Health and Religion

[Astargath]

There are at least 2 places in the Bible (one in Isaiah) that tell us that in the next life we will never remember any of this. It will never come to mind.

So, it is not that you don't believe in God. Rather, it is that you are angry with Him for not judging things according to the way you think.

Don't throw away eternity for yourself. Having the pleasure of some deep anger against God in this life (though I don't see where there is pleasure in anger), is not worth losing your salvation for eternity.

Rather, humble yourself, and ask God to comfort you and bring peace to your mind and soul.

''Rather, it is that you are angry with Him for not judging things according to the way you think.'' Actually as you can clearly see from my example above, I'm not angry or happy, it simply makes no sense and it's not fair.

What makes it unfair is the unfairness of mankind toward God. God gave His all in Jesus death on the cross. He did it to save mankind. But here you are, not only accepting the imperfection of being sinful in the first place, but extending your imperfection to the rejecting of the great sacrifice Jesus did to save you. You ain't fair. Certainly not to God.

God sacrificed himself to himself to forgive us. Another nonsense from the bible right there. It makes absolutely no sense and we are not even saved, we are still here, aren't we? Why did an omniscient and all powerful god need to sacrifice his ''son'' to forgive humanity? Why not just forgive us? What is there to forgive anyways, he already knew everything that would happen.

Perfection requires justice. God couldn't just forgive without destroying His Own perfection. The sacrifice of Jesus included the punishment for mankind that would maintain the perfection of God.

The perfection of mankind needed to be maintained, because God had judged mankind so extremely good at the time of the creation, that God placed His spirit within mankind. In order to maintain the perfection of His own judgment about mankind, He needed to maintain the perfection of mankind. The perfection having been maintained in the sacrifice of Jesus, mankind is now free to be his own agent... to accept God's perfection for himself, or to reject it.

Since God is love, He truly wishes mankind to accept the perfection of Godness or God-likeness. And since God is love and just, He realizes that He must not coerce any man in the judgment that each person makes.

There is no way to adequately and properly explain the things that are involved in the salvation of man. Suffice it to say that God is holding the salvation choice open for each person as long as that person lives. And since Jesus was God as well as man, mankind is being brought into God-likeness. Maintaining health is simply man using the strength of God that God has placed in each and every one of us.

What the fuck? Imagine I'm God and I know everything that's going to happen. It makes no sense for me to get mad at people I created for things they are going to do if I knew about it beforehand. There is no need to forgive anyone because I already know what's going to happen. If I didn't want that to happen then I wouldn't have created it, no?

What you say is a major example of one of the major points. Nobody can imagine how God thinks.

Since you don't know everything that's going to happen like God does, and since you don't know how things all work together, why would you even think your logic about creating or not creating is valid?

Since you know that your logic is not strong enough to be valid, you are simply hoping it might be valid, and you have faith that it is valid. This is exactly what religious people do in their religions.

Keep on worshiping yourself in your religious logic if you want. But when the chips are so far down that you can't find a way out, remember God. He will accept you if you come to Him sincerely. Do it now, unless you have locked yourself so deeply into God unbelief that you have no chance of turning to Him.

So am I supposed to just believe in something that I will never understand? Even if I knew god existed how would I ever know that what he is doing is the right thing? Why would anyone worship god if we can't even understand if he is good or not? Sure the bible says he is but how would we ever know?

What are you even yammering about? You believe in science, don't you? You believe in evolution, don't you? But the small amount of either one of them that you know - science or evolution - shows that you believe in things that you don't really know about very much.

How do you know about believing in science or evolution? Other people tell you about them. Same with the Bible writings. This means that you are very religions.

Go ahead and tell me that you know everything about science or evolution. I always like a good laugh.

You don't have to ''believe in science''. You know the earth is round, don't you? You make fun of notbatman because you know he is not right. We have experiments, photographic evidence, videos, tests, math, that proves the earth is not flat. That's science. Religion on the other hand doesn't have that, there is no test or photographic evidence, videos or math to prove it and yet you ask me to believe in your specific god and when I question his actions you simply tell me I don't understand. Why would anyone believe in that?

https://youtu.be/LQ0Vtk9ffGI

You don't have to believe in the Bible. You know it's a book, right?

Why do you have to believe in science? Because it wasn't you who did the scientific experiments (except that you might have done one or two). Other than that, you have to believe the scientists who did the experiments, or you have to believe the people who have written about the experiments the scientists did.

In other words, all of science is a religion for all people... except for the few scientific experiments anybody might have done for himself.

For example. You might have personally stuck a couple of electrodes into water, and found that you could split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Since you did it personally, there is a piece of science that you know, rather than having to take it on faith.

But are you one of the scientists who runs nuclear power plants? If you aren't, you have to believe what the scientists tell you, or what the some general "practitioner" scientists have written down in the books. What if they are lying? What if they are mistaken? Consider Fukushima and Chernobyl. Odds are that they aren't lying. But you don't know they aren't mistaken or lying. Religion.

Either you believe science and religion, or you don't, or you only believe one of them. But outside of a few small science experiments, you don't know that science is factual. Same with religion. There are those who tell you some factual experience about religion that they had, but they don't know it all, and you have to make the choice whether or not to believe them.

