Pharyngula

Posted by: mattand08 | April 22, 2011 2:30 PM

Wow.

Posted by: azumahazuki | April 22, 2011 2:32 PM

He's written his own eulogy with this one...I have a baaaaaaad feeling about this.

OTOH maybe he's checking out just in time to avoid the rush...

Chris, no one here will pray for you, because it wouldn't make a difference anyway, but we're all hoping for what gets called a miracle :) Perhaps you should get a cat; I hear DEATH is rather fond of them. Also he's not entirely sure how the little horse-shaped pieces move, so challenge him to chess.

Posted by: Cents | April 22, 2011 2:33 PM

Just had to say how wonderfully written, penetrating and incisive that letter was.

Thank you Christopher Hitchens!

Posted by: GuitarGuy608 | April 22, 2011 2:36 PM

why cant i write this well?

Posted by: Brownian | April 22, 2011 2:40 PM

why cant i write this well?

For starters, it appears your keyboard is missing the shift and apostrophe keys.

Posted by: Red Weasel | April 22, 2011 2:50 PM

If I were half as brave and eloquent as Christopher Hitchens I would consider myself a great man.

Thank you for setting the bar so high.

Posted by: Sastra | April 22, 2011 2:51 PM

A class act, and eloquent with or without a voice to speak with. And always with style.

Posted by: alan | April 22, 2011 2:55 PM

Hi Chris,

We won't pray for you. But how about a Salute?

Alan

Posted by: NerdySkeptic | April 22, 2011 2:56 PM

Hitchens can sure put into beautiful poetry (sorry, prose) what the rest of us think!

WOW!

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/d5rjMOt1pMdd6stFpeUjsXM.EVbX9D_cR_g0E0HIxl9jr7uFyPiDAcc-#f24de | April 22, 2011 3:02 PM

PZ, thank you for posting this.

Mr. Hitchens, well said as always. I have always looked up to you with admiration, and will continue to do so. Keep fighting and while you aren't in our prayers, you are definately in our thoughts. I hope the best for you sir.

Eric

Posted by: Randy (not Randy) | April 22, 2011 3:04 PM

Brownian, in my case there is no need at all to apologize for the wiseassery. I really needed it.

Posted by: Randomfactor | April 22, 2011 3:11 PM

Sad and wonderful.

Posted by: Dick the Damned | April 22, 2011 3:18 PM

If there were a theistic god, surely it would want Christopher Hitchens to live a long, productive life, to better enhance human flourishing? But CH is an anti-theist, so this god would also want him out of action.

What's a confused god to do? No wonder it only exists in the minds of people who can't properly exercise critical thinking.

Posted by: oihorse | April 22, 2011 3:20 PM

My apologies to GuitarGuy608 and everyone else for whom I ruined the moment with my wiseassery.

Meh, that snark was pure win. +1 would read again.

Posted by: Savior Breath | April 22, 2011 3:30 PM

It's an honor sharing the planet with you, Hitch.

Posted by: Gus Snarp | April 22, 2011 3:36 PM

Hear, hear!

Posted by: SaintStephen | April 22, 2011 3:37 PM

Get well godd damn you.

Posted by: Gus Snarp | April 22, 2011 3:40 PM

@Brownian - Your particular brand of comic relief will always be welcome, as far as I'm concerned.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | April 22, 2011 3:47 PM

After a long series of accommodationist claptrap coming at us from every corner of the Web, this letter has been very invigorating to read.

Posted by: Tex | April 22, 2011 3:54 PM

Poetry.

Posted by: spaghettificatedgod | April 22, 2011 3:59 PM

Sorry to be such a fanboy but, I love Christopher Hitchens. I've never met him, I don't know him, but I really do love him. We need so much more of him than, I'm afraid, we're ever going to get.

Posted by: Darwins-church | April 22, 2011 4:08 PM

To live in the hearts in those you leave behind is to never die. Carl Sagan

Posted by: ArianDrake | April 22, 2011 4:18 PM

Thanks to PZ for posting this and Christopher Hitchens is truly an inspiring person. Thank you.

Posted by: ergaster | April 22, 2011 4:29 PM

What a superb piece of writing. What a great human being he is. I'm reminded of how Frank Zappa faced his impending death: "He faced his death with the outmost courage." Christopher does too, in spades.

Posted by: Fred Price, The Cantankerous Cephalopod | April 22, 2011 4:43 PM

WOW. Just wow. Like, seriously, this is just so amazing.
Dont keep the faith XD

Posted by: cairne.morane | April 22, 2011 4:51 PM

/stand
/tar Hitchens
/applaud

Posted by: Rorschach | April 22, 2011 5:08 PM

*sniff*

Now this is a manifesto I'd like every atheist to read and sign !

Posted by: Brian English | April 22, 2011 5:12 PM

By Zeus the man can write!

When reading this phrase Our weapons are , was I the only person who expected the Spanish Inquisition?

What? Nobody expects that.....

Rorschach, no dogmas, no credal statements!

Posted by: Brando | April 22, 2011 5:31 PM

The word alchemist does it again. Rousing and excellent piece of prose.

I send hope to the uncaring cosmos that a statistically rare remission comes and stays.

What the stupid and confused, those who take probability personally, would call a miracle.

Posted by: Segmentum | April 22, 2011 5:37 PM

Well, he did smoke like a chimney for decades knowing full well that would significantly increase his chances of getting cancer.

I wish his resolve and determination was present long ago to break that rather banal "mind shackle"..

Posted by: Timberwoof | April 22, 2011 5:41 PM

Message for you, Sirs.

He's not dead yet!

Posted by: Dan L. | April 22, 2011 5:44 PM

The man is a priceless treasure. Let's all lift a glass of Black Label to his honor tonight.

Posted by: unclerobert.myopenid.com | April 22, 2011 5:57 PM

Christopher Hitchens & Thomas Jefferson Have To Be Some of The Smartest People To Have Ever Lived.

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmKSJqjaOQXtHq0eSLNtkP3dyiyQ3WChmQ | April 22, 2011 6:11 PM

Inspirational!

Posted by: littlestar | April 22, 2011 6:25 PM

Absolutely lovely. So glad we have him to speak with such eloquence while looking death in the face. His lack of a need for religion and all it's easy answers rings so much truer from his view at the edge.

Posted by: criticalacuity | April 22, 2011 6:37 PM

I think he'll be the first person I ever shed a tear for when he passes. Great speech, and I think you'll all agree that we'll all very much miss him when he leaves us.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 22, 2011 7:03 PM

Hitchens used his platform to encourage the waging of war against Iraq.

One million dead Iraqis as of 2007, millions more displaced.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | April 22, 2011 7:07 PM

Hitchens used his platform to encourage the waging of war against Iraq.

Like all of us, the man is flawed. And somehow I doubt George W. Bush was particularly motivated by Hitchens when making the decision to invade Iraq.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 22, 2011 7:16 PM

Like all of us, the man is flawed.

To point out the flaws in what he has written is to take him seriously.

It would be disrespectful to him to not take him seriously.

And somehow I doubt George W. Bush was particularly motivated by Hitchens when making the decision to invade Iraq.

The continuation of the war, and the degree of force therein, has always been dependent upon the US citizenry's varying complacence or agitation, as Obama's draw-down of troops demonstrates.

Hitchens' influence on "serious people", as well as on secularists, has some effect on the degree of agitation.

Posted by: John Morales | April 22, 2011 7:31 PM

SGBM:

To point out the flaws in what he has written is to take him seriously.

So you perforce take everyone you criticise seriously?

Really.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | April 22, 2011 7:40 PM

There is much to admire about Christopher Hitchens. He's an eloquent writer and speaker, a masterful debater, and has the courage to express his convictions. There's also things about Hitchens which are much less admirable. His support of the Iraqi fiasco is something I detest about him.

The man is dying. De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

Posted by: SeeDubya | April 22, 2011 7:41 PM

@elronxenu

It's the same on RichardDawkins.net and I took him to be saying it was the first from which others have been copied like a print of a picture or copy of a painting. I could be wrong, though.

Posted by: John Morales | April 22, 2011 7:57 PM

SGBM, it's one thing to criticise specifics, and another to make accusatory claims such as "Hitchens used his platform to encourage the waging of war against Iraq" as if that were a moral judgement.

Posted by: Kevin | April 22, 2011 8:12 PM

Inspirational.

Sure to be referred to, copied, quoted, re-quoted, and paraphrased over and over again.

Thanks, Hitch.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | April 22, 2011 8:27 PM

Emily Dickinson on death -- excerpt sfrom a letter she wrote to Louise and Frances Norcross in November of 1882:

I hoped to write you before, but mother's dying almost stunned my spirit.

I have answered a few inquiries of love, but written little intuitively. She was scarcely the aunt you knew. The great mission of pain had been ratified—cultivated to tenderness by persistent sorrow, so that a larger mother died than had she died before. There was no earthly parting. She slipped from our fingers like a flake gathered by the wind, and is now part of the drift called "the infinite."

We don't know where she is, though so many tell us. ...

Posted by: AssassinGrl | April 22, 2011 8:31 PM

Thank you, Hitch. You have already achieved at least a measure of an afterlife, as your words will continue to inspire for many years to come.

Posted by: =8)-DX | April 22, 2011 9:18 PM

God be less, and don't. keep. the. faith.

Posted by: Dan L. | April 22, 2011 9:26 PM

Hitch is FOS about the Iraq war, it's true. I believe he came to his view out of an honest, deep-seated hatred of tyranny, but he has disappointed me by adopting some of the Right's discredited talking points, such as the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection.

Still, I regard him as an intellectual giant of our times; I'll take him, Iraq war and all. His passing would be a great loss to the cause of reason and enlightenment. Get well soon, Hitch.

Posted by: Jud | April 22, 2011 9:33 PM

Hitchens has famously moved to the right politically, pissing off a fair number of Brit lefties in doing so. The Iraq business is of a piece with this general shift (unfortunately, to my mind). I have sometimes thought his literary criticism pieces in The Atlantic more arch and personal than enlightening. There and elsewhere, his writing has occasionally been a bit more consciously showy than very good writing ought to be.

But perhaps this cancer has, to borrow a phrase, "concentrated the mind wonderfully," because that letter was just The Bomb.

when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstition.

Indeed, we build our own prison, and refuse to see the bars are nothing but air, thin air, at our own great cost and others' as well.

This reminds me of a sequence in a comic strip called Odd Bodkins by Dan O'Neill (not sure if anyone here will remember - he was perhaps most famous for publishing, with other authors calling themselves the Air Pirates, a Mickey Mouse parody that caused The Walt Empire to sue the living bejesus out of him for more than 10 years). The two main characters are walking in the rain, hands in pockets, hunched forward against the downpour. One says to the other, "Seems like it's been raining forever." The other says, "Tell it to stop." So the first says, "Stop, rain."

And it does.

Posted by: Jewel | April 22, 2011 9:40 PM

I wish I had one tenth of the courage Mr Hitchens has proven he has. I will spend the remainder of my life trying to live up to his example.
Thank you sir for all you have shared and for the class you have shown while sharing your wisdom.
Thank you
Jewel

Posted by: iconografer | April 22, 2011 9:45 PM

thanks hitch.

Posted by: madfeline | April 22, 2011 10:40 PM

A toast tonite to Christopher Hitchens "and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion."

Posted by: tentodttatcs | April 22, 2011 11:11 PM

I love Christopher Hitchens. I won't pray for him when he's gone, but I promise to cry.

Posted by: northfox | April 22, 2011 11:21 PM

Isn't it nice that we are personal beings? Isn't it nice to have free will? CH made up his mind to not believe in God. God let him do that.
The gates of hell are locked from the inside.

Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon | April 22, 2011 11:25 PM

I had to turn down the volume on the radio (blues on WNKU) and read Hitch's words out loud to myself. Surely others who did so got goosebumps and possibly a bit of water at the eye.

It is courage and poise like this -- especially when backed up with evidence and eloquence -- that informs my love for others on this whirling rock. Without some rational grounding I can scarce imagine what would compel me to ethical considerations. Hitch is one of the latest in a long line of thoughtful and honest humans who have taught and tutored me. The result is my own tale of a wonderful life and an ever widening awareness if not some less wide understanding.

Christopher, your legacy will be to have set a rich table before us with much to discuss and much to consume. We shall be a long time at this table, and you will be long supping with us.

Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom | April 22, 2011 11:43 PM

The gates of hell are locked from the inside.

What a ghoul.

Posted by: Benjamin "pardon my French" Geiger | April 23, 2011 12:03 AM

Darwins-church:

Could you please cite that quote? I've said something very similar for quite some time, and it'd be nice to attribute it to the original speaker.

Posted by: airbagmoments | April 23, 2011 12:10 AM

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Posted by: airbagmoments | April 23, 2011 12:12 AM

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Posted by: slimothy | April 23, 2011 12:28 AM

Wow. I don't believe it would be possible to write a more beautiful Atheist Manifesto.

Posted by: John Kieffer | April 23, 2011 12:30 AM

Dear Mr. Hitchens,

I memorized this line in high school 40+ yrs ago and wish to recite it here for you. It is from Shakespeare's play: *Julius Caeser* in which Caeser, being warned of the impending threat to his life, states:

"Cowards die many times before their death; the VALIANT tastes death but once ... of all the wonders I yet have seen, it seems to me most strange that man should fear death -- a necessary end -- will come when it will come."

Mr. Hitchens, you personify Shakespeare's valiant!

Bravo, sir.

John Kieffer
President, Atheists of Florida

Posted by: Rorschach | April 23, 2011 12:45 AM

CH made up his mind to not believe in God. God let him do that.

Dimwit.

Posted by: The other Tim | April 23, 2011 1:02 AM

We will carry on, Hitch. We promise.

Posted by: Andromeda | April 23, 2011 1:19 AM

"As the enemy becomes more familiar"...reading that and the rest of the piece made my heart heavy. I loved "god is not great" and am looking forward to reading Hitch-22.

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmRjbXoDgCq4N0aNWT2Z2RtB4Mm9CbDVys | April 23, 2011 1:55 AM

Strange Gods..........
Every time you spend money on yourself for something you don't need, you are killing other people.
You could forgo everything you don't need and instead donate that money to feed others who have no food. You could save children from starvation every day, but I bet you don't.
You are responsible for the deaths of thousands every year, as are most all of us.
Do you drink anything besides tap water? You don't need to......
You should focus more on the deaths you cause rather the deaths you think Christopher Hitchens caused. You are blind to your own guilt.

Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon | April 23, 2011 2:04 AM

Do you drink anything besides tap water? You don't need to......

Do you piss anything but blood and bile? Your prescription for Strange Gods speaks loudly to me that you really know that you needn't either . . .

Posted by: maxamillion | April 23, 2011 2:27 AM

Bravo Mr. Hitchens, Bravo!

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 23, 2011 2:38 AM

Every time you spend money on yourself for something you don't need, you are killing other people.

You could forgo everything you don't need and instead donate that money to feed others who have no food. You could save children from starvation every day, but I bet you don't.

You are responsible for the deaths of thousands every year, as are most all of us.

Do you drink anything besides tap water? You don't need to......

Taking all that as given, this still doesn't follow:

You should focus more on the deaths you cause rather the deaths you think Christopher Hitchens caused.

See, Hitchens's lifestyle is not terribly different from my own. So all that you listed above also applies to Hitchens, and on top of it all there's also his culpability in the Iraq War.

Regardless of what I should do to reduce my footprint and reduce others' poverty, it does not make any sense for any of us to stop criticizing people who promote mass murder.

You are blind to your own guilt.

Complacency is not blindness.

Posted by: FTS | April 23, 2011 2:57 AM

SGBM: Are you saying Hitchens deliberately "promoted mass murder"? And what would you do about those like Saddam Hussein?

Posted by: The Tim Channel | April 23, 2011 3:14 AM

While my guitar gently weeps.
Enjoy.

Posted by: jafafahots | April 23, 2011 4:26 AM

And what would you do about those like Saddam Hussein?

Personally I woulda not supported him and armed him in the first place.

But that's just me.

Posted by: John Morales | April 23, 2011 4:59 AM

SG, haven't you ridden your hobby-horse enough already?

After all, this post is about his letter to AA.
No warmongering here.

Posted by: John Morales | April 23, 2011 5:24 AM

yahoomess ID=ZiflkKEgpv7S_O2F8Cw1EI6SISY-#55528: You confuse aspirational thinking with utopianism.

(Science is already thus emancipated, FWIW.)

Posted by: KG | April 23, 2011 5:52 AM

Admirable address by Hitchens, a person of great courage.

Posted by: Rorschach | April 23, 2011 6:03 AM

So to summarise, what I would have done as POTUS about Saddam Hussein in 2003 is to press for the retargeting and enforcement of economic sanctions, maintained the no-fly zone, and supported the UN weapons inspectors.

Hindsight, meet 20/20 vision.

Posted by: Rorschach | April 23, 2011 6:30 AM

We're not all as fuckwitted as you.

Stay classy hey. I don't know what you argued for before the invasion 8 years ago, since I didn't know you at the time, and I doubt you know much about my position on this now or back then either. It just seems a bit cheap to be saying 8 years on from some complex political event, "this is how I would have done it". So thanks for the "fuckwitted", but it comes across as a bit impulsive. Or in fact, you know, fuckwitted.

Posted by: KG | April 23, 2011 7:00 AM

Of course, everything I said about what I would have done about Saddam in 2003 is part of a strategy of containment, which had been in operation since 1991. Hence a less detailed argument is that I would have continued - but sought to refine and improve - that strategy.

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawla3Os1I06yxePJtpZovi6EUNHNc4qoj48 | April 23, 2011 7:18 AM

Whoa...terrific

HOWEVER

Religion isn't the problem.
Religion would be fine
except that it contains people.

"the overt menace of nuclear-armed mullahs" - excuse me, but I am not aware of ANY "nuclear-armed mullahs". I am open minded, tell me of one, just one. Wait...DON'T tell me of one, spare me your fear driven, drivel. You are hallucinating - actually, we are ALL hallucinating, it is in the nature of people and why we muck up the good name of religion.

"It is our innate solidarity" - excuse me, but did readers just let that phrase slide? ...Oh, never mind...

"the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation" -

Gee, with all these wonderful characteristics I have to ask did you vote Democrat or Republican?

Wait. Just kidding. All evidence, any objective, "courageous pursuit of truth" will tell you that such a choice is big evil vs bigger evil. Yet I cannot help but think that the difficulty in moving people to an open minded third choice has as it's chief barrier people's "innate solidarity" with some group with
which they have become identified.

Belief systems are not limited to the Otherworld, but are a part of the human psychological make up. Our habitual approach to swimming through a sea of everyday inputs becomes our programming and then our programming itself becomes our input. Also, such is the marriage between our psychological makeup and our physical apparatus that to consciously choose to swim contrary to our personal belief system will make the majority of people physically stricken or sick, maybe even
cause them to "lose their speaking voice" :)

...Well, I am hungry for some toast. Ciao.

Posted by: Mr.Kosta | April 23, 2011 8:16 AM

Isn't it nice that we are personal beings? Isn't it nice to have free will? CH made up his mind to not believe in God. God let him do that. The gates of hell are locked from the inside.

Isn't it nice we're not braindead morons like you and we do not relish on someone else's death?

I spit on you and in your stupid and evil dogma. Go have anal sex with a porcupine, you rotting ghoul.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/cWzofMB0zswdYNFr9vbnt2XgjbLJVWKHwA--#d7f9f | April 23, 2011 8:49 AM

But I cannot help but think that Hitch would be here a few years longer had he not smoked so long, and he probably wouldn't have smoked so long if he didn't have the innate feeling that it wouldn't happen to him, that he was special, and that he would rise above the scientific predictions.

Posted by: northfox | April 23, 2011 9:40 AM

@azumahazuki #133

yes, I am still here. And yes, I used the phrase 'the gates of hell are locked from the inside' from C. S. Lewis. As with so many phrases that made it into common knowledge, it does not have to be put within quotation marks and does not need to be footnoted. At least that's what I thought. If I was mistaken, please accept my apology.

To tell the truth, I do not know if the gates can be opened again.
But I know that I have to make an informed decision while I live on this earth what to do with my life. I had this nagging question 'why do I live?' for quite a while, and I made up my mind after reviewing the options.
My decision *was* tested (and I do not mean it was tested by a person) while I went through some really rough times in my life. Our oldest son was born with a congenital heart defect, and he died at age 10, 11 years ago. But that's a long story.

Again coming back to the original point, I don't know if those gates can be opened again. I surely wish they can. But the point that Lewis was making is that no matter how much proof there is for a God, there will be people who will not accept any proof. It boils down to a personal decision.
Hell is not a punishment, it is the natural and logical outcome of my decision.

Posted by: northfox | April 23, 2011 10:02 AM

@ Foggg #155

*********************
Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your intellectual freedom is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.
Robert G Ingersoll
**********************

I say a wholehearted 'amen' to that. 'So is it!' I have never felt freer than now. I love the freedom to discuss things with friends whom I trust and it just happens that one of them is so much wiser than me.

***********************
In this sense, every church is a cemetery and every creed an epitaph.
Robert G Ingersoll
***********************

I do not see the connection to the previous sentences here.
Also, absolute statements, like 'Every', make me search for exceptions. And I feel that I don't have to look far.

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawla3Os1I06yxePJtpZovi6EUNHNc4qoj48 | April 23, 2011 10:05 AM

Oops, I posted @156.

Was not familiar with CH's health condition. My bad, that is what Google is for.

When I put a smiley face after
"lose their speaking voice" I believed CH was suffering from the omnipresent flu.

We all hope his health improves. Send your prayers to his general aura, his system will know what to do with the energy.

People make the mistake of sending energy directly to the sick area of the body and thus strengthen the ailment. Send it to the healthy portions and elevate their strength.

And never ever ever send it point blank at someone's heart...JEESH!

You are welcome.

Posted by: Rab Simpson | April 23, 2011 10:31 AM

@northfox #162

There is no proof of your "god". There is no evidence for the existence of your "god". If you think there is by all means present it, and we'll determine whether or not you understand the definition of the words themselves (proof and evidence).

Also, please bear in mind that wanting something to be true because it makes a difficult situation easier to handle doesn't make it true.

Posted by: airbagmoments | April 23, 2011 10:51 AM

In tribute to Hitch I offer a quote from a play by Catholic writer Alfred Noyes. Probably it was meant satirically in the play, but it works anyway. As far as I can tell this is the first appearance of this quote on the internet because it is apparently invisible to Google, so here's to you Hitch!

"It might be the final test of man
That he should face this darkness and this death
Worthily and renounce all easy hope,
All consolation,
All but the wintery smile upon the face of Truth."

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawklr9rECbmso94itcJM7XXmzLdwng-caDs | April 23, 2011 11:22 AM

We love you, Hitch.

Thanks for always being there for us and for giving us such a treasure trove of reason, logic and wisdom from which to gather and use as the “tools of our trade” keeping church and state separate.

We will keep and defend your legacy with strength and honor, brother.

With great admiration, always.

Steve Schlicht
Biloxi MS

Posted by: raven | April 23, 2011 11:49 AM

I used the phrase 'the gates of hell are locked from the inside' from C. S. Lewis.

Ooh, Pascals Wager again. I can play too.

"The wheel of reincarnation turns forever."

Northfox, Braham is very disappointed in you. You are wasting your life. Believe in Brahma or you will be reincarnated as a slug, tapeworm, or gasp, horrors, a fundie xian internet troll with a malfunctioning mind. Again. You blew your last life too, I see.

