So, what's the general consensus here on evolution?

[Snusdog]

Guys sorry for being a bit testy.............it has nothing to do with this thread or its topic...............just a long day.

I apologies.

I do tend to use language precisely.................but I do a great deal of writing in the field of philosophical Hermeneutics ..........precision is required.


That said, my point wasn't to berate anyone. Rather it was to broaden the discussion by driving it back to its essential assumptions and then asking- if these assumptions are true would they not destroy the possibility of theories or evidence or scientific tests.

Such then leads us to ask what must be the case (what must the nature of reality be like) in order for theories, evidence, and scientific tests to be even possible.

Step three then is to rebuild our position in a self conscious and consistent manner in light of these basic necessities.

Otherwise we fall prey to the fictive view of science and to modern pluralism (which is little more than radical skepticism dressed in congeniality)

Again my apology

Peace

[danielan]

Armed with this information, Jenner experimented by infecting an 8-year-old boy with cowpox and then exposing him to smallpox.

A true humanitarian.

[texasmade]

Lets all do a group excericise.


(I'm not sure what this has to do with evolution but I'm posting it anyways)


when it gets to be night time lay there in total darkness and think about dying, the feeling and what comes after if anything

think of what you have accomplished in your life

then compare it to the things numerous accomplishments that many great people have come to have

and think about how they are no longer here to see the fruits of their actions

then think bigger, think about the sheer size and vastness of the universe compared to your city
or your state that you hold to be large

think of how insignifacnt you and your effect is on the grand scale of everything

then think about everything you do

every breath you take

everytime your heart beats

the numerous processes that happen within your body to make those things possible

think of the feeling of your bed, sheets, and covers

the feeling you get from the tips of your fingers

imagine each individual cell

scraping across the surface

think smaller

of the components

the very things that make up the things that make you

and the profound effect they have on everything we know

think about how something so small can have such a huge effect on everything in existence

and then notice how it goes unrecognized by the masses

[LaZeR]

Tex. You just made me come without touching myself after that eloquent speech.

[Snusdog]

I also think one should know and consider one's audience. Examining the foundations, contingencies, and contradictions of the bulk of human philosophical explorations can be illuminating and endlessly challenging for those so inclined but is unlikely to bear anything but acrimonious fruit within a lay forum allegedly devoted to the simple joys of snus and tobacco.

I agree and the mistake was mine.

At the same time, I think we as a society as a whole need to raise the bar a bit. Not everyone needs to be a philosopher nor should they be. However there needs to be an awareness that our ideas have a genealogy. They have implications. They presuppose certain possibilities and exclude others.

The creationist never guesses that he assumes the same basic nature of reality as the evolutionist (but damn if he does not need to). If he ever proves his case, the God he seeks to defend would cease to be.

The evolutionist never guesses that his basic assumptions about the nature of reality will ultimately not only refute the theory of evolution but make all theories meaningless (or better fictional accounts of reality that are no more informative than stories about Thor or Zeus)-- but damn if they don't need to.

When we began I was chided as being full of crap.

Now this forum knows that very smart people are writing serious works on the fictive nature of science. These works have as their starting point the very nature of reality being assumed by both creationist and evolutionist

Derrida says we can't know anything. There are no stable texts, there is no language (no real world reference to which language points and nothing definite about which language speaks). His view is what it is because he starts with the very nature of reality being assumed by both creationist and evolutionist.

You may not be a philosopher but damn if you don't need to know this.

So let modern man argue consistently for his view of individuality and he will fall prey to randomness and ultimate nihilism

Let the evolutionist argue consistently for his view of the basis of laws, mathematical statistics, and evidence-- and he will fall prey to rationalism and nihilism

Let the creationist keep his mouth shut and try to learn something.

But let the Christian argue consistently form the vantage point of the triune God of Scripture (not some generic concept of god)-- and he will find that the Christ of Scripture is the savior of both the possibility of science as well as of the scientist himself.

For the record I come down firmly on the side of Kant's injunction to burn all books on metaphysics. His mistake was not including "A Critique of Pure Reason" in the bonfire. But that's just me. I could be wrong. Heh.

