of the existence of the evolutionist half of their fellow Christians, whom they blindly call atheists. It can be a very peculiar experience if you attempt to engage them in discussion or argument on that point. It's like they have physical brain damage - like from a headwound or stroke. Chuckle. Their brain is just dysfunctional, and they don't even realize how the conversation is turning into a nonsensical mess.
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Do you happen to be a programmer? If you are I suggest you explore Genetic Algorithms. If you do you'll quickly discover that the "tornado in a junk yard" thing is completely wrong, and that evolution can and does create complex new information, in fact often exceeding your ability to "intelligently design" stuff. Genetic Algorithms are a powerful technique, and they can be used to tackle problems that are effectively impossible to solve with any other programming technique.
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Mammals are always mammals, but they diversified and some evolved into Carnivores (other mammals evolved into herbivores or primates or rodents or other things). Carnivores are always carnivores, but they diversified and some evolved into felines (other carnivores evolved into bears or canines). Felines are always felines, but they they diversified into lions and tigers and panthers and cougars and housecats and lynx and leopards and pumas. And in the last few hundred years housecats diversified into all the different breeds of housecat.
Maybe it will be easier if you picture running it backwards. Start with all the cat-like species, and imagine running time backwards slowly diminishing or erasing little differences between them, so that they slowly merge back into one original generic "cat" type. At the same time you run canines backwards, diminishing the differences between dogs and wolves and coyotes and jackals and foxes so they all merge into an original generic "dog" type.
You also merge all bear-types, pandas and polar bears and grizzlies and sun bears and sloth bears back into one original "bear" type.
Then you slowly slowly steadily run backwards more, diminishing or erasing differences between the original "bear"-type and the original "cat"-type and the original "dog" type. They all merge back into the original generic "carnivore" type. And running back further you go on diminishing or erasing differences between that original "carnivore"-type and various other classes of mammal.
Dogs never turn into cats, but an original mammal something like 100 million years ago diversified into dogs and cats and polar bears and lions and squirrels and cows and hippos and dolphins.
Evolution in the trans-species sense has never been observed at any time even once.
Sure it has, but first it helps to clarify how new species arise. First note that it has been only about 600 years since an original set of generic "dogs" diversified into all of the dog breeds you see today. In juts a few hundred years "generic dogs" diversified into bloodhounds with far superior noses, whippets with a unique hinged spine giving them superior speed, sheep dogs with extremely sophisticated herding instincts, pitbulls with unique behavioral and physical combat traits, tiny chihuahuas and huge great danes and hundreds more breeds with a wide variety of novel traits. But for now lets just consider chihuahuas and great danes, and lets imagine we killed off every other breed of dog. Based on sheer physical size difference, chihuahuas and great danes are physically incapable of interbreeding. Merely by killing off all other dog breeds, chihuahuas and great danes wind up being to completely separate populations, genetically isolated from each other. Over time they can only drift further and further apart genetically. Essentially all dog breeds arose in just the last 600 years, if chihuahuas and great danes continued to drift apart for a few hundred thousand years they would evolve significantly far apart, two completely distinct species.
New species arise by a single population diversifying, and then splitting in two. (Or splitting in two geographically, and then diversifying apart.)
There's no magical dividing line going on..... they just slowly steadily spread out over time. Just like dog breeds slowly smoothly arose over time. There's no magical dividing line where one breed splits in two. A single breed just smoothly get more and more different, until *we* arbitrarily decide to give them two different names.
If you research Ring Species, they are examples of natural populations that have become so spread out and diversified so far apart that animals at one end of the ring cannot or do not interbreed with animals at the other end of the ring. It's a single population that is so diversified that killing off the animals in the middle of the ring would instantly split the two ends of the ring into two separate species.
And the fossil evidence is even more powerful.
nor is it appropriate to simply tell kids to "accept this, it is fact."
You're wrong.
A science teacher can state that the sun is 93 million miles from earth, and does NOT need to present all of the evidence and experiments backing it up. There simply is not enough TIME to do that for every single thing being taught in a science class. Teaching science (and learning science) is NOT the same thing as doing the science itself.
