I wasn't sure. It's one thing to say that meaning, purpose, and ethics do not derive from or depend on being created by God; it's another to become a nihilist and find nothing meaningful and have no sense of purpose and be amoral.
What if the Theory of Evolution is Right? (Part I)
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Theists can't help but think that nihilism and atheism are synonymous. Nay. They insist.
Jan 3, 2015
0
#1044
MindWalk wrote:
Meaning, purpose, and ethics do not derive from being created by God and do not depend on being created by God.
Your quote is needlessly dogmatic.
Try this: "Meaning, purpose,and ethics need not derive from God...". Even though this is by no means a self-evident truth, one can make a rational argument for it.
For many, meaning, purpose and ethics as a matter of fact DO derive from God. Many would assert the contemporary atheism owes a huge debt to the Judeo-Christain ethos, and thoughtful atheists do in fact acknowledge this.
As I've said over and over, only to have it drowned out by red font pleonastics, I want the Enlightenment Project (developing an enduring ethos based only on reason) to be successful. As a scientist, is depresses me that I've seen no objective evidence that it has.
For the thoughtful atheist, one can read Jean Luc Ferry's "A brief history of thought". The task is to develop a rational and loving ethos out of the ashes of Nietzsche's thorough decontruction of the Enlightenment Project (and Christianity too, to be fair).
Can it be done? I doubt it, but I honestly want to be wrong. I want to live in peace, watch my grandchildren grow up, pursue those things which seem to be good to me, all free of totalitarian oppression.
I just don't seeany objective evidence that atheists can pull it off. But I'm rooting for you!
Here is something apropos about science that I want to share.
"... there are many reasons why you might not understand [an explanation of a scientific theory] ... Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. A little screen comes down and you don't listen anymore. I'm going to describe to you how Nature is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in the way of your understanding it. It's a problem that [scientists] have learned to deal with: They've learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense. [A scientific theory] describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is - absurd.
I'm going to have fun telling you about this absurdity, because I find it delightful. Please don't turn yourself off because you can't believe Nature is so strange. Just hear me all out, and I hope you'll be as delighted as I am when we're through. "
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988),
from the introductory lecture on quantum mechanics reproduced in QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Feynman 1985).
From the excellent link provided by Elroch:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/index.html#evidence
hapless, you are such a fop.
I am an atheist and I will be married (happily) 49 years next week. I've always paid my taxes, served my country in the military, never taken drugs, raised my children to be good citizens, never been in jail, my family loves me, my neighbors like me.
Religion? The Holy Inquisition and torture, witch burnings, heads are being lopped off even today in the name of religion. Don't forget sacrificing the first born sons to Baal. Or the Aztecs who took captives atop their pyramids and cut their hearts out. The Holocaust...pedophile priests...the Irish Protestants versus the Irish Catholics. And...so much, much more...crimes in the name of "God".
Too, "God" flooded the Earth and killed untold millions of people, sends billions of good people who don't believe in him to perpetual torture. And...so much, much more...holy deeds in the name of "God".
Bah! I can see why you designate yourself a fool.
OK, I have edited my atheist's credo. The changes are in red.
I am so happy now that you have enlightened me. I accept everything you say. There is no god. There is no soul or purpose in our universe, except for the ones we have created for ourselves, just random events competing for optimal outcomes. What appears to be negative entropy is just a phenomenon resulting from vast amounts of time, space and opportunities. If you drop a sufficiently large number of saucers, a cup will be formed. I am just a soulless mass of proteins, enzymes and lipids called life and there are no ethical demands except the ones I created for myself. Thank you for revealing the truth.
gopher_the_throat wrote:
OK, I have edited my atheist's credo. The changes are in red.
....If you drop a sufficiently large number of saucers, a cup will be formed. ....
I think that this does not logically follow the 'competing for optimal outcomes' idea and there are good physical reasons why it is not true.
However, everything else you wrote in this post is basically correct.
Welcome to the fold.
Well, that was just a metaphor indicating that random change can introduce an ordered result.
Jan 3, 2015
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#1050
Rickett2222 wrote a lot of stuff indicating he/she is woefully ignorant of basic scientific terminology and concepts.
