What you're doing is showing your faithiesm

of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.

francis collins human genome project

The difference between everything you mentioned and God as a concept is that the idea of God has explanatory power. The question of whether the Universe had intelligent causation is a valid question, and from what we know (that space time energy and matter had a finite beginning), the cause of the Universe would be immaterial, spaceless, timeless and transcendent. These perfectly describe attributes of an all powerful God. We also have evidence of design in the Universe and the fine tuning of physical laws. So, to rule God out as an explanation is simply ignorant. Between evolution and special creation, you have virtually exausted the possibilities of how life came to exist.



>> ^Drachen_Jager:
>> ^Morganth:
No, this just illustrates that you do not understand. If there is a god who created the universe, why then would he have to be wholly provable from inside of it? You're actually having to make a number of assumptions about the nature of god to make your claim.
If there is a creator god, we would not relate to him in the way that Hamlet relates to a character in another act of the play, but rather in the way that Hamlet relates to Shakespeare. He could not find him in the highest tower or prove that Shakespeare exists in the lab. Really, the only way Hamlet could ever know that Shakespeare exists is if Shakespeare writes something about himself into the play.
Seriously dude? Hamlet? That's not a person. He's a character in a play, your analogy is utterly useless other than to confuse the gullible.
I make no assumptions about the nature of God, you are the one who makes assumptions about the nature of God. You HAVE to make assumptions about the nature of God to make your argument work. I'm saying there is no God, so there are no necessary assumptions about his nature, since he doesn't HAVE a nature.
There is an infinitum of proposals you cannot prove to be true or false. Unicorns, wizards and dragons ruled the earth 2000 years ago. The Flying Spaghetti Monster created God. All the matching pairs of socks that go missing are stolen by sock-goblins. The proposal that God exists is, therefore only one in an infinity of unprovable junk. Unless you are prepared to believe that UFOs abduct people and mutilate cows and every other stupid theory people throw out there, you have no reason to believe the Universe was created by some kind of sentient being. One is just as likely as the other. If we believed in unprovable junk we'd never get anything done, the scientists would all be bogged down in nonsense and we wouldn't have iPods and personal computers. We'd still be banging rocks together.

@kceaton1

I wholly agree that I detest these once atheists that have literally taken what is normally a balanced "naught" position as to God(s) existence barring evidence and instead these anti-theists ditch that stance and deem that not only is all religion a wash, but any God is as well. They're very "militant" in nature and seem to draw in those that are less secure about their own opinions; kind of like the Westboro Baptists. Unfortunately, they are also very pro-active, boisterous, and vitriolic in nature--worse of all they call themselves atheists still, giving the rest of us a bad rap.

And they're everywhere. The only place that I can go and say anything about Christianity without being ridiculed is a Christian forum. This goes from the obvious places like atheist forums, to a place like this, to even the comments section on CNN.com. Antitheists seem to outnumber thoughtful atheists at least 100-1.

Some of them though are just plain tired of the charades they have had to play with men they worked with, people they once respected--but, those same people might as well put their workmate, friend, and neighbors into brutal conditions for a simple principle held: atheism. It's happened before, not as ruthless as it may have been in the earlier centuries, but black listing someone in a community can happen. I've seen it happen innumerable times first hand! I can't blame some for their outrage and pointed damnation they hold for others; it was created by those that may complain that the volume and acidity of their words may be too strong--or too true.

Some have been mistreated, and some are just on the hate bandwagon because they are angry, insecure people who scapegoat religion for the evil in the world. Much like an anarchist blames all the evil in the world on governments.

Of course religion has it's share of idiots as well. They are almost always the fundamentalists, like the Westboro clan. Papa (George H. W.) Bush once said that atheists should have no rights in the U.S.--if he had his way--they would not be citizens nor would they be patriots. Because, this is a nation "under God"--atleast after that was added. Maybe Papa Bush didn't know that historical part. Religion also has a grand stand in politics and the media. That is yet another thing that must be remembered is that when an anti-theist does speak it will outrage the religious; but, atheists, anti-theists (even Jews, Muslims, Hindu, Buddhism, etc...), endure the endless exposure and should be expected to remain quiet... Fox News is the epitome of which I speak as it is nothing more than a pulpit for the rich, white, Christian, American, white collar worker.

Stupidity, of course, is not exclusive to any particular group of people, but is common to all of them.

But, there is one more consideration that HAS to be mentioned. As this point gets me to go after religious people all the time. If this makes me anti-theist, because I voiced a concern over what is being said--then anti-theism is far more wide-spread and has NOTHING to do with atheism. I do think this may be a common misconception from just my general experiences on the messageboards, here and elsewhere.

The problem is: Science!

This is especially true for all of the fundamental type religions. They all have a huge laundry list of minor science flaws to HUGE science flaws. Fundamentalism Christianity in the U.S. tends to take the lead in this war of fact versus opinion. There are plenty of fully qualified scientists out there that are religious, but ones that tend to go against the full body of evidence and scientific community to prove a religious claim tend to be "not fully qualified". They tend to use full scientific data and factual evidence to create a new theor...I mean hypothesis (many will try to use "theory", but their reason for their arrival at the new understanding tends to have no basis) and inject a very large amount of opinion, sprinkled with some facts. One such example is the red-shift video provided above by @shinyblurry .