Beautiful and spot on

[justintempler]

Are the facts of existence determined by a set of laws, such as causation? In this view the Universe is rational (regardless of where you locate the origin or source of that rationality). In this case you would trace the whole of western thought back to Plato

Or

Are the facts of existence the product of chance? Here there is no overriding deontic necessity (i.e. no system of natural laws that determine what will happen next and what in all likelihood happened before), no intelligent design, or plan of God. The universe is random (thus randomly generated factuality). In this case you would trace the whole of western thought back to Aristotle.

You are creating a false dichotomy.
You don't have to choose causation or chance, You can have causation and chance.

Rationality is a product of the human mind. Cause and effect happen whether or not someone exists to observe it. The universe was here long before the existence of man. Laws of nature are descriptive, they are tools humans developed to understand their enviornment. We are a product of the universe, the universe is not a product of us. Religions mix up cause and effect and try to say that the universe was designed for man.

Chance and randomness do not negate the laws of nature.

The chances of you existing:
If you go back 10 generations (250 years) the chance of you being born at all is at most 1 divided by 6 x 10100 or
1 in 60000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000.
In gambling, even a chance of 1 to 100 is not worth a gamble.
Are you ever lucky to be alive!!
If you go back 1 million years or 40 000 generations (each generation is considered 25 years), your chance of being born is at most 1 in 1.8 x 10403167 or
18 with 403,166 zeros after the 1.
In other words your chances of existing is essentially zilch, even if we were considering this possibility only a short 250 years ago.
Right now you do exist, so the actual chance is 100%, but the predicted likelihood in the past of you being born would be essentially zero.
The calculations of these numbers (calculations shown below) tend to overestimate your chances of being.
They only include numbers based on your father's contribution, his father's contribution, his father contribution, and so on. In other words the calculations are based only on the direct male line.
They do NOT include the following factors that would make the chances of your existence even less:
- your mother's contribution
- the men and women that died in war, famine, disease without or with fewer offspring-- in some generations 50% of humanity.
- the men and women that died from natural causes.
- children that died before reaching the age of reproduction.
- fetuses and fertilized eggs that died and were naturally aborted.
You are the result of many generations of survivors. One of the people that died prematurely could have been your Dad or your Dad's Dad and so on. Somehow, none of your forefathers died before passing on his genes to the next man in your lineage. Because of the deaths mentioned most human lineages died out, while luckily yours survived. Lo and behold, here you are!
Because of these deaths, your odds of existing were actually much less than the odds given below.

I left the math out to save space, it can be found here:
http://members.shaw.ca/tfrisen/chanc...u_existing.htm

You are alive, you are the result of random chance
and yet
You are still the product of cause and effect.

[Snusdog]

You are creating a false dichotomy.
You don't have to choose causation or chance, You can have causation and chance.

It is not a false dichotomy if the options are mutually exclusive. That would be an actual dichotomy. Law derived factuality says that facts are determined by something. A randomly derived factuality says that facts are not determined by anything. You can’t have factuality that is both determined by something and nothing

That said, I don’t argue that the major schools of thought in the last 300 years have assumes both chance and law (they must just simply to get on). My point is can they account for the mutual correspondence between the two? Mind you this is THE unanswered question that has defined and still defines all western thought. If you have got the answer……………then you need to write a book……………… I will write the forward and be your editing secretary and we will both be very very very rich……………..It will be THE BOOK of ALL western philosophy.

Rationality is a product of the human mind. Cause and effect happen whether or not someone exists to observe it.

Notice the flip flop. You begin with rationality as subjective (this is pure Kant and resulted in the now famous Kantian wall- our mind/reason fashions the categories by which we encounter reality. Therefore, we can never get outside those categories to observe the real world…………….. skip forward 200 years and you have the fictive view of science ).

But then you tell us cause and effect (the very heart of rationality) is purely objective and happens whether or not we observe it.

These two views are mutually exclusive.

The universe was here long before the existence of man. Laws of nature are descriptive, they are tools humans developed to understand their environment.

Again how you qualify “descriptive” and “human tool” will determine whether this is fictive (a mere story we tell to help us manipulate the natural world to our own end….or…..truths about reality as it is)

Religions mix up cause and effect and try to say that the universe was designed for man.

