If Evolution is Not True...

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Who is being punished, where ?
From what I see, people are doing what they want to do without interference, unless from some other human.
We have two choices ' repent ' if we do Not want to ' perish ' ( be destroyed ) according to 2 Peter 3:9.
There is No double jeopardy connected to perishing, but just being destroyed forever - Psalms 92:7

Repent what? Just "repent" for the sake of repenting? Is that the first thing you'd say to a newborn child?: "Start repenting this instant, kid, 'cause you're already evil beyond redemption." Why even have children, then? Why on earth would anybody want to bring more evil into an already evil world?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

We can assume they were created in the sense that they were brought into existence, but I would not use the word created as it implies there is a creator.


Nope nope nope nope nope.
There is zero reason to think that a creator exists just because evolution is wrong; the origin of species could be the big bang or some other unknown phenomena. Just because we don't know how something got there doesn't mean god put it there.
Unless such an artisan can be proven to exist through other ways that we have been arguing about all along.



There is zero reason to believe that gods would be nonhierarchical / equal in power just because they hypothetically created us.

And a bunch of "nopes" right back at you. But really, you're so close and just missing by a hair. The "big bang" or some other "unknown phenomena" might indeed start the long process that leads to something more complex until, eventually, something like us. But no "big bang" or any other similar phenomenon that is not creative can create an utterly immense amount of order from nothing. That is what many religious actually argue, and that is why they call whatever that "creative something" is, God. There's just no other choice.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

It could be the two perspectives are correct. God designed the universe and evolution on earth was part of that design. If we could only know about God's plan and its purpose, then we might know more about the particulars.

It "could be," but you have nothing whatever that would seem to suggest that, and you don't "know about God's plan and it's purpose," so there doesn't really seem to be any particular reason to suppose that, does there?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I don't think you can make the assumption of deistic creation simply from an absence of evolutionary theory. The story provided by evolution is pseudo-theology which provides the modern world with part of its mythology. Biological science frankly melts much more often than that in other fields, whereas the evolutionary theory has been held fixed since the 19th century for basically ideological reasons, some of which supported most of the 20th century's killing.

So if we don't have evolutionary theory, then what? Well, we're discovering an entire field of Lamarckian epigenetics these days, though we're not allowed to call it that, because Darwin was right is a canonical received gospel of "science". That goes away, and we can start to conduct serious work into heredity. But more seriously, we start to return to a holistic view of the world, a premodern conception, in which an ecosystem is greater than the sum of its parts. Species certainly are recognized to adapt, but the mediating force is held at a respectful remove from our interaction with them, which is the critically important thing, and we can start respecting nature as a holy thing, rather than debasing both it and ourselves as creatures of the "sexual selection".

To go back to the real point, a bit beyond this thought exercise, of course species change and adapt according to the environmental conditions they find themselves in. So do humans, and indeed, so do human cultures. But the picture of this is far more complex than simple Darwinian evolution as still propounded by individuals like Dawkins et. al. and the picture that comes from strictly Darwinian evolution is a bleak, pitiless picture which has been used to justify racial holocaust and sexist subjugation of womankind alike, while slowing down biological-technical research and preventing us from maintaining a society capable of helping individuals, by denying the influence and importance of epigenetic heredity.

But doing that would run counter to the orthodoxy of established science, so we are left with these ferocious science-defenders, most being second-rate "scientists" themselves, policing the diversity of scientific endeavour.

Theories that incorporate ideas which negatively impact society are not worth having even if they are statistically more likely. Evolution refers to a set of events, and while those events are biologically important, they have been put into a framework which has had evil consequences for societies of the world in general. It would be better to disassociate the biological from the evolutionary framework and instead place it firmly into an ecological one, which is essentially congruous with conceptions of virtue and harmony across all cultures.

Nobody, anywhere, has produced anything like evidence of "Lamarckian epigenetics." Although, one area I think that would have been greatly appreciated by endless numbers of tortured female children would be the fetish in China for the "lotus foot," in which little girls feet were tightly and painfully bound for years until they were utterly deformed and almost useless for walking on -- but really, really tiny, which everybody wanted. And yet every new generation kept having feet that were too darned big!

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Geocentrism is true. We can define the coordinate system however we please, and placing 0,0,0 at Earth's centroid of mass is both socially virtuous and has certain advantages in a universe of varying volume as a function of time.

