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-- the more religious you are, the less intelligent you are.
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Originally posted by Renegade Neitzsche said \"Good writers [...] prefer being understood to being admired\" and that's a maxim that you could probably benefit from understanding. Even if you are the most skilled writer on these boards, espousing the most enlightened philosophy this world has ever seen, all these fantastic metaphors and platitudes count for nothing if people don't know what the hell you're going on about.

exactly right. the whole role of academia is to put forward a world view, how things are, how they were, how they should/could be.. if youre unable to influence anybody coz youre rambling, then whats the point?

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Originally posted by Subey I'll edit it down so that Raistlin will understand it more clearly.

im not stupid, but i still have no idea what youre banging on about. renegade's posts are a whole lot more complicated yet infinitely easier to understand.

the philosphers have merely interpreted the world; the point is to change it -karl marx

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN im not stupid, but i still have no idea what youre banging on about. renegade's posts are a whole lot more complicated yet infinitely easier to understand. the philosphers have merely interpreted the world; the point is to change it -karl marx

I accept the criticisms. I am aware that the "style" of the presentation of my logic is *messy*. That within it I embbed other things which make it more difficult to comprehend.

Given the somewhat abraisiveness of that style the resistance it has received has been surprisingly pleasant

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade This, whether you want to call it something else or not, is the same denial of an anthropic espistemological foundation posited by Descartes about 500 years ago. While you'll be happy to know that Western Philosophy has never absolutely solved the ontological rift created by Descartes' bifurcation of body and mind, your qualms about the fallibility of the senses in determining the nature of the "noumenal world" are nothing new.

Ah XIlus tis you. (yes this is the last obvertly obnoxious tangent I will insert... I hope, explanation of such tangents is included later in this post )

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Originally posted by Renegade I'm not treating this an exercise in intellectual masturbation, trying to "win" the argument by trotting out everything I've very cleverly read until I've cornered your king (see, I actually understand your tangential metaphor this time )

Would you agree that there is a certain elegance to them that is not available without their use? I think your extension of the tangent illustrates this, that's part of why I use them, and I do realize that their success is based on the reader's knowledge of the tangential subject and that that limits their effectiveness and utility.

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Position with regards to what? Truth of what? When you post something like this can you please explain clearly and precisely what it is you're trying to say, so that poor students of "established wisdom" like me stand a chance of knowing what you're talking about?

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Originally posted by Renegade See, again, you're talking in esoteric riddles and I have no idea what you're trying to say. Not yet, but I hold out great hope.

I will try to be more clear now.

I will explain 2 foundations of my position, the first of which will which explain the method in my tangential madness.

1) I suspect you are aware of all the psychologists who give variations on the following:

"90% of all communication is subconscious". Where they refer to things like body language etc.

Having watched/participated in many debates I have come to believe that the subconscious is not limited to the conscious mind's conclusions. That the subconcious receives the information, analyzes it correctly, and then "recasts" it so that it doesn't damage the conscious mind's existing position. (the reason for this I will add at the end)

The method to my madness then. Is that up to this point in this thread, my primary desire wasn't to communicate my ideas to your conscious mind, but rather to communicate ideas to your subconscious.


2)
As for my own template for the holy grail of logic. It exists somewhere between the following two poles.

Pole 1: The Ancient parrable of the blind men and the Elephant as template to explain the various perceptions of reality.
and
Pole 2: The Movie Cube as a matching pair to the elephant parable.




Simple explanation of recasting
It's the best way of advancing knowledge.

If an atheist and an agnostic meet, and the atheist wins the argument then the next time they meet the agnostic cause will not have advanced.

Say atheist identifies Hole X in agnostics logic. During the actual argument the Agnostic will respond with a stop gap fix "that's not logical for reason Y". He will then return home and his subconscious mind will instruct him to "Fix that hole damnit". Once that hole is fixed then the research into agnostic logic will be stronger.

In effect the job of an atheist (substitute any perspective) is to improve his own perspective, and improve the perspective of others by finding holes for them. It may be war on the surface, but subconsiously its a mutually reinforcing team effort.

