Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Never a First Human Being

[Robert Tulip]

your inability to respect other people's worldviews worries me that one day you will fly your ideological plane into my house.

Gotcha. Let me get this straight if you don't mind, ant. You say my belief in science means I am likely to become an Islamist terrorist. Fantastic. I feel there may be at least one or two minor steps of logic in that argument that you have skipped. Not all of us are capable of your Ramanujan-style intuitive jumps ant, so I would appreciate the benefit of your wisdom on why evolution = terror.

[youkrst]

thanks for the heads up on Ramanujan Robert!

i had never heard of him, what a fascinating story!! awesome. (really added to my day)

[sonoman]

I have experienced spiritual revelation. You haven't.

i think you may need to experience some more spiritual revelation as your omniscience is faltering just a tad

sorry sonoman but when you post stuff like that no matter how hard i try to leave it i just have to point out how absurd it sounds to me

Talking about spiritual phenomena always sounds absurd to atheists--because they've never experienced it yet have all sorts of opinions about it. Extremely foolish way of trying to make sense of the world by acting as if the vast majority of human beings are absurd because they recognize a fact of life atheists do not, yet atheists as I have stated time and again cannot give rational reasons for their negative fundamentalist belief system that objects to people talking about experiences atheists don't have.

if god were talking to you surely he would say "just get over yourself"

How would you ever know what God was talking about? You can't resist the putdown of theism so you add another dollop of non-experience to the pile of such that follows atheists around everywhere they post their negative fundamentalist beliefs about a subject matter, spiritual phenomena, they haven't an experiential clue about.

i challenge you to post one single edifying thought, devoid of fruitery, so that i can read it and say, wow that was great, sonoman didn't fruit me up but posted a wonderful clear thought that in isolation was in itself a marvellous help to make my day less confusing.

Like I say, I'm dealing with the atheist fundamentalist mindset that is in constant denial about spiritual phenomena so it matters not a bit what I post here or link there, you cannot see it. I could post the New Christian Theology of the coming Age which I have as anyone but atheists can read online at: http://biomystic.org/celestialtorah.htm, but you won't go there and actually read it except for my challenge here. And even then you'd come back and say it's nothing special, doesn't measure up to this or that, in short, you can't see it. Same thing with my Climax Social Evolution Theory. You can't find it anywhere else but on my website and it a most remarkable new holistic biologically-based theory of how human societies organize themselves in a continuation of the biological climax pattern. I haven't heard a peep from any of the supposed naturalists here about this theory which appears secular as it came in a revelation before my religious conversion experience, except it came to me as I adopted the name of Ariel not knowing at the time of its powerful spiritual triggering effect in my life that manifested years later. But again, this is spiritual talk and of no real interest to atheists who don't think it's real because it doesn't happen to them.

what i mean is i have read many of your posts and seem less informed about what you are saying than i was before i read them.

please don't say it's because i haven't experienced spiritual revelation

OK. You're just blind to evidence contradicting your prejudices. Like all bigots operating from fundamentalist belief systems, atheism being no exception.

[youkrst]

Talking about spiritual phenomena always sounds absurd to atheists

but not to me sonoman, strange as it may or may not seem to you. I have had many strange and wonderful experiences in my life and truth be told i'm probably more of a "transcendentalist hindu pantheist buddhist gnostic" than an atheist, but these are all just ways of interpreting life and looking at life (metaphors) they are not life and mystery itself any more than the menu at a restaurant is food.

so talking about spiritual phenomena strange as it may seem is not strange to me at all, but i always try to remember that what i talk about is only my interpretation, not the reality, any more than a map is a country.

How would you ever know what God was talking about?

how do you know i am not "god" in disguise right now, testing you, how do you know i am not just another aspect of the divine, as you are, god wearing us all as a garment.

it's just another metaphor

how can you disregard my unity with the eternal mystery without denying your own.

I'm dealing with the atheist fundamentalist mindset that is in constant denial about spiritual phenomena

i have something in common with sam harris, i am very interested in "spiritual phenomena", i suspect in time it will all make sense, even as once electricity seemed like "voodoo tricks" but now is more readily understood. but what i hope to avoid is mistaking my current metaphors for fact.

I could post the New Christian Theology of the coming Age which I have as anyone but atheists can read online at: http://biomystic.org/celestialtorah.htm, but you won't go there and actually read it except for my challenge here. And even then you'd come back and say it's nothing special, doesn't measure up to this or that, in short, you can't see it. Same thing with my Climax Social Evolution Theory. You can't find it anywhere else but on my website and it a most remarkable new holistic biologically-based theory of how human societies organize themselves in a continuation of the biological climax pattern.

well, have patience and if i begin to detect something interesting in your posts, you never know i might just read your site more. so far as i have read your posts i have been put off by your "i'm this, i'm that, my thing is great" yet i have not detected enough substantive proposition to interest me enough in reading more.

again can you give me one little starting point that might pique my interest.

in the end i am already having a belief system of my own and am always on the lookout to refine it, add to it, improve it, but so far you haven't really said anything i find fascinating.

it's like in the "holy grail" python movie where they try to tell the french taunter they will show his master the grail, and the taunter replies, "i will tell him but i dont think he'll be very interested, he's already got one"

so if you want to help me you have to show me you have an idea or a concept of value to me.

i dont need more metaphors, i need better metaphors.

when i first read campbell, jung, watts and many many others i was immediately drawn to their insight, they had valuable insight to impart and i am so very grateful for their knowledge and ability to communicate.

except it came to me as I adopted the name of Ariel not knowing at the time of its powerful spiritual triggering effect in my life that manifested years later. But again, this is spiritual talk

have you ever thought that you might have even partially misinterpreted your own experience, i know i have (my own i mean).

to teach you must be teachable.