BTW, CS Lewis is a substandard and highly dishonest xian nonthinker. His Trilemma was a false Trilemma. There aren't 3 choices, there are actually 6. Liar, Lord, Lunatic, Mistake, Mythology.

Might as well quote chick tracts or Pat Robinson.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | April 23, 2011 12:11 PM

I pray to God that a miracle will happen.

Talking to yourself is such a good and sure way of getting something done. :-þ

Posted by: Sylvia | April 23, 2011 1:30 PM

What struck me most in this letter is, ironically, how much closer he is to the fundamental messages taught by Jesus, which are love and the Golden Rule. So sad that ignorance and greed have corrupted them. May your passing be pain free, Mr. Hitchens.

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | April 23, 2011 2:33 PM

Good luck to you, Hitch. You've done some great works and some great wrongs. When you're gone, what you've written will still be cherished, raged at, wept over, and torn apart by opponents who respect you enough to care. I don't know that anyone could ask for a better legacy.

Posted by: azumahazuki | April 23, 2011 5:54 PM

@northfox

Evidence above all else. I have had some similar "testing" experiences (though have not lost a child for obvious reasons).

Raven said basically what I want to say, so I'll add this:

Crack a bunch of books. A lot of science books. Understand that, whatever God exists, this God chose to do things evolutionarily, with all the pain and suffering for billions of years that implies.

Understand that the foundational stories of Yahweh (Adam and Eve, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, the Exodus, and so forth) never happened.

Realize that the four Gospels, purported to be eyewitness testimony, cannot agree on:
1) How long Jesus was on the cross (hint: 3 hours or 6 hours, he won't be dead).
2) What he said when he died
3) Whether he got a spear in the side or not
4) The Great Zombie Uprising
5) Who was at the tomb?
6) Who saw Jesus first?
7) How long did he stay before ascending?
8) What did he say and to whom before he did?

Consider Mat. 10:23 as well, and ponder on the fact that Jesus did not fulfill Messianic prophecy. Ask yourself why Matthew has to lie and misrepresent and twist OT prophecy (cf. Isaiah 53) to shoehorn an account in that does not mesh with Luke's anyway.

Think about all the murder, torture, wars, rapes, killing, and other miscellaneous crimes that have happened since about 40 AD. Read about how dogma changed and why. Read the great universalists, especially Origen, and ponder how it took 300+ years for his univesalism to be anathemized, despite the councils declaring plenty of his other ideas anathema.

In short, think. You seem sensitive and intelligent but uninformed. As the man himself said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye free."

Posted by: calilasseia | April 23, 2011 8:14 PM

For all his flaws, past errors of judgement, and human frailties that he shares with the rest of us, Hitchens can still bestride the discoursive landscape as a colossus, as this letter establishes most eloquently. In what may be his last major public words to his fellow human beings, he has established that he has far more claim to the moral high ground, than all the cheap sophists who would deliver us, in chains, into the concentration camp for the mind that is supernaturalism.

When the moment of the last goodbye arrives, it is writing such as this, that will leave us lamenting the departure of a modern Socrates.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 23, 2011 8:25 PM

Deal with it.

We are dealing with it by pointing out his sexism.

He is notable, and I think your own prejudice is the cause of your sickness, such as it is.

There is no prejudice in noting that Hitchens says a lot of sexist shit.

Posted by: northfox | April 23, 2011 9:19 PM

@azumahazuki #182

my answers will be too off-topic and do not belong to this thread, I believe.
Also, I don't want to cause others to read the acidic replies to my post by some other posters.
If you are interested in a discourse, pls email me at northfox2011@yahoo.com.

I will reply to all the points you raised.
I don't know if I am sensitive and intelligent, but I consider myself informed.
I have a university degree in natural science and I teach at a university.

Posted by: Ichthyic | April 23, 2011 11:53 PM

northfox...

not SILVERfox with a new nym I trust?

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/IPmkV9pzreLTyzEO4iLRFpLnao2whLeM#638ab | April 24, 2011 12:55 AM

I feel no need to adulate; do not believe that wailings and incantations can affect the laws of nature; do not want any form of creationism taught in schools; and believe firmly in separation of church and state.

And, yet, I hold a glimmer of hope for something after, something ok. I hope a fraction of a glimmer more than " . . . all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before."

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 24, 2011 2:06 AM

SG, there is if you can't get past it to the full measure of someone.

Again, John, everybody here has an opinion on what stands out about someone. And we are all sharing them.

No one is obliged to submit to your insistence that we should see him in a particular way.

There is no prejudice in noting that Hitchens says a lot of sexist shit.

I could write a nuanced article on his political history but I don't see any need for it. Such is already available from many sources.

I really shouldn't have to correct you on this, but there's a big ol' non sequitur in assuming that the things I take the time to say about Hitchens are the only thoughts I have about him. Same goes for skeptifem.

As Hitchens is more complex than one person's brief blog comments might capture, I am more complex than the sum of my speech on any topic might imply.

This thread is about his atheism, not the Iraq war or his putative sexism.

Every time you say something like this, I am going to up the ante. Hitchens made racially dubious comments about Obama:

'And why is a man with a white mother considered to be “black,” anyway?'

Bringing it up is one thing, ineffectually obsessing about it is another.

That's amusing coming from someone who is currently obsessing over defending Hitchens's honor. There was no need for you to accuse skeptifem of prejudice. You can step away from the computer at any time. I'm not suggesting that you should, by any means; your lack of introspection is entertaining.

I note that you are exhibiting symptoms explainable by mania.

Unless you are a psychiatric professional, or someone who personally experiences mania, this over-the-internet diagnosis is extremely irresponsible.

If you are a psychiatric professional, or someone who personally experiences mania, that's still the sort of thing you ought to communicate by private email.

(If you were a psychiatric professional, you would know that most of the symptoms of mania would be exceptionally difficult to diagnose by observing a person's writing on the internet (unless they were actually talking about their symptoms.))

Posted by: char.my.dar | April 24, 2011 6:25 AM

Does anyone see a little boy most times when we watch and/or read CH? Granted, a master of writing/thinking and immposssible not to like, and anyone that doesn't see the chuckle, well, I wouldn't want to know them anyway.
CH makes me so sad though.
I have been tuned to him since a weird show back in 95 or 96, either with Lamb and/or CRose when he slammed MTeresa.
So, quiet with "you don't even know him" type stuff. (just in case).
But, remember the ACooper interview----his 1st time coming out saying he has cancer. Copper is talking, injects CH's words of 'burning the candle',...etc...CH HAS to add before Copper continues, "and what a lovely light it shown",... Now (I), (WE) know that's beautiful...but, well,..I see it so much, especially with CH. I LOVE him---It should be clear here. I am just curious if anyone see's his sadness---and not just because he is likely going to be talked about in the past tense likely sooner than we were hoping. I could list more. oh, so many more---and YES Like when all of the sudden it seemed like we could now see him on youtube anytime---Peeps,...that was just 3 years ago! and THAT was a pain. Now, it's easy, and as it goes- it figures we wil lose him--and then what? The guys, SHarris?...I DO like him,..but CH was such the little boy---I'm partial to him. I liked that about him. He had/HAS an edge..Sam is good though- I still remember the feeling of when we'd all be like, (wow, our guy is on) and all the places we'd have to go to find him, then the god not too good book---we were in love!!!...haaa...you KNOW it too--,..and then once in a while "he's on tv!"
Wow, are we gonna miss you Chris---yes, I said it, CRIS---ok topher--- and then we'll have ? RDawkins?...Briliant---but makes me puke (me personally)...but what about CH and the sadness,...even said recently that (it takes a lot to make him "moist"). I think he is saying a truism,...but I KNOW there's a river. I think CH has "(built) up that wall)---ha,..I made a cutsie---Let's all be british and gay--it's fun---LOVE YOU CHRISTOPHER---good trip!

Posted by: BuzzLOL | April 24, 2011 6:33 AM

.. Hello,

.... I'm new here, just clicked onto the Hitchens story and ended up here... looks like I may have found another new home, LOL! .. Strangely, my membership confirmation email for this site ended up in my SPAM file instead of my INBOX... wonder if that was intentional on Yahoo!'s part for religious reasons? I almost didn't find it, but was looking in the bulk/spam file for another reason! I've had problems with Yahoo!'s THOUGHT POLICE in the past. For instance, Yahoo! used to block the term: ALL RELIGION IS MENTAL ILLNESS !! After losing 90% of their customers to Google, they stopped censoring that. Once again proving desperation can be a useful tool for getting the truth out...!

.... On to Hitchens, I was troubled that 3/4's of the comments above appear to be worship of Hitchen!, As an atheist, I would think that would trouble him, but as an egotistical person who seems to be more interested in making a living selling books to atheists than really being an atheist, I suspect it doesn't bother him. Which also explains his support of EvilBushJr.'s unneeded War on Iraq. 6,000 U.S.Troops dead and 50,000 horribly wounded for life to remove ONE Saddam Hussein was NOT a reasonable bargain... And the loss of 1 million more Iraqi lives was also reprehensible... to those of us who can think outside our own box/country...

.... I also don't find Hitchen's writing/thinking particularly good in the letter above. Right from the first words: "Dear fellow-unbelievers", unbelievers is a negative term... if we are to prevail, we must start speaking in POSITIVES! Few want to follow those who speak only in negatives. Same for even the word "atheist", meaning 'not religious' or 'no god(s)', it's negative. I prefer the term Normal People, which is a positive term, but also conveys not having religion addiction or any other addictions or mental illnesses... something Hitchens could have added to his atheism... not having smoking/nicotine addiction... Hitchens is a young man, in my view, younger than me, and if he had been a Normal Person with no addictions, instead of merely an atheist, most likely his health would be great like mine...

.... In reference to other posters above: further, improved containment of Saddam was NOT "hindsight", it was my foresight as well... also, before 2001, I knew and wrote online that if elected, EvilBushJr. would be a terrible president... more foresight... of course, even I didn't realize just how bad, that he would be The 'W'orst President in History... who could have forecast that the people of the USA would tolerate such a bad president for 8 years... or re-elect him after 4 years...?!?!? Mentally ill religious people should not be allowed to vote and participate in running our country... cure yourself first, then ask to vote... the USA can't afford anymore of religics' bad choices... Did any of our English friends know in advance what a Bush lapdog Bliar would turn out to be?

Posted by: char.my.dar | April 24, 2011 6:39 AM

@Buzzlol
no, you just have to adjust your mail---truth is, goog, yaho,..all lean WAY left--

Posted by: sassan.darian | April 24, 2011 7:39 AM

Please live and don't leave us...thank you for your inspiring words

Posted by: BuzzLOL | April 24, 2011 8:03 AM

.. I suppose in those days, it was necessary for Jefferson to own slaves in order to have sufficient education, wealth, and influence to, along with Madison, get separation of church and state into the constitution... and become atheist president... not justifying slavery... just glad Jefferson and Madison got their way in the formation of the USA and writing of the Constitution... wish more people today had their wisdom of 250 years ago... and apparently Jefferson didn't consider blacks/slaves to be 'untouchables'... although open marriage to one was prolly impossible in his day...

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | April 24, 2011 8:11 AM

a Bliar government would probably launch an invasion of Poland.

Invading Poland is so mid-20th Century.

Posted by: Don Quijote | April 24, 2011 8:42 AM

BuzzLOL:

I think I am correct in saying that Hichens' father died of the self same cancer that he is now suffering. A good chance therefor that he could have contracted cancer without a single cigarette or a glass of whisky.
Glad to hear though that in your smugness you are addiction free and in good health.

Posted by: llewelly | April 24, 2011 9:15 AM

An important part of skepticism is remaining aware of the faults of people you admire. Thus, critiques of Hitchens are entirely topical to this thread.

Posted by: Bdohrin | April 24, 2011 11:37 AM

Some of these responses.

Obviously many atheists are just as kooky as religious nuts.

Hitchens not perfect? You don't say!

No one and no thing is perfect. Thats what evolution is about.

But it's ok to appreciate the things and the people that are close. While still being aware that there is always room for improvement.

Hitchen's mixture of wit, humor, sarcasm, intellect.....was rare indeed. He will be missed.

Posted by: Iain Walker | April 24, 2011 12:03 PM

northfox (#162):

But the point that Lewis was making is that no matter how much proof there is for a God, there will be people who will not accept any proof.

Maybe. Closed-mindedness is not unique to any particular segment of the population. On the other hand, no-one can be blamed for not making an illogical leap of faith to believe something for which compelling arguments are lacking. It's up to the likes of you and Lewis to provide those arguments, and Lewis's failure to provide anything other than non sequiturs and fallacies is quite notable.

It boils down to a personal decision.

And for the rationally-minded, that decision depends on the validity of the arguments and the plausibility of the premises.

Hell is not a punishment, it is the natural and logical outcome of my decision.

Wrong. It is the enforced outcome of the arbitrary and restricted set of options that your deity is supposed to have seen fit to make available.

If I'm banged up in the Lubyanka, and my NKVD interrogator offers me the choice between submitting to the authority of Comrade Stalin or being carted off to the gulag, does my refusal to accept the former mean that my incarceration in a Siberian labour camp is the "natural and logical" outcome of my decision? Or does it mean that I have been unreasonably forced to chose between artificially limited options?

Lewis was no totalitarian, but the logic of his (and your) view of hell as something the unbeliever freely chooses is nevertheless totalitarian in principle. It is the "freedom" to chose between non-exhaustive alternatives imposed from above by an unaccountable authority. A god that says "Thy will be done" as it casts you into hell is a disingenuous monster, and both Lewis and yourself diminish yourselves as human beings by defending such a idea.

Posted by: Hairhead | April 24, 2011 12:42 PM

Skeptifem & Some Gods: Good for you, I'm on your side.

I have admired Hitchens as a writer, raconteur, wit, and courageous, acidic public atheist for many years. I adored his takedown of the vile Mother Teresa, who arranged for the poor of Calcutta to die in prolonged suffering, all for a god she didn't really believe in. I championed Hitchens when he pointed out that the scabrous, arrogant, vicious, and amoral Kissinger was a war criminal who ought to be put on public trial.

And I was distressed at his "bad lad's" approach to life -- smoking, drinking, and sexism. And I was horrified at his initial support of Bush2's Iraq War, and sickened at his humiliating pretzel-logic when he continued to support that vile immorality.

Hitchens was accomplished, imperfect, complicated, and deserves huzzahs for his good works, and careful, clear, public raspberries for all the times and ways in which he was a shithead. He will be missed.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 24, 2011 1:33 PM

Well, I admire his unapologetic smoking and drinking. People's all welcome to treat their own bodies as they choose.

Posted by: raven | April 24, 2011 1:58 PM

The whole xian idea of hell is silly anyway.

According to most xian variant dogmas, you go to hell if you don't believe jesus is god or that jesus/god even exists. Being a serial killer is OK though, as long as you still believe. "Xians aren't better, just saved" and all that.

But why should a universe spanning 13.7 billion year old powerful fairy care a bit if we believe in him? It hurts no one, and makes no real difference to anyone. If the sky fairy really cared, he would have his own TV show, Youtube channel, website, and sponsor some pro sports.

If people didn't believe I exist, I wouldn't much care. I certainly wouldn't torture them for all eternity over it. That would be...evil.

Besides, if you trace the history back, hell was just something xians invented when the religion went off the rails. Paul made xianity about believing in jesus rather than believing in what jesus actually advocated about living and life, the message itself.

It isn't much in the Old Testament. A lot of Jews didn't even believe in an afterlife, including the Temple priests, the Sadducees. And we know exactly where the xians stole it from. The NT bible was written in Greek, by Hellenized Jews and Gentiles and they just recycled the Greek Hades.

Posted by: John Morales | April 24, 2011 7:08 PM

[meta]

Hey arobert, other than the proselytisation and miracle anecdote, it was a good comment.

Posted by: Jeleron | April 24, 2011 9:09 PM

Sorry... somebody covered that in a previous post.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 25, 2011 12:31 AM

Beautiful words, and a truly intelligent man. From what I have read in the comments, I see that he is loved for many things. Among them are his words of wisdom, clarity, and his gift of words.

I personally believe that God exists (the Christian God), and I do so for multiple reasons, but no way shape or form do I condemn or look down upon those who don't believe in Him. My goal here is to understand more of the atheistic way of thinking and enlighten a few of the commenters that I thought were out of line.

1. Seeing that evolution in and of itself is a faith, how can atheists condemn religion that is based on faith and science just as evolution is?

2. Not all persons who are religious lack critical thinking skills. A few comments mentioned this and I seriously doubt the validity of this in light of my extensive exposure to reigious believers.

3. It seems in the words of C. Hitchen point to the fact that religion leads to violence. Of course many religions support violence, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I agree full-heartedly that many religions are based in violent beliefs, but Christianity? Yes it has had it's violence, but when the majority of something promotes higher moral standards, how is that negative?

I view those who practice chrsitianity falsely as the "enemy." those who call themselves Christians and don't follow the teachings of Christ are hypocrits and I do not support them. Atheism is not something I fear, because I am a very intellectual person and I can see some valid points that atheism makes. There are just too many flaws with the viewpoint that make it unacceptable in my eyes. I would appreciate friendly criticism on this matter and I would welcome email conversations if anyone is interested.

My regards to Hitchens.

Posted by: Rorschach | April 25, 2011 4:12 AM

Kenneth :

I personally believe that God exists (the Christian God)

Sure, good on you mate, good application of critical thinking there. Because it is so much more likely that the god being you were personally indoctrinated to believe in exists, and all the other gods of the other people who believe their god is the only one that really exists, as opposed to what rationalists are pointing out, namely that given the claims of 35000 religious splinter groups that their god id the real and only one, it is indeed more likely that none of them exists.

Seeing that evolution in and of itself is a faith

Ever had a sore throat or chest infection where they had to change your antibiotics because the first batch didn't work ? That's called evolution. There is no faith involved here, unless one is completely blinded by religious dogma.

I agree full-heartedly that many religions are based in violent beliefs, but Christianity? Yes it has had it's violence, but when the majority of something promotes higher moral standards, how is that negative?

Oh geez, what a tool. Excuse me while I go and find a new irony meter.

Posted by: raven | April 25, 2011 7:23 AM

Kenneth the psycho idiot:

Atheism is not something I fear, because I am a very intellectual person and I can see some valid points that atheism makes.

You aren't even remotely an "intellectual person". I doubt if you even managed to graduate from high school.

You aren't bright enough to even figure out what to be afraid of and why.

Most thinking people fear xianity and at least some xians. They have a proven track record of being violent and homicidal that stretches back two millennia. That is one reason why 1 million people leave the US religion every year.

On a good day in the USA, your fundie perversion holds us back. You are just baggage being dragged along behind our society. On a bad day, fundieism can and will destroy us. It's already killed two of my friends, dead in Iraq, thanks to George Bush.

Posted by: KG | April 25, 2011 8:11 AM

Kenneth

My goal here is to understand more of the atheistic way of thinking

You're either a liar or a halfwit, as shown by the ludicrous claim:

Seeing that evolution in and of itself is a faith

In either case, fuck off.

Posted by: Iain Walker | April 25, 2011 8:34 AM

Kenneth (#226):

My goal here is to understand more of the atheistic way of thinking and enlighten a few of the commenters that I thought were out of line.

There isn't really any single "atheistic way of thinking", because the only common denominator that unites all atheists is their lack of belief in any gods. Different atheists can arrive at their non-belief in different ways, and justify it for different reasons. Atheists can be of any moral or political persuasion, and atheists can still believe in the supernatural (minus any gods, of course). However ...

What I think you will find unites most atheists commenting on this blog is a commitment to skepticism and critical thinking (I'm not saying that all of us always live up to these ideals in every single aspect of our intellectual lives, but it is a goal we try to work towards). We try to maintain a consistent and rigorous approach to evaluating claims of knowledge, and we hold that when one examines the claims of theism from a critical perspective, they do not stand up to scrutiny.

Another common factor amongst many of the atheists here is a tendency towards anti-authoritarianism. So as well as considering the supposedly factual claims of theism to be unsupported (if not false), many of us also consider theism as an ideology to have serious moral flaws, both in principle and in practice.

Again, I emphasise that the above is just a general characterisation which is more or less typical of atheists here, although it is also fairly typical of many atheists in the industrialised West. So don't think of this as necessarily being a definitively "atheistic" way of thinking. Rather, think of it as being a fairly common way of thinking that supports a position of atheism.

Seeing that evolution in and of itself is a faith, how can atheists condemn religion that is based on faith and science just as evolution is?

Oh dear. This couldn't be more wrong, and strongly suggests that you don't really understand how science actually works.

Evolution is a theory, which means not that it is a guess or conjecture, but that (a) it is a rigorous explanatory framework that unites and explains a wide range of phenomena (specifically relating to the complexity and diversity of life), (b) it provides a basis for generating testable hypotheses that help us explain detailed aspects of these phenomena, and (c) it is well-supported by the available evidence. That is what the term "theory" means in science.

The evidential support for evolution comes from numerous tests of its predictions that have been conducted over the past 150 years in all aspects of biology. Basically, biologists determine what we would specifically expect to observe (or not to observe) in the natural world if evolution were true. They then look to see what observations actually obtain - observations which are expected if evolution were true constitute evidence for the theory. Observations that are not expected if the theory is true would then constitute evidence against it, requiring the theory to be modified in order to take these observations into account (and evolutionary theory has indeed undergone many modifications and improvements since Darwin). If enough contrary observations were made, then it would mean that evolution would have to be scrapped and replaced with a better theory. But this hasn't happened. Evolution remains supported by an overwhelming preponderance of evidence from genetics, palaeontology, embryology, molecular biology, biogeography, ecology etc etc. Indeed, it is one of the most thoroughly tested and best supported theories in science.

A selection of the evidence (which also describes ways in which evolution could have been falsified but in fact was not) is available at TalkOrigins. You may find this helpful.

In short, there is no faith involved in the acceptance of evolution, no more than there is any faith involved in accepting plate tectonics, the germ theory of disease, relativity or that the earth orbits the sun.

And your comment about religion being supported by science is downright puzzling. What scientific findings do you think support religion, and why? I should perhaps point out that the religious alternatives to evolution (creationism, including "intelligent design") are scientific failures - they either fail to make detailed predictions that would allow them to be tested, and when they do make predictions, those predictions either turn out to be false (e.g., the global flood beloved of YECs, or Behe's "irreducible complexity") or turn out to be trivial observations which are equally conistent with evolution. There are good methodological and factual reasons why scientists and philosophers reject creationism as valid science (or indeed valid reasoning of any kind).

Posted by: Iain Walker | April 25, 2011 10:13 AM

Kenneth (#226):

Not all persons who are religious lack critical thinking skills.

True. However, a common criticism from non-believers is that such persons do not apply those skills consistently. Many intelligent believers seem to regard their religious beliefs as somehow exempt from the same kind of rational scrutiny as their other beliefs. It's not uncommon for believers to admit that they cannot rationally justify their religious beliefs, but hold onto them anyway as a matter of faith. But it's noticeable that it's only their religious beliefs that get a free pass like this. The criticism being levelled here that this is a failure to apply critical thinking consistently.