As far as you go, both religion and science are religion for you. Go to the doctor and get cured by religion. That's all it is for you, because you don't know for a fact that what they say is the truth. Unless you, yourself, are a very experienced doctor, you totally have to take it on faith... just like you have to take Bible scholars on faith if you want to believe them. You just believe and hope, same as any formal religion.

However, all the experiments and tests are written somewhere and I can also study the subject and perform the experiments myself, you don't have that possibility with religion because there are no experiments, no tests, no math, even If I wanted to test them by myself I couldn't because there are none. Sure you have to trust science in some things unless you want to study about everything and perform tests yourself but at least you have the possibility to actually do the experiments or at least understand them, again, you don't have that in religion, you are supposed to believe in it blindly because badecker says so and we can't understand god so we just have to follow what he says because he says so. There is no logic there. Science works, religion doesn't.

But you didn't read the experiments. You didn't do the experiments. Ever heard of the term "fake news?"

Some of the news has been fake for over a hundred years. But since it wasn't known to be fake way back then, it has been incorporated into the public psyche, and we accept it as truth... even though we don't know.

A simple example is the fake news of flat earth. Look at how many hundreds of years people believed it to be true. And (as you well know) there are those who keep on believing it today. They even have a lot of near-science built up to almost-prove that FE is real. And many of those FE people base their whole idea around religion, formally.

So, go out and do all the scientific the experiments so that you know your science isn't religion. But if you only do one or two, its religion for you. And you know what that means, don't you? When you get good (or bad) health by following medical advice, you have, Health and Religion.

But you are ignoring my point. Your religion doesn't have any experiments or tests, even if someone wanted to see if they were right they wouldn't be able to. I obviously cannot study and perform tests on everything I do or use. I don't need to perform a scientific experiment to see that my PC is working or that planes fly. Science works, I have ''faith'' in science because it has proven to me that it works time after time just like when you have faith in your wife that she wont cheat on you because she has proven to be loyal. This doesn't mean it wont happen just like science, it could be wrong but there is really no reason to think it is. When it comes to health I'm sure you go to a doctor or a hospital, don't you? Did you study medicine? Do you need to, to trust doctors? Why do you trust doctors? Because you know they have studied medicine and you know science works.

This is the essence of science vs religion.

Well, bring your point back on topic, and you will see that health and religion have a lot to do with each other. Coincube and I have been showing you this over and over, and some of it has to do with science.

Your science is only your personal religion, and doesn't match general science.

Coincube maybe, you not so much. I also think he accepts evolution as a fact but I'm not sure.

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[BADecker]

There are at least 2 places in the Bible (one in Isaiah) that tell us that in the next life we will never remember any of this. It will never come to mind.

So, it is not that you don't believe in God. Rather, it is that you are angry with Him for not judging things according to the way you think.

Don't throw away eternity for yourself. Having the pleasure of some deep anger against God in this life (though I don't see where there is pleasure in anger), is not worth losing your salvation for eternity.

Rather, humble yourself, and ask God to comfort you and bring peace to your mind and soul.

''Rather, it is that you are angry with Him for not judging things according to the way you think.'' Actually as you can clearly see from my example above, I'm not angry or happy, it simply makes no sense and it's not fair.

What makes it unfair is the unfairness of mankind toward God. God gave His all in Jesus death on the cross. He did it to save mankind. But here you are, not only accepting the imperfection of being sinful in the first place, but extending your imperfection to the rejecting of the great sacrifice Jesus did to save you. You ain't fair. Certainly not to God.

God sacrificed himself to himself to forgive us. Another nonsense from the bible right there. It makes absolutely no sense and we are not even saved, we are still here, aren't we? Why did an omniscient and all powerful god need to sacrifice his ''son'' to forgive humanity? Why not just forgive us? What is there to forgive anyways, he already knew everything that would happen.

Perfection requires justice. God couldn't just forgive without destroying His Own perfection. The sacrifice of Jesus included the punishment for mankind that would maintain the perfection of God.

The perfection of mankind needed to be maintained, because God had judged mankind so extremely good at the time of the creation, that God placed His spirit within mankind. In order to maintain the perfection of His own judgment about mankind, He needed to maintain the perfection of mankind. The perfection having been maintained in the sacrifice of Jesus, mankind is now free to be his own agent... to accept God's perfection for himself, or to reject it.

Since God is love, He truly wishes mankind to accept the perfection of Godness or God-likeness. And since God is love and just, He realizes that He must not coerce any man in the judgment that each person makes.

There is no way to adequately and properly explain the things that are involved in the salvation of man. Suffice it to say that God is holding the salvation choice open for each person as long as that person lives. And since Jesus was God as well as man, mankind is being brought into God-likeness. Maintaining health is simply man using the strength of God that God has placed in each and every one of us.

What the fuck? Imagine I'm God and I know everything that's going to happen. It makes no sense for me to get mad at people I created for things they are going to do if I knew about it beforehand. There is no need to forgive anyone because I already know what's going to happen. If I didn't want that to happen then I wouldn't have created it, no?

What you say is a major example of one of the major points. Nobody can imagine how God thinks.

Since you don't know everything that's going to happen like God does, and since you don't know how things all work together, why would you even think your logic about creating or not creating is valid?

Since you know that your logic is not strong enough to be valid, you are simply hoping it might be valid, and you have faith that it is valid. This is exactly what religious people do in their religions.

