Christianity

[Dontaskme]

The “default” sex (i.e., without any other further input) is actually female – however, the presence of a gene called SRY on the Y chromosome initiates the release of testosterone and the formation of male sex organs. SRY is a transcription factor – a genetic element that can turn on the expression of other genes.

HAHA, you'r only having sex with yourself.

God is a female. HAHA, that must really piss IC off.

Fe...male is smarter than the male...another rhetorical metaphor that pisses IC off.

The Lad Y is not for turning.

[Alexis Jacobi]

All with exactly the right genetic mutation to produce the next generation of proto-humans? And none of them with a genetic makeup that would undo the genetic mutation for the next generation? And they all mate, and this produces the next generation, all with the mutational adaptive trait? And then the previous generation of proto-humans all died out, without exception, and without producing any alternate kind of mutation that would take the "tree" in a different direction?

But all of this scientesque lingo which you are using -- the terms of evolutionary science and biology -- you cannot believe in and do not believe in. Yet you keep using the terms of one épistémè as if they can be interchanged with another. Why do you even bother?

Your view is the literalist view expressed in Genesis. And, oddly enough from where I sit, you believe each and every element of the story as if it depicts a natural history and a human history and anthropology. It is a very curious position to have and to hold to.

The interesting thing is that your interlocutor, that is to say myself, cannot do it. I simply cannot do what you do. And so the larger problem is that it is largely impossible for those of 'modern mind' to be able to see and believe the literal stories. But what I ask is How could it ever come about that masses of people could ever resolve to return to the way of seeing that you are accomplished in? You can start out with a mythological understanding of reality, that much is true. But that view will always be challenged by 'reality' itself which tells a different story. It is chipped away bit by bit until finally it collapses.

In order for that not to happen though it requires a *you* to come along and help patch the Olden View together with the New View. And a huge amount of rhetorical energy has to be spent in that project. It certainly does not come spontaneously.

The more that one enters that modern épistémè the less possible it is to hold to the Olden View unless one remains in a sort of bubble or unless one can freeze oneself intellectually. Yet at some point one would be strung, uncomfortably, between one view that is irreconcilable with another view which can only be bridged with a bizarre perceptual manoeuvre. That is where cognitive dissonance arises, isn't it?

You embody, it seems, that manoeuvre. You are arguing for it and recommending that it is the *right* one to have. But the people you are talking with cannot perform the manoeuvre that you succeed in pulling off.

And curiously they extend their disbelief from the incapacity to honestly and authentically believe in the Adam & Eve story into a larger disbelief in everything associated with religious belief generally and also universally.

Also curiously is the fact that you do not help them at any level. You actually provide them with a tangible focus in order to sharpen their (as I understand them) atheistic views. It is a strange conundrum.

In regard to Intelligent Design

However, those who do pursue the *intelligent design* argument certainly seem to have at the least some decent and considerable arguments. Such as the improbability of the complex cell arising out of the primordial slime. There are some serious people who just cannot see how that could have happened. So they edge toward the notion of the design coming from a designer.

But when you think things through that has to be the case no matter how the scenario is presented. They ask: If the cell according to mathematically probability could not have spontaneously put itself together in some electrified pool, then where did the cell come from? Some other place in the Universe? Or are they proposing that it was -- poof! -- spontaneously created by the Creator? (That view corresponds to your belief in the literal Genesis-version). But they do not speculate beyond their core point. They can only go so far as to state what they state: It is mathematically improbable (or impossible) that it (the cell) did arise on its own. But if it did not then where and how did it?

But they certainly do not therefore justify the Christian view in its specificity. You could take on their view and have nothing at all to do with any existent religious mythology.

So in this sense they propose that a whole other way of seeing through the lens of science and reason be developed in order to explain.

But no matter how it came about, and no matter how one looks at the issues, it really all did arise out of that Original Event they refer to, when nothing really existed and nothing was formed. The only way that I can see is that it all existed in latency. But to say *in latency* means that the idea of it had to exist, on some plane or other, prior to its taking shape. Or is it proposed that the Universe just invents itself as it moves from [whatever they say the original stuff was] to [everything that became manifest]?

I have no idea how those who devote themselves to physics-science and speculation would approach or resolve the issue that I try to express here.