A lesson teaching the evidence and how we know the sun is 93 million miles away would be interesting and valuable, and that definitely should be done for at least a few of the key concepts for each field of science, but that obviously cannot be done for each and every point being taught.
You either have evidence that supports an idea, or you don't.
Right. And that is how science is PREFORMED. But it is literally impossible to TEACH students in that manner when you need to provide students a basic overview of an vast field of science in a limited number of classroom hours.
Each science subject really should do that with some of the key points in the field to keep the students connected with how all of the science was established, and a good teacher really should do that as much as possible when students ask specific questions. However the job of a science class is an overview of a field as understood and practiced by professionals in that field. It is sufficient for a teacher to say "This is how the field is understood and practiced by scientists in the field".
Evolution is a bit of a special case in that there is such a vast amount of misinformation out there, and a teacher pretty much needs to make an extra effort to get through to students who may have been tainted by it. Fortunately there is a vast body of powerful and easily presented evidence backing up evolution. A good and well prepared teacher shouldn't have much trouble proving all of the major points of evolution are true beyond any reasonable doubt - easily proving evolution true beyond any remotely sane definition of doubt. And he should be able to do that without diverting too much time from the rest of the lessons.
The evolution denialists generally buy into the propaganda that there's little or no evidence backing up evolution, or that what evidence exists is weak and full of holes. And of course that position comes crashing down comically when a well prepared teacher actually starts showing students the iron-clad evidence that supposedly didn't exist. Anyone trying to deny evolution looks like an absolute clown once you start showing students even a tiny fraction of the evidence. It's like some clown saying it's impossible for heavier-than-air-machines to fly, while the teacher points out the window at a jetliner going by.
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However, it does produce a clearer and clearer picture over time. Sometimes it is wrong, and we later learn better. It is not perfect, but it is the best method we have for exploring and understanding our universe.
Whether that clearer and clearer picture is more and more correct depends on whether some basic assumptions are true.
If you want to be more precise, science progresses to enable us to make more predictions and for those predictions more accurate. For example this enables us to build airplanes because we can predict that certain wing shapes will make the plane fly, and this enables us to build computers because we can predict that certain arrangements of silicon will function as a CPU. More accurate predictions are more useful.
For practical purposes, "more accurate" and "more useful" *is* the definition of "more correct". If you want to argue for a different definition of "more correct" you may do so, but that's really only relevant in a philosophy class - not so much in real life.
A proper view of science acknowledges that [god] is untestable and therefore not within the realm of science to confirm or deny.
Right. Science makes no claims either way about things which are untestable.
On the other hand what I commonly see here (though not in your post) is the belief that if science can't find it then it doesn't exist.
(1) If there is no detectable evidence for something it may technically "exist", however if it has no detectable effect then it does not exist in any practical or meaningful sense. There is no possible useful reason to believe it exists.
(2) There are an infinite number of things that could exist and don't, yielding a zero percent chance of a randomly selected thing actually existing unless there is some evidence for it existing.
In philosophy class you can talk about undetectable things which in some sense "actually exist", however in the real world it is absurd to have a positive belief in anything which (1) does not exist in any practical or meaningful way and (2) has a zero percent chance of actually existing.
In my opinion, outside a philosophy class, and in practical-usage English language, it is more than reasonable to sweep things with zero percent chance of existing into the casual category of "doesn't exist". That comes with an implied understanding that it will be moved out of that category if-and-when there is any positive evidence for that thing.
So in a formal and theoretical sense, there *could* exist invisible garden fairies that help turn leaves pretty colors in the fall, but in informal practical language we simply say they don't exist.
I'm not suggesting that one individual's brain is messed up - perhaps it is all of our brains. What does of all of our science ultimately rest on? Logic. Simple logical laws like "If a implies b, and b implies c, then a implies c". Well what if it's wrong?
That reminds me of the question - What if you're just a brain in a jar and no one else actually exists and everything you see and hear and feel is just signals sent to your brain by a computer. And the answer here is basically the same.
To answer it, first lets assume that what you propose is true. In that case NOTHING you could ever say is reliable. NOTHING anyone could ever say could ever be trusted as meaningful. Any attempt at arguing anything would be pointless. Any attempt at communication at all would be pointless.