Keep on worshiping yourself in your religious logic if you want. But when the chips are so far down that you can't find a way out, remember God. He will accept you if you come to Him sincerely. Do it now, unless you have locked yourself so deeply into God unbelief that you have no chance of turning to Him.

So am I supposed to just believe in something that I will never understand? Even if I knew god existed how would I ever know that what he is doing is the right thing? Why would anyone worship god if we can't even understand if he is good or not? Sure the bible says he is but how would we ever know?

What are you even yammering about? You believe in science, don't you? You believe in evolution, don't you? But the small amount of either one of them that you know - science or evolution - shows that you believe in things that you don't really know about very much.

How do you know about believing in science or evolution? Other people tell you about them. Same with the Bible writings. This means that you are very religions.

Go ahead and tell me that you know everything about science or evolution. I always like a good laugh.

You don't have to ''believe in science''. You know the earth is round, don't you? You make fun of notbatman because you know he is not right. We have experiments, photographic evidence, videos, tests, math, that proves the earth is not flat. That's science. Religion on the other hand doesn't have that, there is no test or photographic evidence, videos or math to prove it and yet you ask me to believe in your specific god and when I question his actions you simply tell me I don't understand. Why would anyone believe in that?

https://youtu.be/LQ0Vtk9ffGI

You don't have to believe in the Bible. You know it's a book, right?

Why do you have to believe in science? Because it wasn't you who did the scientific experiments (except that you might have done one or two). Other than that, you have to believe the scientists who did the experiments, or you have to believe the people who have written about the experiments the scientists did.

In other words, all of science is a religion for all people... except for the few scientific experiments anybody might have done for himself.

For example. You might have personally stuck a couple of electrodes into water, and found that you could split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Since you did it personally, there is a piece of science that you know, rather than having to take it on faith.

But are you one of the scientists who runs nuclear power plants? If you aren't, you have to believe what the scientists tell you, or what the some general "practitioner" scientists have written down in the books. What if they are lying? What if they are mistaken? Consider Fukushima and Chernobyl. Odds are that they aren't lying. But you don't know they aren't mistaken or lying. Religion.

Either you believe science and religion, or you don't, or you only believe one of them. But outside of a few small science experiments, you don't know that science is factual. Same with religion. There are those who tell you some factual experience about religion that they had, but they don't know it all, and you have to make the choice whether or not to believe them.

As far as you go, both religion and science are religion for you. Go to the doctor and get cured by religion. That's all it is for you, because you don't know for a fact that what they say is the truth. Unless you, yourself, are a very experienced doctor, you totally have to take it on faith... just like you have to take Bible scholars on faith if you want to believe them. You just believe and hope, same as any formal religion.

However, all the experiments and tests are written somewhere and I can also study the subject and perform the experiments myself, you don't have that possibility with religion because there are no experiments, no tests, no math, even If I wanted to test them by myself I couldn't because there are none. Sure you have to trust science in some things unless you want to study about everything and perform tests yourself but at least you have the possibility to actually do the experiments or at least understand them, again, you don't have that in religion, you are supposed to believe in it blindly because badecker says so and we can't understand god so we just have to follow what he says because he says so. There is no logic there. Science works, religion doesn't.

But you didn't read the experiments. You didn't do the experiments. Ever heard of the term "fake news?"

Some of the news has been fake for over a hundred years. But since it wasn't known to be fake way back then, it has been incorporated into the public psyche, and we accept it as truth... even though we don't know.

A simple example is the fake news of flat earth. Look at how many hundreds of years people believed it to be true. And (as you well know) there are those who keep on believing it today. They even have a lot of near-science built up to almost-prove that FE is real. And many of those FE people base their whole idea around religion, formally.

So, go out and do all the scientific the experiments so that you know your science isn't religion. But if you only do one or two, its religion for you. And you know what that means, don't you? When you get good (or bad) health by following medical advice, you have, Health and Religion.

But you are ignoring my point. Your religion doesn't have any experiments or tests, even if someone wanted to see if they were right they wouldn't be able to. I obviously cannot study and perform tests on everything I do or use. I don't need to perform a scientific experiment to see that my PC is working or that planes fly. Science works, I have ''faith'' in science because it has proven to me that it works time after time just like when you have faith in your wife that she wont cheat on you because she has proven to be loyal. This doesn't mean it wont happen just like science, it could be wrong but there is really no reason to think it is. When it comes to health I'm sure you go to a doctor or a hospital, don't you? Did you study medicine? Do you need to, to trust doctors? Why do you trust doctors? Because you know they have studied medicine and you know science works.

This is the essence of science vs religion.

Well, bring your point back on topic, and you will see that health and religion have a lot to do with each other. Coincube and I have been showing you this over and over, and some of it has to do with science.

Your science is only your personal religion, and doesn't match general science.

Coincube maybe, you not so much. I also think he accepts evolution as a fact but I'm not sure.

Well, that makes me kinda happy. Got your goat cause you can't prove much, if anything. And I can even out-talk your political science. All Right! Maybe you will wake up before it's too late for you.

_

[CoinCube]

Coincube maybe, you not so much. I also think he accepts evolution as a fact but I'm not sure.

I accept evolution as our current most probable model of human development not as fact.

We have seen some limited evidence of micro evolution during humanities brief era of recorded observations.

