Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[Immanuel Can]

But I understand your reluctance. Quite simply, you're caught in a bind that I knew you'd be caught in, the minute you pulled out the how-can-God-allow-evil argument: subjectivists don't actually believe in evil. They can't. They have to dismiss the reality of it as some kind of feeling or wish, not as an objective reality. So it's not a question they can even ask without violating their own worldview.

Nice try, Immanuel. Unfortunately for you your tactics are transparent and I do not believe you.

You don't need to. Anybody can see it.

If you had a definition of "evil," you'd simply offer it, wouldn't you?

But I'll look at the remaining four responses you squirted out in panic, and see if I finally see you define your term there.

Two minutes later: Nope, I checked...nothing there but further evasions.

[Dubious]

Call them what you want. Call them "Oog" and "Ook," the cave people. There will still have had to be an original mating pair. That's just how it works.

If you don't know, then you need to get married.

How do you know I'm not married; why would I even have to be?

So as to understand reproduction.

That's so funny, I never realized you had a sense of humor. But like it says in Mozart's opera, Cosi Fan Tutti, by the age of fourteen every girl knows where the devil keeps his tail. I figure boys, having daily use of it and soon discovering its multi-functionality, wouldn't waste any time letting the girls know!

[henry quirk]

Evil is the commodification of a person.

Evil is the metaphysical, purposeful, will lookin' to piss on Creation (man being its chief target and tool).

Evil and Evil are both real: the former is the violation of natural right; the later is the malignancy promotin' such violation.

There, you're welcome.

[Alexiev]

Darwin himself insisted that Natural Selection could only "select" for those mutations that were an immediate survival advantage. He said it is "utterly blind" to anything that does not increase survival chances, and has to "select against" anything that is harmful in regards to survival. So the idea that an irreducibly complex organ could develop by stages is simply ruled out by the basic mechanisms to which Darwin himself .

No evolutionary theorist subscribes to that anymore.

Hmmm...I don't think that's the case. At least, there's not another mechanism but survival of the fittest to power Evolutionism, so far as I know.

The gene -- not the individual -- is passed down to the next generation.

Oh. The "selfish gene" theory. Well, nobody can take that one seriously. Genes do not "intend" things. And there's no mechanism that would prefer the survival of genes over individuals. In fact, it's contrary to survival of the fittest itself: Darwin's whole idea was that the individual would survive if it, the individual, were more adapted; but the selfish gene theory implies that genes are "smarter" than individuals, and aim at their own survival in the face of the death or detriment of the individual.

The selfish gene theory is clearly correct a priori. A person's genes will spread more rapidly if he has no children but his sibling has 6 than if he has 2 children. That's obvious. Also, "survival" is largely irrelevant. The more appropriate term would be "descendant-leaving-success.

All of this is clear based on simple logic. Of course genes are not "selfish", and Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene overused that metaphor (although it's a good introduction to genetic theory, unlike his silly New Atheist books).

Individuals do not prioritize "survival". Some animals die as soon as they reproduce. All female mammals risk their own survival to give resources to their children.

Humans often join priesthoods or nunneries. Perhaps by concentrating family resources on the older children, the parents actually enhance DLS.

Maybe I'll comment on the rest of your post later.

[Immanuel Can]

Evil is the commodification of a person.

Very good. I agree that's evil.

The problem's going to come when we try to explain why. In a secular world, human beings have no special intrinsic dignity...they're just another animal, as you've often pointed out to Mikey. Now, if human beings were, say, made by God, in His image and for His purposes, then maybe we could talk about intrinsic dignity; but in a secular world, what tells us that human beings can't/shouldn't be commodified?

Evil is the metaphysical, purposeful, will lookin' to piss on Creation (man being its chief target and tool).

Evil and Evil are both real: the former is the violation of natural right; the later is the malignancy promotin' such violation.

There, you're welcome.

That will do nicely...except for an Atheist. He has no conception of evil that he can base in anything deeper than personal preference...and who says the indifferent, uncaring universe he supposes he lives in can care a flip about personal preference? Why would we think that was the case?

[Immanuel Can]

The selfish gene theory is clearly correct a priori.

Umm...sorry...I have to ask, do you know what a priori means? It's certainly not at all that. No empirical or "scientific" claim ever is, and the selfish gene theory is certainly presented as "scientific."

And I suggest it's not even wildly plausible, in fact. It's pretty funny to think of genes as being more powerful and decisive than the person whose genes they are...so powerful, in fact, that they "drive" the poor bugger to die for the sake of a chromosome that happens to look like his...even without his being consciously aware at all that that is what he's doing.

I think Dawkins et al. are clearly grasping at straws there. I don't think that even at first glance one is going to find that winsome, unless one is already desperate, like Dawkins, to save a theory from a serious perplexity.

[Immanuel Can]

I'd just like you to "communicate" your own definition of one word: the key word that you used. It has four letters.

Explain the context in which I used the word evil. Or quote it.

::: crestfallen look, dejected tone :::

What more needs to be said?!? What more?!?

How Evil entered our world!

What a great question. What do you think the answer is?