[uwot]

In regard to Intelligent Design

However, those who do pursue the *intelligent design* argument certainly seem to have at the least some decent and considerable arguments.

Gus, agreement does not advance knowledge. Four people on comfy chairs and the same song sheet will not produce 'decent and considerable arguments'.

Such as the improbability of the complex cell arising out of the primordial slime. There are some serious people who just cannot see how that could have happened. So they edge toward the notion of the design coming from a designer.

Well as we presently understand it, the choice is between improbable and miraculous. Whaddya know? Some 'serious people' opt for miraculous.

But when you think things through...

Gus, are you going to break the habit of a lifetime?

...that has to be the case no matter how the scenario is presented. They ask: If the cell according to mathematically probability could not have spontaneously put itself together in some electrified pool, then where did the cell come from?

More fool them. No mathematical probability is zero.

[Walker]

No mathematical probability is zero.

With belief in The Big Bang, nothing is improbable.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well as we presently understand it, the choice is between improbable and miraculous. Whaddya know? Some 'serious people' opt for miraculous.

Stephen Meyer: "The case for intelligent design is not an interpretation or a deduction from the scriptural text, but an inference from biological evidence."

If I understand correctly I think Stephen Meyer tends to a theological position at least personally. If that is so (and I have not looked into it) then he might use his scientifically-based argument for *intelligent design* as a bolster for his own theological belief.

But I think his view -- if he is honest with himself -- is just as he says.

David Gelernter: “Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but a basis of a worldview, and an emergency . . . religion for the many troubled souls who need one.”

Here is another interesting side of the coin: What Gelernter says seems to be true. The way I understand this issue is that a great deal of pressure was placed on conventional religious storyline. The Darwinian proposal and theory was certainly one of those. And it worked to *collapse* the former views which were supported by mythological mind.

But why is it then that an almost 'religious' belief is transferred and superimposed on the New Worldview?

How do we talk about that?

What does he mean by 'troubled soul'? And the next question would be, though I don't know how it would be pursued, is are you Wee Willy a 'troubled soul' in that sense? That is, do you use a religefied theory in a manner similar to what you accuse the religiously-minded as doing? I mean, is there sense and validity in what Gelernter says?

Do you have that sort of honestly, or is it self-knowledge? to be able to answer honestly?

Or would you say that Gelernter is a clandestine religionist, somehow, and lies to himself?

[Immanuel Can]

So what have I got to be ashamed of regarding anything I wrote? You haven't yet explained it.

Yeah, I did...a message ago. Go back and reread, if you want to know.

If you don't care to do that, don't expect me to care.

Point me to where you explained it so I know what you're talking about. That should be easy enough!

[Immanuel Can]

Back again to letting others here decide for themselves which of us is more likely to be found up in the "philosophical" clouds.

Yep.

Over and over and over again we are confronted with actual flesh and blood human beings accusing each other of evil behavior.

But what are we to make of that fact? What's your conclusion?

You've said, "People accuse each other." Fine. How do we know what the value of those "accusations" is?

with determinism we have no consensus of opinion among either scientists or philosophers that free will is in fact the real deal.

We certainly have a 100% consensus of all, one demonstrated through the way they act -- even among those who, like you, pretend they believe in Determinism, and say so in the most passionate language.

But that fact, you will not even address...though you cannot possibly not know it's true.

Which way do you want to argue? Are the opinions people express indicative of some truth we have to account for, or are they simply dismissible.

How about this: you provide me with the definitive evidence from Penfield's book that pins it to the mat once and for all..

Buy the book. It's cheap, it's readily available. If you don't, then your request is simply insincere.

You choose the context in which to explore this more substantively.

I choose the context of two people who have both read the book.

Good and evil are among the word-sounds that English speaking people invented. The rest is history. With or without the Christian God.

Honestly, I've got to say that that's one of the worst arguments I've ever heard ! It's really funny.

Right, like down through the centuries people have not invented words to differentiate behaviors they approve of and behaviors they do not. With or without countless Gods.

That they have "invented words" is the least profound observation you could have made. They also invented "pixie" and "unicorn."