Other believers do try and claim that their religious beliefs are reasonable, but again it is noticeable that they often apply their reasoning skills to those beliefs rather poorly, when compared to the way they apply them to their non-religious beliefs. One example would be the cell biologist Kenneth E. Miller, whose book Finding Darwin's God contains a wonderfully rigorous debunking of creationism and "intelligent design", but then founders desperately when it comes to defending his own religious beliefs.

I agree full-heartedly that many religions are based in violent beliefs, but Christianity? Yes it has had it's violence, but when the majority of something promotes higher moral standards, how is that negative?

Three points:

1. Most Christians treat the bible as as a reliable guide to morality, but a non-selective reading of the texts reveals that it is replete with the most appalling evils. The numerous divinely inflicted or sanctioned genocides in the Old Testament spring to mind as obvious examples, but the New Testament has its morally dubious elements as well (e.g., consider the sheer nastiness of the Parable of the Talents, Luke 19:12-27). Taking the bible seriously as a useful source of moral guidance requires that you pick and choose what to take from it, but in order to do that effectively, you need an independent standard of morality by which to distinguish the morally useful from the morally defective passages. And if you already have such an independent standard, then what do you really need the bible for?

2. Most if not all of the morally worthwhile elements of Christianity are not unique to it. The Golden Rule, for example, is not original to Jesus, and has been formulated independently in many different cultures at many different times. Under certain assumptions, it is even predictable in game theory as a stable strategy for the interaction of social agents. So again, the objection here is that to the extent that Christian ethics are worthwhile, they are also redundant - we don't actually need Christianity in order to appreciate the value of the principles that it happens to teach.

3. Many of the underlying assumptions of Christianity (and other forms of theism) are at best morally dubious, even if Christians as a rule behave morally in practice. Theism is inherently authoritarian, in that it not only teaches that value and purpose derive from adopting a subservient posture to an unaccountable authority, it also celebrates this. The very notion of sin - the idea that the ultimate moral failing is disobedience to authority - typifies this view. Similarly, the idea common to many branches of Christianity that faith is a necessary condition of salvation is also deeply authoritarian, since it elevates ideological commitment as a virtue over all others. In such a world view, dissent, nonconformity and moral independence are treated as failures of moral character, as is honest doubt.

So even if we allow that there is a lot of good in Christianity, it is perfectly possible to be good without Christianity (or indeed religion in general), and it is arguable that when Christians do the right thing, they are often doing it for the wrong reasons, or for reasons that are morally corrupt. So when you say:

Of course many religions support violence, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

I would reply that Christianity is in fact part of the bathwater, no matter how sweetly scented and bubbly it may superficially appear, and that the baby of human morality will be perfectly safe without it.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 25, 2011 10:25 AM

Iain Walker:

Thank you very much for a polite post.

Excellent explanation of Atheism. So a large emphasis is on critical thinking skills. Even though I disagree with the premise that our human intellect is the ultimate source of truth, I will use the critical thinking skills I have to analyze your statements.

Evolution is a faith:
I threw that statement out there to see the response it would receive. Now I'd like to explain my thinking behind that conclusion I have made. What is evolution and where does it stand within the scientific method? Macroevolution has never made it past hypothesis. In order for something to be a theory, it must pass rigorous tests and NEVER fail in any regard; or it must be modified to fit a test that it will pass. Evolution has never been able to show how a species can change into a completely different species within a testable means. Another thing evolution has failed to bring up is a missing link between homo sapien and "monkeys". There are a few that appear to be a missing link, but if evolution were true, we should find MILLIONS of links. The fact that man struggles to find any significant number of links is a strong discredit to evolution.
Now, we can argue those points all day, but what the issue boils down to is that evolutionists believe in their "theory" so much that they have the faith to believe that somewhere out there are the missing links. The idea that the grand canyon was carved by the Colorado river has been soundly thrashed by creationist scientists, yet evolutionists had the faith to accept it while it was a general consensus amongst evolutionists.
Evolution is a faith based on a strong number of ideas and facts, many of which are valid and true. (Anyone who says natural selection doesn't exist is denying sound scientific reasoning.) In essence, evolution is a belief that life can be explained without intelligent design.
What is creation? Creation is a belief that all life was created by a God. How did I reach this conclusion? Take the example of Mt. St. Helens. In a matter of weeks, canyons were formed, layers of rock and mud were layed, trees were in a precursor stage to petrification, and multiple other observations were made. All of those observations were made through science and I believe that they support creation. Many points of evolution were destroyed by that volcano and ensuing pyroclastic flows, and I have the FAITH to accept them as true.
So evolution and creation are, in my mind, both based to some degree on faith. I also believe that true, well-practiced science points to creation. I have much more to say about this issue, but I'll wait for some responses.

To address the issue of gravity, and other sound theories, yes, they are valid and I accept them. Why? Because they have unfailingly withstood anything that the scientific method can throw at them. They have withstood millennia of tests and proofs. Evolution has not and it cannot withstand them.

Now I'd like to talk a little bit about genetics and evolution. The entire idea of evolution rests on the fact that information can be gained through breeding and years of mutations. The fact is that information CAN NEVER BE GAINED. How do evolutionists deal with entropy? When a scientific law (the highest level of scientific "proof") contradicts a hypothesis or even a theory, how can you accept that without having faith? The answer is that you can't. You have to have faith that you are interpreting the world around you in an accurate fashion.

Again thank you for the polite post.

Ok, now some others made some comments I feel I need to address.
John Morales: I have no problem accepting that god's may be in our minds, that is something that I have ruminated over for years. It is a valid logical argument, but that does not mean it is true. It takes faith to believe that it is not.

Rorschach: the fact that disease mutates to become immune to antibiotics is evolution. MICROevolution. I believe in microevolution or natural selection because it is a valid observation that is consistent with multiple tests. Does that disprove creation? No. Does it prove macroevolution? No.

Nerd of Redhead: Two words: carbon dating. We guess how much carbon was in the atmosphere millions of years ago then we test current levels and make an educated guess as to the levels over that period of years. What is that based on? The theory of evolution and when species lived. How do we know when the species lived? Carbon dating of the layers surrounding fossils. Circular reasoning and terrible science.
Genetics has destroyed the axiom of evolution through the laws of thermodynamics. There are so many flaws with the science surrounding evolution, and there is much evidence if intelligent design, global flood, and a TON of archaeological evidence supporting creation and the bible.

Thanks to all who have furthered my understanding if this issue. I believe name calling is unnecessary seeing as we are trying to have an intellectual conversation, so I would ask you to refrain from it. If my thinking is as bad as you make is sound, destroy it with logic and critical thinking.

Posted by: Iain Walker | April 25, 2011 10:40 AM

northfox (#235):

the uncivil replies to your post have shown me once more that most posters here seem not to be interested in a serious discussion.

There are other ways to be uncivil, northfox, in addition to the use of invective. Another such way is to use the intemperate language of others as an excuse not to engage with points of substance raised in the discussion. A lot of theists who turn up here seem to employ this tactic - make a contentious post, and then use the tone of some of the replies to justify ignoring the content of all of the replies. It's very wearying, and on this forum is generally considered a greater breach of ettiquette than mere bad language.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | April 25, 2011 11:01 AM

Macroevolution has never made it past hypothesis.

Typical fuckwitted creationist bullshit. Macroevolution equals microevolution over time, as any real thinker would see as obvious, except those with presuppositions otherwise. Nothing cogent here folks, not one citation to the peer reviewed scientitfic literature, just sophist/theist bullshit.

Two words: carbon dating.

Yes, what about it? Do you have anything new we haven't refuted each time it has come up?

We guess how much carbon was in the atmosphere millions of years ago

And where does science claim that carbon dates more than about 50,000 years ago? And why does obviously old coal and diamonds only date back to 70,000 years ago? Only only needs to see the formation of carbon 14. In the upper atmosphere, the conversion of nitrogen 14 to carbon 14 predominates. In the earth, neutron capture by carbon 13 predominates, which is why the dating of old coal gives 70,000 years ago, as carbon 14 is constantly being formed at low levels. If you lie about carbon dating being used for millions of years, what else will you lie about? Your honesty and integrity are up for question.

Posted by: KG | April 25, 2011 11:22 AM

Kenneth,

As I diagnosed immediately, you're either a liar or an ignorant idiot. To take just a few examples from your spew of creationist garbage:

Evolution has never been able to show how a species can change into a completely different species within a testable means. Another thing evolution has failed to bring up is a missing link between homo sapien and "monkeys". There are a few that appear to be a missing link, but if evolution were true, we should find MILLIONS of links. The fact that man struggles to find any significant number of links is a strong discredit to evolution.

False in every respect. Examples of speciation have in fact been observed, see Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events. Moreover we have numerous examples of intermediate stages in speciation - google "ring species". From the fossil record we have numerous examples of fossils intermediate between what are now separate major groups (e.g. reptiles and mammals, fish and tetrapods, whales and their land-living ancestors). You demonstrate your crass ignorance by referring to "homo sapien". Any elementary textbook will show you that the scientific term for our species is Homo sapiens: the initial upper-case letter, the final "s", and the italics, are all required. Don't expect to be taken seriously when you make such elementary blunders. The hominid fossil record for the past few million years is quite good, but in fact we would have abundant evidence of our close relationship to other primates - and of course, primarily to apes rather than monkeys - even if no fossils had ever been found: anatomy, physiology, genetics all demonstrate it. Fossilisation, of course, is a rare process, so it is simply a lie to claim that "MILLIONS" of links should have been found. (Incidentally, putting your lies in ALL CAPS does not make them true.)

The idea that the grand canyon was carved by the Colorado river has been soundly thrashed by creationist scientists,

A bare-faced lie.

In a matter of weeks, canyons were formed, layers of rock and mud were layed, trees were in a precursor stage to petrification, and multiple other observations were made. All of those observations were made through science and I believe that they support creation. Many points of evolution were destroyed by that volcano and ensuing pyroclastic flows

More garbage. None of these observations cast any doubt whatever on the reams of evidence for an ancient earth and evolution. Indeed, it was well understood long before Darwin that the earth must be very old, to account for the thousands of feet of sedimentary deposits, clearly laid down over long periods (as shown by the gradual changes in fossil fauna, finely graded sediments, marks of rain and of seasonal changes, etc.).

The fact is that information CAN NEVER BE GAINED. How do evolutionists deal with entropy? When a scientific law (the highest level of scientific "proof") contradicts a hypothesis or even a theory, how can you accept that without having faith?

If you knew anything whatever about thermodynamics, you would know that it is only in closed systems that entropy cannot decrease. Look up in the sky on a cloudless day, and you will see a very bright, yellow or orange disk. We scientists call it "the sun". It provides the earth with a reliable source of low-entropy energy. If you take the sun and earth together, the increase in entropy due to nuclear fusion in the sun far outweighs the decrease due to evolution on earth. If you were right, you impenetrable dolt, it's not just evolution that would be impossible: life itself requires local decreases in entropy. How the fuck do you think a single fertilised cell could grow into an adult without an "increase in information"?

We guess how much carbon was in the atmosphere millions of years ago then we test current levels and make an educated guess as to the levels over that period of years. What is that based on? The theory of evolution and when species lived. How do we know when the species lived? Carbon dating of the layers surrounding fossils. Circular reasoning and terrible science.

More utter piffle. Why not take the trouble to actually find out something about a subject before you display your stupidity and ignorance for all to marvel at? Carbon dating is used only to date items from around the last 50,000 years. It does not depend on "how much carbon was in the atmosphere millions of years ago" or indeed (directly) on how much carbon there has been there over the last 50,000, but on ratios between carbon isotopes. Older rocks and fossils are dated using other dating techniques, mostly involving isotopic decay, and all well tested and (where they overlap) consistent with each other. However, the relative ages of rocks and fossils were largely worked out before any of these techniques became available, and before evolutionary theory was developed.

I believe name calling is unnecessary seeing as we are trying to have an intellectual conversation

Bwaw-haw-haw! It is no more possible to have an "intellectual conversation" with an ignorant, lying fuckwit like you than it is with a dog turd.
All of us here have heard each of your moronic lies more times than we can count. Spewing them all over us yet again is a profound insult.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | April 25, 2011 11:41 AM

Kenneth

Even though I disagree with the premise that our human intellect is the ultimate source of truth,

Reality is the ultimate source of truth. Thankfully, our flawed intellects are not the only tool we have for exploring reality. A goodly portion of science is built around eliminating our innate biases so that we can learn what actually happens and through that perhaps learn why as well.
Evolution is a faith:

I threw that statement out there to see the response it would receive. Now I'd like to explain my thinking behind that conclusion I have made. What is evolution and where does it stand within the scientific method?

Macroevolution has never made it past hypothesis. In order for something to be a theory, it must pass rigorous tests and NEVER fail in any regard; or it must be modified to fit a test that it will pass. Evolution has never been able to show how a species can change into a completely different species within a testable means.

Frankly, this is complete bullshit. How much actual reading of biology and evolution have you done? I am a complete lay person and I know that we have seen speciation within the past hundred years.

Another thing evolution has failed to bring up is a missing link between homo sapien and "monkeys".

Nonsense, we have a well understood and clear progression of species from a common ancestor for both our family and that of the other great apes to which we are closely related. We don't have a sample from every generation which is what you seem to be suggesting is necessary in order to accept that evolution has occurred. Science on a comprehensive basis is reality. Or put another way, science is a representative sample of reality.

The idea that the grand canyon was carved by the Colorado river has been soundly thrashed by creationist scientists,

Where? What predictions did the creationist scientists make that was not explained by geology and yet observed in the grand canyon?

In essence, evolution is a belief that life can be explained without intelligent design.

Evolution is a description of how the data that we see fits together. Life is here, it is varied, it changes to accomodate different environments, and so on. It does so in a slapdash, barely there, fashion, often creating problems at the same time that others are solved. Life isn't fantastically well suited to continue, it is on average just well suited enough to continue, this is not the work of a careful intelligent designer, but of chance.


Many points of evolution were destroyed by that volcano and ensuing pyroclastic flows, and I have the FAITH to accept them as true.

Because the geological evidence so produced has never been equalled anywhere else? There have been volcanoes on this planet for billions of years doing the same things, we have seen pyroclastic flows before, just not on TV.
Are you trying to suggest that the sedimentary rocks of Colorado are at all the same as the metamorphic and igneous rock produced by that volcanic event? Do you know the difference between shale, basalt, granite, and limestone?

Now I'd like to talk a little bit about genetics and evolution. The entire idea of evolution rests on the fact that information can be gained through breeding and years of mutations. The fact is that information CAN NEVER BE GAINED.

I don't think you quite understand what information is. There was information in the photons generated by solar fusion, there was information in the electrons making up lightning strikes, there was information in the primeval chemical soup. Some of that information combined to make something more ordered, most of it was transformed into heat. That something ordered has continued to be able to take some of the information in it's environment and propagate itself while transforming the rest into waste heat. So over the subsequent billions of years this ordering, which is not information merely how it is stored, has led in fits and starts to life as we know it. Nothing in our genetic code represents more information than existed 4.5 billion years ago, in actuality the amount of useful information in the universe has gone down over that time and we have tapped the flow from useful into heat to remember some of the steps along the way. 


It takes faith to believe that it is not.

There is no faith in not believing something.

the fact that disease mutates to become immune to antibiotics is evolution. MICROevolution. I believe in microevolution or natural selection because it is a valid observation that is consistent with multiple tests. Does that disprove creation? No. Does it prove macroevolution? No.

Is the resultant organism different from those that entered whatever environmental gauntlet that caused it to microevolve? Yes, it has different common features than its ancestors started with. If you had any understanding of timescale you would be incapable of granting your microevolution without requiring that macroevolution happens.

Two words: carbon dating. We guess how much carbon was in the atmosphere millions of years ago then we test current levels and make an educated guess as to the levels over that period of years. What is that based on? The theory of evolution and when species lived. How do we know when the species lived? Carbon dating of the layers surrounding fossils. Circular reasoning and terrible science.

Carbon dating is not a baseline measurement, it is a convenient way to date specific artifacts within a narrow age range. If it didn't work it would do virtually nothing to discredit archeology and nothing at all to paleontology which looks too far back to rely on that technique. The only real difference would be an added time in evaluating other features for dating purposes. 


Genetics has destroyed the axiom of evolution through the laws of thermodynamics.

You need to understand how thermodynamics works before you can make this claim.

there is much evidence if intelligent design, global flood, and a TON of archaeological evidence supporting creation and the bible.

The only evidence that I have ever seen for ID is incredulity, what predictions do ID make for things we haven't seen? Where does it tell us to expect to find new fossils, what does it tell us to expect regarding disease and resistance, how does it account for the vastly larger number of species than are currently existent. The only evidence I have ever seen for a global flood has been grossly wrong, radioactive materials don't vertically sort in a mechanical mixture, dead animals don't sort geographically in a mechanical mixture. The archeological evidence does not support the vast majority of the history related by the bible. Show me reason to suppose that Moses led an exodus, that David existed, that Jericho was sacked by Joshua, that Jesus rose, or any other factual claim from the bible that isn't the bible. I'll be interested to see what you have.

Posted by: Iain Walker | April 25, 2011 11:47 AM

Kenneth (#238):

Macroevolution has never made it past hypothesis.

That's incorrect. Please look at the link I provided for you.

Evolution has never been able to show how a species can change into a completely different species within a testable means.

I think this highlights part of your misunderstanding. Species don't change into new species - rather, distinct sub-populations within a species branch off to form new species. The mechanisms involved in this are quite well (although not perfectly) understood - reproductive isolation between the two populations, followed by the accumulation of neutral and selected mutations in each population independently, until the accumulated genetic differences mean that inter-mating between the two populations no longer results in fertile offpring. That's how speciation occurs in sexually reproducing species, and the process is something that we can observe - we can see how reproductively isolated populations diverge over many generations, such that they are firstly disinclined to mate with each other even when opportunities arrive, and secondly become less able to produce fertile offspring if they do mate.

Secondly, speciation by hybridisation within a single generation has been observed in plants on several occasions - the daughter species is able to breed within itself, but not with either of the two parent species.

Thirdly, we can even see speciation ocurring in the fossil record, especially in plankton and marine invertebrates, where large numbers of organisms are fossilised under conditions of continuous sedimentation, allowing us to track changes in the range of morphological variation over time. Obviously we can't judge speciation on the basis of inter-breeding capability as above, but we can see distinct populations defined by their range of variation eemerge from a single inital population over time, antil they are as distinct from each other as they are from any other identifiable fossil species.

Another thing evolution has failed to bring up is a missing link between homo sapien and "monkeys". There are a few that appear to be a missing link, but if evolution were true, we should find MILLIONS of links.

Again, this just shows how much you still need to learn about the subject. There is no such things as a "missing link" in evolutionary biology - this is an archaic expression derived from the 18th-19th century creationist idea of the Great Chain of Being, the discredited notion that all living things could be meaningfully classified in a single linear hierarchy. Scientists never use the term - instead, they use expressions like "transitional features", which more accurately captures the idea of a specimen whose characteristics show it to be intermediate between the relevant groups of organisms.

Secondly, evolution does not predict millions of "missing links". Fossilisation is a rare process, especially for terrestrial animals with relatively low population sizes (such as early hominids), so our knowledge of geology would lead us to expect that we would only be able to assemble snapshots of the process, not a continuous record. Furthermore, when species branch off from each other, they often remain fairly stable for much of their lifetimes, even as daughter species are branching off them. Evolution is not necessarily a smoothly continuous process - it often proceeds in fits and starts. Consequently, you would not expect to see a continuous sequence of change in the fossil record. In any case, this is irrelevant - the important thing is that the snapshots that we do find in the fossil record fit the predictions of evolutionary theory - and they do.

Thirdly, despite all this, the fossil record of human evolution is fairly detailed, and shows a consistent (if jerky) accumulation of human-like features over time. Amongst the branching bush of hominds, we can trace the adaptations to an upright posture, the increase in brain size, and numerous other anatomical changes that lead from the more ape-like common ancestor with chimpanzees to modern Homo sapiens. All of this is as predicted by evolutionary theory.

Fourthly, that human beings and other modern apes share a common ancestor does not depend on the fossil record alone. The patterns of physiological and genetic similarity between them also support the hypothesis. For example, the L-gulano-γ-lactone oxidase gene is damaged in most primates (other mammals use it to synthesise vitamin C), and so is free to mutate without being affected by natural selection. And what we find is that the dmamaged gene differs only slightly between humans and chimpanzees, differs more between humans and chimpanzees on the one hand and orangutans on the others, and so on and so forth. The pattern of similarity and difference matches the same patterns revealed by other genetic and physiological comparisons, which is (again) exactly what evolutionary theory predicts. And which creationism doesn't predict at all.

Everything else in your post seems to be based on similar misconceptions and a similar lack of familiarity with the relevant science. I'll try and reply further, but it may have to wait until tomorrow.

But a lot of your misunderstandings are covered extensively in the link I provided to TalkOrigins. Even if you remain unconvinced, at least try and make the effort to understand what evolution actually says, and how it is tested, and why scientists accept it on the basis of these tests, rather than just repeating creationist canards which you have obviously not taken the time to check. That way at least you will be able to discuss the subject from an informed perspective.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 25, 2011 11:57 AM

Macroevolution has never made it past hypothesis.

Define Macroevolution. Since no one but idiots uses it.

The first evolution that caused Darwins and others to think on the issue was the observed evolution of species.

To say that Macroevolution does not occur is to say that I can walk 30 meters but not 31.

A latest study on it created an artificial environment separating two fish populations in a river (they damned it). Within several generations the two populations displayed divergent evolution. Same location, same stock, only difference was that some were isolated at an elevated position

Posted by: raven | April 25, 2011 12:16 PM

Northfox the idiot death cultis:

@Kenneth,
the uncivil replies to your post have shown me once more that most posters here seem not to be interested in a serious discussion.

NO!!! It shows that both you and Kenneth are uneducated idiot cultists by even xian death cult standards. Lies are bad enough but you are also wasting poor, defenseless electrons and photons and people's time.

northfox the moron death cultist:

Anyway, don't be discouraged. I would want to invest my time and energy in activities where I can help people who want to be helped. Or at least give some input and expect a civil reply.

How delightfully crazy. Northfox said something that wasn't just stupid and ignorant. It's way out that in cuckoo land instead.

1. Who says atheists need help? Most of us are ex-xians. Atheists score higher in IQ and socioeconomic status than the general population. Among them are the best and brightest our society has ever produced.

Fundies are notorious for their social problems, low socioeconomic status, and for holding our society back. Who needs the help here?

2. Northfox has nothing intelligent to say and can't back up any of his points. It's OK. At least he knows it and isn't going to waste his and our times. I kept expecting an outbreak of Josh McDowell, Strobel, WL Craig, or Plantinga anytime. All tenth rate thinkers.

Kenneth isn't even that smart.

Posted by: KG | April 25, 2011 12:33 PM

the uncivil replies to your post have shown me once more that most posters here seem not to be interested in a serious discussion. - northsilverfox the fuckwit

Kenneth insults everyone here by posting garbage that a few minutes' research would show to be just that. Just as you do with your cretinous tone trolling. Fuck off.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 25, 2011 1:04 PM

Wow, it constantly amazes me to see how low many will stoop. Unfortunately the slinging is not just on one side. Man's inherent sinful nature comes out in all beliefs.

First of all, all of you should know I am a senior in High School and thus I don't have the education that most of you do. All of my statements have been based on what I have heard from creationists, and the reason I am saying them is so I can gain perspective and educate myself.