The very fact that you are making the argument, the very fact that you are bothering to communicate at all, it inherently carries an axiom, an assumption, that it is intended to be meaningful. If we do not take that axiom as a given, if we do not take that assumption as a given, then there is no point in responding.
The act of communicating at all is nonsensical unless it carries an implied axiom that it is meaningful.
How could they have won? They have 0 evidence.
My guess is that the class probably VOTED on which side won. Sadly, most people continue to believe (and vote for) what they want to believe, regardless of any evidence which may be presented to them.
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I had a teacher split the class into 2 sides, those who believe in God and those who believe in evolution.
Then your teacher was an IDIOT.
He may as well have class into 2 sides, those who believe in God and those who believe in chemistry.
In the U.S. about half the population accepts evolution, and only about 4-8% of the population are atheists. Even if you put all of the atheists on the pro-evolution side, that still leaves at least 42% on the evolution side who do believe in god. Or to rephrase, out of evolutionists, something like 8-16% of them are atheists and 84-92% of them believe in god. To a rough approximation, pretty much all evolutionists believe in god. Just like pretty much everyone who accepts chemistry believes in god.
There was me and a very nervous oriental student on the evolution side. I didn't win the debate, but I put up a good fight.
Did you call him on his idiotic god-vs-evolution ploy?
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I'm talking about species arising from simple subtractive processes in the DNA/RNA replication process.
You should grab a highschool bio textbook, or maybe just find a decent website on evolution. It's not a subtractive process. Evolution creates new, useful, complex information.
If really want, I can provide an example clearly demonstrating how evolution can and will create valuable new information, although I'll have to keep things relatively simple to fit it in a post. You're really better off finding a textbook or something. It can cover far more than a Slashdot chat.
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Not only is evolution an APPLIED SCIENCE in a variety of areas, it is in active use by the majority of Fortune 500 companies. The area of application I am most familiar with is in evolution implemented on computers. The basic idea is that you start with a population of "digital DNA", and you allow it to evolve in a simulated environment. Computers can fun thousands of generations of evolution in a matter of hours. The digital DNA then evolves, creating new and useful information to optimize reproduction in that simulated environment. By careful selection of the environment, and the "natural selection" of that environment, evolution will produce new useful information optimized to solve almost any sort of problem. For example I read about one case where a jet engine design was evolved, one more fuel efficient than any jet engine ever "intelligently designed" by human engineers.
Hell, there's even one company strictly devoted to this sort of digitally applied evolution. They have a super computer doing nothing but running evolution non-stop for years on end, and the entire profit mode is from filing patents on the valuable innovations being regularly generated through evolution.
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There were... I think two.... U.S. state legislatures that were floating legislation to define the value of Pi. Neither was remotely recently, and I don't think either passed. It shouldn't be hard to google.
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Someone who says they don't believe in god is no more lying than someone who says they don't collect stamps. Even if you think atheists are wrong, it's asinine to call it any sort of lie.
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Perhaps you should pick up a decent highschool biology textbook. You clearly don't know much about evolution.
There is no proof at all that one species can evolve to become another.
Of course there is.
100% of the scientists in a field don't randomly buy into a theory without an absurdly huge mountain of evidence proving it true beyond any sane definition of doubt. And yes, rounded off to the nearest full percentage point, 100% of all biologists accept evolution is true. You can claim "many" biologists deny evolution, you can pull of a list of a few hundred people with biology degrees who deny evolution and say that is "many", however but a few hundred crackpots still amounts to ZERO PERCENT of over a hundred thousand actual professional biologists. There are "many" scientists who deny the moon landing, it's still ZERO PERCENT. "Many" means jack-shit when it's a ZERO PERCENT and the other 100% all confirm they are total crackpots.
But to directly answer your question, go learn what a Ring Species is. (Any good high school biology textbook should cover it, or just try Google.) At that point it's blatantly obvious proof of evolution of new species. Simply consider killing off the animals in the middle of a ring species and *poof*, it's blatantly obvious that one species has evolved into two. Q.E.D.