...back to unicorns and pixies. Words created to describe creatures that do not actually exist...but are only invented for "make-believe" stories. Whereas Good and Evil [and all the many equivalents] were invented in all communities to encompass behaviors that were in fact embodied in any number of contexts in which the consequences were anything but "make-believe".

You're missing the point...probably trying very hard to miss it, too.

The "behaviours" existed. So do the "words." But that the "words" describe any objective property of the "behaviours" is the question you have to resolve.

A thing does not become "good" or "evil" merely because somebody comes up with the word. That value-claim has to be justified in some way.

Without proof that unicorns and pixies exist, the words are just imaginings. "History" won't help the case at all. An old stupidity isn't better than a new one.

The same is true of good and evil -- they simply don't exist in an Atheistic world. They are not real properties of anything -- unless you can prove otherwise.

Go ahead.

They exist for those atheists

Nope.

There is no chain of logic that ties Atheism as a first premise, to a single moral conclusion. And if you listen to enough Atheists, you'll find that's exactly what they, themselves -- at least the one's who understand their own view -- actually say as well. In fact, they pride themselves on that.

Out in the real world, people are rewarded or punished every day for behaviors that are entirely grounded in actual flesh and blood human interactions out in particular communities.

Like the Salem Witch Trials, you mean? Yes, no doubt.

Instead, it's my point that in a No God world, Evil is merely that which someone believes exists "in their head".

Right. In other words, it's a delusion. Nothing more.

As I noted to the objectivists among us, including Christians like you...

Certain behaviors are flat out Evil to them.

But you think they're just fooling themselves about that, obviously.

No, I am only pointing out that "here and now" I don't believe in objective morality.

Right. So they're fooling themselves. Exactly as I said.

[Immanuel Can]

All with exactly the right genetic mutation to produce the next generation of proto-humans? And none of them with a genetic makeup that would undo the genetic mutation for the next generation? And they all mate, and this produces the next generation, all with the mutational adaptive trait? And then the previous generation of proto-humans all died out, without exception, and without producing any alternate kind of mutation that would take the "tree" in a different direction?

But all of this scientesque lingo which you are using -- the terms of evolutionary science and biology -- you cannot believe in and do not believe in. Yet you keep using the terms of one épistémè as if they can be interchanged with another. Why do you even bother?

Not because I agree with it, as you point out. But only to show you where they road of your own assumptions inexorably leads.

I simply cannot do what you do.

You're jumping to assumptions.

So far, I've only asked you to do one thing: to decide whether an original mating pair explanation or a group-simultaneous explanation is more likely to be the right explanation for how the human race came about.

I haven't asked you to believe one other thing yet. And you don't have the foggiest idea where I'll go from there. You think you do, but I can see from your objections, you've got no idea.

So sit tight, answer the question, and see where it goes.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Gus, are you going to break the habit of a lifetime?

I thought a dramatization of why I always win here and why you always lose would be helpful to all concerned.

[Dubious]

Yeah, I did...a message ago. Go back and reread, if you want to know.

If you don't care to do that, don't expect me to care.

Point me to where you explained it so I know what you're talking about. That should be easy enough!

I can't find that message where you supposedly explained it.

Show me or prove that you have nothing to show and just throwing turds in a conversation whenever you find yourself in a cul-de-sac. You should be happy to prove your point and what an honest fellow you are in the bargain.

So again, show me!

[Immanuel Can]

I can't find that message where you supposedly explained it.

Page 200. Three from the bottom.

[Nick_A]

All with exactly the right genetic mutation to produce the next generation of proto-humans? And none of them with a genetic makeup that would undo the genetic mutation for the next generation? And they all mate, and this produces the next generation, all with the mutational adaptive trait? And then the previous generation of proto-humans all died out, without exception, and without producing any alternate kind of mutation that would take the "tree" in a different direction?

But all of this scientesque lingo which you are using -- the terms of evolutionary science and biology -- you cannot believe in and do not believe in. Yet you keep using the terms of one épistémè as if they can be interchanged with another. Why do you even bother?

Your view is the literalist view expressed in Genesis. And, oddly enough from where I sit, you believe each and every element of the story as if it depicts a natural history and a human history and anthropology. It is a very curious position to have and to hold to.