The video I posted does have a basis, the phenomena was legitimately observed:

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606294

Obviously it isn't conclusive, but it definitely has merit and should be explored rather than dismissed. I would really like to know the difference between something like this and the pure speculation accepted as fact in big bang cosmology, such as the existence of dark matter and dark energy. They are little more than fudge factors, as well as cosmic inflation, to account for the glaring holes that don't fit observation. That isn't science, but you excuse it because..?

Science can become a VERY heated area of topic when it comes to religion. This begins when a religion: tries to debunk a theory or a part of it, to commandeer a theory and direct a new conclusion to fit an already preconceived destination which has not been peer-reviewed or tested, repeating scientific theories in religious pamphlets or media while purposefully undermining the theory by not presenting in full and correct context or actually printing falsehoods, lying about the nature of scientific testing, repetitiously incorrectly stating current stances on various theories (like radio-carbon dating, etc...), attempts by any churches through the state to eliminate the teaching of branches of science--especially ones that have been tested so much that have attained the rank of THEORY (Evolution, etc...), again the use of lying in media against science--this has reached every facet of media-large and small.

Here's the problem with the so called theory of evolution. What Darwin observed was microevolution, not macroevolution. He observed that species will adapt to their environments. That is scientific fact, and a great discovery. What he did from there is speculate that because species adapt to their environments, that those adaptations would lead to new species, and therefore, that all life has a common ancestor. Since it wasn't something that could be observed, what was supposed to prove his theory would be evidence from the fossil record. There was only one problem with that:

innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? ..why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?

Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory.

Charles Darwin
Origin of the Species

The total lack of transitional fossils was a complete embarrassment to Darwin. The excuse made was that because the record was so poor, more time was needed to unearth the fossils. Here we are 150 years later, and those transitional forms have failed to materialize. The fossil record is composed mainly of gaps. It also defies all the predictions of gradualism. All the major body types appeared suddenly in the Cambrian explosion without any discernable evolutionary history, and they appeared highly diversified. All the major phyla, classes, orders etc were there at the beginning. Species appear suddenly in stasis and leave just as suddenly. Macroevolution is not science, it has never been observed nor can it be tested. It is a just-so story which does not fit observation.

Christians don't have a problem with science, they have a problem with what isn't science. Macroevolution was a giant leap made by Darwin for which there was no evidence, and the fossil record does not match the predictions of the theory. Because of this, evolutionists have moved away from the fossil record and have used other lines of evidences to prove macroevolution, like common genetics in our DNA. The problem with that is, common genetics also indicates a common designer, and is better indicated by it actually, because of the mosaic pattern we observe in the genome.

I'm sure there are more. History has been a great use to show us what religion WILL do to science, even though all that is being shown is the truth. It truly is a dangerous weapon. If you can't except truth what hope do we have for you. Yes you can be a good person, but somehow you're flawed, unable to except reality.

Historically the church supported scientific inquiry. Science got its start in Christian Europe, and many of the greatest scientists were devout Christians.

When I was a believer (no matter what @shinyblurry says I was; I was Mormon and shiny seems to believe that his religious path is of course a T3 hard-line; were as Mormons just get the basic 56k dial-up...) I FELT the presence of God, or more accurately The Holy Ghost. I had no problem believing in everything science told me when I was religious. I knew it was the truth and I knew that God would not want me to ignore the grand insights into the workings of his masterpiece. I could feel in my soul, the first year I had physics, that something profound had just happened. I had found something I had been searching for my whole life. I felt connected to everything. I began to dismiss those that were religious around me and disliked evolution--to me evolution was so simple and yet such a wondrous way to create the most complex of things from literally the simplest. A literal masterpiece. So I do know that some can believe all that science says, but it's very hard in Christianity.

There are two kingdoms in this world, the kingdom of darkness and the Kingdom of Heaven, and they are both supernatural kingdoms. You can get a supernatural experience in a false religion, but it is just a corrupt copy of the real thing. Were you feeling a burning sensation in your chest? What you were feeling wasn't the Holy Spirit, or the presence of God, but the false spirit that pervades the mormon church. The presence of God is something that goes beyond feelings and sensations. This is how people get duped into false religions, because they get a spiritual experience from a false spirit.

I grew up secular, and when I became a Christian I was more than willing to accept the conclusions of science. I had believed them all my life because they had been taught to me as factual. I was even willing to intergrate them into my faith. It was only after investigating these things that I found, to my shock, that there wasn't any actual evidence for these things, and that they were neither testable or observerd. I changed my mind based on my investigation of the facts and not because of any religious duty. I would still believe it if I thought there was convincing evidence, but it isn't there.

Since you're scientifically minded, let me give you a challenge. You appear to be quite confident that evolution is proven true, so if that is the case, see if you can refute the arguments in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0890510628/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

So I hope I made a point with this. Anti-theism comes from quite a few directions. The most usual and common sight is that you'll see between someone defending scientific theories, while the less common will be those that have been directly burned by the religious community they most likely once belonged to. The last is of course what was brought up in earlier posts: atheists who turn into anti-theists. They tend to be the kind that will assert that religion is evil no matter how small or insignificant it may play a role in someones life.