Furthermore we have absolute proof in fossil evidence. Most of the fossil record is very gappy, however in phylum Foraminifera we have an absolutely continuous and complete record spanning several tens of millions of years of evolution linking over a hundred species. We can trace diverse currently existing species back to their common ancestor. It's not merely a continuous fossil record of each transitional species, but a continuous record of transitional forms along each species-to-species evolution.
The reason we have a this perfect record of this portion of the tree of life is because we have an effectively limitless supply of these fossils. Foraminifera are tiny animals that live in the ocean, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. They live in the ocean in gigantic numbers, and as they die they fall down to the deep dark cold sea floor in a slow continuous rain. And they leave behind mineral "skeletons" that make for idea fossils. In the 1970's the oil industry developed deep sea drilling technology for oil exploration, and they started bringing up long seabed drill cores. Each drill cores is loaded with hundreds of thousands of perfectly layered foraminifera fossils.
So yes, not only do we have perfect proof of the evolution of diverse species, it is a hyper-detailed record of exactly how populations evolve into new species over time.
Maybe you should spend less time reading junk claims on denialist websites, and try hitting your local library and picking up an actual science textbook.
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When your theory conflicts with reality, it's time to dispose of your theory.
Atheists are more moral on average than theists, as demonstrated by a variety of research. To cite one easy and strong example, atheists are virtually non-existent among the U.S. Federal prison population. Far far below the percentage of atheists among the general U.S. population. Either atheists are all genius criminal masterminds who never get caught (chuckle), or atheists are far less likely to commit criminally-immoral behavior.
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In modern US more that 200 thousand women are sexually assaulted each year http://www.rainn.org/statistics
No, read it again. It indicates about 200 thousand PEOPLE are sexually assaulted each year.
About 100% of assaulters are men.
Factually false.
If we want to combat sexist prejudiced stereotype bullshit in society, we need combat all of it. And that includes the sexist notion that any man is "lucky" to have sex. The sexist notion that men cannot or do not refuse consent to sex. The sexist notion that men are not raped, and fucked-up definitions of "rape" which categorically deny the possibility of a man being raped (except by another man).
Lets look at a very recent survey done by the United States Center For Disease Control. It defines "Rape" as attempted or competed forcible penetration of the victim as well as drug/alcohol facilitated completed penetration of the victim. It reports lifetime "rape" rates at about 18.3% of all women and about 1.4% of all men. However this report has a brand new section, a category that has been implicitly excluded for pretty much all previous rape research. It's a category called "made to penetrate". I will remind you that "made to penetrate" does is EXCLUDED from the definition of "rape". The report gives a lifetime rate of 4.8% of all men "made to penetrate".
And lets be clear on what "made to penetrate" means. I was recently reading a message board which had nothing to do with sexuality where, out of the blue, someone commented on the stereotype that men cannot be rape victims, and posted a request for men to share their stories if they had ever been raped. A completely generic non-sex-related community with a fairly random sampling of male readers. Unsurprisingly most of the replies were anonymous. They included reports including a man raped at gunpoint, a man walking on campus in the dark being tasered by an unknown woman then handcuffed to a tree raped and tasered again to the rapist could remove the handcuffs and run off, multiple reports of men discovering their drink had been drugged and being unable to fight off their attacker, multiple reports of men being threatened with being accused of rape themselves if they did not submit - including a case where a man walked into his bedroom to find a naked woman demanding sex and when he resisted she deliberately scratched his neck and hands and threatening to claim he tried to rape her. The reports just went on and on. Those are just what I recall offhand.
Not a single one of those incidents qualifies as "rape" in the CDC survey, not a single one of them constitutes "rape" under virtually any rape survey ever done. They fall under the brand new category "made to penetrate"..... because somehow forcible penis-in-vagina sex is not rape when a woman does it. All men are sex-obsessed animals without the ability or right to decline sex. Because any man who gets raped is "lucky" he got to have sex.