The interesting thing is that your interlocutor, that is to say myself, cannot do it. I simply cannot do what you do. And so the larger problem is that it is largely impossible for those of 'modern mind' to be able to see and believe the literal stories. But what I ask is How could it ever come about that masses of people could ever resolve to return to the way of seeing that you are accomplished in? You can start out with a mythological understanding of reality, that much is true. But that view will always be challenged by 'reality' itself which tells a different story. It is chipped away bit by bit until finally it collapses.

In order for that not to happen though it requires a *you* to come along and help patch the Olden View together with the New View. And a huge amount of rhetorical energy has to be spent in that project. It certainly does not come spontaneously.

The more that one enters that modern épistémè the less possible it is to hold to the Olden View unless one remains in a sort of bubble or unless one can freeze oneself intellectually. Yet at some point one would be strung, uncomfortably, between one view that is irreconcilable with another view which can only be bridged with a bizarre perceptual manoeuvre. That is where cognitive dissonance arises, isn't it?

You embody, it seems, that manoeuvre. You are arguing for it and recommending that it is the *right* one to have. But the people you are talking with cannot perform the manoeuvre that you succeed in pulling off.

And curiously they extend their disbelief from the incapacity to honestly and authentically believe in the Adam & Eve story into a larger disbelief in everything associated with religious belief generally and also universally.

Also curiously is the fact that you do not help them at any level. You actually provide them with a tangible focus in order to sharpen their (as I understand them) atheistic views. It is a strange conundrum.

In regard to Intelligent Design

However, those who do pursue the *intelligent design* argument certainly seem to have at the least some decent and considerable arguments. Such as the improbability of the complex cell arising out of the primordial slime. There are some serious people who just cannot see how that could have happened. So they edge toward the notion of the design coming from a designer.

But when you think things through that has to be the case no matter how the scenario is presented. They ask: If the cell according to mathematically probability could not have spontaneously put itself together in some electrified pool, then where did the cell come from? Some other place in the Universe? Or are they proposing that it was -- poof! -- spontaneously created by the Creator? (That view corresponds to your belief in the literal Genesis-version). But they do not speculate beyond their core point. They can only go so far as to state what they state: It is mathematically improbable (or impossible) that it (the cell) did arise on its own. But if it did not then where and how did it?

But they certainly do not therefore justify the Christian view in its specificity. You could take on their view and have nothing at all to do with any existent religious mythology.

So in this sense they propose that a whole other way of seeing through the lens of science and reason be developed in order to explain.

But no matter how it came about, and no matter how one looks at the issues, it really all did arise out of that Original Event they refer to, when nothing really existed and nothing was formed. The only way that I can see is that it all existed in latency. But to say *in latency* means that the idea of it had to exist, on some plane or other, prior to its taking shape. Or is it proposed that the Universe just invents itself as it moves from [whatever they say the original stuff was] to [everything that became manifest]?

I have no idea how those who devote themselves to physics-science and speculation would approach or resolve the issue that I try to express here.

"The universe is the body of God" ~ Panentheism

You are one of the few here who could contemplate "swarm logic". But if true, Christianity through the help of the Holy Spirit offers conscious freedom from swarm logic. It is deep stuff and those caught up in literal biblical interpretations and the inability to contemplate new thought more than two inches beyond their senses won't get it. But for those who do, it offers much food for thought about the creation and reactions of swarms including the Great Beast

https://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/04/ ... -about-god

Part Two Of Two (Read Part One here.)

There is no single meaning for the word "God." The idea of God and gods has been evolving and shape-shifting nonstop for millennia, and it's not over yet.

All traditional ideas of God are demonstrably inadequate to our time. They perpetuate conflict or fail to inspire us enough to rise to the existential challenges of our complex and dangerous world.

So let me propose a new way of thinking about God. Let me explain with an analogy.

Ants are very simple creatures. They can recognize a dozen or so pheromones (scent molecules) and can sense where those pheromones are more intense. They also can tell the difference between meeting two ants in a minute and 200 ants. That's about the extent of their individual communication abilities. But if we observe 10,000 of them in a colony, a "swarm logic" has emerged. The colony is continually adjusting the number of ants foraging for food, based on the number of mouths to feed, how much food is stored already in the nest, how much food is available in the vicinity, and whether other colonies are out there competing. Yet, no ant understands any of this.