Easy homework to avoid being the class dunce: read these two articles:
and learn why scientific theories prove extremely reliable in practice, and why life can continue for tens of thousands of generations without degrading (as directly observed).
Jan 3, 2015
0
#1051
gopher_the_throat wrote:
Well, that was just a metaphor indicating that random change can introduce an ordered result.
Actually, your jeering analogy was a perfect example of a strawman, an underhand attempt to insinuate that one thing is really just like another when it is not.
There is absolutely no question that the combination of replication and mutation can produce order in the sense you describe. This can be demonstrated by realistic simulations, modelling the observed ways that digital information is (chemically) replicated and that, as an automatic result, natural selection leads to evolution (in the simple sense of a gradual optimisation with regard to fitness).
See Dr Andrew Pargellis' demonstration that replicators can arise from entirely random starting conditions, with simple "laws of nature". [This is really cool!]
The key requirement is that fitness depends on the exact information being replicated, so mutations have a range of fitness. That there can be correlation between the fitness of a genome and the fitness of the distribution of its possible offspring is a practical necessity as well - hardly in doubt when examples are looked at.
One of the most absurd of creationist claims about this process is that all mutations are bad. This implies all genomes are perfect, so there are no genetic diseases. The absurdity is made more striking when it is realised that the number of possible variations on just one single genome in one generation (i.e. one individual arising from specific parents) is larger than the number of particles in the Universe. A smart person can see that this means that evolution has not had a fraction of the time necessary to explore the genomic space and reach true optima (even if the fitness function had no time variation).
I do not intend to be "jeering" but there is some degree of irony included in what I have written. Would you care to rewrite my statement in a way that is more satisfactory?
Jan 3, 2015
0
#1053
Strawman Alert!
One of the most absurd of creationist claims about this process is that all mutations are bad.
No one on this thread has claimed that. About three thousand posts ago I gave a couple of specific examples of favorable mutations in humans: sickle trait (someone beat me to it, but I agreed with it), adult lactose tolerance are two that come to mind. Racial traits, assuming that they MUST have been caused by mutation, also infer positive features. Examples: people of African descent are almost never are diagnosed with Hemochromatosis or celiac disease. And a black with Tay-Sachs syndrome? Maybe it has happened somewhere, but in the spirit of the thread I'm too lazy to look it up.
Elroch, for about the third time in the last 100 posts, you have been arguing with a group that has fled the scene weeks ago. There are no young-earthers here, no flat-earthers, no backwater yahoos. The people you are addressing likely have qualifications exceding your own, except for stochastics. Everyone here,to my knowledge, acknowledges the role of evolution in some shape or form on our planet.
I've yet to link my first quote to any creationist site. I've provided plenty of links to those right wing religious works like "The Selfish Gene" and "Scientific American".
So just lay off the silly stuff.
gopher_the_throat wrote:
I am so happy now that you have enlightened me. I accept everything you say. There is no god. There is no soul or purpose in our universe, except for the ones we have created for ourselves, just random events competing for optimal outcomes. What appears to be negative entropy is just a phenomenon resulting from vast amounts of time, space and opportunities. If you drop a sufficiently large number of saucers, a cup will be formed. I am just a soulless mass of proteins, enzymes and lipids called life and there are no ethical demands except the ones I created for myself. Thank you for revealing the truth.
Just curious who are your adressing these comments to. Many people forget that in between posts and responses that there can be a number of posts posted always good to at least mention the post #
Jan 3, 2015
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#1055
Dr. Andrew Pargellis proved that using sophisticated computer techniques one can demonstrate a process which has never been and likely never to be demonstrated in the wild.
Theists enjoy stuff like that, too. Dr. John Lennox has gone into rhapsody analizing computer models for "spontaneous self-replication". Except that they're not spontaneous, and they're not truly self-replicating. Unplug the computer, and the whole process comes to a stop.
They're aren't that many people hitching their horses to that wagon these days.
If you believe in The (mythical) Replicator, then synthesis it in the lab. Given our modern techniques, surely it can't be that hard, especially considering this once happened in the wild by chance.
Of course, The (mythical) Replicator took about a billion years to come about in the wild, plus or minus some change, but Lensky has shown us all how to speed up the process.