See: Bacteria micro evolution
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8

We know from the fossil records that there were many forms of life in the past that are no longer around today.

Given this data extrapolation into the theory of gross macro evolution over time appears to be the most probable current explanation of the known data.

I think it important to be humble in these matters and acknowledge that we as a species are so very limited in what we really understand.

Evolution for example is the theory of how life changes over time. If there is no time is there any evolution?

The illusion of time : past, present and future all exist together
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vrqmMoI0wks

[Astargath]

Coincube maybe, you not so much. I also think he accepts evolution as a fact but I'm not sure.

I accept evolution as our current most probable model of human development not as fact.

We have seen some limited evidence of micro evolution during humanities brief era of recorded observations.

See: Bacteria micro evolution
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8

We know from the fossil records that there were many forms of life in the past that are no longer around today.

Given this data extrapolation into the theory of gross macro evolution over time appears to be the most probable current explanation of the known data.

I think it important to be humble in these matters and acknowledge that we as a species are so very limited in what we really understand.

Evolution for example is the theory of how life changes over time. If there is no time is there any evolution?

The illusion of time : past, present and future all exist together
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vrqmMoI0wks

Thank you for your response. At least you are not totally insane to claim is a hoax. It's true that we are still very limited but we can't just dismiss scientific theories as hoaxes. I also personally cannot just believe in god and I have read your links. I also think that if a god is real and he is truly benevolent I shouldn't need to believe or even acknowledge him as long as I'm a good person.

[BADecker]

^^^ You still haven't offered one shred of proof for evolution. In multitudes of evolution theory changes, and countless multitudes of tests for evolution, both based on the theory, and in tests of nature, nobody has found one piece of proof for the existence of evolution. All the close evidences for evolution fit adaptation better and easier than they fit evolution. There has not been found even one pure random/spontaneous effect that would be required if evolution theory were to be correct.

How long has this been going on... this search for evolution? Since before Darwin:

The concepts of evolution and natural selection have very long histories, with the first theories preceding Darwin and Wallace’s by thousands of years.

When are evolutionists going to become honest, and stop twisting all kinds of non-evolution things this way and that, constantly proclaiming that now they have finally found a touch of evolution?

The evolutionist is like a person in prison, constantly examining his room over and over for thousands of years, just to find something that he might have missed, so that he can escape. And to make it worse, modern science is showing him more firmly than ever that nothing is there. Yet the more firmly modern science shows him, the harder he re-scrutinizes the room that he as scrutinized over and over for ages.

In the past - perhaps before Darwin, and even the first hundred years after Darwin - evolution once might have been an honest attempt. But now, with all the modern science, and all the failures at finding proof, stubborn evolution scientists are proving themselves to be fools.

They have turned evolution into a hoax by proving that it doesn't exist, yet saying that it does.

[BADecker]

^^^ You still haven't offered one shred of proof for evolution. In multitudes of evolution theory changes, and countless multitudes of tests for evolution, both based on the theory, and in tests of nature, nobody has found one piece of proof for the existence of evolution. All the close evidences for evolution fit adaptation better and easier than they fit evolution. There has not been found even one pure random/spontaneous effect that would be required if evolution theory were to be correct.

How long has this been going on... this search for evolution? Since before Darwin:

The concepts of evolution and natural selection have very long histories, with the first theories preceding Darwin and Wallace’s by thousands of years.

When are evolutionists going to become honest, and stop twisting all kinds of non-evolution things this way and that, constantly proclaiming that now they have finally found a touch of evolution?

The evolutionist is like a person in prison, constantly examining his room over and over for thousands of years, just to find something that he might have missed, so that he can escape. And to make it worse, modern science is showing him more firmly than ever that nothing is there. Yet the more firmly modern science shows him, the harder he re-scrutinizes the room that he as scrutinized over and over for ages.

In the past - perhaps before Darwin, and even the first hundred years after Darwin - evolution once might have been an honest attempt. But now, with all the modern science, and all the failures at finding proof, stubborn evolution scientists are proving themselves to be fools.

They have turned evolution into a hoax by proving that it doesn't exist, yet saying that it does.

What is the significance of the post I am quoting here? Since evolution is a hoax, thereby becoming a religion for many, what is the state of health of the world for believing this religion/hoax? Personally, I would like to believe that people are healthier when they know the truth.

While the placebo effect of evolution might be spreading around the world, it will never be strong enough to make evolution real, and it will probably destroy the good health of many.

[BADecker]

If God be regarded as a kind of egregore that protects those who feeds him, then it is possible that he will protect his followers.

God is His Own entity. Eternal health starts with recognizing this.

[Astargath]

^^^ You still haven't offered one shred of proof for evolution. In multitudes of evolution theory changes, and countless multitudes of tests for evolution, both based on the theory, and in tests of nature, nobody has found one piece of proof for the existence of evolution. All the close evidences for evolution fit adaptation better and easier than they fit evolution. There has not been found even one pure random/spontaneous effect that would be required if evolution theory were to be correct.

How long has this been going on... this search for evolution? Since before Darwin:

The concepts of evolution and natural selection have very long histories, with the first theories preceding Darwin and Wallace’s by thousands of years.

When are evolutionists going to become honest, and stop twisting all kinds of non-evolution things this way and that, constantly proclaiming that now they have finally found a touch of evolution?