To get to your posts:
"Even if you remain unconvinced, at least try and make the effort to understand what evolution actually says, and how it is tested, and why scientists accept it on the basis of these tests, rather than just repeating creationist canards which you have obviously not taken the time to check. That way at least you will be able to discuss the subject from an informed perspective."

I agree with that statement 100%. I am repeating the "creationist canards". Obviously you more educated people have corrected a lot of what I have said, and I'm sure I would have more to say if I were more educated. I appreciate the help in undersanding evolution. For the time being, I'll reply to what I know. I will be reading the resource you provided later this afternoon.

For now, the idea of order and the laws of thermodynamics:
"All things tend toward disorder" Natural selection uses DNA already within the species. The information for larger ears or is already present within some DNA. (this is just an example) When the species is breed properly, the ears will become larger. Has information been gained? No, only lost. Microevolution is true because information does not need to be gained. Macroevolution is a HUGE step forward in saying that information can be gained by random chance. Has there ever been an example of a gaining of information that has positively influenced a species? I ask you this because you would know and I don't. Even if you do provide an example, how can evolutionists believe or come to the conclusion that this has created what we see today? Symbiosis, healing bodies, and so many other complexities require a large amount of information to be present in DNA. How can mutation lead to such a large amount of information with very little negative information. What experiments show gaining in information that leads to new species? That takes a large step of faith to believe in my book.

To those who said it doesn't take faith to not believe in something: it takes faith to believe in something, and what do you believe? Evolution? It takes faith to believe in something that is not provable beyond the shadow of a doubt, and science can't actually "prove" anything because it is based on observation AND interpretation. So anything you believe to be real takes faith. That fact that I exist takes faith to believe. Atheists often play the card of: we don't need faith, because we have science. Science not only goes both ways (creation and evolution) but it also REQUIRES faith.

I don't have the time to argue all the specific points about Mt. St. Helens and other points I made, because frankly I don't have the education, but I don't think those are critical to the conversation.
My main points are:
1. Science, more specifically evolution, requires faith.

2. Entropy discredits macroevolution.

@Iain: I will read your link this afternoon.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | April 25, 2011 1:22 PM

My main points are: 1. Science, more specifically evolution, requires faith. 2. Entropy discredits macroevolution.

And they're both stupid points that have been refuted ad nauseum since the stupidity of the religious has driven them to try and hand wave away all the science that backs the fact and theory of evolution.

Posted by: MrFire | April 25, 2011 1:30 PM

First of all, all of you should know I am a senior in High School and thus I don't have the education that most of you do. All of my statements have been based on what I have heard from creationists, and the reason I am saying them is so I can gain perspective and educate myself.

So why aren't you paying attention in Biology class?

Moreover, you do not seem to be coming here to 'gain perspective and educate yourself'. You seem to be here to preach with a hodgepodge of laughable factoids that you yourself now admit to understanding poorly. You're disingenuous and solipsistic. Look up the phrase 'Dunning-Kruger Syndrome'.

There was a creationist called Evolution Skeptic who came by one time and was only a little older than you. That person was polite, genuinely curious, and without an overt agenda, and they were treated accordingly.

Posted by: llewelly | April 25, 2011 1:53 PM

Kenneth | April 25, 2011 1:04 PM:

Macroevolution is a HUGE step forward in saying that information can be gained by random chance.

The information does not come from "random chance". It comes from natural selection, powered (mostly) by sunlight.

Some genetic changes will make a creature less likely to survive, and others will make it more likely to survive. Many are neutral. Which genetic changes fall in which category is a deterministic result of their interaction with the creature's other genes, and the environment. It is not random.

Natural selection is not powered by magic; the interaction of genes, creatures, and the environment requires energy. The sources of energy are primarily sunlight (harvested by plants and other creatures with chloroplasts), geothermal heat, and stored chemical energy (most of which came from either sunlight or geothermal heat).

Evolution turns energy into information (and not very efficiently). Because it requires energy, it is not in violation of thermodynamics.

Next time you are outside on a sunny day, look up, and consider the Sun. Consider all the world's plants, from plankton to coast redwoods, which gather energy from the Sun, and all the creatures that get energy by eating those plants. And think about how hard the Sun is to miss. Only those trapped in the intellectual darkness of Scott Adams' universe of endless cubicles and endless ignorance can take the "evolution violates the second law" argument seriously.

Has there ever been an example of a gaining of information that has positively influenced a species?

There are millions of examples. Here a few books which detail some of them: Evolution: What the Fossils Say, and Why It Matters, by Donald Prothero, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time, by Jonathan Weiner, Why Evolution is True, by Jerry Coyne. Please pick one of these books, and read it.

Posted by: Nightjar | April 25, 2011 2:02 PM

Wow, it constantly amazes me to see how low many will stoop.

Kenneth, understand that you're not the first creationist to come here to spew bullshit about a subject you know nothing about. There's nothing wrong with ignorance itself (it can be fixed), but when someone so obviously ignorant about a subject feels entitled to tell those who have spent a great deal of time researching and struggling to understand it as best as they can that they're wrong, well, that tends to make them upset.

Seriously, who do you think you are to tell scientists that they are wrong while demonstrating (and even admitting) an abysmal ignorance about basically every single scientific field? That's extremely arrogant of you.

Has there ever been an example of a gaining of information that has positively influenced a species?

Yes, many of them. Ever heard of Lenski and his bacteria, for example?

Even if you do provide an example, how can evolutionists believe or come to the conclusion that this has created what we see today?

It's the most parsimonious explanation when you take all the observations made so far into account.

So anything you believe to be real takes faith.

You're really stretching the meaning of the word faith here. Do you really think that believing that the earth orbits the sun is equivalent to believing in leprechauns? Is it all the same to you? Because that is exactly what it sounds like you're saying.

Science not only goes both ways (creation and evolution)

No, it doesn't. That's your ignorance talking.

but it also REQUIRES faith.

Not by any sensible definition of the word "faith", it does not.

I don't have the time to argue all the specific points about Mt. St. Helens and other points I made, because frankly I don't have the education, but I don't think those are critical to the conversation.

Heh. I see you regret having tried the Gish Gallop on us. :)

1. Science, more specifically evolution, requires faith.

You either need to gain a better understanding of science or you need to look up the word "faith" in a dictionary.

2. Entropy discredits macroevolution.

And you need to gain a better understanding of both evolution and thermodynamics.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | April 25, 2011 2:19 PM

Oh, bloody hell.

My main points are:
1. Science, more specifically evolution, requires faith.
2. Entropy discredits macroevolution.

1. Science does not require faith. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Science has provided us with pretty much everything you take for granted: a nice well-heated house, the computer you use to spout your obnoxious ignorance, the pills you pop to make your tummy feel better after your case of indigestion brought on by your righteous anger, and so on.

Science is "proven" every time it allows us to discover something new, something not known before. Science requires "faith" only as much as you require faith in gravity to keep you from floating off into space (which we know about because of science).

2. Do you understand what entropy is? If so, you do realize that entropy applies to whole systems, right? You understand that entropy can appear to be violated at a local level (at least, it'll appear that way to people who don't understand what they're talking about) while the entire system is bound by the second law of thermodynamics?

You have gulped the Kool Aid™, my ignorant friend. You believe you are well-educated on these issues, but truthfully, you have a warped sense of reality that impedes comprehension.

But, I have a simple question for you: what knowledge has religion given us? Name one single effective thing given us by religion, rather than science. It can be anything: a cure for a disease, an insight into the nature of the universe, a mathematical truth.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 25, 2011 2:25 PM

Dhorvath: I believe I understand the principle, but could you provide a biological example?
I believe you are correct in correcting my approach and for that I apologize, but please don't let that inhibit my ability to learn about your view of this issue.

Mr. Fire: I am "spewing" those factoids in an effort to see them disassembled.

Nerd of Redhead: I have been starting some reading on the topic. This is only the beginning. You cannot with any grain of truth say that there is no science at AIG. Regardless of their mission, I have seen countless examples of the scientific method being applied to a situation. I'll again use the example of the Colorado river. Slow erosion cannot explain many of the formations there and many experiments best explained the patterns of the formations as being formed by a massive flood. The data points to a flood. The interpretation of that data is what you disagree with, not the actual data. The flood could have been caused by large lakes in Missouri and others states during an ice age. AIG has no science? Really? With that said, I'm sure most of the commenters on this page are very well learned, but so are the persons at AIG.

Llewelly: I was not aware that evolution rests that strongly on sunlight. Thank you for that clarification. "Evolution turns energy into information" Any books about that? Or could you at least explain how the information is created? Natural selection I agree with, it's the macroevolution I can't see the backing for.

Again, I apologize if my approach to this topic was poorly constructed or if I offended anyone. Please, don't be offended by a high schooler when you all clearly have an education superior to mine. My search here is for truth. If you don't think that's my intent, I apologize for not remaining consistent with it.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 25, 2011 2:40 PM

Keneth you are an arrogant little fuck. AIG does no science. None. You can't do science with a forgone conclusion. But ok prove me wrong. What original research have they done what discoveries have they made. The ansxwer is none they not evolution are incapable of creating new informaiton. They don't do science they spin and provide comentary on the science of others.

Are you aware that they lieM. Blatently. Big wigs have been caught in absurd acts of sleaze to forward their jihad. One photosh oped a pic of obama to remove him from it so he can claim that he was photoshoped in originally and bolster birther claims. The photoshop was spo bad it left chibi obamas knees. Does that sound. Honest to you? Why does the truth beed toblie? You have no clue on the basics of science and insist an org that is dedicated to stopping science because it scares them is a valid source.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 25, 2011 2:57 PM

This macroevolution argument is the most fuckibg stupid shit ever. You see the mechanism you see it happen yet insist that it continui8ng happen8ng is imp0ossible. There is no biochem breaking system to stop dna from going beyond an arbitrary kind. You right now hsve physilogical remnants of your ancestry as a fucking fish for christ sake. Go lookj at the evolution of insectsbthat shows nicely how modifications of a single body plan can create vas diversity. We have the fossils of protoinsects that show thr transition of legs into mouth parts antenna etc and the fusion of worm like segments to make the head thorax etc. You can easily mentally regress every insect, iding the modifications they have,v back to the simple base body form.

How far do you want tobdefine macro evolmutionM. What about just flies...was have flies that spounge foood flies that bite with scizzor mouths and flies that are mosquioes...and we know they are all vastly different but are all related flies divergent from the same fly ancesttry....and the flyform is

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 25, 2011 3:08 PM

Wow kenneth...few peoplme defend ignorance with such gleeful goat fucking pride.

Fucking idiot without knowledge how will you even KNOW what's important to knowM. Have you heard of the Dunning Kruger effectM. That people can be so stupid to not know how out of their depth they areM

Think for one second...how is it thatg religion to you DISCOURAGES information and knowledge ? Why do you trust something that tells you to limit your understanding. Fuck if your attitude is so praising of ignorance why did you even bother learning to read?

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | April 25, 2011 3:10 PM

I am asking where the information is from?

This question has already been answered.

Tell me, young man, do you always ignore posters with a female-seeming 'nym, incidentally? I ask because Christianity is an inherently sexist paradigm, which teaches its adherents to regard women as valuable only inasmuch as they are conforming to certain rigid gender roles; i.e. women should be mothers and wives and nothing else, hence their opinions about things unrelated to mothering or being a wife should be disregarded. Have you been infected by this toxic ideology, or was it just a coincidence that you failed to respond to me?

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | April 25, 2011 3:11 PM

Kenneth, AIG does not do science. They often present arguments that seem scientific to laypeople, giving the impression that they have done something scientific, but if there is any real science in it(and often there isn't, AIG often makes stuff up out of whole cloth) that science was done by someone else, not by AIG. And that science is cherry-picked and distorted to appear to support conclusions it was never meant to support. AIG has even deliberately misquoted real scientists and real research in such a way as to make it appear to be saying the exact opposite of what it was intended to say.

If the people at AIG are learned at anything it is in politics, persuasion, and deception.

For example, consult with any real geologist or any real geology resource, and you will learn that absolutely everything that AIG has ever said about the Colorado river has been error, distortion, or outright lie.

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 25, 2011 3:17 PM

Kenneth:

My method of approaching this topic was flawed. It's just that I have been taught that my facts are facts, and until I came on this post, I understood them to be flawless. I believe that's where my arrogance came from. I would ask for some understanding here because you are challenging what I have been taught from my youth up.

I'll suggest that before you make any more absurd pronouncements about evolution or the scientific evidence supporting it, you should first learn whatever you can about it. Your high school education isn't cutting it. We're not here to be your teachers, to refute every idiocy you've been handed by religious nutters for most of your life. Learn a couple things about the world. Drop the presuppositions, and drop every damn thing you've ever heard about a god. Then ask a few sincere questions, and we'll try our best to answer them.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 25, 2011 3:19 PM

SallyStrange:

"women should be mothers and wives and nothing else"
I have a lot to say on this issue, but because of constraints of this discussion, I feel I cannot discuss this topic here. (This is an issue I actually am quite educated and experienced in.) If you want to have this discussion, I suggest we find another venue. In short, I don't agree with that statement, but there are aspects of the issue I agree with. If you want to have more of an education than a man, who am I to tell you what you can and cannot do? That's my short response.

To be honest, I don't read the names of posters until I have to refer back to the post to reply to it. There are so many posts for me to sort through it becomes difficult to keep track of them.

The reason I didn't respond was because I actually agree with the logic of what you stated. I couldn't read the article about the fish because it required a subscription, but I will be putting some research effort into it. About your argument of the faith/belief, I addressed that issue in post #271.

Posted by: stuv.myopenid.com | April 25, 2011 3:33 PM

"women should be mothers and wives and nothing else" I have a lot to say on this issue, but because of constraints of this discussion, I feel I cannot discuss this topic here. (This is an issue I actually am quite educated and experienced in.)

Oh do tell. I'm sure all ladies present cannot wait to be educated on gender roles by a Christian high school student.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 25, 2011 3:42 PM

stuv.myopenid.com

I'm sure you would love to disagree with me. ;)

Posted by: Paul | April 25, 2011 3:43 PM

I thought that the evolutionists were the ignorant side, but clearly, there are two definite sides to this issue.

No, there is one side. Pig-ignorance and making shit up doesn't get a side by default. Unless you're actually making a case with grounding more firm than "my pastor told me at Sunday School that microevolution is a myth, QED".

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | April 25, 2011 3:46 PM

If God created right and wrong, and right and wrong are now in existence, independent of their creator, what need is there to listen to the creator when he says "this is right and that is wrong"? If your god says that slavery is okay in certain circumstances (and he does, if you believe that your god is speaking the the bible), then how did anyone ever figure out that slavery is, in fact, wrong in ALL circumstances?

Ultimately, all the criticisms you raise against evolution are much more effective criticisms of Christianity and indeed any religion. If you have trouble with people believing in a theory that has an incomplete explanation of the facts, BECAUSE the explanation is incomplete, then why would you prefer a theory that has ZERO explanation of the facts, and indeed contradicts several established, easily observable facts?

Posted by: Paul | April 25, 2011 3:47 PM

If God is real and he created the world, then who am I to deny him and what he says is right or wrong? He CREATED right and wrong.

Euthyphro dilemma. Is what is good commanded by god because it is good, or is it good because it is commanded by god? Something to read about, anyway.

Posted by: Mr.Kosta | April 25, 2011 3:50 PM

If God is real and he created the world, then who am I to deny him and what he says is right or wrong? He CREATED right and wrong.

Then, how come you cannot legally burn a woman for being a witch? XVIth century Protestants thought they were fulfilling God's command.

I'll tell you why. We created right and wrong, and then we created gods to enforce it. As our perception of right and wrong changes, God's wishes change as well.

For example, the Vatican no more sees proclaiming the Earth orbits the Sun as wrong. Centuries ago, Giordano Bruno was burned alive for that "heresy", and Galileo forced to abandon his life's work.

But, Eppur si muove indeed.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | April 25, 2011 3:58 PM

@ Nigel

You piqued my curiosity, so I had to look up the Wisconsin Dells. Nifty indeed! I'll have to pay a visit sometime. It's been a while since I did a long road trip, and I know so much more about geology now than I did the last time...

Posted by: Kenneth | April 25, 2011 4:01 PM

Onion Girl:
I think you are very wise in your recommendation. I will follow it.

Sally Strange: Really? The Bible promotes slavery? Really? Where?

Vicki: I do believe the Bible is true for many reasons.
If our very existence is defined by God, then our very knowledge of what right and wrong are is defined by God and thus created by him.

I need to move on, mostly because I am very busy this week, but I will follow up to some of this discussion as needed. Thank you for enlightening me with your perspectives and knowledge.

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 25, 2011 4:06 PM

I believe the Bible is true, and what it teaches is that faith and belief in God leads to a want to obey what is right. If God is real and he created the world, then who am I to deny him and what he says is right or wrong? He CREATED right and wrong.

If that's the case, then what is right? What is it that believing in imaginary beings makes you want? Or don't you know what morality really is? Don't you have a better idea of what morality is than you do of your imaginary deity?

If something is right and wrong because a god says so, then I interpret that as you taking the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma. So your belief in morality depends on your belief in a god, which is an imaginary being for which you have no evidence. There's no shakier ground for morality than that. Stop believing and suddenly rape and murder are okay? That's just insane.

We already know, independent of any religious belief, that we do not want to be harmed, and that we benefit from social arrangements by which we decide not to harm others as much as possible. Some things are hard to understand, and the answers are sometimes hard to come by, but that doesn't mean we have to believe in magic. Gods, souls, afterlives, etc., are all completely unnecessary, for science, ethics, aesthetics -- you name it, they just don't matter.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | April 25, 2011 4:08 PM

Sally Strange: Really? The Bible promotes slavery? Really? Where?

I guess you need to brush up on your history too. Have your elders been lying to you about the role of the church in the abolition movement as well as the facts about evolutionary theory? Terrible pity, that is. I wish you luck in your mission to educate yourself. I suggest you include re-reading your Bible, since you've obviously missed some major parts of it. There are many verses suggesting how slavery should be regulated, but none that explicitly condemn the practice of slavery. Thus we conclude that Yahweh is down with slavery, so long as it's practiced according to his rules.

Luke 12:47-48

1 Timothy 6:1-2

Ephesians 6:5

Exodus 21:20-21

Exodus 21:7-11

Posted by: Brownian | April 25, 2011 4:12 PM

Sally Strange: Really? The Bible promotes slavery? Really? Where?

Promotes may be a strong word. What it doesn't do is condemn it, and in fact it lays down rules about how to engage in it.

So, pretty much how the pro-choice movement treats abortion.

If our very existence is defined by God, then our very knowledge of what right and wrong are is defined by God and thus created by him.

If you haven't encountered instances where your morality diverges from God's, then you haven't read the bible thoroughly enough.

If you have read the bible thoroughly, and find your morality jibes perfectly with God's ("Yeah, I can totally agree with setting a bear upon forty-two kids to kill them because they called a friend of mine 'Baldy'"), then you're most likely writing from jail.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | April 25, 2011 4:16 PM

Knowledge can overcome martial superiority, but martial superiority will never overcome knowledge.

Knowledge produces martial superiority.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 25, 2011 4:17 PM

Brownian: Your problem is a lack of understanding and the mistake of taking the Old Testament of the Bible at face value. God is God. He is allowed to eradicate sin because he is perfect. He can do as he pleases. Now, is that unfair? Not really. He is omnipotent, and he has no governing authority. He created us. The most important part of the Bible is that God loves us, but when we choose to not follow him, he cannot accept us because of our sin. Calling the prophet "baldy" is no small crime. It was blaspheming God himself. You can't do that to an omnipotent God. All of this is Bible-based, but I think your understanding of religion and God is very different from mine.

Posted by: Sastra OM/COR | April 25, 2011 4:18 PM

Kenneth #298 wrote:

If our very existence is defined by God, then our very knowledge of what right and wrong are is defined by God and thus created by him.

While you're gone, you might want to give a moment over to thinking about the specific mechanisms for this. It sounds nice, but what does it all really mean?

God "defines?" You need to define how you're using that word, because it can't mean what it just meant in this sentence.

And what would it mean, technically, to "create" right and wrong? How? What are they -- forms of energy? Spiritual essences? Emotions? Connected to what? What is the process here? How is "knowledge" given to human beings? Planted in the nerves? Learned by reading a book? Figured out by life and experience?

Read your quote above and try to parse it out, step-by-step. Don't just wave around some fine-sounding proclamations or vague pronouncements. Analyze them as clearly as you can: give them some details. Follow a chain of reasoning from God's "creation" of right and wrong to our knowledge of right and wrong.

Is this even possible?

Shouldn't it be a bit more fleshed out, if we're to take it seriously, and compare it to scientific and philosophical views that are instead rich in detail, mechanism, process, growth?

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 25, 2011 4:22 PM

If you have read the bible thoroughly, and find your morality jibes perfectly with God's ("Yeah, I can totally agree with setting a bear upon forty-two kids to kill them because they called a friend of mine 'Baldy'"), then you're most likely writing from jail solitary confinement at a super-max prison.

Of course, that's not a problem. God thinks just like Kenneth, pure as the driven snow, and he hasn't read the Bible either.

Posted by: madbull | April 25, 2011 4:27 PM

I hate the way he talks like he's dead already. :(

Posted by: KG | April 25, 2011 4:30 PM

What I am seeing time and time again on this thread is a false and completely incorrect view of who God is.

So, Kenneth, where has your view of "who God is" come from? Those same people who told you that evolution could be dismissed in a few sentences, which you now admit to be "utterly false". Are you aware that even within Christianity - let alone other religions - there are tens of thousands of sects? Each is convinced that its view of "who God is" is correct, while those of all the other sects are wrong. Even if there is a god, what are the chances that the version you were told is the right one?

Try actually reading your Bible and thinking about what it says. God kills almost everyone - by the painful method of drowning - because he's angry with the way people behave (did all those children and animals really deserve a painful death, Kenneth?), "hardens Pharoah's heart" so he can show off how powerful he is by murdering Egyptian children, repeatedly orders the Israelites to commit genocide, slaughters his faithful servant Job's family in pursuit of a bet with Satan, sends bears to tear children apart just for being rude to a prophet, and threatens anyone who believes wrongly with torture that goes on for ever. He is, probably, "the most unpleasant character in all fiction", as Richard Dawkins says: a sadistic, dishonest, pathologically jealous, genocidal, petty, vindictive psychopath.

Posted by: Brownian | April 25, 2011 4:32 PM

Your problem is a lack of understanding and the mistake of taking the Old Testament of the Bible at face value. God is God. He is allowed to eradicate sin because he is perfect. He can do as he pleases. Now, is that unfair? Not really. He is omnipotent, and he has no governing authority. He created us.

This justification is a knee-jerk reaction to the problem of evil, but that's not what I'm asking you to consider.

You see, the question is not "Why would God do a bad thing?", but "How is it possible, given that I supposedly derive my morality from God, that there are some acts which God has committed that I would call 'bad' were anyone but god to do them?" In short, if God does it, then how do you justify calling genocide 'bad'?

Also, don't make the mistake of assuming everyone who disagrees with the theology you profess as having a 'lack of understanding'. I was a Christian for longer than you've been alive, and I've considered these questions from multiple perspectives, including yours. I don't particularly care if you hand-wave away my objections, but doing so will not make you a better thinker.

If your theology doesn't trouble you and cause you crises of faith regularly, then you're not doing theology but rather lying to yourself because you fear mental discomfort.