Jan 3, 2015
0
#1056
Rickett2222 wrote:
gopher_the_throat wrote:
I am so happy now that you have enlightened me. I accept everything you say. There is no god. There is no soul or purpose in our universe, except for the ones we have created for ourselves, just random events competing for optimal outcomes. What appears to be negative entropy is just a phenomenon resulting from vast amounts of time, space and opportunities. If you drop a sufficiently large number of saucers, a cup will be formed. I am just a soulless mass of proteins, enzymes and lipids called life and there are no ethical demands except the ones I created for myself. Thank you for revealing the truth.
Just curious who are your adressing these comments to. Many people forget that in between posts and responses that there can be a number of posts posted always good to at least mention the post #
Wow. I follow this thread infrequently, and I knew immediately what he was referring to.
hapless - that's amazing because I was not refering to anything. I am trying to devise a credo (I believe) that smmarizes the underlying beliefs of atheism.
gopher:
Are you daft? I've post about 597 times that atheism is simply a state of being without theism. Nothing more. Nothing less.
And, too many theists choose to define it as anti-theism. They refuse to believe that anyone could be without theism without also being against theism.
Are there some atheists who are also anti-theist? Sure. But that isn't atheism. That is something else. Just as there are religiosos who would like to behead or burn at the stake those who don't follow their particular zany beliefs.
Also, gopher...
I can't say that what I'm going to say is universal among atheists. You see, there are soft atheists and hard atheists.
Soft atheism is akin to agnoticism (although even there, there is soft and hard...theistic agnostics and atheistic agnostics). For example, a hard atheist would claim that there is 100% no "god(s)".
Me? I am a soft atheist. I do not believe any of the thousands of man made gods are credible. I have spent decades researching the subject and that is my final conclusion. Therefore: atheist.
What happens after death? I believe: nothing. But I don't have any proof. Saying that, I do not fear perdition because I am convinced that it is a man-made concept. As I've said, I am 100% convinced that the holy handbooks of all religions are myths and/or lies.
Can there be something after death? I doubt it but it is possible. What is the first cause? I don't know. But I am convinced that it isn't Yahweh, Jesus or Allah. So, on this subject I am agnostic. (Maybe Mother Goose?)
I am in good company with Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein and (I suspect) Richard Dawkins and Elroch.
If I know something, fine. If I don't, I plead ignorance. Wouldn't it be nice if the average theist could do likewise? 
Jan 3, 2015
0
#1060
hapless_fool wrote:
Dr. Andrew Pargellis proved that using sophisticated computer techniques one can demonstrate a process which has never been and likely never to be demonstrated in the wild.
Theists enjoy stuff like that, too. Dr. John Lennox has gone into rhapsody analizing computer models for "spontaneous self-replication". Except that they're not spontaneous, and they're not truly self-replicating. Unplug the computer, and the whole process comes to a stop.
They're aren't that many people hitching their horses to that wagon these days.
If you believe in The (mythical) Replicator, then synthesis it in the lab. Given our modern techniques, surely it can't be that hard, especially considering this once happened in the wild by chance.
Of course, The (mythical) Replicator took about a billion years to come about in the wild, plus or minus some change, but Lensky has shown us all how to speed up the process.
As I said, creationists arguing against the theory of biological evolution (which is the sole topic of this thread) seem to be unable to avoid switching to arguing against the hypothesis of abiogenesis.
I can see the motivation: the Bronze Age writers of Genesis were clearly writing about how a passing deity magicked the common ancestor of all life from some clay. 
I am not sure what form of analog of ancient transport you were referring to in your post, but I can assure you from a somewhat less closeted viewpoint that:
- the role of computer simulation in science continues to grow as computing power grows and models improve. Some truly amazing things have been achieved recently, such as simulations of the entire biochemistry of Mycoplasma genitalium at a molecular level http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19016772 and the OpenWorm project.
- naturalistic explanations will continue to be the only ones with a role in science until the first piece of evidence arrives to necessitate anything else (I'm happy to bet this never happens).
Meaning, purpose, and ethics do not derive from being created by God and do not depend on being created by God.
Isn't that what I said? I thought I was getting the atheistic message correct.