That's how all this started.

[henry quirk]

The problem's going to come when we try to explain why.

It's the problem for which there is no easy solution. A man like Mike writes God off as a fairy tale, dismisses morality as a fiction, and views himself and his fellows as meat machines. What can I offer such a person except resistance? No evidence I offer is acceptable (all such evidence falls outside materialism [which is all he'll admit]).

When the other guy insists he and you are cattle, and reason fails, what's left left but a strong defense against the inevitable atrocities such men open the door to?

[Immanuel Can]

The problem's going to come when we try to explain why.

It's the problem for which there is no easy solution. A man like Mike writes God off as a fairy tale, dismisses morality as a fiction, and views himself and his fellows as meat machines. What can I offer such a person except resistance? No evidence I offer is acceptable (all such evidence falls outside materialism [which is all he'll admit]).

When the other guy insists he and you are cattle, and reason fails, what's left left but a strong defense against the inevitable atrocities such men open the door to?

Yep. That's about it.

[Will Bouwman]

...in the Biblical account, both individuals were created individually, so in no sense would be consanguinous.

But their children would have been. Who else was there to breed with?

[Immanuel Can]

...in the Biblical account, both individuals were created individually, so in no sense would be consanguinous.

But their children would have been. Who else was there to breed with?

Well, according to the Evolutionists, it would be any other comparable hominid, including all the pre-modern ones, that did not possess a dominant gene capable of causing gene-reversion of the "modern" mutation. And in the Biblical narrative, it would not be forbidden for early mankind to intermingle in this way -- no law against it existed -- and we know that consanguity does not automatically issue in genetic damage or extinction. So it's not a problem, whichever story we accept.

[Alexiev]

The selfish gene theory is clearly correct a priori.

Umm...sorry...I have to ask, do you know what a priori means? It's certainly not at all that. No empirical or "scientific" claim ever is, and the selfish gene theory is certainly presented as "scientific."

And I suggest it's not even wildly plausible, in fact. It's pretty funny to think of genes as being more powerful and decisive than the person whose genes they are...so powerful, in fact, that they "drive" the poor bugger to die for the sake of a chromosome that happens to look like his...even without his being consciously aware at all that that is what he's doing.

I think Dawkins et al. are clearly grasping at straws there. I don't think that even at first glance one is going to find that winsome, unless one is already desperate, like Dawkins, to save a theory from a serious perplexity.

Genes don't "drive" individuals. What is a prior correct is that genes will tend to increase in frequency not because of the "survival" of the individual in whom they reside, nor (only) because of his or her DLS. Their continuance snd potential increase is due to other factors as well -- such as the DLS of close relatives. This is mathematically obvious -hence a priori.

I feel like I'm offering an introduction to genetics to a freshman. This is standard stuff. Oh, well. What else is new. You get an "F" in the "easy A" intro course.

By the way, your penchant for criticizing Darwin instead of Standard, modern evolutionary theory is akin to Dawkins' penchant for criticizing fundamentalist literalists instead of sophisticated Christians.

[Will Bouwman]

...in the Biblical narrative, it would not be forbidden for early mankind to intermingle in this way -- no law against it existed -- and we know that consanguity does not automatically issue in genetic damage or extinction.

So how did genetic damage enter the human species?

[Immanuel Can]

...in the Biblical narrative, it would not be forbidden for early mankind to intermingle in this way -- no law against it existed -- and we know that consanguity does not automatically issue in genetic damage or extinction.

So how did genetic damage enter the human species?

According to Evolutionism? Or according to the Biblical view?

[Immanuel Can]

The selfish gene theory is clearly correct a priori.

Umm...sorry...I have to ask, do you know what a priori means? It's certainly not at all that. No empirical or "scientific" claim ever is, and the selfish gene theory is certainly presented as "scientific."

And I suggest it's not even wildly plausible, in fact. It's pretty funny to think of genes as being more powerful and decisive than the person whose genes they are...so powerful, in fact, that they "drive" the poor bugger to die for the sake of a chromosome that happens to look like his...even without his being consciously aware at all that that is what he's doing.

I think Dawkins et al. are clearly grasping at straws there. I don't think that even at first glance one is going to find that winsome, unless one is already desperate, like Dawkins, to save a theory from a serious perplexity.

Genes don't "drive" individuals.

Right. They have no volition. "Selfish" is a nonsense word, when applied to them. It doesn't even rise to the level of being an apt metaphor, let alone a reality.

By the way, your penchant for criticizing Darwin instead of Standard, modern evolutionary theory is akin to Dawkins' penchant for criticizing fundamentalist literalists instead of sophisticated Christians.

There have been modifications on Darwin, it's true; but nobody questions his invention and initation of the theory...although they should, probably, since his theory was actually quite derivative of earlier theories with more obvious faults. However, "selfish gene" isn't "standard" anything. It's nonsense. It's Dawkins et al. desperately trying to avoid certain persistent problems in conventional Evolutionism. It requires us to attribute a kind of "volition" or better a teleological orientation and efficacy, to genes...entities obviously incapable of either.