The Basic Stupidity of the Idea of Evolution

[QuestionAuthority]

Look, evolution WAS a theory but it is a fact now, go ahead and do your own experiments and come to your own logical conclusions instead of waging a philosophical online thread war.  

That would require intelligence he doesn't have, I agree that religious people should keep to the churches, when I see them trying to infiltrate our governments and our school systems that's when I get pissy about it and too many of them keep trying. The scientific minded will always have an advantage over the pious because they always seek the truth even if it challenges their own beliefs, the pious however don't which is why we'd be all stuck in the dark ages if they had their way.

I was religious as a kid growing up in a religious Indian middle class family and as a kid I was able to understand the stupidity of religion, I just dont get it that if I - not the most intelligent guy on the planet - can get how stupid & baseless religion really is as a KID why cant these so called grown ups do that as well ?

The sad thing is, most religion is fantasy. The bit of it that is reality is often overlooked.

Which part is fantasy and which part is reality and how can you tell the difference between them? People believe what they want to believe at the end of the day. Personally I don't get how religious people can shoot down the idea of evolution because beings are far too complex to have been created this way but believe a far greater being with super powers can just spontaneously exist without questioning how the hell he came into being.

Religious people have always equaled mental retardation to me. This group believes in things like angels and it confuses you that they don't believe in evolution?

Things Christians believe:

A mistranslated book written by cave people is a reliable guide to the modern world.

There’s an invisible man in the sky who likes to watch you while you’re showering.

Two thousand years ago, an alter ego of this invisible man knocked up a Jewess whose husband wasn’t satisfying her.

The progeny of this drunken coupling was both god and the son of god.

This son of god was killed (but not really, since he’s also god, and god can’t die) and then came back to life to seek revenge, just like J.D. Walker.

His killing was a necessary sacrifice in order that we might be forgiven for the sins of Eve, the first woman in the world, who lived 6000 years ago in a magical garden, where a talking snake convinced her to eat a forbidden apple.

To show our thanks for this sacrifice, we should put special crackers and wine in our mouths, where they will be magically transformed into his flesh and blood, which we should then swallow despite taboos regarding cannibalism.

A guy built a boat out of wood large enough to hold two of every creature on the earth with primitive tools.

In the beginning there was only Adam and Eve. God punished them by making them biologically reproduce. They founded the entire world which means incest is ok. Eve had two sons Cain and Able. They went off and found wives. From where exactly?

The most retarded of all: People of the world speak different languages because a tower was constructed to reach the cloud God lives in. To punish them he made them all speak different languages.

If you don’t believe all the preceding items, then after you die you will be plunged into a lake of fire and tortured for all eternity.

If you do believe all the preceding items, then after you die you’ll get to go to heaven, which is a cloud in outer space.

Retarded.

[BADecker]

Which part is fantasy and which part is reality and how can you tell the difference between them? People believe what they want to believe at the end of the day. Personally I don't get how religious people can shoot down the idea of evolution because beings are far too complex to have been created this way but believe a far greater being with super powers can just spontaneously exist without questioning how the hell he came into being.

That is exactly the point... well, close to it.

Scientists got sick of finding no clear results that could show God. So some of them simply suggested that He did not exist, and started looking for the spontaneity that must have started this whole thing, and that "evolves" it this way and that right up to the present.

The trouble is, science hasn't been able to find anything that they can show is true spontaneity. They have been able to find all kinds of simplicity, complexity, diversity, and a bunch of other "...ities," but no pure spontaneity.

The thing that we have found in great abundance is cause and effect, action and reaction. Cause and effect is the thing that "runs" even our most complex machinery. We, ourselves, seem to operate throughout by cause and effect. Even our decisions and thinking are determined by which neurons fire and which other neurons and chemicals determine that they fire, and which stimuli act even on these, all the way back to "the beginning(?)".

Since we are cause-and-effect people, and since this is all we have been able to find in nature (except, of course, in the things that we haven't found the causes for yet), fantastic and improbable as it may seem, this whole nature and universe must have been programmed. And whatever programmed this universe, we don't have much of a clue about. Religion might think it has, but science knows it doesn't.

When scientists are unwilling to talk about the fact that they haven't been able to find any spontaneity (no pure random "effect"), in the face of all the cause and effect findings that they readily admit to, their theories of something like evolution are extremely unbalanced, flawed, even simply wrong.