It's because they have no idea how much of western civilization is built upon Christian principles and philosophy. What they need to do is educate themselves:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-that-Made-Your-World/dp/1595553223

In the end most atheists boil down to this:

Stephen speaking to a religious friend...
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

~Stephen Roberts

@bobknight33

Yeah, things might be getting worse in some ways, but I'd say the top 1/3 of contributors to society will still be getting cool new technology every year.

I'm looking forward to the iPhone 7 or something with a flexible display that can fold out to the size of an iPad. Also, sequencing our genomes will start to become practical for normal consumers in a few years, so we can expect better health outcomes and even better medical tech after that.

People without good critical thinking skills can be misled to do stupid and harmful things (like voting for prop . Faith is synonymous with lack of critical thinking. Faith is a problem no matter how benign some of its practitioners currently are because they can more easily be misled by clergy, politicians, and hucksters.

Stupid people do stupid things, whether they are theists or atheists. Faith has nothing to do with it, and your idea that believing in a higher power is a suspension of critical thinking shows that you are intellectually satisfied with a stereotypical and superficial analysis, which itself shows a lack of critical thinking.

With over 90 percent of the world having some kind of faith in a higher power, and 93 percent of this country, you must think you're pretty darn special, considering that you must believe that the vast majority of people on this planet, and those who came before them, are inferior to you. Yet, you have more faith than anyone else. Here is a smart person to tell you about it:

atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.

francis collins human genome project

Christian theology is bullshit because the problem of evil is insurmountable.

You apparently don't know the difference between the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil. They are separate issues.



Malaria was not created by free will. If there were a benevolent all-powerful creator, he would not have allowed Malaria to exist.

What about poisonous mushrooms? Should He allow those? Someone might eat one. Should He have allowed us to invent electricity, since people have been electrocuted? How about hang nails? Long lines at the grocery store?

Sin fucked up the world? Well, the creator would have had to create the magic that would cause the world to become fucked up when sin occurred. Malaria is necessary for the greater good?

Man screwed up the world. Sickness, disease and death are the consequences of sin entering into the world through man. None of it was necessary, but God is still capable of using it to achieve a greater good.

You just have a very imbalanced view here. You blame God for the bad but fail to notice the good. If there is anyone to blame for scourge of Malaria today, it is the apathy of human beings:

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/preventive-care/malaria-prevention.htm

That makes your supposed creator about as 'benevolent' as Hitler who thought gassing Jews was necessary for the greater good. The god of the old testament is a genocidal megalomaniac, exactly like Hitler.

Hitler didn't send his son to die on a cross for your sins. God has His hand extended to you to pull you out of the fire at any time, but it's on you to reach out for it.

>> ^jwray:

People without good critical thinking skills can be misled to do stupid and harmful things (like voting for prop . Faith is synonymous with lack of critical thinking. Faith is a problem no matter how benign some of its practitioners currently are because they can more easily be misled by clergy, politicians, and hucksters.
Christian theology is bullshit because the problem of evil is insurmountable.
Malaria was not created by free will. If there were a benevolent all-powerful creator, he would not have allowed Malaria to exist. Sin fucked up the world? Well, the creator would have had to create the magic that would cause the world to become fucked up when sin occurred. Malaria is necessary for the greater good? That makes your supposed creator about as 'benevolent' as Hitler who thought gassing Jews was necessary for the greater good. The god of the old testament is a genocidal megalomaniac, exactly like Hitler.
It is pretty fucked up to believe in / worship this bloodthirsty megalomaniac without any evidence that he even exists.
Yes, church gives you a sense of community. That's fine. I still even go to a church event once in a blue moon to catch up with some old friends from 10 years of attending the same small Sunday school classes. But for fuck's sake, there are other ways to meet people and serve your community than through glorifying a fictional genocidal tyrant who wouldn't even deserve it if the bible were true.

It's natural that atheists proselytize, because atheism is a religion:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6034949/Atheism-Is-Protected-As-a-Religion-says-Court-

It has its own creation story:

"Thus, a century ago, [it was] Darwinism against Christian orthodoxy. To-day the tables are turned. The modified, but still characteristically Darwinian theory has itself become an orthodoxy, preached by its adherents with religious fervour, and doubted, they feel, only by a few muddlers imperfect in scientific faith."

Grene, Marjorie [Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of California, Davis], "The Faith of Darwinism," Encounter, Vol. 74, November 1959, pp.48-56, p.49

with its own miracles:

"Time is, in fact, the hero of the plot... given so much time the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles."
George Wald, "The Origin of Life," Physics and Chemistry of Life, 1955, p. 12.

In which its adherants have total faith:

I have faith and belief myself... I believe that nothing beyond those natural laws is needed. I have no evidence for this. It is simply what I have faith in and what I believe.

Isaac Asimov
Counting the Eons P.10

I do not want to believe in God, therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible: spontaneous generation arising to evolution

George Wald - Harvard Professor
Nobel Laureate

They believe it even in the face of contradicting evidence

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.

Francis Crick Nobel Laureate
What Mad Pursuit p.138 1988

Much evidence can be adduced in favor of the Theory of Evolution from Biology, Biogeography, and Paleontology, but I still think that to the unprejudiced the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.

EJH Cornor, Cambridge
Contemporary Botanical Thought p.61

It provides a comprehensive belief system:

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideaology, a secular religion- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with its meaning and morality...