Posted by: Vicki, Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief | April 25, 2011 4:36 PM

What does "can't take [the Jewish bible] at face value" mean, though? Which parts are we to dismiss as non-literal? Clearly not the tearing apart of children by bears, since you're defending that. The instruction to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy? The idea that to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven? "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor"? Not eating pork or mixing fibers?

And how do you know? What is your authority for deciding which parts of this anthology to take at face value?

Posted by: Nightjar | April 25, 2011 4:39 PM

Not every part of evolution is proven. There are some things such as the origin of life that elude the best scientists.

Kenneth, the origins of life are not part of biological evolution.

There's much to be discussed about the fascinating topic that is abiogenesis (and as a biochem student, I'm particularly interested in it), but the origins of life are not considered to be part of the modern evolutionary synthesis.

All that is needed to start the process of evolution (and that's what explains life's diversity) is a self-replicating system, and it doesn't necessarily need to meet our definitions of "alive". It just needs to be able to produce copies of itself with modification, and you've got something natural selection can work on and improve.

So, in part, the mechanisms that drive evolution most likely were involved in the origin of life, but the theory of evolution itself does not concern this event.

It's okay if you want to discuss abiogenesis, but I don't think you really want to get yourself stuck in yet another discussion about a completely different topic. Onion girl is probably right. But I'd like to point to this site: http://exploringorigins.org/index.html

It doesn't have that much information and you'll probably have to dig deeper into the subject if you really want to learn, but it's visually attractive and a good place to start. It also has a timeline of evolution that you may find interesting.

Concerning evolution, there's also this site that a another creationist who came here and, like you, seemed interested in learning (Logan, IIRC) found useful. I hope you do too.

Good luck.

Posted by: btthegeek | April 25, 2011 4:43 PM

Kenneth wrote:

At any rate, your logic is valid, and this is a deep subject into which I cannot get right now due to time constraints.

If I may attempt to translate this from fundagelical to skeptic:

I understand your argument, but I'm too afraid of the implications it may have on my beliefs should I look any further into it, so I'm going to pretend I'm smarter than you by telling you I can refute your argument and hoping you don't notice that I didn't actually refute your argument.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | April 25, 2011 4:51 PM

Not every part of evolution is proven. There are some things such as the origin of life that elude the best scientists.

What the theory of evolution explains is the diversity of life and the origin of adaptions in living things.

The origin of life is not part of the theory of evolution, just as the origin of mass is not part of the theory of relativity.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 25, 2011 5:24 PM

From the looks of it, no one is interested in "spoon-feeding" me answers so I'll remain silent and do my own private studying. I appreciate those who have helped me and I believe I have a lot of food for thought now. Thank you.

I wish you all the best of luck in life.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | April 25, 2011 5:33 PM

Kenneth,
I am one of those who would have engaged for weeks on end, but you said stupid shit that needs to be addressed. Your lack of reply speaks volumes about how important you think that is and works to reinforce that I not 'spoon feed.'

Posted by: Nightjar | April 25, 2011 5:47 PM

I am one of those who would have engaged for weeks on end

Oh, me too.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | April 25, 2011 5:50 PM

Nightjar,
:-).

Posted by: Ken Houston | April 25, 2011 7:34 PM

I've never had a hero before......I have now!

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | April 25, 2011 7:44 PM

no one is interested in "spoon-feeding" me answers so I'll remain silent and do my own private studying.

Science can't be spoon-fed. You must do your own studying, as it is a big, complex subject. There is no Cliff's notes for the ignorant to learn the subject in-toto on short notice

You want to learn, don't do what you did today. You came off as a pompous but ignorant creobot, and if you hadn't put your high school status in early, you would have been shredded to pieces in no time flat. You received our polite version of rebuttal.

The import thing to get out of today, is that science is evidence based, and the peer reviewed scientific literature is the ultimate publication and citation source. Not AIG, DI,or any other religious based organization. If you presume the religious based web sites lie and bullshit, you can't can't go wrong. Nobody says you have to become an atheist to acknowledge evolution. But you do have to look at all the evidence, and see that it doesn't fit the babble. Absolutely no evidence for the Flud, the Exodus, or Jebus is in the literature.

Posted by: Owlmirror | April 25, 2011 9:00 PM

The points that I'm sure Kenneth was garbling were

1) Missoula megafloods -- therefore, global flud !!!.

I'm sure that I don't have to mention more than that, other than to point out to Kenneth that those ripped west through what is now Eastern Washington, and drained into the Columbia River.

2) The speculation that a lake overflow did cause some of the features of the Colorado River -- therefore, global flud !!!

The above is an actual geological hypothesis, FWIW:
( Meek, N. and Douglass, J., 2001. Lake overflow: an alternative hypothesis for Grand Canyon incision and development of the Colorado River, p. 199-204 in Young, R.A. and Spamer, E.E. (eds.), Colorado River, Origin and Evolution. Grand Canyon, AZ: Grand Canyon Association.
).

Kenneth? The existence of non-global floods having occurred is not in question. Many non-global floods have occurred, all over the world.

They are not evidence for there ever having been a global flood, and it is utterly dishonest to present them as such.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 25, 2011 10:32 PM

As far as the issue of women and their rights etc... It will take some time to effectively address this issue and I will have to establish some more of my background. I'll probably post on this matter sometime tomorrow or later this week.

Don't bother. I'm betting 5/1 this mewing and foot dragging is because you want to try to dress up shit in the prettiest bow you can find.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | April 25, 2011 10:47 PM

Don't bother, please, young Kenneth. The women of the world are perfectly capable of recognizing that they are autonomous, independent human beings who deserve every right and opportunity to determine their own place in the world. Your pronouncements on the subject are more than irrelevant, they are offensive--there's nothing new you have to say. Your belief system is ancient and thus it is unsurprising that it is predicated on oppression. We've evolved so much since then--but imagine how much further we could have made it in that amount of time without religion's dead weight dragging us down.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 26, 2011 12:18 AM

Jesus himself was tempted and he was God himself.

I'm amazed anyone can write that and not see the fuck stupidity of it.

Hey Kenneth! Become my servant and I'll reward you with all of your socks!

Posted by: Kemist | April 26, 2011 6:41 AM

As far as the issue of women and their rights etc... It will take some time to effectively address this issue and I will have to establish some more of my background. I'll probably post on this matter sometime tomorrow or later this week.

I'm guessing some "separate but equal" kind of bullshit. You know, men and women have "different roles" - prepackaged gender role crap, reworded to make it sound nicer.

If it is don't bother, we've all heard it before and we see through it.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 10:45 AM

And you people say I'm not open to hearing what other people have to say? It might be true that you'll disagree or have already heard the stance I hold, but does that give you the right to be so close minded about it? Throughout most of the discussion here I was open to the idea that there is no God, and that evolution is true, but I see no reciprocation of that attitude. If you all have all the answers, congratulations, I'm glad you think you're so smart. My opinions are not welcome here, and clearly no one is interested in listening or even has the courtesy to be openminded.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 10:56 AM

"I'm guessing some "separate but equal" kind of bullshit. You know, men and women have "different roles" - prepackaged gender role crap, reworded to make it sound nicer.
If it is don't bother, we've all heard it before and we see through it."

Yes, really open. I see how open you all are to hear my opinion. If you have something to say to me, I don't assume what you are going to say and disregard it before you say it. Apparently, thats not a courtesy that I can expect from the people here.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | April 26, 2011 11:00 AM

No Kenneth, right now we are taunting you because you said stupid shit. Either buck up and apologize for saying stupid shit or convince us that our reading of you was wrong and apologize for being unclear.

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 26, 2011 11:03 AM

Throughout most of the discussion here I was open to the idea that there is no God, and that evolution is true, but I see no reciprocation of that attitude.

Where's the evidence? Where's any indication that the concept of a "god" is even coherent? What exactly are we supposed to be open-minded about?

My opinions are not welcome here, and clearly no one is interested in listening or even has the courtesy to be openminded.

Your opinions are what they are, and we haven't prevented you from offering them. Opinions don't outweigh facts. Start saying things that are factual, and no one will have any reason to disagree. Was "evolution in and of itself is a faith" not intended to be a factual statement?

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 26, 2011 11:08 AM

By the way everyone I agree with some parts of Nazism! I'll tell you what my opinion on it is later....*disappears*

Posted by: Owlmirror | April 26, 2011 11:27 AM

Throughout most of the discussion here I was open to the idea that there is no God, and that evolution is true, but I see no reciprocation of that attitude.

Oh, I'm perfectly willing to posit that there might be a God. One of the stories I like is called Hell is the Absence of God, which depicts a universe in which God is real, and provides empirical evidence of his existence. Miracles occur on an intermittent basis. The souls of the saved can be seen to rise to heaven; the souls of the damned can be seen to descend to hell; angels visit, and there are real effects of their visitations that can be seen by everyone.

If God were real, and provided something like the above, people would not be atheist. Of course, ethical questions would remain, and the story is about those thorny ethical questions.

I don't think God is real because any putative God fails to provide even the slightest shred of his existence, in the real world.

And as for evolution -- well, I think it's true, and provides an excellent explanation for life as we see it. YEC distortion and misrepresentation of science -- like that silly business with thermodynamics -- does not contradict what science actually says, which is that thermodynamics is perfectly compatible with evolution.

If anyone had a good argument against evolution, it would overturn a huge chunk of biology as we know it. But all that creationists have is bad arguments; sometimes genuinely terrible arguments -- most of which we've seen already, many times, and some of them argued with a little more eloquence that you have.

So... what do you want from us? A refusal to say that bad arguments are bad?

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | April 26, 2011 11:42 AM

Yes, really open. I see how open you all are to hear my opinion. If you have something to say to me, I don't assume what you are going to say and disregard it before you say it. Apparently, thats not a courtesy that I can expect from the people here.

Kenneth, this is a tough crowd. The default amount of respect given towards someone is that granted to a stranger in a crowd: we (and by "we" I mean, "I") will not punch you in the face. In fact, if asked, many of us will politely answer logical questions, such as, "What time is it?" or, "Pardon me, but could you point me toward the nearest WC?" or even, "What exactly is a ring species, and what does the implications for evolution?"

So, given those sort of polite questions, we will in turn be polite, to the minimum level.

From that baseline, you can either go up in respect, or down in respect. The way to go down in respect is to come in and assert with grand authority that evolution could not happen because of the second law of thermodynamics, or that atheism leads to immorality, or that women and men are equal but have separate roles as defined by a god, or that the unfettered free market is the rational solution to all our social and economic woes.

These sorts of things have been addressed a thousand thousand times here. (Okay, so perhaps only a few hundred times.) We get a little tired of it. But mostly, you'll lose respect because it shows gleefully-willful ignorance. And that is the situation in which you find yourself right now. We have very little reason to respect you, as you came in asserting knowledge you did not have, and now you are going to give us your divinely-inspired opinion on the roles of males and females. You certainly can't blame us for speculating on which path you'll take. We have seen each path a dozen times, and we know where they lead.

If we are wrong in our assumption, and you are going to say something truly enlightened like, "I believe you should judge the individual not on physical features such as skin color or presence of breasts, but on their personality and abilities," then we can all apologize later, and your respect here will go up a little bit. Not a lot, as you've dug yourself in pretty deep.

But a little.

There is, in general, one primary currency here: intellectual honesty. If you are able to admit when you are wrong (which it appears you can, though you haven't said the actual words yet), if you are able to put up a good logical argument, if you are able to show you are willing to grow, you will gain respect. You don't even have to be right all the time. Just don't pretend you know something you don't, admit when you are wrong, and hone your logic and increase your knowledge, and you gain respect.

Otherwise: we will certainly listen to you. Just don't be upset when we guess what you are going to say next, and dismiss it. We've had that discussion before. We know what you are going to say, within a set of a few variations.

Your arguments aren't new, Sugar Plum. Everything you've said so far has come from the Creationist Rhetorical Zinger Survival Guide and Coloring Book. Unless you have some bold new argument to present, we're going to have a series of canned, yet effectively fatal, responses.

So, to sum up: if you want respect, earn it. If you think you aren't following the exact same trajectory as pretty much every high-school creationist who's ever come here, you're wrong. If you'd like to stay and participate, you are more than welcome.

Oh, and one other thing: if you do stick around and earn respect, you're still not immune from a harsh take-down if you are wrong. Just remember, at that point, it's a sign of respect.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 11:53 AM

"the word is evidence"

The real evidence that God exists is in the Bible and in the world. The Bible is the only religious book with no contradictions (from what I have been told) and yet remains relevant thousands of years later. Archaeology blatantly supports the stories of the old and new testament. If you don't want to agree that the bible is perfect, then you won't accept God. Rather, if you don't want to accept God, you must discredit the Bible.

As far as contradictions go, the only contradictions I have ever seen involve not understanding the Bible. Some people say in the Bible that the Bible first says that Noah released a raven from the ark, then it says that he released a dove. Guess what? He released BOTH. Any five year old who reads that passage would notice that it says he ALSO released a raven. Those types of contradictions make us Christians laugh at those who say the Bible contradicts itself.

http://www.philosophy-religion.org/faith/pdfs/Resurrection.pdf

http://www.reasons.org/fulfilled-prophecy-evidence-reliability-bible

http://newhopeforliving.com/old/98-01-11.htm

As far as the issue of women and their rights... I predict that my opinion will be torn to shreds, and flushed down the toilet, yet, I will remain open enough to voice my opinion.
As far as the law is concerned, women should not be discriminated against. If a woman wants to have a career, she should not be prohibited by law. Think of Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale. If they had not been permitted to lead a life of independence from family, perhaps thousands of soldiers would have died. There is clear benefit from giving women rights legally.
With that said, I can't stand when women's rights activists overreact. Our church often goes to NYC and sings on the streets and passes out tracks. Both the men and women from our congregation go, and the majority of them are youth. During one of these trips, a women saw that there were ladies in the group singing. What she said was, "What are they doing to their women???" She couldn't comprehend how the ladies in our group actually CHOSE to go on the trip. She wanted to help them "escape." That's the kind of attitude that takes it too far. If anyone in our congregation wants to have a career, they are more than welcome to. In fact, there are some young ladies that are pursuing medical careers as nurses.
Christianity does NOT force women to stay in their "role." Christianity teaches that there is more blessing in raising a family than doing other things. Why? Because when a women raises good children the benefit to society is enormous. If someone can raise 4 kids and have them become something in society, that has a more lasting impact than starting a business or having a career. Strong homes and family life has been shown to strengthen societies and nations.
That does NOT mean I condemn those who go out and have careers. If there were no women psychologists, counseling would not be as effective. If their were no women in the workplace, there would not be the critical balance between the strengths of men and of women.
So, what do I believe about women and their rights? The law should not discriminate, but it should be recognized that some women actually want to raise families and nothing more. Without women in all aspects of society, life would be terrible. BUT, the same can be said for men. Without men in society a significant portion of society would suffer.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | April 26, 2011 11:58 AM

The Bible is the only religious book with no contradictions

bwahahahahahahahahaha

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 12:01 PM

Nigel:

As I said before, I thought everything I was saying was based on fact that I had been told. As you can see, as soon as I was presented with facts and logic that countered those arguments logically, I stopped arguing those points and I apologized for my attitude. I am now willing to engage in a discussion from the perspective that I know nothing or next to nothing about evolution. I believe I approached this issue in the typical creationist ignoramus way and now I would like to ask questions if others are open. I will completely understand if no one wants to talk to me anymore because of what I did. It was wrong and again I apologize for it. Once the above post is commented on, I would like to return to asking a few questions about evolution in a polite and humble way. I am only interested in truth at this point.

Posted by: Beatrice, anormalement indécente | April 26, 2011 12:03 PM

Some people say in the Bible that the Bible first says that Noah released a raven from the ark, then it says that he released a dove. Guess what? He released BOTH. Any five year old who reads that passage would notice that it says he ALSO released a raven. Those types of contradictions make us Christians laugh at those who say the Bible contradicts itself.

Yeah... That's hardly the biggest problem with the flood story.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 12:09 PM

"Only if those offspring are boys, it seems. Otherwise, their preferred role seems to be "breeder."

Behind every great man stands a great women. If men did not have the emotional and intellectual support of the women at home, they would not perform as well at work. Their role is not just a breeder, they do a phenomenal job at raising families, and I have no problem with reversing the roles in a family. The main reason everyone here differs from my opinion is because you believe we evolved from monkeys. If that were true, then I would hold your opinion as well. Because I believe God created man and women with different strengths, I believe women are better suited to family raising and men are better suited to leadership roles. That doesn't mean reversing those will end in disaster, it just means that a more efficient method of bettering society is available.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | April 26, 2011 12:11 PM

Kenneth

"the word is evidence"

That word does not mean what you think it means.

The real evidence that God exists is in the Bible and in the world.

Where in the world is there evidence that your deity exists? Details would be nice.

The Bible is the only religious book with no contradictions (from what I have been told)

You have been misinformed. The bible contradicts itself constantly on topics as diverse as chronology (when were adam and eve created?), the actions of individuals(who slew Goliath?), and the will of it's tyrant.

Archaeology blatantly supports the stories of the old and new testament.

Which stories are well supported? Just in this thread you have been given details of where it falls off the rails, do you care to refute those?

Rather, if you don't want to accept God, you must discredit the Bible.

Which has been done, even here.

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 26, 2011 12:15 PM

LMAO! Kenneth, go play with your toys and imaginary friends.

The Bible is the only religious book with no contradictions (from what I have been told) and yet remains relevant thousands of years later. Archaeology blatantly supports the stories of the old and new testament. If you don't want to agree that the bible is perfect, then you won't accept God. Rather, if you don't want to accept God, you must discredit the Bible.

Those are blatant lies, whether it's you telling them or whichever apologist it was who told them to you. Here are just some of the more explicit contradictions in the Bible. Not that it matters a great deal, because the Bible's just literature. It's not a deity or evidence for a deity, which you do not have. The same goes for archaeological evidence which does support the historicity of some of the stories in the Bible. That's all a red herring, perhaps unless some archaeologist has found a burning bush. You've still got nothing, and you're only making yourself look less honest and more ridiculous.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 12:16 PM

Dhorvath:

"Where in the world is there evidence that your deity exists? Details would be nice."

If the Bible is true then God exists.

"You have been misinformed."

Wrong. I have heard literally hundreds of "contradictions" and through my own understanding and reading of the Bible not a one of them is true. I'll be glad to look into the ones you mentioned.

Which stories?
The fact that a nation named Israel lived in Canaan. The story of Jericho. Pontius Pilate. The grave where Jesus was buried. The list goes ON and ON...

You have not proven that God does not exist. You have merely supported a "theory" of how existence can be explained without God.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 26, 2011 12:17 PM

A REAL education allows for both schools of thought to be evaluated.

Look, you're doing the arrogance thing again.

Stop.

Ask, "has creationism made any contributions to science? Is creationism a 'school of thought' that makes testable predictions comparable to science?"

Ever seen the movie "Expelled"?

Yes. As I already understand evolution (Ben Stein does not), I recognized that the movie was wrong.

This might help you: http://www.expelledexposed.com/

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | April 26, 2011 12:20 PM

Kenneth,

believe women are better suited to family raising and men are better suited to leadership roles. That doesn't mean reversing those will end in disaster, it just means that a more efficient method of bettering society is available.

Is it more efficient? What studies have been done which indicate that to be true? What studies have been done which do not? How do you account for the difference in volume of the two schools of thought?
_

A REAL education allows for both schools of thought to be evaluated.

Yes, but one is a science and the other is nearly literature with a smattering of philosophy thrown in. Do not make the mistake of thinking they are comparable, both are worth looking into, but for far different reasons. Look at how many of us science types have good knowledge of the bible and its history.

Posted by: Sastra OM/COR | April 26, 2011 12:23 PM

Kenneth #372 wrote:

The main reason everyone here differs from my opinion is because you believe we evolved from monkeys. If that were true, then I would hold your opinion as well. Because I believe God created man and women with different strengths, I believe women are better suited to family raising and men are better suited to leadership roles.

No, the disagreement wouldn't be based on religious belief. Not as long as you think there is good evidence to back up the idea that men and women have "different strengths" and therefore your belief is reasonable and workable.

Keep in mind that you only have to bring in the Bible as an authority for any argument if the evidence is actually going against your argument. Science, politics, history, social theory, whatever. Those subjects have to do with the world we all share, religious or non-religious. If you think that whatever the Bible says (or whatever you think the Bible says) on these subjects is true -- then you won't need to cite or use the Bible. You can just point to the common evidence in the world and convince us from that.

If you can't, then you either need to rethink how reliable the Bible is -- or rethink how you want to "interpret" it.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | April 26, 2011 12:29 PM

"Where in the world is there evidence that your deity exists? Details would be nice." If the Bible is true then God exists.

Wow, what a fucking stupid answer. You said there is evidence in the Bible and in the world. Where is the evidence in the world? If your answer is "the Bible is in the world" then you're a fucking idiot.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 26, 2011 12:36 PM

And stop doing the Gish Gallop. If you are at all interesting in learning then you will have to go into details with us, and that requires not running from one topic to the next while saying a few superficial words about each. Stop bringing up more things. Stop, wait, breathe, and let people here draw you into more detailed discussions.

For instance you said "Has there ever been an example of a gaining of information that has positively influenced a species?"

Did you see the responses?

Expanding on #295, you should read this. Ask questions about it. Ask real questions, about which parts you don't understand, not just whatever you think might be clever.

And realize the implications of this. Whoever told you that evolution has never been demonstrated to produce "positive information" (you should instead talk about functionality that increases reproductive fitness), that person was lying to you.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 12:39 PM

razor:

"a burning bush"

The findable archaeology is what I am referencing.

The second contradiction... "By faith ye are saved through works." You must have both to be saved. The Bible simply is emphasizing two different parts of his salvation.

Nigel:

If there are no contradictions in the Bible, Kenneth, who is the father of Joseph? When was Christ supposed to return, and why didn't he? If the messiah was supposed to be a descendent of Abraham, but Joseph was not the father, how is Jesus the promised messiah? Where was Jesus' first sermon? What was Jesus given to drink during his trial? How did Judas die? If no man save Jesus has ascended into heaven, what happened to Elijah? Can God be seen? Was it God or Satan who moved David against Israel?

Just reading through that list, I don't see any significant contradictions that cannot be explained within context.

Strangegods:

Expelled was not just about evolution. It was about giving all science a voice.
So intelligent design has not been forced out of schools by evolutionists? Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer. Is that not science?

Iain Walker:
That clears up many of my misconceptions about how evolution is actually viewed in the scientific community. One question: If speciation is theoretically possible, are there any examples of a species becoming a different species, or is the reason we don't have that information because we don't have long enough periods of observation? I haven't looked into the Cichlid example yet so forgive me if that is a valid example.

Sastra: So you want external evidence that men are better at leadership and women are better at home-life. My conclusions are based on my personal experience of observing many families. Families that tend to have reversed roles, are not as strong. That is my experience, but I'll be more than glad to try to find some studies that support this.

So let me make sure I understand what you all are saying. Because the Bible is fallible and not perfect, God cannot exist because the Bible was just written by men. Would that be an accurate statement of your view?

Can anyone tell me an archaeological example that directly contradicts something the Bible says?

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | April 26, 2011 12:43 PM

God cannot exist because the Bible was just written by men.

God may exist, but the Bible is certainly not reliable evidence for such a thing.

Can anyone tell me an archaeological example that directly contradicts something the Bible says?