[nsimmons]

Which part is fantasy and which part is reality and how can you tell the difference between them? People believe what they want to believe at the end of the day. Personally I don't get how religious people can shoot down the idea of evolution because beings are far too complex to have been created this way but believe a far greater being with super powers can just spontaneously exist without questioning how the hell he came into being.

Since we are cause-and-effect people, and since this is all we have been able to find in nature (except, of course, in the things that we haven't found the causes for yet), fantastic and improbable as it may seem, this whole nature and universe must have been programmed.

I love this, two entirely conflicting logical fallacies.

1. We found everything, and cant explain anything else, hence god.
2. We haven't found everything, hence god.

Not only ignorant, but stupid as well.

I wasn't aware we had discovered everything there is to know about everything. Please alert the world. What an idiot.

You seem quite the expert on science and being a scientist? Where did you obtain your PhD, please direct me to your list of publications.
What is your scientific education and experience?

You have about as much understanding as I have of oncology, which is little to none. Why should anyone listen to anything you have to say about anything?

[BADecker]

Which part is fantasy and which part is reality and how can you tell the difference between them? People believe what they want to believe at the end of the day. Personally I don't get how religious people can shoot down the idea of evolution because beings are far too complex to have been created this way but believe a far greater being with super powers can just spontaneously exist without questioning how the hell he came into being.

Since we are cause-and-effect people, and since this is all we have been able to find in nature (except, of course, in the things that we haven't found the causes for yet), fantastic and improbable as it may seem, this whole nature and universe must have been programmed.

I love this, two entirely conflicting logical fallacies.

1. We found everything, and cant explain anything else, hence god.
2. We haven't found everything, hence god.

Not only ignorant, but stupid as well.

I wasn't aware we had discovered everything there is to know about everything. Please alert the world. What an idiot.

Bravo! You are waking up to some of the questions of logic and the universe. It is always thrilling to see when people start to question things, and examine the things that they have formerly taken for granite.

You seem quite the expert on science and being a scientist? Where did you obtain your PhD,

No PhD.

please direct me to your list of publications.

Click on my handle in this forum, above, at the top of this post. Go to the bottom of the page that opens up. Click the link entitled, "Show the last posts of this person."

What is your scientific education and experience?

Nosey!

You have about as much understanding as I have of oncology, which is little to none.

I'll look it up in the encyclopedia sometime.

Why should anyone listen to anything you have to say about anything?

Because I have a very loud voice when I choose to use it. They shouldn't listen, really, but they can't help themselves.

 

[Prelude]

I feel sorry for you, badecker. I sincerely hope you won't live the rest of your life in ignorance.

 

[jeffthebaker]

I feel sorry for you, badecker. I sincerely hope you won't live the rest of your life in ignorance.

 

I feel the same way. Do you think we could get a donation fund set up for Badecker and all others in a similar position? He needs all the help he can get.

[Prelude]

I feel sorry for you, badecker. I sincerely hope you won't live the rest of your life in ignorance.

 

I feel the same way. Do you think we could get a donation fund set up for Badecker and all others in a similar position? He needs all the help he can get.

In all seriousness, only time can help. Religion is a dying problem, it becomes less and less relevant every day as it has been for a long time. We are too connected and intelligent for it to be a viable means of control in this day and age for most people. Hopefully we're only a few generations away from religion being in the same camp as smallpox.

On a very related note, have you guys watched the documentary "Jesus Camp"? It's an interesting look at hard-core religious beliefs, available on Netflix.

[BADecker]

I feel sorry for you, badecker. I sincerely hope you won't live the rest of your life in ignorance.

 

I feel the same way. Do you think we could get a donation fund set up for Badecker and all others in a similar position? He needs all the help he can get.

In all seriousness, only time can help. Religion is a dying problem, it becomes less and less relevant every day as it has been for a long time. We are too connected and intelligent for it to be a viable means of control in this day and age for most people. Hopefully we're only a few generations away from religion being in the same camp as smallpox.

On a very related note, have you guys watched the documentary "Jesus Camp"? It's an interesting look at hard-core religious beliefs, available on Netflix.

Thanks, kids, for feeling sorry for me. I should feel sorry for you more, but I don't, 'cause you are young enough that you just might survive.