OK. You're just blind to evidence contradicting your prejudices. Like all bigots operating from fundamentalist belief systems, atheism being no exception.

again i'm not an atheist but i'm not a theist, yet i am both. they are just ways of looking at things and i try to really get into all the ways of looking at things because i am enchanted by the mystery.

have you ever thought that you might also be blind...... to something you just can't see. are you already perfect? is there nothing missing, if you are complete why are your statements at times patently less than accurate.

why do i not sense more depth, why are you still ego bound?

you imply you think i am a bigot?

and i am, aren't you, look deep inside, to deny your own bigotry is to be blind to it, and give it strength as it lurks unseen in your subconscious, acknowledge it and dethrone the false tyrant, if you say you do not know bigotry in yourself then you never know it properly in others. drag the pretender within into the light.

i wish you well sonoman, but mostly i wish you would realise that we are all in this together and we need to realise that we are all reflections of each other to certain extent.

i have an inner sonoman, and an inner ant, an inner DWill if you will.

nothing human is foreign to me.

come join me as we both seek better light to see by.

their is plenty of light here, and some of it is coming from ATHEISTS!!!

[Vishnu]

how do you know i am not "god" in disguise right now,

Because I am. I direct you to my avatar & username.

[youkrst]

...took a job in mississippi, muddy water turned to wine

everybody feelin' fine



one of my better disguises

so true though Vishnu, I indeed seem to be the illusion that stops one seeing one everywhere.

[DWill]

i have an inner sonoman, and an inner ant, an inner DWill if you will.

nothing human is foreign to me.

I love to listen to you talk, so please keep it up. It might help me reach my inner youkrst!

The quotation from Terence should be engraved in big letters...somewhere--how about here at booktalk? Our opinions about things really aren't such big deals as we make of them. There's a benefit to being able to slap a "fundie" on the back and say, "What else can we talk about, buddy? How's your life going, anyway?"

[ant]

I'm not certain what your objective here is.
Is it to ultimately marginalize people of faith?
Is it to discredited a faith based world view?
Is it to assert that yours is the superior, thus the inferior should be expunged in some manner?

Goddamn, are you capable of giving a straight answer? First you hurl insults at me and at Dawkins for merely making a claim about evolution. Then you say Dawkins is just giving his opinion about evolution, but you're insulted at the suggestion of being a creationist, then you're playing the martyr as if someone wants to throw you in a concentration camp. But now you say:

Evolution's role in forming our capacity for both faith and science is strictly undeniable

We're just trying to have a discussion about evolution, it's not a persecution. It sounds like you disagree with it, sometimes, or you hope it's not true, or you think it's just speculation on the part of scientists and you prefer another explanation. Or you just don't know anything about it. So which is it?

Forget if Dawkins knows the exact species that occurred 185 million generations ago -- as I said, it should be obvious that this wasn't the point of the thought experiment. I repeat: If he had given a disclaimer about it being a fish-like or similar primitive animal, would that have been OK? Do you disagree with Dawkins that if you lined up your ancestors, they would show a very gradual shift until you've reached a very primitive species?

Look at this again:

A scientific hypothesis is a proposed explanation of a phenomenon which still has to be rigorously tested. In contrast, a scientific theory has undergone extensive testing and is generally accepted to be the accurate explanation behind an observation.[1] A working hypothesis is a provisionally accepted hypothesis proposed for further research.

Now tell me, based on the criteria of a scientific hypothesis, is Evolution based on fact confirmed by the scientific method?
Dawkins advertises evolution as fact. My contention here has been that evolution is not, by science's own definition, based on fact. Evolution is primarily theory laden. That is not to say its false, but, in the strictest sense, it is a theory. An intellectual presentation of it should signify it as such.

Geo betrays honesty by skirting completely around definitional terms by claiming "it's well grounded."
Why are we loosening our criteria here? On what basis are we justified to state evolution is FACT when it does not pass the inspection demanded by scientific hypotheses methodology?

[geo]

. . .

Geo betrays honesty by skirting completely around definitional terms by claiming "it's well grounded."
Why are we loosening our criteria here? On what basis are we justified to state evolution is FACT when it does not pass the inspection demanded by scientific hypotheses methodology?

Oh my. Here we go again. It's only a scratch.

As I have already said elsewhere on this thread, evolution is as much fact as germ theory and the existence of atoms. The world's scientific community accepts the evidence for evolution as ironclad. I was merely trying to get you to admit that you personally don't accept the evidence, but you can't or won't. So yeah, someone is being dishonest here.

No one is debating the reality of evolution except for religious dogmatists. The evidence for evolution is immense and overwhelming. The very fact that you are here dickering about the meaning of the word "theory" makes your position loud and clear, Ant.

The Nov. 2004 issue of National Geographic was trolling for science.



Excerpt:

"Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. It's a theory about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science, and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say that it's "just" a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Albert Einstein is "just" a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic theory. Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally—taking it as their best available view of reality, at least until some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along. "

full text of the article:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0 ... ltext.html

[DWill]

The popular usage of 'theory' messes up people's thinking with regard to bundles of facts and hypotheses such as natural selection. They think the word is used in the same sense as in, "I've got a theory about why my car won't start on Monday mornings when it's facing downhill." The theory of evolution by means of natural selection comprises compendiums of facts.

geo, a minor matter: I recall seeing that Nat'l Geo cover and reading the article maybe 2-3 years ago? When I listen to anyone say that he doesn't believe evolution is true, I always think of how hard it must be to not to be able to crack the pages of that radical journal, Nat'l Geographic. There isn't a single issue, I'll bet, that doesn't contain at least one article that delves into evolution.