What if the Theory of Evolution is Right? (Part I)

Well, I think that I adequately answered you in #951.

kstevens67 "I think we can all agree that "Love thy neighbor", with 'neighbor' meaning anyone, is the right path.

1. No...we can't "all" agree.

2. No...loving "anyone" is incredibly naiive and ditto-headed.

You asked...and I mean you no malice...but that is my final answer, young man. 

   As a thought...

   I don't think that there is anyone on this thread that I don't like. Now, I am not willing to love "anyone". But I think that if trapped on a deserted island, I could "live and let live" with most.

   Including hapless. He strikes me as a good and decent man. But I am disappointed in him. Seems to me he said that he had dowloaded "The Selfish Gene" and was going to tear into it and come back with his critique.

   Never happened. He was gone "for a spell" and then popped in recently just to poke a finger in the eye of anyone who found the theory of evolution as credible. Then he storms off, again, in an indignant huff.

   I'm not buying it, hapless. You never did buy Dawkin's book...did you? You would rather eat worms, I suspect, than buy a book where an atheist such as Dawkins would get a royalty. And you really don't want facts. You, sir, thrive on beliefs.

   Am I right or am I right?!

I don't care if he bought it or borrowed it as long as he read it, and I am still interested to discuss it. So far he has not indicated any disagreement with the science.

   Looks to me that the above says it all.

Someone's got egg on their face:

fissionfowl, I am not advocating disrespect for believers. Believers should be treated with the same civility as anyone else is treated with. Human beings, whether believers or not, get respect simply as thinking, feeling beings.

But that is not the same as respecting their beliefs. Their choice to believe is their own. Sure. But *what* they believe might be absurd, ridiculous, patently false, self-contradictory, completely unworthy of anyone's respect. I have an acquaintance who believes all sorts of absurd things because numbers, he thinks, tell him them. Well, he's free to make life-decisions based on numerology--but that doesn't mean I have to respect numerology or that I shouldn't criticize it.

Always, always, *always* distinguish between criticism of a *person* and criticism of *what that person believes*.

To ask, "Would the world be better if everyone followed the maxim 'love thy neighbor' " is not the same as to ask, "Is it reasonable to think that everyone really will follow the maxim 'love thy neighbor'."

My answer to the first question is, "Yes."

My answer to the second question is, "Regrettably not."

The problem fissionfowl seems to be pointing to is this: Person S holds belief p. Belief p is absurd, ridiculous, worthy of the harshest criticism. But person S seriously believes it. It is important to him. He cherishes it. To him, it seems that to criticize belief p is to criticize him for believing it.

It is important to note that if person S holds belief p *and through his indignance at criticism as "disrespectful" immunizes himself against seriously considering serious criticisms of belief p*--and if he does this for all of his beliefs--then person S has ensured that he will not improve his belief system by eliminating the self-contradictory or unjustified or poorly-justified ones. He has ensured that his belief will remain what it is forever, *whether it is true or not* and *whether there is the slightest good reason to think that it is true or not*.

In order to be able to change beliefs for rational reasons, one *must* be willing to subject his beliefs to criticism--whether from himself or from other people. And that means he has to be willing to stop thinking of other people as showing disrespect toward him when they criticize his beliefs.

Some physicists criticized Einstein's views on quantum mechanics--but they had the highest respect for Einstein himself.

I'm still waiting for such knowledge and understanding despite quite a few polite requests!

I see Iluvsmetuna has kindly copied my question to the other thread, but unfortunately no-one there has been able to find an example either. 

@ Mindwalk:

A lot to answer there, so I guess I'll just sum up... I probably should've taken your original statement more literally, which would mean I agree; Religiosity doesn't mean above reproach. 6000 year earth stuff for example or taking Noah's ark literally. It just depends how far one stretches the lack of respect and when it should become simple disagreement.

I guess I was slightly blinded by ridiculous Richard Dawkins type characters and read too much into what you said.

Tuna is not a human being it is a fish so it cannot be humanly rational as a fish only swims all day long 8 days a week.

The problem here is to try to find enough logical posts by tuna to make say a bell curve distribution or any other type of distribution. I have only one doubtful one and you cannot make a distribution of any kind with a single element.

Tuna posts are meant to criticize with quotes or phrases found on the Internet.
Tunas loves tuna is this not what the user nickname or sobriquet is all about?

The day that tuna finds a pair of shoes that fits the size of the brain is the day that a new tuna will be born from ashes.

Until than tuna is a perfect example of Narcissism. Narcissus was taken to a pool, where he saw his own reflection in the water and fell in love with it, not realizing it was merely an image. Unable to leave the beauty of his reflection, Narcissus drowned.
Tuna is drowning even though being a fish as tunas cannot  dive beyond say 3000 feet.

Tuna problem no 1 solved. Awaiting for tuna no 2 and the whole family of tunas to be in tuna sorry in tune.

If the theory of evolution is right then the current humans as we all know them will be some day extinct and replaced by a new form of life.

This new form of life will evolve to a form of life that does away with the current humanoid bones and muscles with all of the paraphernalia needed to survive such as heart, kidneys, lungs, and liver.

The new form of life will be pure energy source and will enable to travel at the speed of light in a new vessel controlled only by the brain. This is my theory. Are we not saying that we use at most 10% of our brain? This will change and evolve to a new form of life.

Some will say this is far fetched and why not?

Do we all forget that the very first living organism was Earth?

A single-celled micro-organisms or microbes lacking a cell nucleus or cell membrane known as prokaryotes appeared on Earth almost four billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the formation of the Earth itself.
See where we are today.

V1: my comment was in no way pejorative, unlike calling people idiots or scoundrels. It was a simple objective assessment. You honestly don't know what you're talking about. It never seems to bother you, and when I came to grips with the fact that the "truth-seekers" were largely close-minded contentious folk, it doesn't bother me, either.

MW doesn't know what a genome is, but it didn't stop him from page after page of cut-and-paste from the sacred texts of talkorigins.

I think tuna is a hoot, but I agree that substantive contributions from him are rarer than fossilized transitional forms.

PW is the atheist tuna. He likes to insult folk, but I've never come away with anything the least bit thought-provoking in any of his posts.

Elroch, unlike most of the other atheist posters here, is a thoughtful and knowledgeable guy. I'm not aware of any factual dispute on anything scientific here, although, as I've pointed out, one can take rock-solid facts and reach different conclusions. My daughter has studied the scientific method in secondary school, and she probably understands this better than Elroch.

It would also be wonderful if he boned up on history a bit, but no one can make him do that. He will have to charge forward, drop his defenses, and accept that perhaps his most cherished beliefs aren't really true.

Anyway, as it's obvious you missed me, I went out to Colorado for a family reunion at Christmas, and I had more enjoyable things to do than read ANYTHING on my iPad.

I also picked up the flu and am pretty miserable.

That's it, I think. Maybe I'll touch bases here, maybe not.

Add: thanks gopher, you are indeed correct.

   I've told you several times that "love thy neighbor" in the sense that you keep saying, meaning everybody, is just tripe.

   You have attacked me several times but have not contributed  a jot nor a tittle to this thread.