From what I understand religion says that the universe was created for the glory of God. It is fundamentally theocentric and not anthropocentric. On the other hand I find that it is modern man who has made the whole of life about the individual’s choice

Chance and randomness do not negate the laws of nature.

Again 5000 years of very smart men await your explanation. Just simply saying it don’t make it so


Now what’s all this talk about my being born:

can you point out the randomness? I don’t see it. We cannot assume that the odds of something happening means by default it happens randomly. You have conflated odds (or the colloquial term chance) with the notion of randomness. But this conflation is merely a product of imprecise language. It is apparent but not actual.

Statistics assume measurable causation. That is how they are able to tell us the likelihood of one thing occurring over another. Measurable causation is not random. Random says we can’t say if or when it will happen at all.

In the same way, a slight degree of probability does not speak to randomness but rather to the complexity of factors involved in the occurrence.

Consider the Chaos Theory of Math- it assumes a deterministic system (hyper rationalism) which due to the complexity of the factors involved is yet unpredictable. The point is that what appears random is in fact right the opposite- a highly complex rational system.

Thus far from demonstrating the point you intended your example simply says that some things don’t happen as often as others but because they are not random we can measure their likelihood to a fair degree of certainty.

Notice then where we are heading……………….let the evolutionist argue consistently form his basis of laws and math— and he will end up in rationalism and nihilsm……………………..exactly where Chaos theory has taken us. Nothing is random. It is all determined. However, it is just too complex for you to measure.

Back peddle….. flee determinism…….. and you will fall head long into randomness and nihilism.

You cannot hold these two together. It will be like a seesaw. The moment you lay hold of one side the other will fly up. Try rectifying it and the previous side goes up.

[justintempler]

Nothing is random. It is all determined. However, it is just too complex for you to measure.

Back peddle….. flee determinism…….. and you will fall head long into randomness and nihilism.

Detrminism ? Try and explain how that avoids nihilism. All the choices you will ever make have already been determined ahead of time. Nothing you ever do in life matters because it's already been determined? How is that not nihlistic?

[bipolarbear1968]

My actions and statements make it abundantly clear that I do not believe in a creator

All I can say is If you don't believe in God, you better be right.

[justintempler]

All I can say is If you don't believe in God, you better be right.

Pascal's wager is so lame. You have the exact same problem as the non-believer if you believe in the wrong god. How do you know your god is the correct one? You better try all the other religions just to be sure, your eternal soul depends on it. LOL.

[tom502]

I agree with Rael. If you want to know the origins of Earth life, and everthing, you should read his books.

[bipolarbear1968]

How do you know your god is the correct one?

I could never prove to you that "my" God is the correct one, but I'd bet my life on it.

[Snusdog]

Detrminism ? Try and explain how that avoids nihilism. All the choices you will ever make have already been determined ahead of time. Nothing you ever do in life matters because it's already been determined? How is that not nihlistic?

No I agree....that was my point.............. determinism is nihilistic

But so too is randomness

the doom of philosophy is that it has sought to counter the nihilism of one with the nihilism of the other.

It will inevitably hold to one while covertly assuming the other. But when one asks "how do these work together" the entire project crashes down.

It is for this very reason that Western philosophy, post-Kant, no longer does metaphysics. Their focus is on the language we use to talk about philosophy (linguistic turn). Yet as Wittgenstein found-- metaphysics is nonetheless assumed and nonetheless dictates the perimeters available to any school of thought. We have simply become unreflective in our most basic assumptions

[BHMitchell]

I love this post. Glad to see sensible, rational people around. I am an avid and outspoken atheist (I won't cause a problem here, I promise). The support and proof for evolution is just too much to deny. It can be easily witnessed on a micro level watching colonies of bacteria. If anyone is interested read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins, and check out Climbing Mount Improbable on youtube. Both are excellent resources for evolution and irreducible complexity information. . .

P.S. I hate the descent from monkies argument as well. If we are evolved monkies, there wouldn't be any today...we shared a common ancestor. It's not that I am offended to hear we came from monkies, just isn't correct biologically.

[tom502]

Humans are hybrids from ETs.