Watch Nova's "Bible's Buried Secrets". It's available for free on their website. I trust you know how to use Google to find the link yourself. The documentary covers many things, among which is evidence that contradicts the Exodus story.

Posted by: Ed Milnisov | April 26, 2011 12:49 PM

We're not evolved from monkeys. That's another lie you've been told. Apes and monkeys have a common ancestor. We split off about 40 million years ago.

Yeah, points for meaning well, but as phrased this too is bullshit and I'm tired of well-meaning people saying it. If the word 'monkey' means anything at all, then the common ancestor of apes and extant old-world monkeys WAS a monkey. And so was the more distant common ancestor of extant old and new-world monkeys.
We really did evolve from monkeys. Seriously.

Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer. Is that not science?

No, it is NOT science.
It is religious rhetoric semi-cleverly disguised as science. Same goes for all 'Intelligent Design Theory'. All of it.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | April 26, 2011 12:53 PM

The real evidence that God exists is in the Bible and in the world. The Bible is the only religious book with no contradictions

Bwahahahahahaha, good lie Kenneth, way to start out your truth telling. The babble is book of mythology/fiction. It doen't prove your imaginary deity, you need conclusive physical evidence to prove your imaginary deity, and then, and only then, can you attempt to bring the babble into play.

The conclusive phyical evidence for your imaginary deity must pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. Something the equivalent of an eternally burning bush. Until then, you deity only exists between your ears as a delusion, and we don't share such delusions here.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 26, 2011 12:55 PM

Expelled was not just about evolution. It was about giving all science a voice.

All science has a voice. All anyone has to do is make testable predictions.

So intelligent design has not been forced out of schools by evolutionists?

Which schools? Public high schools? It has not been forced out of secular universities. Anyone who makes testable predictions can be heard at secular universities.

Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer. Is that not science?

Does it make testable predictions?

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | April 26, 2011 1:01 PM

Kenneth, my favorite Bible contradiction is what I call the lost child of Adonikam. Two places in the Bible list the number of those who returned from exile. One lists 667 in the tribe of Adonikam, the other says 666. (And the one that says 666 mentions nothing about the number of the beast, which would have been a neat prophecy (but go ahead and say that's why the 667 source changed their number).)

That contradiction, right there, is enough, but there are thousands more. My second favorite is the placard on top of Jesus's cross--what exactly was written on it?

But you believe.

Incidentally, I am sketching out a book about the role of running in human evolution, and seeing quite different roles for men and women in that time. Which means nothing for my personal views on individuals in this time.

Saying that we evolved from monkeys is an ambiguous statement. My way of saying it is that we apes are still in the Old World monkey group, but that we and the present monkeys had a common ancestor...which, if you saw in a dark jungle, would be called a monkey.

By the way, your group hands out "tracts", not "tracks". And the reaction of a few passersby doesn't apply to the rest of the world, no matter what you believe.

As I said above, your belief is your problem. You believe we are wrong, you believe your group is right, all your mental processes are derailed by your belief in the validity of your faith and the people you have chosen to trust. Faith isn't much different than an irrational obsession, really.

You let people persuade you to follow them, and to give them money, you believe them and believe that you know what you are doing, and you give them your trust and your life and your self-respect.

Get over it, Kenneth. Get away from them.

Posted by: Owlmirror | April 26, 2011 1:02 PM

If the Bible is true then God exists.

If the Wizard of Oz is true, then Oz exists.

The fact that a nation named Israel lived in Canaan.

So what?

Does the fact that Kansas exists, and is as L. Frank Baum described it, mean that Oz exists?

The story of Jericho.

Bzzt! Archaeology FAIL. Jericho exists -- but the "story" of the walls falling? LOL! At the alleged time of Joshua, Jericho had no walls.

Pontius Pilate.

Meh. Tornados exist, therefore Oz exists?

The grave where Jesus was buried.

Jesus wasn't buried in a grave, you ninny, he was allegedly placed whole in a tomb -- a bloody cave. And archaeology has not found this place; the alleged "holy" sepulchre was a former temple of Aphrodite that was claimed to be the place of the tomb in the fourth century.

How would archeology find it, given that the place was supposed to be empty? What distinguishes one empty tomb from all others?

Posted by: Kemist | April 26, 2011 1:04 PM

Behind every great man stands a great women.

Just as long as she stays behind, isn't it ?

For the greater good, of course.

Of course she might decide to be a nurse, but dog forbid that her career take precedence over that of her manly man. Otherwise, who will cook dinners and change diapers ?

That's exactly the "separate but equal" trope. And it's extremely demeaning for women who are serious about their careers, for those who might want to do something else, something great, besides/instead of raising kids.

The three of us have been raised by a woman and a man with careers. There was no "reversal of roles" (whatever those stupid roles might be), but an everyday sharing of the household/kid care work between father and mother - as it should be. It made us all the more closer to our father - the man has changed my dirty diapers, fed me, and read bedtime stories to me, how can it be otherwise ?

Women's careers are not whims that are to be indulged by their men. Men should not be viewed as inferior caretakers for children. It's insulting to both men and women.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 26, 2011 1:06 PM

"The flood was not physically possible." Explanation or website or source? I know of many theories out there, what is your explanation of the invalidity of those theories?

Matter can be neither created nor destroyed.

a) Where did the water come from to coat the entire earth

b) Where did it go

C) before you answer, note that there is not enough water even if you liquefy all of it to do what you're saying.

D) If you argue the world was dry and all the water was in the sky note that the pressure this would cause would make Earth inhospitable for life as we know it.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 1:07 PM

Menyambal:

"Faith isn't much different than an irrational obsession, really."

From an intellectual standpoint that is correct. It looks foolish to believe in a spiritual being, just as it looks foolish to believe in a statue being a god.

razor:

As you said razor I should stick to one question at a time. My mind is overflowing with questions, so you may prompt me to ask another when you think we have adequately addressed one issue.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 26, 2011 1:14 PM

Problems with the bible from the top of my head

A) the different time lines in the Gospels do not match up (Census not==Harod's reign)

B) Nazareth's existence at that time was questionable, but that's a weaker one

C) Why Romans would execute someone for violation of Jewish law...the Temple had the authority under Roman law to punish religious crimes as long as they did not disrupt the Roman law. Jesus being either a God or King of the jews does not violate Roman law, threatening to overthrow Rome or Caeser would, but Messiah figures were legion at the time.

D) Zombies arrise in one Gospel but not the others and it isn't mentioned in historicals

E) The Liniage of Jesus's family are either in conflict from the two gospels, OR one is of Joseph who is irrelevent to Jesus's herritage and thus shows that Gospel did not accept the virgin birth

F) There is no evidence of jewish slaves in Egypt as described in Exodus

G) There is no evidence of a Davidic empire as described nor of a Temple that Solomon built which is of absurd properties for its time

H) The Tower of Bable...really think about it. We know how languages form...and why was God threatened by the tower (and apparently is not now). This only makes sense when you realize it's from an older pantheistic mythology

I) Cain is given a mark to protect him from people (despite there being only his family in the world?) and in the wilderness finds a wife....this is evident of pre-monotheism again.

Posted by: CJO | April 26, 2011 1:17 PM

Can anyone tell me an archaeological example that directly contradicts something the Bible says?

Archaeology doesn't really work this way. Archaeologists, in making their discipline into a true science over the course of the last century, had to give up the simplistic and misguided practice of interpreting their results tendentiously in that way, trying to "prove" or "disprove" this or that anient fairy tale. So what we get from modern archaeology that relates to the Bible are detailed pictures of settlement patterns, trade relationships, and material economies at different sites. When we take the picture we get of Palestine from this practice and compare it to the Bible, we're not trying to discredit this or that particular passage. What we discover, though, are numerous anachronisms, instances where the author of the text retrojected the conditions of his own time onto an earlier era. The patriarchal narratives in Genesis are an example, as is the unified Kingdom of David, which is portrayed in the Bible as a fully developed Temple-state, but no such material circumstances existed at the time the events were supposed to have occurred.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 26, 2011 1:20 PM

Man survives being swallowed by a fish for 3 days...does that sound like science or fairy tale?

Posted by: Sastra OM/COR | April 26, 2011 1:23 PM

Kenneth, I'd like to ask you a question: how much is riding, for you, on the Theory of Evolution?

What I mean is this: if the theory of evolution is correct, and adequately explains the forms and diversity of life on earth -- does that mean the Bible is false? That Christianity is untrue? That there is no God?

Or would that only mean that evolution must then have been the method God used to create things? Theistic evolution: God working through the way it created nature upfront -- as opposed to needing to intervene in it constantly with miracles to get the results it wanted.

Is evolution your test for God?

If so, then you need to take this very seriously, and study the science. A lot is riding on this for you.

If not, then drop the pretense that this is about anyone trying to disprove God, prove God, or deny God, or whatever. Faith is a commitment a person makes to become a spin-doctor -- to look at any evidence which seems to contradict a belief and say, enthusiastically, that on the contrary this makes you believe even more than before! Heads you win; tails you win.

With faith, you need never be wrong again.

Caring about what is really true, though, is a risk.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | April 26, 2011 1:27 PM

What I don't like to see is people blindly accusing Christianity of forcing women to stay in their place. I have witnessed that in Christianity, but I believe it is far less significant than what it is commonly thought to be. I'm not saying that anyone here is "blindly" accusing Christianity of gender roles. They probably have seen it happen. I am only stating my opinion. If a women wants to go start a career or become president, or anything else, I do NOT condemn her for that. I may disagree with her viewpoints, but she should be more than welcome to do as she sees fit.

You really need to read your own holy book and stop taking other people's word for what's in it. The only way you could be unaware of things like the New and Old Testament pronouncements on slavery as well as the Bible numerous self-contradictions is if you've never actually read the whole thing and have instead relied on authority figures to tell you what it says. You've already discovered that they've been lying to you. So when are you going to start questioning what else they are lying about?

To wit: the Biblical view of women is that they are property. If a man rapes a woman, and she is a virgin, then it's a crime because he has illicitly deprived her father of his property rights, and damaged her property value. Solution: pay off dad, and transfer ownership of the woman to her rapist via marriage. If a man rapes a woman who is NOT a virgin, then presumably she is married, and the only crime is adultery--depriving the woman's husband of his property rights. If she's not a virgin and she's not married, then there is no crime because she isn't really a person anyway. This is in the Old Testament, to be sure, but the New Testament does not really do much to contradict this view of women.

It's nice that you think it's "permissible" for women to have careers while their husbands stay home to mind the children, but you should recognize that the reason you hold that view is because you live in a society where equality between men and women is accepted as a positive value. The reason our society has reached this state is because activists have struggled, mostly AGAINST the church's wishes, to secure legally guaranteed equal rights for women. There are many, many Christians who really think that women should be breeding and nothing else--and the Republican party just named one of these women their chosen "woman of the year." These people actually have more claim to scriptural accuracy than you do with your half-assed, grudging allowance that women and men are individuals who may not all fit into predetermined roles.

Christianity is an inherently sexist paradigm. You live in modern times, where it's more or less accepted that it's wrong to treat women as chattel. The evolution of women's rights closely mirrors the evolution of slavery: first the church defended oppression, then the church was split, then society went ahead with the project of equal rights, then the church started (slowly) catching up.

Posted by: Owlmirror | April 26, 2011 1:30 PM

Because the Bible is fallible and not perfect, God cannot exist because the Bible was just written by men. Would that be an accurate statement of your view?

The God of the bible provides no evidence for his own existence, therefore, there is no reason to believe that the God of the bible exists.

The fact that the bible is fallible simply emphasizes that the bible is fictional.

Can anyone tell me an archaeological example that directly contradicts something the Bible says?

Are you simply going to ignore all of the contradictions that have been pointed out?

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 1:33 PM

Sastra 401

"No. That is perhaps a statement of your view, if the major reason you believe God exists is because the Bible is perfect and infallible. "

Thank you for that clarification.

Owl: 402
"If the Wizard of Oz is true, then Oz exists."
What is false with that statement? THere is nothing invalid about that logic in my eyes. Am I missing something?

"What distinguishes one empty tomb from all others?" The fact that the Bible provides EXPLICIT details as to the location, type and others factors about the tomb.

Ing: 403

Did you know PZ was IN Expelled? Did you know they banned him from the premier viewing?

Question since you agree with Expelled: do you think those of us here support Nazism?

I was not aware...

Nazism? What does that have to do with ID being banned from colleges?

Kemist: 404 Isn't it also insulting to women to say that men can raise children just as easily as women? No. Not in my opinion. Raising children is hard, and I respect women more because I believe they are more effective in raising children. IN SOME CASES... That addendum is very crucial.

Nerd: #405

Isn't that just your opinion?

Also, if teaching about greek gods is allowed in schools, why not teaching about Christianity? Isn't it because atheism fears Christianity? What have I missed. (I must have missed something huge here)

Ing: #406

Thank you for that clarification. I agree there are substantial flaws with the flood theories.

#411

That's what I thought science was. Thank you.

#414: Creationists have found fossils of fish that are capable of this. source: AIG take it or leave it.

So more of what I have gathered is that the idea of creation is absurd on a science basis, and the accuracy of the Bible is pathetic. That is why you all hold the views you do?

The article about the E. Coli is microevolution, is it not? How can you extrapolate that E. Coli could eventually become a different species?

Sallystrange: #418
"You've already discovered that they've been lying to you." Intentionally? No. I'm going to start reading books on the issue.

The issue of women's rights. I have stated my opinion and you disagree. I'll leave it at that, but I'll consider reading more material about the issue.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | April 26, 2011 1:38 PM

If I am not mistaken, science is observations. Am I wrong?

It is much, much more than just observations. It is also about tying observations together into solid and self consistent theories. The observations should be done in a standard methodology so folks can reproduce your work. They form the body of evidence that is science.

There are no scientific observation that your deity exists. Ergo, science ignores your imaginary deity.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | April 26, 2011 1:39 PM

"You've already discovered that they've been lying to you." Intentionally? No.

So, they're stupid rather than mendacious--and this doesn't alarm you? Your only reaction is that you're going to read more?

Listen, I have a bridge for sale--real cheap, and it has a fabulous view of Manhattan...

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 26, 2011 1:41 PM

Kenneth are you home-schooled? If not, assuming you live somewhere in the western hemisphere, then you ought to be in class.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 1:45 PM

"There are no scientific observation that your deity exists. Ergo, science ignores your imaginary deity."

I disagree with the first sentence, but that is an area where I need more knowledge gathering.

"So, they're stupid rather than mendacious--and this doesn't alarm you? Your only reaction is that you're going to read more?"

That means I am going to stop being fed whatever they teach, and read what both sides have to say and evaluate each side. That means I'll be making my own decisions.

Owl: I think everyone here has presented valid arguments against the Bible and its stories. I will be investigating them. (in other words, UNCLE!) I must discover things for myself and stop blindly accepting what others throw at me.

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | April 26, 2011 1:46 PM

Kenneth, I admire you for sticking with this, but I say again that your faith is the same kind of thing, a blind stick-to-it-no-matter-what. There is no such thing as a little faith--you may believe otherwise, of course.

Regarding the flood: There is no evidence at all for it, out in the world. None. Even in the bible, it makes little sense--why do an ark, instead of just a parting-of-the-waters as was done for Moses? You won't see that, of course.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 26, 2011 1:54 PM

What does that have to do with ID being banned from colleges?

Ah, there it is. Another lie.

ID has not been banned from any colleges. You don't know what you are talking about.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | April 26, 2011 1:55 PM

Kenneth:
Can anyone tell me an archaeological example that directly contradicts something the Bible says?

Yes: according to Wikipedia,

The archaeological evidence of the largely indigenous origins of Israel is "overwhelming," and leaves "no room for an Exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness."

The citation is in the Wikipedia article.

You. Have. Been. Lied. To.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 26, 2011 1:58 PM

I am reading all of your posts, and even if I don't reply I am paying attention. Most of the time I don't have an educated response and thus I can't say much.

Kenneth, this is an easy one. http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/06/02/a_new_step_in_evolution.php

either:

ask sincere questions about it (including "what does this word mean in this context" if you're not sure), or

acknowledge that evolution has been directly observed to produce novel and useful mutations (and so whoever told you otherwise was wrong).

Your options are clear. Pick one.

Posted by: Kemist | April 26, 2011 1:58 PM

Isn't it also insulting to women to say that men can raise children just as easily as women?[yes] Raising children is hard, and I respect women more because I believe they are more effective in raising children. IN SOME CASES...

Tell this to my male cousin, who raised his little boy as a nice lad singlehandedly. The boy's mother made me lose faith forever in the myth of "maternal instinct" where humans are concerned.

The thing is that women might not like raising children. They might prefer to be engineers. Your "respect" is condescending to those who might not want to conform to stupid man-made gender roles. We are all humans. Humans have to learn every single thing they do, including motherhood / fatherhood. Nobody's inately good at it.

Are women here insulted by the statement : Men are just as good at child care as women ?

'Cause you know, the best persons to answer that question are women. Not men who think they know better than them.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | April 26, 2011 2:06 PM

Isn't that just your opinion?

No, the opinion of all scientific societies, and even the US legal system (Kitzmiller. v. Dover decision).

Also, if teaching about greek gods is allowed in schools, why not teaching about Christianity? Isn't it because atheism fears Christianity? What have I missed. (I must have missed something huge here)

Yes, you have missed something there. The babble can't be taught as gospel. It can be used as an example of literature, in comparitive religion courses, and philosophy courses. It just can't be proselytized, or any one interpretation presented as fact. The Greek gods are recognized as mythology (fiction). So should your imaginary deity and the babble.

Posted by: triskelethecat | April 26, 2011 2:13 PM

@Kenneth: I'm late to the party since I haven't been able to comment all day. Here is more reading material for you:

The End of Biblical Studies by Hector Avalos

Dr Avalos addresses a lot of the archeological issues you brought up. The book is very readable and well referenced.

Christianity is taught in most schools that I am aware of. History, sociology, English, History of Religions. Like Islam, Judaism, Greek and Roman gods, other gods and goddesses from multiple continents and tribes. It does not belong in a science class, just like ANY OTHER mythology. ID is religion. Teach it in a religion class.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 2:19 PM

#434

Ok, I must not. Thanks.

#435:

That sounds explicit to me. A rich man's tomb. That narrows it quite a bit. Only one bed used... etc..

#436
Ok, yet another example... I resent the fact that persons here consistently say I have been lied to when the intent behind lying is negative. If I believe something is true, I'll share it with the world. That's all that has been done by my sources.

#438:

I did ask a question about it in 422

#439:

So anything that is not science should be thrown away because it has no value?

#440

I've stated my opinion. I don't see any reason to go further.

#441:

As I said as far as the world proof. UNCLE!

"Do you really believe this? Is it important to you?"

This treads into a completely different area of my beliefs that I won't go into, but yes I believe that. It is important that I practice this and show others the idea, but I won't go out and force others to adopt the idea.

"You may think you stepped in something unpleasant, but nothing we can teach you will make your life worse and much of it will make your life fuller and more interesting."

How? What does atheism offer? (this is sincere not sarcastic. It's difficult to convey in text.)

The other areas you brought up are areas where I need to read and understand. Thank you for addressing them.

#442

I thought I missed something. Thank you for the clarification.

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | April 26, 2011 2:22 PM

Kenneth, you are welcome.

We haven't been telling you what we believe, though. We've been telling what we accept, or understand, even. We are not believers.

As I have said elsewhere, we aren't just marching to the beat of a different drummer (a belief in evolution, say). We are dancing, playing the music, writing the music and building the instruments.

Which you are going to take as dreadfully self-centered, but it's just an illustration of the difference. Most religions are dreadfully self-centered of course--you believe that you are right and all of us are wrong, and that the entire universe was made just for you to be righter than us in.

You think you know all about science and evolution, and you promise to go read more. But most of your info comes from religious propaganda, and will likely continue to. You must read EVERYTHING, and think about it well (which you seem to be doing a fair job of here).

Kenneth, I was raised Christian, went to Baptist churches and had a brother in a seminary, even. So I know what you are going through and where you are. And I know that you do not really know where we are and what we went through to get here.

You seem a smart and sincere person. You can find truth if you truly seek it out, and you can become a better person through the journey.

Good luck to you.

Posted by: CJO | April 26, 2011 2:31 PM

A rich man's tomb. That narrows it quite a bit.

Look, just admit it. You know nothing about ancient burial practices, or anything else about history that you might bring to bear on a discussion about Jesus's tomb in the gospels. "A rich man's tomb" is what you fixate on because that's one of the bogus prophesies from Isaiah that the events surrounding the crucifixion and resurrection are supposed to fulfill, according to your pastor.

Well, it does not "narrow it," it is not "EXPLICIT," it is a fictional detail, purposefully included in the narrative as a proof-text from Isaiah. Joseph of Arimathea is entirely unknown to history, and he utterly disappears from the narratives the second he's had his little prophesy-fulfilling turn on the stage. No other ancient source even makes any reference to a place called Arimathea!

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 2:31 PM

Belief
"confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof"

It is not belief. I take back what I said about "belief". (at least for now)

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 2:37 PM

Owl:

"If the Wizard of Oz is true, then Oz exists"

The logic behind that is VALID. Not true, but valid.

"Which "views" are you referring to, here?"

In other words do you agree with what I said?

"Do you think the truth is a matter of personal opinion, as opposed to being objective fact about what has been discovered?"

As you all have instructed me, I cannot blindly accept anything as truth from people. That's all I'm doing.

"Are you going to provide any of the information I asked for @#349?"

No.

Posted by: CJO | April 26, 2011 2:43 PM

It shouldn't challenge your faith at all, as his focus is history, not theology.

The thing is, though, modern conservative evangelicals have invested their theology so heavily in bogus historical claims that there's no way an accurate picture of history wouldn't also threaten Kenneth's theology. Just as with evolution, their faith blatantly and persistently denies historical reality in favor of the fantasies and delusions of one narrow, sectarian interpretation of the Bible.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | April 26, 2011 2:51 PM

Kenneth:

I'm going to start by reading: Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. Is that a good start?

That is an excellent start. It's a good read, whether you accept everything or not.

I again applaud both your intellectual curiosity, and your courage in confronting your beliefs (no matter how that confrontation turns out).

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 26, 2011 2:54 PM

"If the Wizard of Oz is true, then Oz exists"

The logic behind that is VALID. Not true, but valid.

In other words, the argument is valid but unsound.

All organisms with wings can fly. Penguins have wings. Therefore, penguins can fly.

The argument is valid, but the first premise is false and so is the conclusion.

By the way, since you didn't answer my questions about whales (and their evolution), how did penguins get the way they are? What kind of "intelligent design" can make any sense of the existence of flightless birds?

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 26, 2011 3:00 PM

Ok, yet another example... I resent the fact that persons here consistently say I have been lied to when the intent behind lying is negative. If I believe something is true, I'll share it with the world. That's all that has been done by my sources.

No. You have in fact been lied to.

This has been documented by a Republican judge in the US court system. After hearing all the evidence, Judge Jones documented creationist lies in his final report: http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf

Please read it. It's not a difficult read.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 26, 2011 3:08 PM

What does atheism offer?

I'll let Penn Jillette explain. (Warning: Penn Jillette is an idiot when it comes to science. Do not believe anything he says about science. He is a stage magician, and is qualified to speak about what atheism means to him, but not at all qualified on anything having to do with any science. He displays the same sort of arrogant ignorance that I've been complaining about here. That said, this essay is reasonable.)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 3:15 PM

I am going to take a break from replying for the afternoon. I'll write a complete response this evening.