The evolutionist is like a person in prison, constantly examining his room over and over for thousands of years, just to find something that he might have missed, so that he can escape. And to make it worse, modern science is showing him more firmly than ever that nothing is there. Yet the more firmly modern science shows him, the harder he re-scrutinizes the room that he as scrutinized over and over for ages.

In the past - perhaps before Darwin, and even the first hundred years after Darwin - evolution once might have been an honest attempt. But now, with all the modern science, and all the failures at finding proof, stubborn evolution scientists are proving themselves to be fools.

They have turned evolution into a hoax by proving that it doesn't exist, yet saying that it does.

Ugh, scientific theories change all the time. The theory of evolution is the best theory to explain natural evolution, there is no other better theory or even hypothesis. Maybe Coincube could explain this better to you since you seem to listen to him.

[CoinCube]

Ugh, scientific theories change all the time. The theory of evolution is the best theory to explain natural evolution, there is no other better theory or even hypothesis. Maybe Coincube could explain this better to you since you seem to listen to him.

Natural Selection holds that organisms adapt to their environments over time. This adaptation is thought to occur through a process of direct selection, fitness related reproduction, and occasional random search. Natural selection can coherently describe the historical situations leading to relatively small differences between organisms – perhaps up to the level of creating new and related species.

What so very few people realize is that Natural Selection is less a biological theory and more of a metaphysical frameworks for biology. Furthermore this framework is appears to be fundamentally incomplete.

There are several areas where natural selection seems to lack sufficient explanatory power. Most of these revolve around the problem of short-term disadvantage tending to undermine long-term advantage at the ‘Major Transitions’ of evolutionary history – which include sexual reproduction but also the evolution of the simple (prokaryotic) cell, the complex (eukaryotic) cell, multicellular organisms, and social organisms. Each of these transitions requires overcoming the fact that natural selection operates much more powerfully and directly upon the lower, simpler and smaller levels of organization that replicate more rapidly; so that there is a constant pressure and tendency for these lower levels to become parasitic upon higher levels. In sum; natural selection is much more rapidly and powerfully dis-integrative than integrative.

The general problem is therefore that the net effect of natural selection alone would be to break down the major transitions of evolution before they can be established – unless this tendency is overcome by some as-yet-unknown purposive (and indeed cognitive) long-termist, integrating and complexity-increasing tendency.

Neither natural selection, nor indeed artificial selection done by Man, has been observed creating a new genus, nor any taxonomic rank more fundamental such as a new family or phylum. There is no observational or experimental evidence which has emerged since 1859 of natural selection leading to major, qualitative changes in form – nor the originating of a novel form. Nobody has, by selection, changed a cat into a dog, let alone a sea anemone into a mouse (or the opposite); nobody has bred a dinosaur from a bird, nor retraced, by selective breeding, a modern species to its assumed ancestral form.

By all appearances natural selection appears to be a radically too small a metaphysical frame - it is not false but it leaves out too much.

Biology cannot exist without a metaphysical framework – and the current one may not be the best, since it has so many, such serious, failures to its name. This is the foundation for various challenges to the current dominant theory of human development. The critiques are serious and should not be casually dismissed.

For more info on this I recommend this excellent paper by Charlton. I borrowed from it liberally in this post.

Reconceptualizing the Metaphysical Basis of Biology
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2016/03/reconceptualizing-metaphysical-basis-of.html?m=1

[Astargath]

Ugh, scientific theories change all the time. The theory of evolution is the best theory to explain natural evolution, there is no other better theory or even hypothesis. Maybe Coincube could explain this better to you since you seem to listen to him.

Natural Selection holds that organisms adapt to their environments over time. This adaptation is thought to occur through a process of direct selection, fitness related reproduction, and occasional random search. Natural selection can coherently describe the historical situations leading to relatively small differences between organisms – perhaps up to the level of creating new and related species.

What so very few people realize is that Natural Selection is less a biological theory and more of a metaphysical frameworks for biology. Furthermore this framework is appears to be fundamentally incomplete.

There are several areas where natural selection seems to lack sufficient explanatory power. Most of these revolve around the problem of short-term disadvantage tending to undermine long-term advantage at the ‘Major Transitions’ of evolutionary history – which include sexual reproduction but also the evolution of the simple (prokaryotic) cell, the complex (eukaryotic) cell, multicellular organisms, and social organisms. Each of these transitions requires overcoming the fact that natural selection operates much more powerfully and directly upon the lower, simpler and smaller levels of organization that replicate more rapidly; so that there is a constant pressure and tendency for these lower levels to become parasitic upon higher levels. In sum; natural selection is much more rapidly and powerfully dis-integrative than integrative.

The general problem is therefore that the net effect of natural selection alone would be to break down the major transitions of evolution before they can be established – unless this tendency is overcome by some as-yet-unknown purposive (and indeed cognitive) long-termist, integrating and complexity-increasing tendency.

Neither natural selection, nor indeed artificial selection done by Man, has been observed creating a new genus, nor any taxonomic rank more fundamental such as a new family or phylum. There is no observational or experimental evidence which has emerged since 1859 of natural selection leading to major, qualitative changes in form – nor the originating of a novel form. Nobody has, by selection, changed a cat into a dog, let alone a sea anemone into a mouse (or the opposite); nobody has bred a dinosaur from a bird, nor retraced, by selective breeding, a modern species to its assumed ancestral form.