Michael Ruse Florida State University
National Post 5/13/00

Atheists know they are right no matter what:

No evidence would be sufficient to create a change in mind; that it is not a commitment to evidence, but a commitment to naturalism. ...Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it.

Steven Pinker MIT
How the mind works p.182

Even if they have to suppress the truth to prove it:

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Lewontin, Richard C. [Professor of Zoology and Biology, Harvard University], "Billions and Billions of Demons", Review of "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," by Carl Sagan, New York Review, January 9, 1997. (Emphasis in original)

"In fact the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won't fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling."

Erasmus Darwin, in a letter to his brother Charles, after reading his new book, "The Origin of Species," in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life of Charles Darwin," [1902], Senate: London, 1995, reprint, p215.

They are true believers:

of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.

francis collins human genome project

It won't be long before there are atheists churches and street preachers handing out tracks.

>> ^shinyblurry:

A mind created and designed it, therefore a mind is involved, therefore it is an invalid example..


So, by this argument, if we live in a deist universe, in which the universe was created but the creator pays it no mind, then abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection are completely plausible. That's an interesting position, it does not really help you here.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Abiogenesis is unproven because there is no evidence, it is just metaphysics. It's your faith that it is true. It is not the only coherent explanation, it is just the explanation that you have to believe because you have ruled out an intelligent designer apriori.

You seem to not understand the meaning of apriori. A few hundred years ago everybody in the western world, at least claimed to, believe the creation myth of genesis. We got to here from there, don't pretend your ideology has not had a chance, you were in charge of the game, we called your bluff, you just had nothing in your hand, you still don't.

Evolving molecules exist, they came into being at some point after it was possible for them to exist in this universe. The only non-magic hypotheses we have are based on a naturalistic model where these molecules are generated by a series of non-evolving processes. The gaps in the chemical record are very much like the gaps in the fossil record used to be, we have not filled them all, but neither have we found one that can not be crossed, and no reason to think they will not be filled.

>> ^shinyblurry:
Here is the hypothesis


The ID position is stated there in four parts, the last three follow from common decent, and the first one is either false, like all Behe's examples, or undemonstrated. It is mathematically possible that there is irreducible complexity somewhere, just as with faeries and unicorns, absence of evidence is not evidence of existence.

All the Discovery Institute links were painful in their fail. DI is a propaganda organization, only one of their links discusses any scientific discovery, and it actually makes no ID claims. The rest of the articles either make no claim, or have been shown to be false. If Well's article is going to be your flagship falsifiable ID position, fine, but you should probably know it's already been falsified here .

>> ^shinyblurry:

There is obviously a concrete difference since life doesn't come from non-life, and has never once been observed doing so. You have everything in the world to prove here.

This is your premise, and your conclusion, draw the line, and I will show you something on either side that confounds your "distinction". If you can't define the problem, I can't show it's flaws. Refusing to define your terms may get you by in theology, we are talking chemistry here, chemistry does not "work in mysterious ways".

>> ^shinyblurry:

if our mental processes are just chemical reactions, then there is no reason to believe anything is true. If our mental states have their origin in non-rational causes, rationality can't be trusted. You can't know if the rationality we have from evolutionary processes is discerning the truth of the world or not.

Ontology can't help you here, gods, since the can intervene, make it more difficult to make truth claims, not easier.

>> ^shinyblurry:

The reason it is labeled magic is because there is no proof.

There is no proof of anything. There is evidence of RNA/DNA metabolism, there is evidence of general chemical probability, there is no evidence for irreducible complexity, or anticipatory design in any non lab built genome. You can scream about nonexistent, and unneeded proof all day, science follows the evidence.

hey look, there's one of my heroes

good point at 4:10... patenting genomic project info is a mess

>> ^chilaxe:

1. Fairness:
How many people do you know who follow the path I described? Even here in Silicon Valley, people like that are rare, so the world is basically just waiting for people like that to come along.
I doubt most people are genetically incapable of following that path, if that's what you're suggesting.

Genetics isn't the only thing you inherit from your parents. You also get citizenship in the country they live in, you get raised and educated in their social and economic class, and you might also be able to take advantage of their network of business contacts. And that's not even mentioning the potential differences in parenting techniques and lessons they impart.

When I say "you think life is fair", I'm mostly saying that you seem to think we all have the same paths in front of us to choose from. We don't.

I had a lot of opportunities available to me that other kids from my neighborhood didn't, not because I'd done anything to earn them, but because my parents were well off.

I had a lot fewer opportunities available to me than my classmates at school, not because I hadn't earned them, but because I wasn't the child of the owner of a multinational corporation.
>> ^chilaxe:
2. Racism:
You could call me an intelligencist if you'd like... I believe immigration slots should be given to that portion of poor people who can, regardless of ethnicity, be statistically shown to have good odds of doing well in the US, both regarding themselves and their children born here.
Remember that it's liberals who believe in institutionalizing racism. Here in California, liberals are fed up with Asians contributing so much to society, so liberals are currently seeking to restore racist discrimination against Asians in universities.
California outlawed such racism in 1996, so schools like UC Berkeley and UC Irvine are almost majority Asian. Personally, I like 21st century societies, so I think Asian studiousness is good.