I just finished the preface for Jerry Coyne's book.

I will say this in response to #457

I recanted that statement in a later post. Belief has to do with the untestable. Evolution is testable.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 26, 2011 3:30 PM

Kenneth, sorry, I didn't see this:

The article about the E. Coli is microevolution, is it not? How can you extrapolate that E. Coli could eventually become a different species?

Because of the existence of ring species, among other things, I think that the distinction of microevolution and macroevolution is an unhelpful one. It is undoubtedly a contrived one. "Species" is a concept invented by humans; it does not describe the real world very accurately. When does Larus argentatus argentatus differentiate from Larus argentatus argenteus? The question is harder than it looks, and this points to a basic problem with the concept of speciation. It's not a useless concept! Not at all. But it can lead us to misunderstandings, and one of these misunderstandings is the idea that "species" are an evolutionary hurdle.

That said, the E coli example is what you would call microevolution. I didn't say it proved what you call macroevolution.

You're doing the Gish Gallop again.

See, when I pointed out the E coli, it was in response to you asking "Has there ever been an example of a gaining of information that has positively influenced a species?"

Here I have given an example of exactly that.

And instead of acknowledging this fact, you gallop onward.

Instead of saying "oh, I see, you're right, I was wrong about that," you just keep running. This makes it very difficult to have an honest conversation with you. It makes me wonder if you are at all serious.

It makes me wonder if you were faking interest in finding out whether there has ever been observed evidence of a mutation that "positively influenced a species". It seems that if you were genuinely interested in that, then you would be genuinely acknowledging that you were wrong about this, even if it's a small thing.

If you'll deal with this, deal with the fact that you asked for something and I gave you exactly what it was that you asked for, then we can move on to what the implications are for what you call macroevolution. But I see no reason to gallop alongside you when you aren't explicitly admitting past mistakes.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 26, 2011 3:44 PM

A teaser on creationist lies as documented by Judge Jones:

As we will discuss in more detail below, the inescapable truth is that both Bonsell and Buckingham lied at their January 3, 2005 depositions about their knowledge of the source of the donation for Pandas, which likely contributed to Plaintiffs’ election not to seek a temporary restraining order at that time based upon a conflicting and incomplete factual record. This mendacity was a clear and deliberate attempt to hide the source of the donations by the Board President and the Chair of the Curriculum Committee to further ensure that Dover students received a creationist alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution. We are accordingly presented with further compelling evidence that Bonsell and Buckingham sought to conceal the blatantly religious purpose behind the ID Policy.

Posted by: Sastra OM/COR | April 26, 2011 4:25 PM

Kenneth #446 wrote:

What does atheism offer?

A free toaster!

Sorry, that was silly. And I know you've taken a break for a while, but I wanted to say a little bit here.

First, I'll second what others have already said: atheism is just a (tentative) conclusion. The thing that will "make your life fuller and more interesting" is the method, the approach -- the honest way of searching and the humble way of appreciating what you find. Believing things 'on faith' may seem to empower you with a special way of knowing, but maintaining faith beliefs in the teeth of either a lack of evidence, or against the evidence, takes a lot of intellectual trickery. It comes with the haunting fear that you're fooling yourself. When you struggle to "keep your faith," you're actually struggling against your own conscience.

Integrity is worth something.

Which leads to my second point: if atheism is true, then atheism offers an understanding of what is true. And that counts, a lot -- if that's the sort of thing you care about.

Does truth matter?

Not Truth-with-a-capital T which is certainty, but striving to be as correct as possible, given that we can never be 100% correct, or 100% sure of ourselves. Likelihood. Probability. Reasonable accuracy. Improved understanding of reality.

If so, then stop asking what atheism or theism or science "offers" you, as if everything comes down to therapy or entertainment. Would you change religions if some other religion (Islam, Wicca, the Mormons) offered free pizza? Nicer friends? A prettier church and more pleasing prayers? No. And, while you may be personally sympathetic if someone else did that, you probably wouldn't think it had a lot of intellectual integrity to it.

If there is no God, then everything wonderful in the world which you thought was evidence for and of God still exists: you just change your explanation for what it is, and why it's there, and how it got that way. But the world is unchanged. You lose nothing, and gain wisdom.

Ok, one last remark, and this is just a suggestion on format. When you reply to a post, it would be useful to everyone if you include the name (or part of the name or the initials) of the person you're responding to along with the number of the post. This is because I might remember what nigelTheBold or consciousness razor said, but not the number of when they said it. Just putting something like "#543 -- yes. I agree" means we all have to scroll back to see who the heck you're referring to. If you can quote a little -- even better.

This would also be useful to you, I think -- since there are a lot of us and we're a diverse bunch. We don't always agree, and we all have different areas of expertise/interest. Writing down our names might help you keep who is who straight. We've been around long enough to know each other, of course, but this advice would be helpful to anyone just coming in, I think, no matter how long they plan to stay around (unless they're a 'drive-by' -- and you've already conversed too much and too reasonably to be what we call a 'drive-by' ... or 'seagull:' come in, squawk, make a mess, and fly off.)

Enough. Take care, and enjoy Coyne's book.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | April 26, 2011 4:32 PM

Oh! I know another analogy.

Kenneth, look through some old family photos. See if you can find some pictures of your dad as a baby. Now take a picture of your dad. Compare those two pictures. Does it look possible that those two pictures are of the same person?

So if I were to say to you, "Those are not the same person. Show me the transitional photos." So, you find a photo of your dad at 13. You say, "Here. This obviously looks a bit like the baby picture, and a little like the adult." I would say, "No! It looks like neither. Show me the transitional photos between the baby and the teen, and the teen and the adult."

And so on.

At what point do you say, "Look, I can find no photos of my father between 15 and 18. But … look! They are obviously the same person, and all these transitional photos exist!"

Now imagine a little thought-experiment. Imagine your grandparents took a picture of your father every day of his life. If you were to compare two adjacent days, there would be no difference. You could work your way forward one day at a time, comparing each day's photo to the previous day's photo. At no point would you say, "These are obviously not the same person." In fact, barring things like haircuts or major injuries, you'd be hard-pressed to be assured the photos from any two adjacent days weren't swapped, as each day from a time-period would look more-or-less like adjacent days.

Do you see where this is going?

Now imagine your father had an identical twin. At one point, they were part of the same clump of cells. This clump eventually split in two, and those two clumps were more-or-less identical. Then they developed and were born.

Your grandparents took two photos every day, one of your dad, and one of his twin. For the longest time, you'd not be able to tell the difference between them. You could interchange their photos and not be able to determine which was which.

But, as life goes on, your father and his twin brother diverged. In the photos, one brother started growing a beard, got a scar on his face, started getting age lines. Eventually, at some point, it becomes easy to distinguish the photos.

In this analogy, the photos are the different "species". The photos start out indistinguishable from each other, but as time goes on, as the photos show development in different directions, it becomes obvious there are two distinct groups.

This is how life develops. Something happens that causes two groups to diverge into separate breeding groups. Eventually, those groups adjust to their environment, and it becomes apparent they are no longer part of the same breeding population.

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 26, 2011 4:40 PM

There will not be pie in the sky when you die. In the light of this knowledge, you can make a more informed decision about how much pie you should eat now, while there is still time.

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | April 26, 2011 4:41 PM

Religion: "That man is undoubtedly speaking the truth of God. Let us follow the prophet!"

Science: "That man may well be lying. Let us check his work."

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 26, 2011 4:46 PM

More of the judge's findings from Kitzmiller. In the following, "Pandas" refers to the book Of Pandas and People, and "FTE" is the company that produces the book.

In Edwards v. Arkansas, 482 U.S. 578 (1987), five years after McLean, the Supreme Court held that a requirement that public schools teach “creation science” along with evolution violated the Establishment Clause. ...

After a thorough analysis of the history of fundamentalist attacks against evolution, as well as the applicable legislative history including statements made by the statute’s sponsor, and taking the character of organizations advocating for creation science into consideration, the Supreme Court held that the state violated the Establishment Clause by “restructur[ing] the science curriculum to conform with a particular religious viewpoint.” Edwards, 482 U.S. at 593.

Among other reasons, the Supreme Court in Edwards concluded that the challenged statute did not serve the legislature’s professed purposes of encouraging academic freedom and making the science curriculum more comprehensive by “teaching all of the evidence” regarding origins of life because: the state law already allowed schools to teach any scientific theory, which responded to the alleged purpose of academic freedom; and if the legislature really had intended to make science education more comprehensive, “it would have encouraged the teaching of all scientific theories about the origins of humankind” rather than permitting schools to forego teaching evolution, but mandating that schools that teach evolution must also teach creation science, an inherently religious view. Id. at 586, 588-89. The Supreme Court further held that the belief that a supernatural creator was responsible for the creation of human kind is a religious viewpoint and that the Act at issue “advances a religious doctrine by requiring either the banishment of the theory of evolution from public school classrooms or the presentation of a religious viewpoint that rejects evolution in its entirety.” Id. at 591, 596. Therefore, as noted, the import of Edwards is that the Supreme Court made national the prohibition against teaching creation science in the public school system. ...

As Plaintiffs meticulously and effectively presented to the Court, Pandas went through many drafts, several of which were completed prior to and some after the Supreme Court’s decision in Edwards, which held that the Constitution forbids teaching creationism as science. By comparing the pre and post Edwards drafts of Pandas, three astonishing points emerge: (1) the definition for creation science in early drafts is identical to the definition of ID; (2) cognates of the word creation (creationism and creationist), which appeared approximately 150 times were deliberately and systematically replaced with the phrase ID; and (3) the changes occurred shortly after the Supreme Court held that creation science is religious and cannot be taught in public school science classes in Edwards. This word substitution is telling, significant, and reveals that a purposeful change of words was effected without any corresponding change in content, which directly refutes FTE’s argument that by merely disregarding the words “creation” and “creationism,” FTE expressly rejected creationism in Pandas. In early pre-Edwards drafts of Pandas, the term “creation” was defined as “various forms of life that began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features intact – fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc,” the very same way in which ID is defined in the subsequent published versions. (P-560 at 210; P-1 at 2-13; P-562 at 2-14, P-652 at 2-15; P-6 at 99-100; P-11 at 99-100; P-856.2.). This definition was described by many witnesses for both parties, notably including defense experts Minnich and Fuller, as “special creation” of kinds of animals, an inherently religious and creationist concept. (28:85-86 (Fuller); Minnich Dep. at 34, May 26, 2005; Trial Tr. vol. 1, Miller Test., 141-42, Sept. 26, 2005; 9:10 (Haught); Trial Tr. vol. 33, Bonsell Test., 54-56, Oct. 31, 2005). Professor Behe’s assertion that this passage was merely a description of appearances in the fossil record is illogical and defies the weight of the evidence that the passage is a conclusion about how life began based upon an interpretation of the fossil record, which is reinforced by the content of drafts of Pandas.

The weight of the evidence clearly demonstrates, as noted, that the systemic change from “creation” to “intelligent design” occurred sometime in 1987, after the Supreme Court’s important Edwards decision. This compelling evidence strongly supports Plaintiffs’ assertion that ID is creationism re-labeled.

In case that was hard to follow, I'll summarize. FTE drafted Pandas prior to the Edwards case. In these oldest drafts, the book explicitly promotes "creationism". The judges in Edwards ruled that teaching creationism in public schools was illegal, an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. After this, FTE started removing the word "creationism" from Pandas, and replacing it with "intelligent design". But they did not change the substance of the book, only the labels. A most amusing look at this can be found by googling the term "cdesign proponentsists" (note, there is a clearer version of the graph in that article here). Then FTE lied about the substance of the book, claiming that the book no longer promoted creationism, even though the book's definition of intelligent design was identical to the book's earlier definition of creationism. (And if you read further into the Kitzmiller finding, you'll note that other creationists lied under oath before the court.)

So, Kenneth, don't assume that the people who teach you creationism are being honest. Many of them have been caught lying. Why do they lie? In my opinion it is because they start from the mistaken belief that if a person believes in God they can't acknowledge evolution, and vice versa. They want to preserve belief in God, but evolution is obviously true, and instead of dropping this false dichotomy, they decide it would be honorable to lie about evolution, if lying about evolution makes more people believe in God.

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 26, 2011 4:52 PM

Ing:

On Bullshit is pretty good. ;)

While liars need to know the truth to better conceal it, bullshitters, interested solely in advancing their own agendas, have no use for the truth. Thus, Frankfurt claims, "...bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are"

The same could be said of "faith," which, if not identical to bullshit, has remarkably similar properties.

Posted by: azumahazuki | April 26, 2011 5:07 PM

The big problem here is one of epistemology, if not philosophy in general, which is why no science will convince these people.

In simple terms, this is the problem: creationists think in terms of complete ontological separation between "kinds." There is, to paraphrase, a great gulf fixed between "kinds," such that they cannot pass. It's a very black and white worldview, and it's no coincidence that this kind of person tends to be religious and conservative too since those are the spiritual and political equivalents.

What science has shown us is that these presumed ontological gulfs do not exist. They are semipermeable membranes. Differences are illusions, deep down. Everything is connected to everything else, and complexity emerges naturally from simplicity where conditions permit.

We are one and THIS is the most powerful argument for humanism that we will ever find. Dr. Bronner's soap bottles may look like hippie-flavored Chick tracts, but the man was onto something big. He brushed up against this.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | April 26, 2011 5:28 PM

SG, thanks for correcting my borked link to Kitzmiller. I don't know what happened, but my POS work computer gets very recalcitrant every now and then, especially in IE. Copypasta can give some very strange results.

Posted by: Sastra OM/COR | April 26, 2011 6:04 PM

Menyambal, Son of Sambal #485 wrote:

Which is why the last part of my comment said that the religious may just be in it for the money.

"Profitable" needn't always refer to monetary gain, though. I think it can just as well refer to any benefit, including personal or psychological benefits.

I have a friend who is a "Spiritual Counselor." She apparently dispenses fairly reasonable advice about relationships and self-awareness wrapped up inside a lot of religious and pseudoscientific babble about souls, healing-energy, alternative medicine, miracles, and spiritual consciousness.

When I try to pin her down on exactly what she means, she retreats into the assertion that it all means whatever people want it to mean. It's metaphor; it's fact: it's both ... somehow. It's not true, it's not false -- and if it is either, then she doesn't want to know because she doesn't care. She's going to do what she does, and say what she says regardless. It doesn't matter.

Do they think it works? Then it worked. That's it. It's all as real as you need it to be. Transcend categories of "true" and "false" and open yourself up to joy.

The important thing to her is whether she's helping people feel better about their lives -- helping them relax and make good choices they are comfortable with. Helping them love, and be loved, in productive lives.

OK. On the whole, that's not a bad agenda. In fact, if you have to have a brutal, over-riding agenda you pursue with single-minded fervor, then "helping people be happy, relaxed, loving, and comfortable" probably ranks up there on the top.

But she's a bullshitter. And I suspect that when the skeptic is out of the room she believes in her own bullshit. It's only when met with challenge that it turns into playacting for therapy. My guess.

This strange version of "not-quite-lying-exactly" is an example from New Age-ish spirituality, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was happening in a lot of traditional and conservative religions -- including the ones that push creationism as 'science.' Another kind of science, valid in its own sphere. They think faith creates its own reality, with new rules. Perception = truth. Truth = God. God = Faith. Faith = Perception.

It's all wrapped up together into one sticky, gooey mess of Grade A Transcendent Divine Sacred Faith-based Bullshit. Truthiness.

"I know X is true because I've experienced it for myself!" Believe.

Posted by: Nightjar | April 26, 2011 7:12 PM

[Kenneth:] Has there ever been an example of a gaining of information that has positively influenced a species?

[strange gods:] Expanding on #295, you should read this.

[Kenneth:] The article about the E. Coli is microevolution, is it not? How can you extrapolate that E. Coli could eventually become a different species?

Kenneth, just reread and compare what you asked before and after strange gods gave you that link. Do you realise you moved the goalposts in a rather evident way?

When are you going to acknowledge that the answer to your initial question is undoubtedly 'YES', so that we can move on? And if you don't yet quite see why the answer is 'yes', please, please, ask more questions about the same topic, don't jump to another one! You're doing yourself no good.

Oh, and just because, here's another example to show that the answer to your first question is indeed yes: Evolution before our eyes.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | April 26, 2011 7:46 PM

@Kenneth:

I'm pleased that you're open to evidence and listening to others who know a hell of a lot more than I do.

You asked, though:

What does atheism offer?

Atheism is not the beginning, it's the destination. The more important thing is rationalism, understanding, and learning. You're on your way to do this, and it's good. Don't take anything at face value, question everything and you'll find your life a lot more fulfilled. One can be rational and understand science and be a Christian (Ken Miller, for example, as long as he's not talking about quantum physics.)

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 26, 2011 8:52 PM

Kenneths' taking us for a ride. I call it.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 8:54 PM

Oops. I accidentally pressed submit.

Strangegods: #468
I apologize if I wasn't clear. I will reply to this more once I have read more of Jerry Coyne's book. I am beginning to understand some differences in the natural selection that evolution advances and the kind I currently understand.

As far as what atheism offers, interesting response and food for thought.

There are so many things I am already learning. I will keep you all posted on my questions.

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 26, 2011 9:29 PM

Here's a complete graduate-level education on ID/creationism. I'm such a generous fellow I offer it to you at no charge.

1. GodDidIt.
2. Therefore, GodDidIt.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 9:38 PM

#499

Then we must make a term beyond macroevolution because that experiment does not show how life could have evolved from one source. It just means the definitions of species are being muddled in order to make the experiment support macroevolution.

Is that valid? Or what is wrong with that?

I am just beginning to learn about this natural selection stuff so be patient with me. :)

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 26, 2011 9:43 PM

Then we must make a term beyond macroevolution because that experiment does not show how life could have evolved from one source. It just means the definitions of species are being muddled in order to make the experiment support macroevolution.

Is that valid? Or what is wrong with that?

I am just beginning to learn about this natural selection stuff so be patient with me. :)

Yes you're wrong.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | April 26, 2011 9:48 PM

onion girl, #491:

I'd like to claim it as original, but I cannot. I'm pretty sure I've read the basic analogy somewhere else (Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, I think). I'm pretty sure the twin thought experiment wasn't mentioned, so I think I can claim that as my own (though it is probably not original at all).

I just really like it. The only thing I didn't make clear was that every photo was a generation. I think that was clear, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, thanks for the compliment. Much appreciated.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | April 26, 2011 9:53 PM

John Morales: "ID is as much a science as astrology;"

Is it? I would contend that perhaps astrology is more of a scientific theory than ID, since it does not posit an omnipotent being who could account for any outcome. So there is at least hope that astrology could evolve with time. ID? Not so much. Its basic premise will always be: whatever there is, goddidit.

Posted by: Owlmirror | April 26, 2011 9:59 PM

"Have you had any science classes at all in your educational history, which were not from YEC sources?"

Yes I can answer that question. I have not. My parents have shielded that from me until I was older and by then, I was already indoctrinated.

I'm sorry to hear that.

I was raised religious, but received secular science education parallel to religious education. It was never suggested that there was a conflict between them.

My father tried to keep up with current science news, and I read up on it as well. I distinctly recall, when the question of evolution versus Genesis was raised, coming up (on my own, as far as I know), with an accommodationist suggestion: "Maybe God caused man to evolve from monkeys so that we would learn humility."

It made sense to me at the time -- evolving from a animal didn't seem that different from being made, originally, from dirt, and the latter might be seen as being a vague sort of metaphor for the former.

I was very young, then -- much younger than high school age.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | April 26, 2011 10:04 PM

Kenneth:

Then we must make a term beyond macroevolution because that experiment does not show how life could have evolved from one source. It just means the definitions of species are being muddled in order to make the experiment support macroevolution.

Y'know, if it were the only piece of evidence, you might have a point. The problem is, there's tons of observational data that lines up with a single conclusion: that of evolution through natural selection.

Ing's link demonstrates that novel and beneficial mutations occur. They even occur relatively frequently. It took only several years for e. coli to encounter not one, but two mutations that, taken together (in what Behe would call an "irreducibly complex" system) give e. coli the ability to process citrate. It took both mutations to produce this ability, so it wasn't a case of a single mutation "increasing information," as you might say, but two.

Think on that a moment.

Now that evolution has evidence it "produces information" (not exactly accurate, but close enough, and those are your words), the rest must also be taken into account. All the predictions made by the theory of evolution must be considered, now that your major stumbling block has been removed. All those predictions I mentioned before? Now's the time to reconsider their significance.

And there's a lot more. I'm just a computer geek who got his education in physics. I did well in biology (my mom's a biologist, so I had a head-start), but my training is not in biology at all. So I don't know all the evidence. I just know what I've encountered in books I've read, in the evidence presented, and what has been verified by external sources.

I think the biggest stumbling block you'll find is your concept of what a "species" is. Each time a new life is formed, it's different from its parents. The changes are small, but like the differences in photos of your father, they add up over time. The only thing that keeps each individual "normalized" is the interbreeding that occurs in a population. So all those changes, small as they are, get spread throughout the population, ensuring each generation can interbreed (and could interbreed with the generation before, and the generation before that; but eventually, it would reach a point, going back in time, when it could not interbreed successfully with its own ancestor population).

Seriously. If you want your noggin messed with, check out ring species. It's the same principle, only applied across breeding populations. It'll certainly challenge your idea of what a "species" is.

Posted by: Sastra OM/COR | April 26, 2011 10:37 PM

a_ray_in_dilbert_space #509 wrote:

ID is worse than worthless.

Yes: even Young Earth Creationism and so-called Flood Theory have a model. It's wrong, but at least it's a model, a description that could be right or wrong. All I.D. "theory" has is successive complaints about another theory, with goalpost shifting.

It doesn't say anything positive. It can't stand on its own.

I mean, look at that list I posted at #507. Can anyone make a similar list of the "steps" or mechanisms or processes involved in "Intelligent Design?" No, because it doesn't get down to "that petty level of detail," as ID proponent Dembski says disparagingly.

That "petty level of detail" is what science does.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 11:09 PM

Right now I am trying to gauge how big the gap is between natural selection and actual evolution through species.

a ray... #506
"whatever there is, goddidit."

whoa whoa whoa. That is NOT the premise of ID. I have only begun to read a book about ID, and that is not the premise.

Sastra: #507

That is basically what I just finished reading in "Why evolution is true" thank you for that. I will be sure to pinpoint a few of my concerns at a later time when I can fully articulate them.

#509 a ray...
It's posts like that that show me the complete lack of search for truth in some people. You are asking me to trust your conclusion that ID is bologna when everyone here just told me to stop blindly trusting people. If I closed my eyes to something, I risk missing something. I refuse to throw ANYTHING out the door. If I had, I would have thrown atheism and evolution out the door years ago. Is that what you what me to do?

#510 Nigel

This goes back to the idea that I need to gauge the gap between macro and micro in my mind. That's why I am going to read about the issues. Apparently evolutionists believe there is little to no difference. I disagree, but I need to read further to articulate what I am thinking.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 26, 2011 11:45 PM

I was not giving equal time before, but I intend to give each "theory" it's voice. You all are giving me perspective on how to analyze things through true science.

Posted by: consciousness razor | April 26, 2011 11:56 PM

If I had, I would have thrown atheism and evolution out the door years ago. Is that what you what me to do?