By all appearances natural selection appears to be a radically too small a metaphysical frame - it is not false but it leaves out too much.

Biology cannot exist without a metaphysical framework – and the current one may not be the best, since it has so many, such serious, failures to its name. This is the foundation for various challenges to the current dominant theory of human development. The critiques are serious and should not be casually dismissed.

For more info on this I recommend this excellent paper by Charlton. I borrowed from it liberally in this post.

Reconceptualizing the Metaphysical Basis of Biology
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2016/03/reconceptualizing-metaphysical-basis-of.html?m=1

''There are several areas where natural selection seems to lack sufficient explanatory power. Most of these revolve around the problem of short-term disadvantage tending to undermine long-term advantage at the ‘Major Transitions’ of evolutionary history – which include sexual reproduction but also the evolution of the simple (prokaryotic) cell, the complex (eukaryotic) cell, multicellular organisms, and social organisms. Each of these transitions requires overcoming the fact that natural selection operates much more powerfully and directly upon the lower, simpler and smaller levels of organization that replicate more rapidly; so that there is a constant pressure and tendency for these lower levels to become parasitic upon higher levels. In sum; natural selection is much more rapidly and powerfully dis-integrative than integrative. ''



Assuming he is talking about mutations here I would add that most mutations are actually neutral.




''Nachman and Crowell estimate around 3 deleterious mutations out of 175 per generation in humans (2000). Of those that have significant effect, most are harmful, but the fraction which are beneficial is higher than usually though. An experiment with E. coli found that about 1 in 150 newly arising mutations and 1 in 10 functional mutations are beneficial (Perfeito et al. 2007).

The harmful mutations do not survive long, and the beneficial mutations survive much longer, so when you consider only surviving mutations, most are beneficial.

Beneficial mutations are commonly observed. They are common enough to be problems in the cases of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing organisms and pesticide resistance in agricultural pests (e.g., Newcomb et al. 1997; these are not merely selection of pre-existing variation.) They can be repeatedly observed in laboratory populations (Wichman et al. 1999). Other examples include the following:
Mutations have given bacteria the ability to degrade nylon (Prijambada et al. 1995).
Plant breeders have used mutation breeding to induce mutations and select the beneficial ones (FAO/IAEA 1977).
Certain mutations in humans confer resistance to AIDS (Dean et al. 1996; Sullivan et al. 2001) or to heart disease (Long 1994; Weisgraber et al. 1983).
A mutation in humans makes bones strong (Boyden et al. 2002).
Transposons are common, especially in plants, and help to provide beneficial diversity (Moffat 2000).
In vitro mutation and selection can be used to evolve substantially improved function of RNA molecules, such as a ribozyme (Wright and Joyce 1997).

Whether a mutation is beneficial or not depends on environment. A mutation that helps the organism in one circumstance could harm it in another. When the environment changes, variations that once were counteradaptive suddenly become favored. Since environments are constantly changing, variation helps populations survive, even if some of those variations do not do as well as others. When beneficial mutations occur in a changed environment, they generally sweep through the population rapidly (Elena et al. 1996). ''

But yeah, let's not get too far away from this topic, we could discuss more on the evolution thread.

[udroxz]

Health and Religion is a good thing to conduct a society for a good life

[CoinCube]

Thank you for your response. At least you are not totally insane to claim is a hoax. It's true that we are still very limited but we can't just dismiss scientific theories as hoaxes. I also personally cannot just believe in god and I have read your links. I also think that if a god is real and he is truly benevolent I shouldn't need to believe or even acknowledge him as long as I'm a good person.

You are welcome.
 
Here are some questions that I have found interesting to ponder.

We all like to say we are good people but are we really or do we just tell that to ourselves that so we don't have to think about our many flaws? Does the fact that we can point to others more evil and malevolent then ourselves really make us good?

Much of our inherited goodness comes from our parents and our society. We as individuals can claim only very partial credit for it. Perhaps what matters more is not what we were gifted but what we choose to do with the gift. Do we point ourselves at an ideal and struggle towards it? Do we strive towards reducing evil (especially in ourselves) or do we squander our gifts?

If we set ourselves toward the ideal how do we even define it or for that matter define good and evil? The alternative of course is the dark and nihilistic claim that there is no good and evil and that the ideal is untrue.

Don't feel obligated to actually respond to any of these questions unless you really want to. They are most useful as reflective exercises.

[BADecker]

Ugh, scientific theories change all the time. The theory of evolution is the best theory to explain natural evolution, there is no other better theory or even hypothesis. Maybe Coincube could explain this better to you since you seem to listen to him.

Natural Selection holds that organisms adapt to their environments over time. This adaptation is thought to occur through a process of direct selection, fitness related reproduction, and occasional random search. Natural selection can coherently describe the historical situations leading to relatively small differences between organisms – perhaps up to the level of creating new and related species.

What so very few people realize is that Natural Selection is less a biological theory and more of a metaphysical frameworks for biology. Furthermore this framework is appears to be fundamentally incomplete.