Objection: "But what about people who DO change their opinions"
Just enough do to make it not obvious. If no one ever changed their opinion this process would be too obvious. Instead the fact that most people don't allows us to ascribe other reasons "People are Republicans because their parents are". "Jimmy's a democrat because he's rebelling against his parents values" etc.

I hope that was more straightforward...

Ah, so I suppose you're trying to say that arguing is usually useless because when we present a hole in someone's logic, that person still clinges to the original idea and only tries to circumnavigate that hole, am I right?

Well, yea, that's largely the case, and that's not always a bad thing. Most researches are never absolutely correct in the beginning but often do have a general idea that's not wrong, so abandoning an idea should only be done after it becomes impossible or unreasonable to keep covering up those holes. In the beginning of the theory of evolution, although with its own faults, creationism still had some merit. Evolution, on the other hand, although promising, did have some holes. But as the time passed, especially with the development of genetics, evolution filled up most of those holes, while the theory of creationism started getting really big ones without being able to fix them. Ultimately most people did switch from believing creationism to believing in evolution. You can only clinge to an idea for as long as it does not portray itself to be a total nonsense. Smart people realized that. A few uneducated and fairly unintelligent people haven't, but hey, there will always be idiots around.

But you see, the thing with TvD is that he doesn't respond and fill the holes we mentioned. He just quiets down for 2 months and then presents the same argument we've found holes in 100 times before, and no, he does not have any better ways of covering up those holes than he had in our previous discussion about the same subject. And that's what makes it fun!

good post tito. The comments at the end were funny cuz they're so true!

tito sounding like kuhn and popper, fun stuff. I am curious which widely accepted beleifs are gonna be ran full of holes and abandoned in the future, wondering what incorrect beleifs are prevalant today. I am not so snobby to beleive that we do not have any, and it will be fun to see which people end up being wrong, muahahaha.

It is really funny how evolution debates spin off into talk about the rules of logic and the meaning of truth, and bias accusations. It is very fun reading to pass the hours by at work because there is no grunt scripting to be done at the moment while the new release is coming through.

So maybe back to the topic about religion making a berson less intelligent, that was the peice that had me interested. Does intelligence require secularity? I dont think so, although some religions seem to be conducive to making people ignorant of the world around them.

I would like to know more of the details about evolution theory, we have heard the basics so many times, the small details are where most of us seem to have problems I think. We see some feature about ourselves and have trouble comprehending how that feature could have possibly came to be through random mutation/natural selection cycles.

One example would be eyes, it is hard for lotsa people to understand how an eye could gradually develop all its intracate co-operating components over a large period of time, many would argue that something so specific could not be possible without intelligent design. I can imagine how to explain this one. Analogies in technology halp me come up with ways to explain it. Like an animal that had a cell that developed the ability to be sensitive to light. The light responsive creatures could avoid frying in the sun. After light sensing other capabilities could gradually develop to separate frequencies into colors, adjust for different brightness levels, much like cameras have evolved over time.

Those are the kind of explanations I find that I need in order to understand evolution. A big Christian apologetics guy calls it "The mouse trap problem" and explains it like this: You take some cheese, a block of wood, a spring, a hook, a smashing device, and a small metal rod, but those peices do not catch mice unless they are PUT TOGETHER. Evolution includes no explanation as to how the mouse trap is put together except to say that it exists because it fits with the environment. A mouse trap is completely useless before it is fully assembled, so how can it come to exist in its present working form by first spending an incredible amount of time surviving in a form that is completely useless and unfit for any purpose? Something that consists of intricate parts cooperating, much like a mouse trap, is hard to imagine developing gradually because people think that such things need to be put together and can't picture how they can be built out of random occurances filtered by natural selection.

That part of evolution theory is unclear to me, and most people that I know. People can imagine ways that such things could gradually develop but there really needs to be a generic explanation instead of supplying some fabricated story for how the system in question could have gradually developed.

I get over this by thinking of things like computers and cars and things like that, and how they didn't start in their complex forms that we see today, they too developed gradually. But the technology analogies cannot explain everything that has evolved, some things are hard to understand how they could be made possible by evolution.