There's a pretty big difference between having a debate over what the most fair (i.e. non-racist) admissions policy would be -- policies that promote racial diversity, or policies that discount race altogether -- and what you were talking about.

We can accurately predict that billions spent on trying to close the achievement gap will never succeed. We can accurately predict that hyper-liberal Berkeley will always have the highest crime rates in the San Francisco bay area regardless of legislative policy because it's sandwiched between Oakland and Richmond, which have collected genomes that are bad at complex society.

We can know that it was probably a mistake for liberals to import 80 million permanently poor people from other countries between 1970-2010.

In that short little quote you asserted:

1. Some races can't be educated, no matter how much money we spend trying to educate them
   
2. Some races will always commit lots of crimes, and no amount of policy change will stop it
   
3. Some races will be "permanently poor", and no amount of economic opportunity will change that
   

That's more or less the soul of the Jim Crow style of politics. There are good races, for whom higher education spending, and economic opportunity will work, and there are bad races, for whom such things are a waste. Therefore, the logic goes, smart policy would be to reserve that spending and those opportunities only for the good races, since they're the only ones who could ever make use of it.

Oh, and keep an eye on your valuables whenever one of those bad races comes by. You never know about those people.

You sure that all people in that kind of world can determine their ultimate fates, purely through their own individual choices? Hasn't that been disproven by history time and time again?
>> ^chilaxe:
3. Human rights:
Yes. People are free to work for anything they want.


Really, that's the only one? Rather than open that can of worms, I'll just follow through with my original line of thought -- that's a right you think everyone should have, right?

Why? Why not abolish such liberal ideas as "equal rights", and tailor our legal system to the findings of your studies?

#1, #2.

Netrunner said: "You seem to believe that all anyone needs to do to become a millionaire is a positive attitude and hard work."

Yes, that's definitely true for the majority of genomes in the US.

Step 1: Devote all waking hours to reading, working, and exercise. Do these things until you're smarter than everyone around you. Eschew meaningless experiential pursuits and don't get married until as late as possible.

Step 2: Profit.



#3 Netrunner said: "I didn't say people should lie."

Pronouncements that scientists should downplay, not publicize, or otherwise bias their results because we don't like those results (they "lend credence to racial stereotypes") has the final effect of countless liberal academics lying and using whatever means are at their disposal to force compliance.



#4 Netrunner said: "I'm sorta curious what you'd like to see people do differently as a result of those kinds of studies."

It's useful for predictions. We can accurately predict that billions spent on trying to close the achievement gap will never succeed. We can accurately predict that hyper-liberal Berkeley will always have the highest crime rates in the San Francisco bay area regardless of legislative policy because it's sandwiched between Oakland and Richmond, which have collected genomes that are bad at complex society.

We can know that it was probably a mistake for liberals to import 80 million permanently poor people from other countries between 1970-2010. If we really want population-replacement that bad, just import poor people from China, and they'll on average outscore White Americans within a generation.



At this point, the fastest way to decrease poverty, academic achievement gaps, and most associated trends is to increase funding for genetics and technologies that lead to reprogenetics. If you want universal access for the poor, that's good.




>> ^NetRunner:

@chilaxe both your #1 and #2 points seem to be based on the premise that life is fair. You seem to believe that all anyone needs to do to become a millionaire is a positive attitude and hard work.
That's not true.
As for #3, I'm a little lost on what you're talking about. I didn't say people should lie, I was trying to explain why "liberal" people would say "we don't care if it's true" about studies that would seem to lend credence to racial stereotypes. I'm sorta curious what you'd like to see people do differently as a result of those kinds of studies.
And assuming you mean this when talking about reprogenetics, I'm all for it. Here's my kicker though, I'll be demanding that it be covered under everyone's universal healthcare.

Cheers!
In reply to this comment by Lendl:
*quality

Your refutations were (in order)

"This guy believes in evolution"

"We can never prove anything about the fossil record"

"this quote is old"

"this guy is crazy"

"this quote is old"

"this guy is a probable creationist"

Yeah, amazing refutations..which you got from a website, while calling me out on doing the same thing. Evolutionists, biologists, palentologists etc DO dispute the theory of evolution..you were right though..the ones I provided were kind of weak. You'll have an infinitely harder time refuting these:

"With the failure of these many efforts [to explain the origin of life] science was left in the somewhat embarrassing position of having to postulate theories of living origins which it could not demonstrate.

After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort could not be proved to take place today, had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past."

Loren C. Eiseley,
Ph.D. Anthropology. "The Immense Journey". Random House, NY, p. 199

"We have no acceptable theory of evolution at the present time. There is none; and I cannot accept the theory that I teach to my students each year. Let me explain:

I teach the synthetic theory known as the neo-Darwinian one, for one reason only; not because it's good, we know it is bad, but because there isn't any other.

Whilst waiting to find something better you are taught something which is known to be inexact, which is a first approximation."

Professor Jerome Lejeune,
Internationally recognised geneticist at a lecture given in Paris

"Considering its historic significance and the social and moral transformation it caused in western thought, one might have hoped that Darwinian theory ... a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth."

Michael Denton,
Molecular Biologist. "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis". Adler and Adler, p. 358

"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory - is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation-both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof."