There are several areas where natural selection seems to lack sufficient explanatory power. Most of these revolve around the problem of short-term disadvantage tending to undermine long-term advantage at the ‘Major Transitions’ of evolutionary history – which include sexual reproduction but also the evolution of the simple (prokaryotic) cell, the complex (eukaryotic) cell, multicellular organisms, and social organisms. Each of these transitions requires overcoming the fact that natural selection operates much more powerfully and directly upon the lower, simpler and smaller levels of organization that replicate more rapidly; so that there is a constant pressure and tendency for these lower levels to become parasitic upon higher levels. In sum; natural selection is much more rapidly and powerfully dis-integrative than integrative.

The general problem is therefore that the net effect of natural selection alone would be to break down the major transitions of evolution before they can be established – unless this tendency is overcome by some as-yet-unknown purposive (and indeed cognitive) long-termist, integrating and complexity-increasing tendency.

Neither natural selection, nor indeed artificial selection done by Man, has been observed creating a new genus, nor any taxonomic rank more fundamental such as a new family or phylum. There is no observational or experimental evidence which has emerged since 1859 of natural selection leading to major, qualitative changes in form – nor the originating of a novel form. Nobody has, by selection, changed a cat into a dog, let alone a sea anemone into a mouse (or the opposite); nobody has bred a dinosaur from a bird, nor retraced, by selective breeding, a modern species to its assumed ancestral form.

By all appearances natural selection appears to be a radically too small a metaphysical frame - it is not false but it leaves out too much.

Biology cannot exist without a metaphysical framework – and the current one may not be the best, since it has so many, such serious, failures to its name. This is the foundation for various challenges to the current dominant theory of human development. The critiques are serious and should not be casually dismissed.

For more info on this I recommend this excellent paper by Charlton. I borrowed from it liberally in this post.

Reconceptualizing the Metaphysical Basis of Biology
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2016/03/reconceptualizing-metaphysical-basis-of.html?m=1

''There are several areas where natural selection seems to lack sufficient explanatory power. Most of these revolve around the problem of short-term disadvantage tending to undermine long-term advantage at the ‘Major Transitions’ of evolutionary history – which include sexual reproduction but also the evolution of the simple (prokaryotic) cell, the complex (eukaryotic) cell, multicellular organisms, and social organisms. Each of these transitions requires overcoming the fact that natural selection operates much more powerfully and directly upon the lower, simpler and smaller levels of organization that replicate more rapidly; so that there is a constant pressure and tendency for these lower levels to become parasitic upon higher levels. In sum; natural selection is much more rapidly and powerfully dis-integrative than integrative. ''



Assuming he is talking about mutations here I would add that most mutations are actually neutral.




''Nachman and Crowell estimate around 3 deleterious mutations out of 175 per generation in humans (2000). Of those that have significant effect, most are harmful, but the fraction which are beneficial is higher than usually though. An experiment with E. coli found that about 1 in 150 newly arising mutations and 1 in 10 functional mutations are beneficial (Perfeito et al. 2007).

The harmful mutations do not survive long, and the beneficial mutations survive much longer, so when you consider only surviving mutations, most are beneficial.

Beneficial mutations are commonly observed. They are common enough to be problems in the cases of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing organisms and pesticide resistance in agricultural pests (e.g., Newcomb et al. 1997; these are not merely selection of pre-existing variation.) They can be repeatedly observed in laboratory populations (Wichman et al. 1999). Other examples include the following:
Mutations have given bacteria the ability to degrade nylon (Prijambada et al. 1995).
Plant breeders have used mutation breeding to induce mutations and select the beneficial ones (FAO/IAEA 1977).
Certain mutations in humans confer resistance to AIDS (Dean et al. 1996; Sullivan et al. 2001) or to heart disease (Long 1994; Weisgraber et al. 1983).
A mutation in humans makes bones strong (Boyden et al. 2002).
Transposons are common, especially in plants, and help to provide beneficial diversity (Moffat 2000).
In vitro mutation and selection can be used to evolve substantially improved function of RNA molecules, such as a ribozyme (Wright and Joyce 1997).

Whether a mutation is beneficial or not depends on environment. A mutation that helps the organism in one circumstance could harm it in another. When the environment changes, variations that once were counteradaptive suddenly become favored. Since environments are constantly changing, variation helps populations survive, even if some of those variations do not do as well as others. When beneficial mutations occur in a changed environment, they generally sweep through the population rapidly (Elena et al. 1996). ''

But yeah, let's not get too far away from this topic, we could discuss more on the evolution thread.

Yet there is one area where natural selection, if true and real, is easily explained. What area is it? It's the area where dumb nature is way smarter than the combined scientists of the world.

The scientists of the world can't even create life in the lab, once, from scratch. Dumb nature has created thousands of different forms of life, that reproduce in such vast quantities as to be unfathomable in number, to say nothing about uncountable.

So, what have scientists proven... in reality? That they are too dumb to determine if there is any such thing as a beneficial mutation at all. And to top it all off, they continue to suggest that there is beneficial mutation, when they can't even begin to do what dumb nature is doing in super-fantastic ways. Did you catch that?... can't even begin...

[kasundul]

Scholarly studies have investigated the effects of religion on health. The World Health Organization (WHO) discerns four dimensions of health, namely physical, social, mental, and spiritual health. Having a religious belief may have both positive and negative impacts on health and morbidity.

[CoinCube]

The Power of Religion
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/the-power-of-religion.html?