I am not trying to say evolution is wrong, but I would like to understand this part of it better.

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Originally posted by Zombie0915 I would like to know more of the details about evolution theory, we have heard the basics so many times, the small details are where most of us seem to have problems I think. We see some feature about ourselves and have trouble comprehending how that feature could have possibly came to be through random mutation/natural selection cycles. One example would be eyes, it is hard for lotsa people to understand how an eye could gradually develop all its intracate co-operating components over a large period of time, many would argue that something so specific could not be possible without intelligent design. I can imagine how to explain this one. Analogies in technology halp me come up with ways to explain it. Like an animal that had a cell that developed the ability to be sensitive to light. The light responsive creatures could avoid frying in the sun. After light sensing other capabilities could gradually develop to separate frequencies into colors, adjust for different brightness levels, much like cameras have evolved over time. Those are the kind of explanations I find that I need in order to understand evolution. A big Christian apologetics guy calls it "The mouse trap problem" and explains it like this: You take some cheese, a block of wood, a spring, a hook, a smashing device, and a small metal rod, but those peices do not catch mice unless they are PUT TOGETHER. Evolution includes no explanation as to how the mouse trap is put together except to say that it exists because it fits with the environment. A mouse trap is completely useless before it is fully assembled, so how can it come to exist in its present working form by first spending an incredible amount of time surviving in a form that is completely useless and unfit for any purpose? Something that consists of intricate parts cooperating, much like a mouse trap, is hard to imagine developing gradually because people think that such things need to be put together and can't picture how they can be built out of random occurances filtered by natural selection. That part of evolution theory is unclear to me, and most people that I know. People can imagine ways that such things could gradually develop but there really needs to be a generic explanation instead of supplying some fabricated story for how the system in question could have gradually developed. I get over this by thinking of things like computers and cars and things like that, and how they didn't start in their complex forms that we see today, they too developed gradually. But the technology analogies cannot explain everything that has evolved, some things are hard to understand how they could be made possible by evolution. I am not trying to say evolution is wrong, but I would like to understand this part of it better.

Okay, first off I would probably direct you to a couple of websites. The first is www.talkorigins.org. There you can pretty much find any of the specifics you are looking for using their search engine. The second website I frequent often and is a pretty descent place to start off is www.evcforum.net. This is a forum website that again covers pretty much any given specific topic you can think of, including many religious topics as well.

The next thing I would ask is for you to go and actually read a book on evolution, and there's no better place to start than Darwin's Origin of Species. The next few books I would recommend would put you a little more up to date on the topic, considering back in Darwin's day there was no concept of genetics. The following books would catch you up well:

1. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
2. Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Dan Dennett
3. The Blind Watchmaker - Dawkins
4. Out of Eden - Dawkins
5. Tower of Babel - Robert Pennock
6. Finding Darwin's God - Ken Miller

Now a few of these pertain to the more recent flavor of evolution - Intelligent Design (ID). #3,5, and 6 address this issue directly.

The underlying problem with people understanding evolution is that on the surface is a relatively simple idea, but when diving into the details it becomes pretty damn complex. Of course this is no different than many other theories out there like, say, quantum theory. To complicate things further, religious folks have a tendency to take out these specifics and either completely take them out of context or completely misunderstand and on many occasions, deliberately outright distort the meaning of those specifics. Two examples you have brought up are classic examples.

The first one is the eye - and you are actually on the right path here a bit. Darwin actually addressed that himself with the succession of gradual steps involved:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB301.html

The second example relates to the first a bit, and that is the example of the "mousetrap" from your Christian apologist friend. This example's origins actually come from Michael Behe, a biochemist who wrote "Darwin's Black Box" in 1994 and cited this analogy in order to boost his idea of what is called, Irreducible Complexity (IC). Since then another guy named Dembski who holds a PhD in Mathmatics went further by supposedly trying to support this idea of IC as well as what he calls "Complex Specified Information" through bogus mathmatical formulas. One of his formulas that he champions is called the "Explanatory Filter" in which he uses NFL theorems (No Free Lunch) to supposedly demonstrate the presence of ID. However, it is clear from the getgo that he completely abused the NFL theorems in the first place, in which one of the authors of the theorems outright states this in the following essay:

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/jello.cfm

You can also read more about Dembski here:

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/dem_nfl.cfm#32

As well as within those websites I gave you above. But to return to the example of Behe's mousetrap, what IDers and creationists alike refuse to understand or want to comprehend is the fact that this analogy is flat out false to begin with in it's attempts to relate to evolutionary pathways. Take the eye, for example - just as you had stated a number of intermediary pathways involving the evolution of the eye to where we are today, this is what occurs in most evolutionary pathways as well - PROVIDED that the environment as a stressor requires such changes to take place (and thus are naturally selected). So the mousetrap itself, yes there are intricate parts inovolved and yes if you take one of those parts away, the entire mechanism would no longer function.

Well, does this by default without any evidence to demonstrate that it must therefore be the result of some Intelligent Designer? Why make such a fallacious assumption without ANY POSITIVE, VERIFIABLE EVIDENCE to support such a notion? In logic circles, that would be considered a false dichotomy.

But more importantly - the steps involved to get to what we observe today do not have to be, and in most cases are not sequential steps in which one step relies on the next. Indeed, many intermediate steps occur on the way that may certainly serve an alternative purpose other than the supposed "end goal" of what we observe today. The classic example is Behe's bacterial flagella. The type-3 export system protein is a good example:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_1.html

So don't think of evolution as merely one step following another to get to some end goal. This is the fallacious thought process of IDers and why they misunderstand evolution in general. Rather, it's more like a big bush where one step can move up, down, sideways, backways, etc. and MAY OR MAY NOT lead to another successive step, which in turn MAY OR MAY NOT lead to another successive step, and so on. Again, it all depends on the environment and the fitness of the population in question.

So to recap - there's a reason why IDers and creationists are full of shit - not only do they have no evidence to support their assertions, not only do they have fallacious arguments from incredulity, God of the Gaps, and False Dichotomy, but they also continuously attack via Straw Man by not understanding or blatantly distorting evolutionary mechanisms in the first place.

Again, I would suggest those websites and a coupla books to get you started if you're really interested.

HTH.



p.s. - On a personal note, Behe has since recanted many of his original ideas outlined in his book, and concedes evolutionary mechanisms taking place (though he still is a bit of a hardhead on a few issues). Dembski, OTOH, is an outright fucking asshole that refuses to answer direct criticisms of his bullshit work, and if he does so he does it in a very dishonest manner. If you're really interested in this, I'd direct you over to www.pandasthumb.net where they take Demski's bullshit on directly quite often.

whoa, a direct response!

I have lotsa time today, maybe I will read some stuff. I recognise the phrase "pandas thumb" from somewhere, don't remember where from though, maybe a philosophy class or somethin.

http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/icdmyst/ICDmyst.html
^^^^
that is friggin impressive, I find that evolution the way it has been tought to me never made that distinction that systems can have different purposes, things like that were left out of the teaching, those evolutionary mechanisms weren't all explained. The controversy over the idea proabaly forces them to leave out the important details like that, sigh. Anyway thanks for the links.

quote:

Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 But you see, the thing with TvD is that he doesn't respond and fill the holes we mentioned. He just quiets down for 2 months and then presents the same argument we've found holes in 100 times before, and no, he does not have any better ways of covering up those holes than he had in our previous discussion about the same subject. And that's what makes it fun!

But thats the thing. These arguments span generations. New hole fixes may not be found ever, or they may take many years.

The question really is "Is there empirical evidence of God?"

The Universe and Life are both *amazing enough* that we realize that they are the best places to look for this evidence.

So this is where we concentrate our thought wars. Different sides concentrating on a different permutation of what the blueprint of reality might be.

quote:

Originally posted by Subey But thats the thing. These arguments span generations. New hole fixes may not be found ever, or they may take many years. The question really is "Is there empirical evidence of God?" The Universe and Life are both *amazing enough* that we realize that they are the best places to look for this evidence. So this is where we concentrate our thought wars. Different sides concentrating on a different permutation of what the blueprint of reality might be.