The two weakest religions that will crash first are the religion of atheism, and the religion of faulty science like evolution. It is happening among a lot of folks right now. And you can see me crashing them right here in this forum.

I don't have anything against you kids. I should feel sorry for you, because you will be receiving the backlash of your crashed religions in the near future. But I don't have time to feel sorry. I'm too busy preparing for the crash, because it will not only be a crash of your religions. It will go into finance, and all kinds of other things.

Should I say, "good luck to you?" I don't have time. But, thanks again for feeling sorry for me.

[Prelude]

I feel sorry for you, badecker. I sincerely hope you won't live the rest of your life in ignorance.

 

I feel the same way. Do you think we could get a donation fund set up for Badecker and all others in a similar position? He needs all the help he can get.

In all seriousness, only time can help. Religion is a dying problem, it becomes less and less relevant every day as it has been for a long time. We are too connected and intelligent for it to be a viable means of control in this day and age for most people. Hopefully we're only a few generations away from religion being in the same camp as smallpox.

On a very related note, have you guys watched the documentary "Jesus Camp"? It's an interesting look at hard-core religious beliefs, available on Netflix.

Thanks, kids, for feeling sorry for me. I should feel sorry for you more, but I don't, 'cause you are young enough that you just might survive.

The two weakest religions that will crash first are the religion of atheism, and the religion of faulty science like evolution. It is happening among a lot of folks right now. And you can see me crashing them right here in this forum.

I don't have anything against you kids. I should feel sorry for you, because you will be receiving the backlash of your crashed religions in the near future. But I don't have time to feel sorry. I'm too busy preparing for the crash, because it will not only be a crash of your religions. It will go into finance, and all kinds of other things.

Should I say, "good luck to you?" I don't have time. But, thanks again for feeling sorry for me.

[nsimmons]

His kind are dying out. Atheists in the first world are growing fast, religion is not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_religion

In terms of absolute numbers, irreligion appears to be increasing (along with secularization generally).[101] (See the geographic distribution of atheism.)

The American Religious Identification Survey gave nonreligious groups the largest gain in terms of absolute numbers: 14.3 million (8.4% of the population) to 29.4 million (14.1% of the population) for the period 1990–2001 in the U.S.[57][96] A 2012 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reports, "The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling."[102] A similar pattern has been found in other countries such as Australia, Canada, and Mexico. According to statistics in Canada, the number of "Nones" increased by about 60% between 1985 and 2004.[103] In Australia, census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics give "no religion" the largest gains in absolute numbers over the 15 years from 1991 to 2006, from 2,948,888 (18.2% of the population that answered the question) to 3,706,555 (21.0% of the population that answered the question).[104] According to INEGI, in Mexico, the number of atheists grows annually by 5.2%, while the number of Catholics grows by 1.7%.[105][106] In New Zealand, 39% of the population are irreligious making it largest percentage of total population in Oceania region

He should be afraid.

[nsimmons]

thread has nothing to do with evolution theory.

what you can learn here from badecker is a (good) use of rhetoric to persuade people about x (x seems to be mostly religious though).

No he isn't. S/He uses tired arguments, logical fallacies and ignorance. An intelligent high school student can see though it. Arguments like this would fail in any liberal arts course, forget science. The only people convinced are equally as ignorant and uneducated. To think stupidity would be worn as a badge of honour. 

[Prelude]

thread has nothing to do with evolution theory.

what you can learn here from badecker is a (good) use of rhetoric to persuade people about x (x seems to be mostly religious though).

No he isn't. S/He uses tired arguments, logical fallacies and ignorance. An intelligent high school student can see though it. Arguments like this would fail in any liberal arts course, forget science. The only people convinced are equally as ignorant and uneducated. To think stupidity would be worn as a badge of honour. 

I think that's what he's saying. This is a good example of dummies like badecker trying to spread their "knowledge" to other simple minded dummies.

[BADecker]

His kind are dying out. Atheists in the first world are growing fast, religion is not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_religion

In terms of absolute numbers, irreligion appears to be increasing (along with secularization generally).[101] (See the geographic distribution of atheism.)

