Fun Stuff > BAND
Folk Music and the Environment
John Curtin:
Sadly, a lot of the ID folks haven't even read the Book of British Birds.
Jackie Blue:
Just because I'm bashing Dawkins-style atheism is no reason to think I'm some kind of super-religious Christian, or even a Christian at all in any significant sense.
So let's leave Intelligent Design out of it.
Nodaisho:
--- Quote from: Kid van Pervert on 25 Jan 2008, 18:02 ---Evolution isn't linear. There isn't a "goal", and there isn't a progression, as in, humanity isn't the sum total of evolution up to this point, all the things that came before us weren't trial runs and everything that will come after us won't necessarily be an improvement over what exists now. We were one organism amongst many millions who just happened to have evolved to have larger and more complex brains that give us an astounding advantage over all other life on Earth. One of the common misconceptions about Natural Selection is that only beneficial traits are passed on genetically. Any trait can be passed on so long as it doesn't directly interfere with the survival of the organism. And even then, things like autism and hemophilia continue to exist, because they don't outright kill you and in some cases they "skip generations". Talk of a "homo superior" or other such concept that we will eventually ascend to through evolution is science fiction, if not fantasy. We won't naturally shed all of our ugly habits over time.
As for cultural / scientific evolution, there is a threshold. It's intimidating to think about the rate of discovery over time, but the talk always assumes that trends will stay constant. My wager is that for the most part things will stay mostly the same for a long time. We have to remember that 50 years ago learned people honestly believed that by now we could be living on other planets, free of all communicable diseases and driving clean, flying cars, due to technological possibilities that seemed limitless. Chances are there will be gains, but they will be comparitively modest.
--- End quote ---
And about twenty years before then, they thought that it was impossible to ever get to the moon.
And not that I am not speaking about any time that any of us will see, just that at some point in time, millions or billions of years from now, if we do not destroy our civilizations, we could do things that seem impossible to the average person these days. Even five hundred years ago, someone would have thought things impossible that these days we take for granted. How long did it take columbus to cross the ocean again? Compared to the length of flights across continents now?
How long has the universe existed? Doesn't it seem somewhat arrogant to assume that in our meager time on this planet, we have become as advanced as anything else has?
And Intelligent Design? Seems like the most intelligent way to design something is so that it continues creating and changing itself. Unless it is a robot that you are giving control of all your weaponry, in which case you are being really fucking stupid.
KvP:
--- Quote from: zerodrone on 25 Jan 2008, 18:07 ---Lacking evidence of something is not enough for me to say that I believe it doesn't exist. I don't believe negatives. Just because I don't believe in invisible unicorns doesn't mean I believe there are no such things.
--- End quote ---
I can't really show that there is or is not a tea kettle orbiting Jupiter, but I'm not agnostic about it.
--- Quote from: zerodrone on 25 Jan 2008, 18:07 ---Dawkins and many atheists are provably ignorant of theologians that define God in completely different terms entirely.
--- End quote ---
I don't think they care about those theists that aren't contained within a very specific yet very large set that believes there is a omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omniscient cloud being who has been and is active in the events of the world and a 2,000 year old novel is both his word and the only reference point for making sense of the modern world and its problems. Anyone else, say, a theist who believes that God is merely the energy created by all the hugs in the world, is beneath notice. They don't present anything worth addressing. If Jesus was just an anarchistic, crazy guru who presented ideas already presented elsewhere in the world, there's no good reason to fixate upon him.
I'll have to read and respond to that SA article a bit later, I have a party to attend presently. I look forward to it, though. Both the party and the article.
Jackie Blue:
Not the SA article, Kid, I was referring to the lengthy criticism of Dawkins' The God Delusion.
Here is a link to it again so you don't have to look for it.
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