Years ago, eh? How long have you been in high school?

Posted by: Thunderbird 5 | April 27, 2011 12:02 AM

One fear from the blindly religious like Kenny Boy here is that us atheists are somehow lesser humans in the nice n' caring stakes because we don't seek or fear some afterlife reward/retribution for every act or omission because we don't follow some book/pastor and their contradictory and often downright appallingly sadistic and unjust ideas of personal interaction and levels of sin and morality.

Kenneth - there is rarely a month goes by when I am not the last face a dying person ever sees, the last touch they feel, the last voice they hear. To be entrusted with the end of a human life is an indescribable privilege. Not once in my experience has the dying person themselves ever raised or desired the paraphanalia or interjection of any godly or afterlife subject at this time. They just want their loved ones close and their hand held.

Then they die. I lay them out. The funeral rituals are carried out. They are mourned and missed.

Sorry, love, but that is all - and if you truly knew the value of the best of humankind, of love and friendship and altruism and society - you'd know that's riches beyond measure. You are still young so life is all to come yet - don't shut yourself down by believing that people ain't good enough as themselves and that the appalling example of so-called spiritual perfection you've been conned with is what they lack.

Posted by: Nightjar | April 27, 2011 5:16 AM

That is NOT the premise of ID.

Oh, yes it is.

ID is not about science. Don't believe me? Well, what if you hear it from the mouth of an ID advocate? Here's Phillip E. Johnson himself:

This [the intelligent design movement] isn't really, and never has been, a debate about science, it's about religion and philosophy.

We're not trying to prove the character of God through science. That's a bad idea. What I'm trying to do is clear away the misunderstandings, the debris that prevent people from accepting that God who wants to accept them.

Oh, and the premise of ID? Here it is:

The Intelligent Design movement starts with the recognition that "In the beginning was the Word," and "In the beginning God created." Establishing that point isn't enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message.

Kenneth, these words were said by a guy who is considered the father of the Intelligent Design movement.

Yes, these people have been lying to you. They're dishonest. They're not interested in scientific debate. They abuse science to achieve their goals, but they don't care about science. They want to destroy it. They're trying to destroy its very foundations.

Please, read The Wedge Document Ichthyic linked to. That document was written by the people at the Discovery Institute and yes, that includes Stephen C. Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell which you mentioned earlier. Kenneth... it is not about science.

Posted by: KG | April 27, 2011 7:06 AM

Kenneths' taking us for a ride. I call it. - Ing

Dunno. I've just read through his comments again, and the rapid switch in attitude certainly rings false to me; but if he is simply trolling, would the "joke" be continued so long?

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | April 27, 2011 9:53 AM

Kenneth, #514:

#509 a ray...

It's posts like that that show me the complete lack of search for truth in some people. You are asking me to trust your conclusion that ID is bologna when everyone here just told me to stop blindly trusting people.

Touché. Very nicely done.

While a_ray_in_dilbert_space (commonly abreviated arids around here) has a point (in fact, what he writes is truth), I'm glad you're not trusting everything you hear.

Have you read the Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling? (The link is in #445 and #462 -- much thanks to strange gods before me ॐ.) The ruling lists out the reasons intelligent design isn't an hypothesis (let alone a theory). It basically comes down to the nature of scientific hypotheses.

There is a set of qualities a proposition must have before it can be a scientific hypothesis. One quality is that an hypothesis must make predictions about observations we have not yet made. It must predict something novel, something new.

This quality is important, because the most important quality of an hypothesis is falsifiability. An hypothesis must have some way to disprove it.

This might seem backwards. I mean, don't you want to prove an hypothesis? Well, yeah, you do.

But you can't.

There are some very deep thinkers who have contributed to the process of the scientific method. One of them was a gentleman named Karl Popper. In 1934, he published a book that questioned much of what scientists took for granted. He basically showed that you really can't prove anything. The best you can do is to falsify propositions that are incorrect.

As it turns out, that's what scientists were already doing, they just didn't think of it that way. In practice, it helped refine the process of the scientific method. What it mostly did, though, was provide a clearer philosophical foundation for the scientific method, and the fruits thereof.

The end result is, you can't really prove anything. Now, don't go off all half-cocked and think that this makes all propositions equal. It doesn't. What you can do is demonstrate when an hypothesis is wrong. Also, the greater the predictive power of an hypothesis, the greater likelihood it is correct. You have a scale of reliability of scientific hypotheses. On one end of the scale, the completely disproven, you have homeopathy and astrology and the claim that vaccines cause autism. On the other end of the scale, you have Newton's laws and evolution through natural selection. (I'll get back to why I'm ranking evolution as high as Newton's laws in a moment.)

Not even on the scale: propositions that make no testable predictions.

So, getting back to the qualities of scientific hypotheses:

Accepting that you can't really prove anything, all you can do is rate the reliability of an hypothesis, it makes sense that the greater the predictive power of an hypothesis, the more reliable it is. Conversely, the less predictive power, the less reliable it is. If it proves to predict incorrectly, it is false.

Consider the proposition that the universe is 6,000 - 10,000 years old. This makes specific predictions about what we won't find. We won't find stars greater than 10,000 light years away. We won't find successive tree rings that are more than 10,000 years old. We won't find ice cores greater than 10,000 years old. And so on.

Unfortunately for this proposition, we have observed galaxies billions of light years away. We have tree ring records that go back 11,000 years. We have ice core samples that go back 800,000 years. So, we can assume the proposition that the earth (and universe) is only 10,000 years old is false. While the proposition makes several predictions, every single one of them turns out to be wrong. It is a very unreliable hypothesis.

The theory (a theory is an hypothesis that turns out to be a reliable predictor of new knowledge) of evolution through natural selection has turned out to be very reliable. It predicts a lot of things. It predicts we'll see change in organisms over time, in which organisms adapt to their environment (such as e. coli gaining the ability to process citrate). It predicted DNA, that introns ("Junk DNA") will have similar signatures in more-closely-related organisms than in distantly-related organisms, leg bones in whales, incredibly long vagus nerve in giraffes, and so on.

Basically, everything that makes no sense if you had a designer, makes perfect sense when viewed in the framework of evolution through natural selection.

The theory of evolution through natural selection has turned out to be a very reliable predictor. Since it predicts a greater range of things than gravity, and those predictions have turned out to be true, it has been as widely tested as gravity.

"Yes," you might say, "but there are unknown areas that evolution has not explained!" True, but the theory of gravity has yet to be fully explained, as well. Our current best theory of gravity (relativity) doesn't fit well with quantum mechanics. So they are still on more-or-less equal footing.

Now, the reason arids said that ID is useless (well, worse than useless) is because it makes no predictions. It is not so much an argument for something (as the "designer" is not only left unspecified, but is innately unspecifiable), but an argument against evolution. Because of this, it makes no predictions of its own. At most, it can only make claims like, "Scientists will not be able to describe how the immune system evolved." (Which, as it turns out, they can.) And this really isn't a prediction about what we will find, but about our ability to discover something.

And so "intelligent design" just simply isn't science. For it to be considered science, you'd have to redefine "science" in such a way that astrology and alchemy would be science.

Behe himself acknowledged this in Kitzmiller v. Dover.

So here, you don't have to take arids' word that intelligent design is worthless as a science. You have one of the leading proponents, one of the few with any kind of scientific background, acknowledging that it's worthless as science, and doing so in a court of law.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | April 27, 2011 10:08 AM

I was not giving equal time before, but I intend to give each "theory" it's voice.

ID is not a scientific theory. It's just not.

It makes no testable conclusions. It's theology not science.

If you are giving time to it then you are giving time to a utterly demolished idea that has been promoted by the religious as a scientific theory and has failed on all fronts.

Posted by: Paul | April 27, 2011 10:59 AM

Dunno. I've just read through his comments again, and the rapid switch in attitude certainly rings false to me; but if he is simply trolling, would the "joke" be continued so long?

It depends on how many troll posts are required on atheist boards nowadays to graduate clown college. The word/post count might have gone up since last year.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | April 27, 2011 11:08 AM

Not that I'm doubting you, as I too am curious about the quick change in attitude, but … how is that even amusing?

To quote Scott Adams "Dance monkey dance"

People get off on the idea they can manipulate others even for absurdly petty results.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 27, 2011 11:15 AM

Kenneth, something I feel I should address:

#509 a ray...

It's posts like that that show me the complete lack of search for truth in some people.

All you can say for sure that you're seeing in Ray's response is impatience. Remember, you're talking to a lot of people who have already investigated these issues and found creationism to be utterly lacking in utility. Ray is old enough to have thoroughly investigated this stuff before you were born.

If Ray had written a similarly terse dismissal of Tarot card reading, or astrology, or crystal magick, you would probably recognize it as impatience: being tired of hearing the same debunked nonsense for decades, seeing it debunked again, and hearing it brought up again.

Just because someone doesn't feel like letting you show them your Pokemans, doesn't mean they aren't interested in the search for truth. It might just mean they're already well on their way, and just don't feel like they owe you much of their time.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 27, 2011 11:24 AM

Fair point, Sastra. On second thought I agree with you; that's the most likely explanation, at least until he explicitly acknowledges an error.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | April 27, 2011 11:32 AM

Kenneth,
ID can only make actual predictions with an intimate knowledge of the workings of the intelligence behind it. Do you see that clearly into God's mind? Does anyone? In the absence of that knowledge all it can do is piggy back on evolution, trying to trip the robust theory in the hopes that ID will land higher when they both tip.

Look at the theory in isolation, pretend that you know nothing about evolution, what does it say? It says that life doesn't just happen, it is guided by an engineer. What does that predict? That there is life? Seems a little self evident and stunningly broad.

In order for it to predict the kind of life that we see right now, we must assume a certain lack of rigour on the part of that designer. Life works, but it doesn't work all that well, every organism has flaws, vestigals, vulnerabilities and such that were not necessary in order to function. How does ID predict this? The D is a bit dodgy if you ask me and the I is outright wrong.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 27, 2011 11:35 AM

Dhorvath #538

Ok, that makes sense to me.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 27, 2011 11:40 AM

Nigel, John, and Ray have mentioned astrology. John linked to its mention in the Kitzmiller trial, so Kenneth, I hope you realize we're not joking about this. I'll quote from Judge Jones again:

First, defense expert Professor Fuller agreed that ID aspires to “change the ground rules” of science and lead defense expert Professor Behe admitted that his broadened definition of science, which encompasses ID, would also embrace astrology.

That's Michael Behe, admitting that in order to consider Intelligent Design as science, we would also have to allow astrology in as science.

This isn't just what evolutionists say about creationism. This is what creationists say about creationism.

And surely you can admit that "astrology as science" sounds fishy, no?

Posted by: KG | April 27, 2011 11:56 AM

Tell me exactly why it is not testable or why it can't make predictions. - Kenneth

Kenneth, you claimed that your paragraph somehow specified how ID is testable, and what predictions it makes. But it simply doesn't. You need to specify just what predictions ID makes, and how they can be tested. Which you have not done. Dhorvath@538 summarises why ID is unable to make predictions and cannot be tested: it's simply too vague. It says nothing about the powers or intentions of the "designer", so nothing at all can possibly count against it. After all, the "designer" might have wished to give the impression that evolution was an entirely unguided process, involving no intelligent design. So nothing at all can count against ID, and it makes no specific predictions whatever. If you dispute this, please supply some specific predictions that ID "scientists" have made, how they have shown that these predictions follow from "ID", and how they have tested them.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | April 27, 2011 12:06 PM

Kenneth:

Thank you. I understand that everyone here thinks that what he writes is truth,and what you base that on is most likely years of experience and research. That's why I'm giving both sides a voice and an equal amount of time.

It's not just that I trust arids (I do). It's as I said: even one of the biggest advocates of intelligent design, one of the few with a scientific background, has acknowledged that intelligent design is not science.

Interesting... Food for thought. I would say though that ID is testable and does make predictions based on what I said above. You can see something that you know is made by chance, and take something that was designed and compare them and see what qualities are different between the two. That repeatable test could then yield conclusions about characteristics that are linked with ID.
Nigel, what have I missed?

What predictions has intelligent design made? How would you go about testing those predictions?

Basically, what test could possibly falsify intelligent design?

The big thing is, "How do I measure 'design'?" Where I grew up, you'd see rocks piled one on top of another, with a large stone balanced at the very top. These structures would be anywhere from a couple of feet high, to about 8 feet high. This was something that heavy equipment operators did to show their skill. Those were designed.

Now, there are rocks in the desert that are balanced on top of a pillar of rock. If I were to base my judgement solely on my own experience, I might think those rocks were put their by heavy equipment operators with very big backhoes.

The rocks in the desert were not designed at all, and are completely natural. They occurred by chance.

Then, too, many things in nature look designed. Crystals, desert roses, clouds that resemble elephants, and so on all look designed, to varying degrees. Yet they are all natural, and occur by chance.

However, I would like to point out your use of the word "chance." Imagine a game in which a million people participate. Each person draw a unique number from a barrel (a very large barrel). There are exactly one million numbers in that barrel. There is one other identical barrel, with numbers identical to the first, from which only one number is drawn.

A couple of questions: what are the chances you will win? What are the chances someone you know will win? What are the chances that someone will win?

Chance is not so simple as many people believe.

And that doesn't even get into the fact that the "natural selection" part of "evolution through natural selection" is not chance. Natural selection shapes life just as a crystal is shaped by chemistry, or geology shapes the continents.

In any case, in the question of the scientific viability of intelligent design, the question becomes, how do you measure "design," and what are you measuring? And how do you distinguish something that is naturally "designed" vs. intelligently designed?

If you can simply describe what "design" measures, what it is you are really talking about, that might provide a starting point.

I submit that design is recognized only by experience. You know what looks natural. You know what looks designed. That's how you distinguish between the two.

As a side note:

In any case, as I pointed out, there are many features of life that are very poorly engineered. Why do whales have leg bones (and are sometimes born with legs)? Why does the vagus nerve go from the brain, down around the heart, and back up to the neck, when a much better design would route it directly from the brain to the neck? Why do people have an appendix, when any good it might do is greatly outweighed by its deadliness?

If there was an intelligent designer, they were not very intelligent at all.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | April 27, 2011 12:21 PM

Yes, I will and have admitted that I now realize information can be gained in DNA that produces positive qualities in a being.

OK, I didn't see you admit this before. But thank you for making it explicit at #539. I do need some explicit indication of consideration and feedback to keep my interest.

I assume you also understand that this "information" (by the way, it makes more sense to talk about functionality that increases reproductive fitness) was gained by mutation and natural selection?

I can't however accept that that will lead to new limbs and ultimately lead a monkey-like ancestor to a human. That's where I need more education and that's why this discussion has been so helpful.

New limbs I'll get around to later today, if someone else doesn't beat me to it. But new limbs are not necessary for monkey-like ancestors to evolve into humans. Monkeys have the same limb structure as we have.

If I had to pick the single strongest piece of evidence for humans' evolution from other apes—and since this is an internet discussion, I probably do have to pick one, though please be aware there's many other lines of evidence—I would point to endogenous retrovirii. Specifically, when an endogenous retrovirus is found at the same chromosomal location in both humans and chimpanzees, there is no reasonable explanation for this observation except evolution. And there have been many such findings.

Posted by: Brownian | April 27, 2011 12:42 PM

Then, too, many things in nature look designed. Crystals, desert roses, clouds that resemble elephants, and so on all look designed, to varying degrees. Yet they are all natural, and occur by chance.

There was a Clovis biface that stumped everyone during the final exam in my stone tools class. As symmetrical as any leaf blade ever knapped, it had evenly spaced flake scars, a tapered point—if you had a stick and some sinew, you'd have a ready-made spear in minutes.

How did it stump us?

It wasn't Clovis. It wasn't a stone tool. It wasn't made by humans.

The damn thing was an eolith, and the flake scars were the result of natural spalling due to natural forces such as glaciation and plain old weathering. Once our professor showed how the flaking pattern didn't match any of the human techniques we'd studied and practiced (weather-spalled chert has different scars than knapped chert: for example, there are no percussion bulbs) we could see that it was the result of natural non-design. But it was one hell of a pseudo-artifact, and there are trickier ones that still fool experts.

The art and science of replication technology (whereby archaeologists try to recreate stone tools in an authentic manner; it's been years, but even I can knap an obsidian microblade you could shave with) is one way by which we can learn enough to distinguish between human-made and natural flaked stone 'tools'. There's a structure, an order of operations that goes into the making of an actual stone tool, whereas eoliths tend to flake evenly all over at the same time, as you'd expect from the process of weathering.

And similarly, we can compare human-designed things to organisms. And we see a difference: organisms and organs are kludgy things, patched together with duct tape and chewing gum, and things once used for one purpose are clumsily refit for others. Wings that fly do not form from nothing, but from forelegs that once walked. Lungs are former swim bladders. Pharyngeal arches become maxilla and mandibles in one place, and gill arches in another.

Designers design anew. Evolutionary processes repurpose what's already there.

Posted by: Nightjar | April 27, 2011 2:51 PM

To address the issue of the leaders of ID saying it's religion, that's not what Meyer's book even begins to say. He says basically what I said above.

Yes, of course he doesn't say that in his book. He's not being honest. That's what I'm trying to tell you. They try to pretend that they're using science to arrive at a conclusion, and that ID has nothing to do with religion, but in reality they're doing it backwards.

Their premise is Goddidit. Their strategy is to sound scientific enough so that lay people will believe they're doing science when in reality they are abusing and lying about it. Their goal is to eventually destroy any aspect of science that contradicts their religion, not because those things are wrong, but because they don't fit their preconceptions.

Kenneth, did you read The Wedge Document, written by the people at the Discovery Institute (including Meyer)? You will notice that before they have even started doing the research (phase I), they already know what the conclusion must be. They don't even entertain the possibility that this conclusion may be shown to be wrong after they do the research (and they didn't even bother to do it). Tell me, does that sound right to you?

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | April 27, 2011 3:30 PM

Some of my education and experience is in engineering, but most of what I know is from my father, who is an inventor and designer. One thing I well know is "reverse-engineering" which is looking at something and deducing how it was made--casting, machining, forging and cetera--and even getting inside the mind of the designer just from examining his work. I am good at that.

The universe, this planet and the people on it were not designed, in any way, shape or form, by any sort of conscious or sane designer. The evidence of natural growth is overwhelming, and the marks of evolution through natural selection everywhere in living things.

Intelligent Design is a crock of fecal material. (The crock is hand-made and fire-kilned, probably early 20th century, while the feces appear to be from rather constipated Americans of southern culture and religious bent.)

Posted by: Paul | April 27, 2011 4:41 PM

It would really seem to be a waste of time to engage with Kenneth further unless he actually reads the Wedge document (it's not long) and replies with regard to how it affects the motivation and scientific standing of ID. If he won't take the time, it just wastes everyone else's since he's assuming good faith and ideological purity (with regard to their approach to the "science"; I don't think anyone doubts their religious ideological purity).

Posted by: Kemist | April 27, 2011 5:38 PM

Yes, I will and have admitted that I now realize information can be gained in DNA that produces positive qualities in a being. I can't however accept that that will lead to new limbs and ultimately lead a monkey-like ancestor to a human. That's where I need more education and that's why this discussion has been so helpful.

Why is it so difficult a step to take ? If information can be gained in DNA (genotype), isn't that change going to manifest itself in the physical characteristics of the organism (phenotype)?

Incidentally, you've chosen an exemple that is particularly relevant for this. It's very easy to manipulate the nature / number of limbs - those are controled during development by a family of genes called HOX.

Variation in HOX family members can, for example, produce an extra pairs of arms, and other spectacular changes with just one mutation.

Example: In the fruit fly there exist a nifty little mutation called Antennapedia. As a consequence of a HOX-family genetic mutation, these flies have legs instead of antennea on their heads.

Posted by: Kemist | April 27, 2011 6:06 PM

I would say though that ID is testable and does make predictions based on what I said above. You can see something that you know is made by chance, and take something that was designed and compare them and see what qualities are different between the two.

How ?

This is more difficult than you might think.

1) If all of life is "designed", where will you find your non-designed controls ?

2) Non-living natural, geological features, those you might use as "non-designed", are not the product of "chance" per se - they are the product of physical / chemical phenomena. What you observe is emergent property. An exemple of emergent property : a school of fish - they move together in a block not because there is a central intelligence that controls them, but because of hundreds of very small, stupid brains following very simple rules. Geological features have fooled people before by looking remarkably designed, until their mechanism of formation was understood.

How can you be sure of what you assume is designed / non-designed ?

3) How can you measure "designedness" ?

4) To echo your question on atheism : say you can prove, or present evidence, that something is designed. Then what ? What is the use of this to me as a scientist ? Designed or not designed, e. coli is e. coli, and it has the properties that I measure in the lab. I can make no inference with the hypothesis of design, no predictions as to how it might change to become resistant to antibiotics. The theory of evolution says that it will adapt, and its mathematical underpinings can give me clues as to how and when.

Posted by: Kenneth | April 27, 2011 6:43 PM

To all those posts that address the issue of ID:

I am continuing to read through "Why Evolution is True" and "Signature in the Cell". As I have been doing this, I see why you say what you do about ID. I can agree that ID is not science by your definition, and should not be ranked with evolution because of that. My next question is why do evolutionists discredit ID so easily when they accept a lot of the conclusions made from astrology? It APPEARS to me and creationists that evolutionists are only regarding observations that are consistent with their theory. Is it because ID relies on an unprovable deism?
With that said, if I ever find something testable or a prediction that ID makes, I'll be sure and mention it here.

#546 Nigel

"Basically, what test could possibly falsify intelligent design?"

I never thought about it that way... The main problem is that "design" cannot really be measured.

"If there was an intelligent designer, they were not very intelligent at all."

Anything that appears poorly designed could appear that way for multiple reasons. 1. Natural selection. I.e. The human appendix. 2. The curse of man when he disobeyed God in the garden. About the nerve, when was the last time that you had a problem with that nerve because it didn't run the way you are suggesting is better? Does it function perfectly throughout the lifespan of a human?

#548 strangegodsbeforeme

I agree that natural selection and mutation led to the development of the new ability to absorb citrates.

#551 Sastra

You point out a huge flaw with the testability of ID. Interesting point. There is no real world test for it, only analogies.

#552 Nightjar

Tell me, does that sound right to you?"

It does not follow the scientific method in the least. That is religious. I can agree to that.

#556 Paul
I did read the Wedge document and I have now replied. Let me make this extremely clear: if you don't want to help me, don't. Because many of the people here believe I have a sincere search for truth, they are furthering that. They are more than welcome to not respond.

#558 Kemist

"Variation in HOX family members can, for example, produce an extra pairs of arms, and other spectacular changes with just one mutation."

So in EVERY case in evolution where instant appearance of a function is necessary, the genes are able to create that with one mutation? That seems improbable to me and that is a significant discredit to evolution in my mind. (uneducated as it may be)
My line of thinking is this: Certain functions, such as limbs growing on beings that swim, will NOT be chosen for by natural selection because they are a hindrance to that species until generations later when they can breathe air and have all the other functions necessary to live on land.

To everyone:
Please note that as you are disassembling my claims, I am moving on because I believe you are right or you have disproven what I have said. I am not attempting to Gish Gallop. I am not asking many of my questions right now because I believe the books I am reading will shed light on them. I will be focusing more of my time on the books now rather than this thread. I will follow up to some of the lines of thinking tho.