And one notable fact is that not a single one of them reported their rape to the police. The rate of women reporting rape is abysmally low, but it doesn't remotely compare to the effectively ZERO rate of men reporting rape. The social stigma, victim blaming, shaming, and rape-denialism against women is an abomination, but it is as bad or worse for any man attempting to report being raped. Not a single one of the male rape victims reported it to the police.... but there was one case of a male rape victim who tried calling a rape-support hotline. And you know what happened? The person who answered the phone (presumably female) CALLED HIM A LIAR and told him to stop making prank calls. Seriously, how fucked up is that? A fucking RAPE SUPPORT LINE calling a rape victim a liar, saying no you weren't raped and stop fucking calling. Solely because the victim was male. Pure unadulterated sexist ideology and prejudi
Why is it only now, when computers get involved that people are having issues with the basic concept?
It's hard to make a news story out of "nothing happened today, today is the same as yesterday".
What was happening yesterday was grossly offensive, but unfortunately the world of yesterday was not as global-aware and globally-active as it is today. The world of yesterday was not as pro-humanrights as it is today. The world of yesterday was not as anti-sexist as it is today. The unfortunate fact is that the people of yesterday never made an issue out of it. So today we inherit a world where this sort of behavior in Saudi Arabia is not "news".
The fact that they are "upgrading" their systems with modern technology does not in itself make it any better or worse. HOWEVER, it is indeed an excellent opportunity to turn this into a headline news story. It can be "Heay look! They've got some new computer system to oppress women". Yeah they were oppressing women yesterday, but now were have something new, something today's-news newsworthy. We have something new to draw fresh and active attention to the issue. The computerization of the system is in itself meaningless, but it is an excellent opportunity/excuse to shout headline news stories. Headline news stories to inform the uninformed. Headline news stories to motivate those who knew about it but who reluctantly accepted "that's the way the world is" and who felt no realistic ability to do anything about it.
Big changes require big movements to push them through. The fact is that we need rallying cries and banners to bring people together. If computerizing the system can be a rallying cry, if it can be a banner, then so be it. Don't blame a righteous messenger for using meaningless detail to hoist a much needed banner.
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I found some leaked data returned by the SAM imager system:
Linky linky
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If you combine them, 500 DIMMs should be plenty to make at least four or five BRIGHTs.
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500 DIMMs is maybe just enough to make mail armor one chest piece only, but it's plenty for 8 suits of femail armor complete chest, bottoms, gauntlets, and a dozen keychains to boot.
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You misunderstood me.I wasn't talking about exclusionary in terms of who they are willing to help. I mean exclusionary in their membership, or even just exclusionary in identification of who the people helping supposedly are. If your first priority really is to feed hungry children or help battered women or cure cancer, then founding a charity named "Lefthanded Redheaded Lutherans for X" is a really BAD way to actually achieve X. That makes the entire organization about Lefthanded Redheaded Lutherans, and any minimal charitable-X you actually manage to achieve is obviously secondary.
You were arguing, or at least strongly implying, that theists are superior or "better" people because there are almost no charities specifically labeled as "atheist".
Seriously, who is the better person if an atheist volunteers helping kids at the local YMCA? The atheist who considers religious affiliation completely irrelevant and who's only priority is helping kids, or the Christians who placed an exclusionary title on a youth organization to take credit for the good works that the atheist does under their label?
Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby. When atheists create charitable organizations they don't put some asinine "atheists only" label on the name. It's like there's "Stamp collectors against cancer" and "Baseball card collectors against cancer" and "Coin collectors against cancer", and you're saying people who don't collect stuff are inferior because they don't have any charities. You're saying that "secular" groups like the American Cancer Society don't count because it's not labeled "Americans who don't collect random crap Cancer Society".
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You're using "delusion" in the broad sense, which is fine. And just like a new ager uses "energy" or "vibration" in a broad sense
Expanding the application of a word from the individual level to a societal level is hardly equivalent of making up arbitrary woo.
I gave an example of a cultural-norm belief with an objectively pathological nature. Do you dispute that extinction is pathological, and that any suicidal belief and practice which directly results in extinction is inherently pathological? An individual may be physically healthy and and "sane" in the sense of normal and well functional within a society, while that society exerts pressure (potentially highly coercive pressure) beginning in infancy to impose objectively pathological false beliefs. Do you seriously claim that using the word "delusion" in a broader societal level context is the equivalent of random new age woo?
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