L.Harrison Matthews,
British biologist

"[The theory of evolution] forms a satisfactory faith on which to base our interpretation of nature."


L. Harrison Matthews,
Introduction to 'Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life', p. xxii (1977 edition).


"I reject evolution because I deem it obsolete, because the knowledge, hard won since 1830, of anatomy, histology, cytology, and embryology, cannot be made to accord with its basic idea. The foundationless, fantastic edifice of the evolution doctrine would long ago have met with its long deserved fate were it not that the love of fairy tales is so deep-rooted in the hearts of man."

Dr Albert Fleischmann. Recorded in Scott M. Huse, "The Collapse of Evolution", Baker Book House: Grand Rapids (USA), 1983 p:120

"Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent."


William B. Provine,
Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University, 'Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life', Abstract of Will Provine's 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.


"The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual machine is in probability. The extremely small probabilities calculated in this chapter are not discouraging to true believers ? [however] A practical person must conclude that life didn’t happen by chance."


Hubert Yockey,
"Information Theory and Molecular Biology", Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 257


"As I said, we shall all be embarrassed, in the fullness of time, by the naivete of our present evolutionary arguments. But some will be vastly more embarrassed than others."


Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Principal Research Associate of the Center for Cognitive Science at MIT, "Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds," John Wiley & Sons: New York, 1994, p195)


"In 10 million years, a human-like species could substitute no more than 25,000 expressed neutral mutations and this is merely 0.0007% of the genome ?nowhere near enough to account for human evolution. This is the trade secret of evolutionary geneticists."

Walter James ReMine,
The Biotic Message : Evolution versus Message Theory


"Today, a hundred and twenty-eight years after it was first promulgated, the Darwinian theory of evolution stands under attack as never before. ... The fact is that in recent times there has been increasing dissent on the issue within academic and professional ranks, and that a growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from the evolutionist camp. It is interesting, moreover, that for the most part these 'experts' have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or biblical persuasions, but on strictly scientific grounds, and in some instances regretfully, as one could say. We are told dogmatically that Evolution is an established fact; but we are never told who has established it, and by what means. We are told, often enough, that the doctrine is founded upon evidence, and that indeed this evidence 'is henceforward above all verification, as well as being immune from any subsequent contradiction by experience'; but we are left entirely in the dark on the crucial question wherein, precisely, this evidence consists."


Wolfgang Smith,
Mathematician and Physicist. Prof. of Mathematics, Oregon State University. Former math instructor at MIT. Teilhardism and the New Religion: A Thorough Analysis of the Teachings of de Chardin. Tan Books & Publishers, pp. 1-2


"If there were a basic principle of matter which somehow drove organic systems toward life, its existence should easily be demonstrable in the laboratory. One could, for instance, take a swimming bath to represent the primordial soup. Fill it with any chemicals of a non-biological nature you please. Pump any gases over it, or through it, you please, and shine any kind of radiation on it that takes your fancy. Let the experiment proceed for a year and see how many of those 2,000 enzymes [proteins produced by living cells] have appeared in the bath. I will give the answer, and so save the time and trouble and expense of actually doing the experiment. You would find nothing at all, except possibly for a tarry sludge composed of amino acids and other simple organic chemicals.
How can I be so confident of this statement? Well, if it were otherwise, the experiment would long since have been done and would be well-known and famous throughout the world. The cost of it would be trivial compared to the cost of landing a man on the Moon.......In short there is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on the Earth."


Sir Fred Hoyle,
British physicist and astronomer, The Intelligent Universe, Michael Joseph, London, pp. 20-21, 23.


"...(I)t should be apparent that the errors, overstatements and omissions that we have noted in these biology texts, all tend to enhance the plausibility of hypotheses that are presented. More importantly, the inclusion of outdated material and erroneous discussions is not trivial. The items noted mislead students and impede their acquisition of critical thinking skills. If we fail to teach students to examine data critically, looking for points both favoring and opposing hypotheses, we are selling our youth short and mortgaging the future of scientific inquiry itself."


Mills, Lancaster, Bradley,
'Origin of Life Evolution in Biology Textbooks - A Critique', The American Biology Teacher, Volume 55, No. 2, February, 1993, p. 83


"The salient fact is this: if by evolution we mean macroevolution (as we henceforth shall), then it can be said with the utmost rigor that the doctrine is totally bereft of scientific sanction. Now, to be sure, given the multitude of extravagant claims about evolution promulgated by evolutionists with an air of scientific infallibility, this may indeed sound strange. And yet the fact remains that there exists to this day not a shred of bona fide scientific evidence in support of the thesis that macroevolutionary transformations have ever occurred."


Wolfgang Smith,
Ph.D Mathematics , MS Physics Teilardism and the New Religion. Tan Books and Publishers, Inc.


"... as Darwinists and neo-Darwinists have become ever more adept at finding possible selective advantages for any trait one cares to mention, explanation in terms of the all-powerful force of natural selection has come more and more to resemble explanation in terms of the conscious design of the omnipotent Creator."


Mae-Wan Ho & Peter T. Saunders,
Biologist at The Open University, UK and Mathematician at University of London respectively


"In other words, when the assumed evolutionary processes did not match the pattern of fossils that they were supposed to have generated, the pattern was judged to be 'wrong'. A circular argument arises: interpret the fossil record in terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it?"