The American Religious Identification Survey gave nonreligious groups the largest gain in terms of absolute numbers: 14.3 million (8.4% of the population) to 29.4 million (14.1% of the population) for the period 1990–2001 in the U.S.[57][96] A 2012 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reports, "The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling."[102] A similar pattern has been found in other countries such as Australia, Canada, and Mexico. According to statistics in Canada, the number of "Nones" increased by about 60% between 1985 and 2004.[103] In Australia, census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics give "no religion" the largest gains in absolute numbers over the 15 years from 1991 to 2006, from 2,948,888 (18.2% of the population that answered the question) to 3,706,555 (21.0% of the population that answered the question).[104] According to INEGI, in Mexico, the number of atheists grows annually by 5.2%, while the number of Catholics grows by 1.7%.[105][106] In New Zealand, 39% of the population are irreligious making it largest percentage of total population in Oceania region

He should be afraid.

Since Atheism is a religion, it is only a shift in the religions, and which religious group has the larger population.

Atheists should fear more. They will have to face God in the judgment, and have a very good reason why they did not believe in Him. There probably won't be a reason that will be good enough, and they will be condemned.

Since all people die, my fear is mostly a fear of the passing operation itself... a natural fear, like everyone else has of death.

[BADecker]

thread has nothing to do with evolution theory.

what you can learn here from badecker is a (good) use of rhetoric to persuade people about x (x seems to be mostly religious though).

No he isn't. S/He uses tired arguments, logical fallacies and ignorance. An intelligent high school student can see though it. Arguments like this would fail in any liberal arts course, forget science. The only people convinced are equally as ignorant and uneducated. To think stupidity would be worn as a badge of honour. 

I think that's what he's saying. This is a good example of dummies like badecker trying to spread their "knowledge" to other simple minded dummies.

Cause and effect is good, sound, scientific logic. Since we have absolutely no evidence of anything other than cause and effect operations in nature and the universe, this means that everything is pre-programmed. This is probably the most fundamental idea that IS and should be held by all scientists in all scientific examination, because it exists everywhere. Nothing exists or operates without cause and effect.

What exists without a cause? Nothing!

When modern science ignores cause and effect within their theories, the theories are flawed. If it isn't a flaw when it is ignored, then it is downright attempted deception.

[RodeoX]

I think you don't understand evolution, ...

I teach evolutionary biology and I am sure this is a misunderstanding.  There is no mystery here it is very well understood. I assume everyone believes in DNA. Well if you understand what DNA is then you understand evolution.
Any person in the world may launch a scientific experiment to test the concept of evolution. They can publish their results for peer review and further testing. Science works by testing ideas with logic. It does not look at claims, rather results of tests. There have been thousands of such experiments but there has never been a finding that contradicts evolution and it is the basis of all modern biology.

I suspect the real reason why people don't "believe" in evolution is because of the greater implications in their lives. Few of us who are atheists recognize what is being asked of a person when they look logically at the issue of evolution. It is as clear as day that it is and has happened. Anyone can see that. Except for those who would have to alter their whole world view just to recognize an obvious fact. It is why for centuries astronomers knew that the sun was the center of the solar system but refused to acknowledge it. Opening their eyes meant questioning everything they thought they knew.  

100 years ago the issue was dinosaurs. Many people simply could not admit they once lived here. It would call into question the Koran or the Bible or the Bahgavadgita. There can't have been dinosaurs!
Eventually religion found ways to accommodate the millions of bones now found in museums. I think that will happen for evolution also. Evolution is modern biology and we use it everyday in medicine etc. In 10 years denying evolution will be like denying the existence of dinosaurs. There will always be some, but very few.

[BADecker]

The basic implications of the term "evolution" seem to be that life and everything else came about spontaneously. The spontaneity seems to be understood as pure randomness. There isn't any evidence of pure randomness existing. There might be some math that suggests that it can exist. But there is no evidence of its existence. Everything exists completely orderly, according to cause and effect.

If "evolution" simply means "change" then, obviously, there is evolution all over the place. But when you consider Darwin's "tree," you can see that evolution does NOT simply mean change.

Human life is more than simply patterns of life that have been handed down over the millennia. Human life is something that does NOT evolve. It comes into existence for the first time when the sperm and egg get together. It is not a random coming together (cause and effect), and it is not a life that existed for untold eons of time. It is new life, that comes about in a moment, even though it is patterned after combinations of older life.