But the math in trying to predict where anything will be tomorrow, a week Thursday or in a million years would be utterly intractable. Knowing where things are with relation to other things, based on the forces that are responsible, reduces the mathematical problems by orders of magnitude! (Cheers, William of Ockham.)

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Maybe you can answer my questions then. I've have found more evidence for my statements and that is Darwin was a naturalist. As you know, one of the areas that I HIGHLY question is the theory that we evolved from apes.

I wonder how many times you've been told this, and how many times you have consciously decided to ignore it? The Theory of Evolution DOES NOT SAY THAT WE EVOLVED FROM APES. It says that we, and chimpanzees share a common -- non-human, non-chimp -- ancestor, and that gorillas and chimps share a common -- non-gorilla and non-chimp -- ancestor, and that horses and jelly-fish likewise -- somewhere lost in the mists of time -- share a non-horse, non-jelly-fish ancestor.

 

[Tomyris]

But the math in trying to predict where anything will be tomorrow, a week Thursday or in a million years would be utterly intractable. Knowing where things are with relation to other things, based on the forces that are responsible, reduces the mathematical problems by orders of magnitude! (Cheers, William of Ockham.)

That's not actually accurate in my opinion, because the entire universe is moving (expanding) and changing in volume continuously and the location of galaxies, superclusters etc. Is constantly shifting. A Heliocentric model is no better than a Galactic or Supergalactic, so why not use a geocentric frame of reference?

 

[Polymath257]

I wonder how many times you've been told this, and how many times you have consciously decided to ignore it? The Theory of Evolution DOES NOT SAY THAT WE EVOLVED FROM APES. It says that we, and chimpanzees share a common -- non-human, non-chimp -- ancestor, and that gorillas and chimps share a common -- non-gorilla and non-chimp -- ancestor, and that horses and jelly-fish likewise -- somewhere lost in the mists of time -- share a non-horse, non-jelly-fish ancestor.

Actually, we *did* evolve from apes. The most recent common ancestor of humans and modern apes was also an ape (just not any of the modern ones).

More to the point: we *are* great apes biologically.

 

[Tomyris]

Nobody, anywhere, has produced anything like evidence of "Lamarckian epigenetics." Although, one area I think that would have been greatly appreciated by endless numbers of tortured female children would be the fetish in China for the "lotus foot," in which little girls feet were tightly and painfully bound for years until they were utterly deformed and almost useless for walking on -- but really, really tiny, which everybody wanted. And yet every new generation kept having feet that were too darned big!

It doesn't work the way you presume, but please do research epigenetics. There is a quiet if somewhat strict movement to recognise that it has a serious impact on population heredity.

 

[Polymath257]

That's not actually accurate in my opinion, because the entire universe is moving (expanding) and changing in volume continuously and the location of galaxies, superclusters etc. Is constantly shifting. A Heliocentric model is no better than a Galactic or Supergalactic, so why not use a geocentric frame of reference?

For cosmology, the difference between a geocentric and a galaxy-centric model is irrelevant. The scale is just that large. So, if you are talking about universal expansion, there is no reason to make a distinction.

For galactic dynamics, it is probably better to look at things from the view of the center of the galaxy and not from the position of the sun/earth (which are essentially identical on that scale).

For the solar system, it is MUCH better to use the sun as the center.

The only time when it is easier to look from the point of view of the earth is when looking at the earth/moon system or specifically events on the earth. For anything else in astronomy, it makes life much more difficult.

 

[james bond]

I am interested in having a consistent description of the universe that is as simple as possible while being testable and predictive. A geocentric coordinate system fails in that miserably.

The Earth is a *very* small part of the universe as a whole. It is good for us to keep that in perspective.

Geocentrism is dead, but there is the bounded universe which has been peer-reviewed.

 

[Tomyris]

Well, sexual selection is *one* type of selection. It certainly isn't the only way that things can evolve, nor was it claimed to be so by Darwin.

That said, differential reproduction *is* the mechanism of speciation. I'm not sure what the cultural aspects are or why they might be relevant to the science.

To be honest, the false assumption of impartiality is precisely the concern. Of course sci

Well, sexual selection is *one* type of selection. It certainly isn't the only way that things can evolve, nor was it claimed to be so by Darwin.