The colony can engineer the construction of an ant hill as high as a man and as busy as a city, yet no one is in charge. Some ant hills can last a century. Over its lifetime, the colony will go through predictable stages of development, from aggressive youth to conservative maturity to death, yet no ant lives more than a tiny fraction of that time. What is going on? Where does swarm logic come from?

It emerges from the complexity of the interactions among the ants. An ant colony is self-organizing. Emergence is a powerful scientific concept that cuts across many fields — in fact, it happens throughout evolution. From the formation of galaxies to the evolution of life to the folding of proteins to the growth of cities to the disruption of the global climate, emergence creates utterly new phenomena out of interactions of simpler things.............................

Quantum entanglement — or "spooky action at a distance," as Albert Einstein famously called it — is the idea that the fates of tiny particles are linked to each other even if they're separated by long distances.

So if an ant hill, a flock of birds, or a school of fish react as one, who or what creates the laws that organic life and swarm logic responds to, who or what designed the laws? Individuality is the result of conscious aspiration which can only be actualized through help from above. As we have seen, the world rejects it and the Great Beast remains a dominant part of swarm logic the energies of which supports the earth.

[Dubious]

I can't find that message where you supposedly explained it.

Page 200. Three from the bottom.

There's no point in continuing to discuss the merits of your arguments. If you're so compelled to believe in the validity of an absurdity from millenniums ago - as if nothing clarifying happened since then - only proves theism as one of the main infecting agents of a weak gutless mind having no immunity in defending itself against anything overtly improbable.

That condition is already understood as manifested through a majority of your posts.

But it wasn't the point of my inquiry!

Based on your coordinates you indicated this post:
viewtopic.php?p=563380#p563380

which contains this nugget...

You have no choice but to believe either in an original mating pair, or in some other alternative you are afraid even to suggest.

...so I asked, having no idea what you're talking about:

what would I be afraid to suggest?

...to which you replied:

You're going to have to tell me. I have no idea what you're ashamed of.

Or maybe, you just have no theory of human "ascent" at all, and just realized it. That's also possible.

For whatever reason, you're steamed and can't come up with anything.

Nor do I know what I'm supposed to be ashamed of.

What I asked was what you meant by this ramble and since there's no explanation, it's clear you don't know either except out of desperation had to throw in some turd-like deflecting incongruity which has no reference to what was being discussed.

Suffice it to say your long record of intentional misrepresentations to supplant actual truth with biblical fictions has a kind of Trump/Putin semblance about it.

No lie can ever be too egregious if it serves one's purpose.

[Dubious]

If you have a theory of how the human race could evolve without there being an original mating pair, then say it.

Btw, evolution is not an incoherent theory and doesn't require an original mating pair while the Adam and Eve story is mandatory without which your entire Jesus story turns to bunk.

When the first Lucy ape met the first Ricky ape would that suffice as the first mating pair? Will you be happy then?

Mr Can clearly believes that in order to produce offspring, human beings have to be genetically identical. Even identical twins are not genetically identical: https://www.livescience.com/identical-t ... l-dna.html His insistence that there must have been an original mating pair is a claim made in the Bronze Age. We now know better. The small variations in genetic make up can improve or hinder mating success; over time the more successful traits dominate, but it is not necessary for two individuals to have identical genomes. For one thing, they'd have to be the same sex.

Theists of the IC kind are as impervious to fact as superman is to bullets; no amount of data will ever suffice. They just roll off without the slightest consequence. There is no way someone like him, for example, would read Adam Rutherford knowing in advance it must all be false. Accept the science and the bible get blasted. For a rabid theist that is not an option.

The amount of mind deformation it takes to believe all this biblical claptrap - which it defaults to if not considerate of the time and context in which it was written - is precisely what makes it unyielding to all that would challenge it.

I think that's one of the main and serious deficiencies of the human brain. It's unparalleled ability to accept anything and everything without question, where even the necessity for it becomes anathema and possibly dangerous for those who do.

Such mind deformities, in whatever form it takes, puts the future itself in jeopardy.

[Immanuel Can]

I can't find that message where you supposedly explained it.

Page 200. Three from the bottom.

There's no point in continuing to discuss the merits of your arguments.

Fine. Works for me. Off you go, then.