Standard evolution teaching does not say much of anything to these things. Perhaps it says nothing to them. If standard evolution writings included the cause and effect that penetrates the universe, as part of the important things in its "doctrine," stating cause and effect right out in the open (because it is probably the most important part of evolution), then evolution might have some true meaning.

As it is, the idea of evolution is being used to deceive people. At the very least, it is entirely remiss in explaining one of the most important of its basic tenets - cause and effect.

[nsimmons]

Again from which accredited institution did you receive your education?

The basic implications of the term "evolution" seem to be that life and everything else came about spontaneously. The spontaneity seems to be understood as pure randomness. There isn't any evidence of pure randomness existing.

Really? You think the entire universe is deterministic and we just need a big enough model? Quantum effects are well established in cellular function. The existence of virtual particles is established. Physics says the universe is random, your understanding of science is stuck in the 18th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle

http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=quantum+effects+in+biology&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=7BXuVOGfLszaoATtw4CgCg&ved=0CBoQgQMwAA

[RodeoX]

The basic implications of the term...

You bring up some important ideas BADecker. Where did evolution/life start? The answer from science so far is "I don't know". It is a true mystery and to just say randomness... That is not an answer. We don't really even know what life is. We can't do it in a lab, we don't know if life started here or somewhere else. We don't know if life is common in the universe or if this is the only occurrence.

What can be observed is that over time life on Earth has become more complicated and that older forms change via DNA into different forms. That we do in the lab every day. It happens to all living things from germs evolving resistance or into new species like HIV, or whale flukes evolving from feet.

There is also a vast amount of fossil and DNA evidence about our own species. For most of our history there was more than one species of human on Earth. Just 40,000 years ago you could have met at least five species of humans.  Today there is only one species, but the reconstructions below show just some of the others in our larger family tree. We (all life on Earth) are just variations of the DNA molecule and in the future it will get even more confusing. Soon we will swap out sections of our DNA the way we modify computer code. It's easy we are all just DNA monsters.

[nsimmons]

I think you don't understand evolution, ...

I teach evolutionary biology and I am sure this is a misunderstanding.  There is no mystery here it is very well understood. I assume everyone believes in DNA. Well if you understand what DNA is then you understand evolution.
Any person in the world may launch a scientific experiment to test the concept of evolution. They can publish their results for peer review and further testing. Science works by testing ideas with logic. It does not look at claims, rather results of tests. There have been thousands of such experiments but there has never been a finding that contradicts evolution and it is the basis of all modern biology.

I suspect the real reason why people don't "believe" in evolution is because of the greater implications in their lives. Few of us who are atheists recognize what is being asked of a person when they look logically at the issue of evolution. It is as clear as day that it is and has happened. Anyone can see that. Except for those who would have to alter their whole world view just to recognize an obvious fact. It is why for centuries astronomers knew that the sun was the center of the solar system but refused to acknowledge it. Opening their eyes meant questioning everything they thought they knew.  

100 years ago the issue was dinosaurs. Many people simply could not admit they once lived here. It would call into question the Koran or the Bible or the Bahgavadgita. There can't have been dinosaurs!
Eventually religion found ways to accommodate the millions of bones now found in museums. I think that will happen for evolution also. Evolution is modern biology and we use it everyday in medicine etc. In 10 years denying evolution will be like denying the existence of dinosaurs. There will always be some, but very few.

It's not only that it changes their entire world view, its worse than that. They have to admit to themselves that they were wrong and fooled. This is a common defence mechanism, people will fight to the death rather than admit they were wrong. Only evolution could produce such a defective species.

[criptix]

thread has nothing to do with evolution theory.

what you can learn here from badecker is a (good) use of rhetoric to persuade people about x (x seems to be mostly religious though).

No he isn't. S/He uses tired arguments, logical fallacies and ignorance. An intelligent high school student can see though it. Arguments like this would fail in any liberal arts course, forget science. The only people convinced are equally as ignorant and uneducated. To think stupidity would be worn as a badge of honour.  

I think that's what he's saying. This is a good example of dummies like badecker trying to spread their "knowledge" to other simple minded dummies.

exactly

imho badecker is far from being a idiot, he seems more like someone you would describe as a fanatic or fundamentalist?
he definitively knows how to use rhetoric to persuade people (more so people that lack knowledge about certain scientific topics - check his post history)

his arguments are less scientific and much more of a rhetoric nature.