Tom S. Kemp,
'A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record', New Scientist, vol. 108, 1985, pp. 66-67


"We have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not."


Niles Eldredge,
Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History, "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p144)


... by the fossil record and we are now about 120-years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much.
The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."


David M. Raup,
Curator of Geology. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology". Field Museum of Natural History. Vol. 50, No. 1, p. 25


"Thus all Darwin's premises are defective: there is no unlimited population growth in natural populations, no competition between individuals, and no new species producible by selecting for varietal differences. And if Darwin's premises are faulty, then his conclusion does not follow. This, of itself, does not mean that natural selection is false. It simply means that we cannot use Darwin's argument brilliant though it was, to establish natural selection as a means of explaining the origin of species."


Robert Augros & George Stanciu,
"The New Biology: Discovering the Wisdom in Nature", New Science Library, Shambhala: Boston, MA, 1987, p.160).







>> ^MaxWilder:
What the hell are you talking about? I refuted every one of your quotes point by point! I provided links to further information. The whole point was that your "evidence" of paleontologists speaking out against evolution was utter bullshit!
The only one where I discredited the source was from some no-name Swedish biologist that nobody takes seriously. Every other source was either out of context (meaning you are not understanding the words properly), or out of date (meaning that science has progressed a little since the '70s).
You have got your head so far up your ass that you are not even coherent now.
But you know what might change my mind? If you cut&paste some more out of context, out of date quotes. You got hendreds of 'em! </sarcasm>
>> ^shinyblurry:
So basically, you cannot provide a refutation to the information itself but instead try to discredit the source.

"Shiny, you don't think that the same process that created a Great Dane and a Chihuahua in less than five-hundred years could produce two distinct species in the space of millions of years?"

No, I don't. That's the whole point..they're all dogs, there is no difference in kind. Do it for 500 or 500 million, you'll have the same result..dogs.

"When you say that "mutations being naturally selected over time to change one species to another species" has never been observed, do you think that could possibly be in any way related to the fact that what you're talking about takes place over millions of years, and the human lifespan is only about eighty years? Huh? Do you think that might have something to do with it?"

Yes, this was a dumb question. Every species we observe is completely fully formed, showed up suddenly in the fossil record with no ancestors. If evolution were true, we would see species in transition from one kind to another today, which we don't. We would find ancestors in the fossil record which showed the tranistions. We don't. If evolution ever happened, it is not observable today anywhere, especially the fossil record.

"If a bacterium becomes immune to a drug that effects it negatively by getting rid of the sequence that the drug affects, that's an advantage. It doesn't matter if it makes it fare worse than before in the general population. Because if it reproduces at all, and a drug kills off the rest of the population, then guess what? That mutated bacterium has just become the new king of the hill hasn't he? And guess what else? It's DNA will continue to produce more DNA, some of which will be extraneous and be used as the building block for? You guessed it, completely new, never before seen sequences of DNA!!!"

The "advantage" is only good for the circumstance, and when the circumstance is gone, the population returns to normal. For instance, when bacteria produce this mutation for resistance, it always makes them less effecient..it always at the sacrifice of something else. There was nothing added and nothing new created..things only got shuffled around. These mutations don't ever survive in the wild.

"It's DNA will continue to produce more DNA, some of which will be extraneous and be used as the building block for? You guessed it, completely new, never before seen sequences of DNA!!!"

that's the magic part..it doesn't ever happen.



>> ^Ryjkyj:
>> ^shinyblurry:
Species always produce according to their kind. Dogs don't ever produce non-dogs. What you're talking about is micro-evolution. Macro-evolution is completely different. That's the theory of mutations being naturally selected over time to change one species to another species..problem is it has never been observed. Not only has nothing ever been found in the fossil record to prove this, the theory itself doesn't work. It has never been once demonstrated that a mutation produced anything useful or added information to a genome..mutations actually destroy information..and if you want to use the bacteria example, the reason bacteria become resistant is not because they evolved a defense..but rather lost the information that the drug used to bind to it..basically, its like the drug is hand cuffing everyone but cant handcuff the one with no arms. That isnt an advatange..when you put the bacteria into the general population they fare worse than before. It's pure metaphysics..and it all goes back to the source of the lie, which is abiogenesis..life from non-life. This basically states that we evolved from rocks..I think that takes a fair amount of faith..a lot more than I have.
>> ^Ryjkyj:
The proof isn't in the fossil record, because fossils are extremely rare. The proof is in your genetics.
If species don't evolve, how do you explain the massive, rapid, observable evolution in dogs over just the last 500 years?