That said, differential reproduction *is* the mechanism of speciation. I'm not sure what the cultural aspects are or why they might be relevant to the science.

The presumption of impartiality is the problem. The assumption that the theory would be the same in another culture reflects the worldview of scientific materialism. The observations may be the same, but the conclusions are culturally mediated. Essentially, sexual selection profanes the sacred in nature, but a different way of viewing the same observations could preserve the sacred without limiting the technical utility.

 

[james bond]

LMAO on this question from Stephen Hawking to Richard Dawkins in their conversation @3:22. First time I've seen this. Even Hawking appears to be LHAO. At least, Hawking makes his point about believing in a fine-tuned universe and multiverses.

 

[Polymath257]

To be honest, the false assumption of impartiality is precisely the concern. Of course sci

The presumption of impartiality is the problem. The assumption that the theory would be the same in another culture reflects the worldview of scientific materialism. The observations may be the same, but the conclusions are culturally mediated. Essentially, sexual selection profanes the sacred in nature, but a different way of viewing the same observations could preserve the sacred without limiting the technical utility.

If a different culture, or more specifically, a person in a different culture, wishes to give a different testable hypothesis, that is completely fair and reasonable.

I'm not sure why sex profanes anything. Or, for that matter, whey a scientific investigation should 'preserve the sacred'.

The presumption of impartiality isn't required. If another interpretation is produced that can be tested, it will be investigated also. In that case, a test that will distinguish the different interpretations is required for the test.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

That's not actually accurate in my opinion, because the entire universe is moving (expanding) and changing in volume continuously and the location of galaxies, superclusters etc. Is constantly shifting. A Heliocentric model is no better than a Galactic or Supergalactic, so why not use a geocentric frame of reference?

I don't know if you have any math knowledge or not -- but if use a geocentric model, in order to calculate a trajectory to any and every object in the entire universe with the single exception of the moon, you must invent increasingly complex, and untrue, trajectories for all of them. The old Ptolemaic view of our own solar system had to invent epi-cycles and epi-cycles on epi-cycles in order to predict where anything would be next year. In 10 years, it was hopeless. For our own solar system, the only thing that reduces the mathematical complexity resulting from the inventive but untrue "epi-epi-cycles" is putting the sun where it actually is -- at one the foci of the ellipse that the earth describes in its orbit.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Actually, we *did* evolve from apes. The most recent common ancestor of humans and modern apes was also an ape (just not any of the modern ones).

More to the point: we *are* great apes biologically.

I hope (and think) that you realize I'm aware of that. But it's important to understand what we're talking about and sometimes the "words get in the way."

 

[james bond]

I wonder how many times you've been told this, and how many times you have consciously decided to ignore it? The Theory of Evolution DOES NOT SAY THAT WE EVOLVED FROM APES. It says that we, and chimpanzees share a common -- non-human, non-chimp -- ancestor, and that gorillas and chimps share a common -- non-gorilla and non-chimp -- ancestor, and that horses and jelly-fish likewise -- somewhere lost in the mists of time -- share a non-horse, non-jelly-fish ancestor.

Well, somebody is wrong here. I didn't mention ToE, but Darwin as a NATURALIST. He wasn't an evolutionist as we know today. BTW, do I detect some anger and frustration in your first sentence? I didn't mention creation at all ha ha.

 

[james bond]

I hope (and think) that you realize I'm aware of that. But it's important to understand what we're talking about and sometimes the "words get in the way."

LMAO.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

LMAO.

And a certain lack of subtlety born of malice, I guess.

You seem to have at least enough grasp of language to realize that words like "ape" can sometimes be too big for the sentence they're used in. Gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, Orangutans and humans are apes. One can always write a post of several hundred thousand words (a la Sartre's Being and Nothingess) but they would then have a tendency to be unread.

Why don't you reserve your scorn for when I'm actually wrong? I promise, you'll have lots of opportunity. I'm human (and an ape) too.

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

LMAO on this question from Stephen Hawking to Richard Dawkins in their conversation @3:22. First time I've seen this. Even Hawking appears to be LHAO. At least, Hawking makes his point about believing in a fine-tuned universe and multiverses.

You are grossly miss-stating what Hawking actually said in the video...