Well, yeah but the discussion here isn't about the very existance of a god, it is about a rather radical and peculiar theory of creationism. Now ultimately, yes, god could have made a great hoax and made it look like evolution existed while infact it was him who created everything in 7 days as the bible says, but that's not what TvD says. His argument is that god did not play that hoax and that he did not skew the laws of physics and planted fake evidence. But in that case the findings of creationism simply don't add up.

quote:

Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Well, yeah but the discussion here isn't about the very existance of a god, it is about a rather radical and peculiar theory of creationism. Now ultimately, yes, god could have made a great hoax and made it look like evolution existed while infact it was him who created everything in 7 days as the bible says, but that's not what TvD says. His argument is that god did not play that hoax and that he did not skew the laws of physics and planted fake evidence. But in that case the findings of creationism simply don't add up.

I agree with your analysis of his position. I guess I'm trying to say is that in order to understand that position we have to see it as a permutation.

I'll Make a graphic to illustrate. Excuse my lack of skill with Corel.


The graphic shows the 4 major interpretations of the bible. The point is that there is at least 1 million people who beleive any one of them.

TvD is permutation 4. It shows that the basis of the human beleif/perception system isn't logic to find truth, but logic to support a permutation.

Well, I leave for 9 months and nothing has changed. Creationism and Evolutionism. God or no. We should just have an uber thread called the GOD THREAD or even a religion sub-board underneath politics.

The Four Threads:
Religion
Bush/America sucks
Isreal and Palestine
Everything else - which will be empty

It is good to be back.

Continue please. Here is more fuel for the fire, God rules!!!!!!!!

quote:

Originally posted by Reverend_Trance Well, I leave for 9 months and nothing has changed. Creationism and Evolutionism. God or no. We should just have an uber thread called the GOD THREAD or even a religion sub-board underneath politics. The Four Threads: Religion Bush/America sucks Isreal and Palestine Everything else - which will be empty It is good to be back. Continue please. Here is more fuel for the fire, God rules!!!!!!!!

Haha, welcome back

quote:

Originally posted by Reverend_Trance Well, I leave for 9 months and nothing has changed. Creationism and Evolutionism. God or no. We should just have an uber thread called the GOD THREAD or even a religion sub-board underneath politics. The Four Threads: Religion Bush/America sucks Isreal and Palestine Everything else - which will be empty It is good to be back. Continue please. Here is more fuel for the fire, God rules!!!!!!!!

Yeah but this time we have nice diagrams of our positions.

See evolutionary design does exist!

quote:

Originally posted by Spacey Orange let me tell yall a story. there are two guys in heap load of shit. one guy starts to pray. the other guy tries to resolve the problem. not good enough? i have another. two families have kids deadly sick. one family takes the kid to the hospital. well, you know what the other does. can you conclude something from this?

WOW look at my post of Aug-24-2005 22:52.

--August 29, 2005. Hurricane Katrina, makes landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana.

--September 16, 2005. Bush has National Day of Prayer for the hurricane survivors and deceased.

isn't there shit to? what the hell does praying do? prayers will not quench thirsts, put roofs over the heads of many, or create jobs, repair infrastructure.


**shakes head**

quote:

Originally posted by Spacey Orange WOW look at my post of Aug-24-2005 22:52. --August 29, 2005. Hurricane Katrina, makes landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana. --September 16, 2005. Bush has National Day of Prayer for the hurricane survivors and deceased. isn't there shit to? what the hell does praying do? prayers will not quench thirsts, put roofs over the heads of many, or create jobs, repair infrastructure. **shakes head**

usually in time of depression and need, people turn to a higher power. Everything in there lives is wrecked or destroyed. Throughout history, during times of trouble, people tun to a higher power of guidance.
The Black Death
Solar Eclipses in primitive societies
The American Civil War - The Second Great Awakening

People try to find comfort so they turn to a higher power for hope. It does not seem logical but it happens repeatedly.

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