The benefits of faith. In his Sunday column this week, Ross Douthat issued something of a challenge to secular liberals. They think of themselves as empiricists, Ross wrote, but they’re actually close-minded about several powerful forces for good, starting with religion.

“When people and societies are genuinely curious,” he continued, “they are very reasonably curious about everything, including things happening in their bodies and their consciousness and more speculative realms.”

The column reminded me of a pattern that, as a secular liberal myself, I’ve long found inconvenient: Religion is correlated with a lot of healthy behaviors and positive outcomes. All else equal, religious people have higher educational attainment, earn more money, use drugs and alcohol less and commit fewer crimes, according to a long line of social-science studies (that have frequently been done by secular liberals).

The question about these findings is the old correlation-causation question: Does religious faith lead to these healthy behaviors? Or is something else, independent of faith, causing them?

A clever new study tries to offer some answers. It’s not anywhere near the last word on the matter, obviously, but it is intriguing.

The three economists who conducted the study sound like something out of a bad bar joke, as one of them, Dean Karlan, remarked to me: “an atheist, an evangelical Christian and an agnostic Jew.” To do the research, they partnered with an evangelical anti-poverty group, International Care Ministries, in the Philippines.

The group taught 15 weeks of classes to more than 6,000 very poor Filipinos. Some of the students received a version that combined religious teachings with advice on health and employment. Others received only the nonreligious parts. By comparing the different batches of students, the economists hoped to isolate the effect of religion.

The results: Six months later, those who received the religious education indeed reported feeling more guided by religion. They were also earning more money, largely by shifting from agricultural work to higher-paying jobs, such as fishing or self-employment. And even small pay increases can be a big deal for people living in extreme poverty.

The results did come with some contradictions. Several other measures of well-being, like food consumption, didn’t change. A few measures, like the frequency of arguments with relatives, looked worse for the religious group. But crosscurrents like these are normal in academic work. Overall, the findings are “cautiously positive” for the power of religion, said Karlan, a professor at Northwestern (and the self-identified agnostic Jew).

No study is definitive. But I do find the overall evidence of religion’s ancillary benefits to be strong. That evidence hasn’t made me personally religious. I’m still quite comfortable with my secularism. But the evidence has made me more humble and open-minded about how the world can go about solving some of its problems.

You can read more about the study at the Innovations for Poverty Action website.

In addition to Karlan, the researchers are James Choi of Yale and Gharad Bryan of the London School of Economics. The researchers are continuing to follow the people in the study.

[BADecker]

The Power of Religion
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/the-power-of-religion.html?

The results: Six months later, those who received the religious education indeed reported feeling more guided by religion. They were also earning more money, largely by shifting from agricultural work to higher-paying jobs, such as fishing or self-employment. And even small pay increases can be a big deal for people living in extreme poverty.

An interesting "side" point of this is, if people can get jobs other than agriculture and make more money, why can't they add the part-time job of personal family agriculture to their more-money, full-time job? This would mean better health for them, from growing their own vegetables. And it would be easier for them because they already have experience in agriculture.

Better health from religion in an additional way.

[GamingBro]

I am not sure that religion and health can be associated like that. Any harm or maybe positive impact of religion on health is minimal at my opinion because everything in our head.

[BADecker]

I am not sure that religion and health can be associated like that. Any harm or maybe positive impact of religion on health is minimal at my opinion because everything in our head.

But, for example, it is the things in our head that make us able to produce cars. Then people use cars, and become healthier because they don't get tired from walking all over the place, or they become unhealthier from using cars and not getting exercise.

The head... the same place that houses and defines our religion(s). Health and Religion.

[Astargath]

Thank you for your response. At least you are not totally insane to claim is a hoax. It's true that we are still very limited but we can't just dismiss scientific theories as hoaxes. I also personally cannot just believe in god and I have read your links. I also think that if a god is real and he is truly benevolent I shouldn't need to believe or even acknowledge him as long as I'm a good person.

You are welcome.
 
Here are some questions that I have found interesting to ponder.

We all like to say we are good people but are we really or do we just tell that to ourselves that so we don't have to think about our many flaws? Does the fact that we can point to others more evil and malevolent then ourselves really make us good?

Much of our inherited goodness comes from our parents and our society. We as individuals can claim only very partial credit for it. Perhaps what matters more is not what we were gifted but what we choose to do with the gift. Do we point ourselves at an ideal and struggle towards it? Do we strive towards reducing evil (especially in ourselves) or do we squander our gifts?

If we set ourselves toward the ideal how do we even define it or for that matter define good and evil? The alternative of course is the dark and nihilistic claim that there is no good and evil and that the ideal is untrue.

Don't feel obligated to actually respond to any of these questions unless you really want to. They are most useful as reflective exercises.

Morality is tricky. There was a time where I thought everything was pretty meaningless, a bit of a nihilistic view, and that nothing really was bad or good, everything was simply pointless. However I still couldn't force myself to do what I considered bad things even though I knew it didn't really matter. There is definitely some genetic factor at work, I get angry very quickly for example, I can control it but I still can't avoid getting angry in the first place. I'm personally struggling right now to decide whether eating animals is good or bad, I'm thinking it is morally wrong but I'm still debating it with myself.

[kaikaikunen]

Health and religion

the man can by medicine, but God alone give you Health.