Shiny, you don't think that the same process that created a Great Dane and a Chihuahua in less than five-hundred years could produce two distinct species in the space of millions of years?
Now, I'm going to ask what may seem to you like a really dumb question: When you say that "mutations being naturally selected over time to change one species to another species" has never been observed, do you think that could possibly be in any way related to the fact that what you're talking about takes place over millions of years, and the human lifespan is only about eighty years? Huh? Do you think that might have something to do with it?
It's really admirable that you read Reverend Billy's latest cut-and-paste pamphlet on the nature of mutation and why it means you should kill people for eating shellfish. But your knowledge of the science is, I think, a little lacking as far as giving you the ability to disprove the conclusions of hundreds of thousands of researchers who base their opinion on actual observation. Mutations don't just "destroy information" in the genome. There are all sorts of ways that mutations can form new information in a sequence of DNA. But either way it's a moot point, because you still don't understand the nature of natural selection.
If a bacterium becomes immune to a drug that effects it negatively by getting rid of the sequence that the drug affects, that's an advantage. It doesn't matter if it makes it fare worse than before in the general population. Because if it reproduces at all, and a drug kills off the rest of the population, then guess what? That mutated bacterium has just become the new king of the hill hasn't he? And guess what else? It's DNA will continue to produce more DNA, some of which will be extraneous and be used as the building block for? You guessed it, completely new, never before seen sequences of DNA!!!
If you doubt that, why don't you try reading an actual book on the subject? (note: I'm talking about a book that actually includes words like: mutation, DNA and sequence. Not a book that you interpret through allegory as being about the subject)
Now, this is the part where you call me out as being angry/abusive. Please note that I'm using the exact same tone of language here as Pastor nitwit uses in that god awful series of videos that you asked me to watch. (note all the explanation points!!!!)

>> ^shinyblurry:

The experiment you're talking about did not produce anything new..the proteins for the adaptation existed in the genome from generation 1..it was merely a rearrangement of proteins that were already there.

So you're fine with a new and useful ability being produced through mutation as long as it isn't demonstrated to be the result of an increase in total genetic information?

Just curious, do you also hold that it has never been demonstrated that any creature has produced viable offspring with more genetic information that itself?

There's no evidence to demonstrate wolf to dog evolution either. I think their best evidence is a mandible found near a campsite. In *every* case like this, when you research the actual evidence you'll find there isn't any..and it is all based on inference and conjecture. Wolves don't produce tame offspring btw, no matter how many generations around humans. And yes, you can prove a negative..no senators are declared muslims. That's easily proven.

The experiment you're talking about did not produce anything new..the proteins for the adaptation existed in the genome from generation 1..it was merely a rearrangement of proteins that were already there. I'll rephrase my statement..no mutation produced a useful adaptation by adding anything new to the genome, which supports why macro-evolution has never been observed anywhere.
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^shinyblurry:
Dogs don't ever produce non-dogs.
Just like wolves never produced dogs?
>> ^shinyblurry:
It has never been once demonstrated that a mutation produced anything useful or added information to a genome..mutations actually destroy information
You can never prove a negative, but you can certainly disprove it.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Species always produce according to their kind. Dogs don't ever produce non-dogs. What you're talking about is micro-evolution. Macro-evolution is completely different. That's the theory of mutations being naturally selected over time to change one species to another species..problem is it has never been observed. Not only has nothing ever been found in the fossil record to prove this, the theory itself doesn't work. It has never been once demonstrated that a mutation produced anything useful or added information to a genome..mutations actually destroy information..and if you want to use the bacteria example, the reason bacteria become resistant is not because they evolved a defense..but rather lost the information that the drug used to bind to it..basically, its like the drug is hand cuffing everyone but cant handcuff the one with no arms. That isnt an advatange..when you put the bacteria into the general population they fare worse than before. It's pure metaphysics..and it all goes back to the source of the lie, which is abiogenesis..life from non-life. This basically states that we evolved from rocks..I think that takes a fair amount of faith..a lot more than I have.
>> ^Ryjkyj:
The proof isn't in the fossil record, because fossils are extremely rare. The proof is in your genetics.
If species don't evolve, how do you explain the massive, rapid, observable evolution in dogs over just the last 500 years?



Shiny, you don't think that the same process that created a Great Dane and a Chihuahua in less than five-hundred years could produce two distinct species in the space of millions of years?

Now, I'm going to ask what may seem to you like a really dumb question: When you say that "mutations being naturally selected over time to change one species to another species" has never been observed, do you think that could possibly be in any way related to the fact that what you're talking about takes place over millions of years, and the human lifespan is only about eighty years? Huh? Do you think that might have something to do with it?

It's really admirable that you read Reverend Billy's latest cut-and-paste pamphlet on the nature of mutation and why it means you should kill people for eating shellfish. But your knowledge of the science is, I think, a little lacking as far as giving you the ability to disprove the conclusions of hundreds of thousands of researchers who base their opinion on actual observation. Mutations don't just "destroy information" in the genome. There are all sorts of ways that mutations can form new information in a sequence of DNA. But either way it's a moot point, because you still don't understand the nature of natural selection.

If a bacterium becomes immune to a drug that effects it negatively by getting rid of the sequence that the drug affects, that's an advantage. It doesn't matter if it makes it fare worse than before in the general population. Because if it reproduces at all, and a drug kills off the rest of the population, then guess what? That mutated bacterium has just become the new king of the hill hasn't he? And guess what else? It's DNA will continue to produce more DNA, some of which will be extraneous and be used as the building block for? You guessed it, completely new, never before seen sequences of DNA!!!

If you doubt that, why don't you try reading an actual book on the subject? (note: I'm talking about a book that actually includes words like: mutation, DNA and sequence. Not a book that you interpret through allegory as being about the subject)

Now, this is the part where you call me out as being angry/abusive. Please note that I'm using the exact same tone of language here as Pastor nitwit uses in that god awful series of videos that you asked me to watch. (note all the explanation points!!!!)