How atheists often misunderstand and misuse the theory of evolution

[Phi for All]

12 hours ago, Night FM said:

But I haven't said anything about the science, merely things other people say about it that misunderstand it.

And even your understanding of this is flawed, because you obviously haven't studied the theory of evolution, and seem unwilling to admit it. You even claim you understand it "often better" than those who have. Have you read up on the Dunning-Kruger studies?

You're a novice in this area, yet you insist on criticizing it based on your limited knowledge. Is this a Christian thing? Do you feel some kind of superiority based on your faith that makes you think ridiculing something makes you better?

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

Perhaps this

See commentary

https://www.quora.com/Does-Lawrence-Krauss-s-book-A-Universe-From-Nothing-justify-its-tit

2 hours ago, studiot said:

Perhaps this

See commentary

https://www.quora.com/Does-Lawrence-Krauss-s-book-A-Universe-From-Nothing-justify-its-title-Is-what-he-calls-nothing-really-such-What-is-wrong-with-defining-nothing-as-synonymous-with-nonexistence-to-ask-Why-is-there-existence-itself

le-Is-what-he-calls-nothing-really-such-What-is-wrong-with-defining-nothing-as-synonymous-with-nonexistence-to-ask-Why-is-there-existence-itself

Well not really. Nothing does not mean chaos. Chaos means utter disorder, surely? That seems to imply there must something to be disordered, or ordered, in the first place.  

Edited September 30 by exchemist

[Peterkin]

9 hours ago, Night FM said:

I'm not sure why someone will change their belief that rape is wrong when presented with better evidence.

Do you have 'better' evidence to support the argument that rape is right than the evidence supporting the argument that rape is wrong?

OTOH, we have seen a great deal of reliable evidence supporting evolution and nothing but opinion to disprove it.

 

Edited September 30 by Peterkin

[Night FM]

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Evolution is the very definition of chaos

How so?

[sethoflagos]

4 hours ago, Night FM said:

How so?

Because evolution tends to respond to increasing environmental diversity by increasing biological diversity which, in turn, increases environmental diversity. A fundamentally unstable and unpredictable system.

 

[npts2020]

22 hours ago, Night FM said:

I'm not sure why someone will change their belief that rape is wrong when presented with better evidence. (But maybe it's better that they don't).

Because the evidence has shown that rape isn't wrong. What do you suppose the likelihood is of anyone ever coming up with such evidence, however?

14 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Religion's may lag behind sometimes and resist fundamental changes in their belief, but they also contain great thinkers that challenge the dogma and lead to better explanation's. 

Ditto scienceism.

Sometimes? When in the past several centuries has any religion been at the forefront of innovation of any kind?

Not sure what scienceism is.

[dimreepr]

8 hours ago, npts2020 said:

Sometimes? When in the past several centuries has any religion been at the forefront of innovation of any kind?

Quote

Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Doctor Angelicus, was a medieval philosopher and theologian. He sought to reconcile the teachings of the Catholic Church with Aristotelian philosophy, bridging the gap between theology and philosophy. His framework harmonized Christian belief with logic, creating a synthesis of faith and reason. Aquinas emphasized the supreme act of existence in God and created beings, distinguishing between God and the material world.

 

Baruch Spinoza - Wikipedia

 

8 hours ago, npts2020 said:

Not sure what scienceism is.

Given the context, isn't it obvious?

 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Given the context, isn't it obvious?

Given that they made the comment, I’d say the answer is “no”

[dimreepr]

21 hours ago, swansont said:

Given that they made the comment, I’d say the answer is “no”

Fair enough; scienceism = people who put their faith in science; I count myself among their numbers.

That includes a lot of people who don't really understand the science, bc we don't speak the language properly; the great thinkers evolve our thinking, sometimes against the prevailing/dogmatic understanding.

Ditto religions.

I'm not sure how else one could interpret that word, in the context of my post. 

[LuckyR]

I'm still waiting for the OP to share his observations on why MOST theists believe in cloud fairies.

[MigL]

On 9/30/2024 at 3:28 PM, sethoflagos said:

Because evolution tends to respond to increasing environmental diversity by increasing biological diversity which, in turn, increases environmental diversity. A fundamentally unstable and unpredictable system.

I like that.
I'll have to remember to use it next time someone points out that life decreases ( local ) entropy.

 

On 9/30/2024 at 9:38 AM, Phi for All said:

Is this a Christian thing?

Religion is a personal subjective belief.
As such, there's the Biblical interpretation from various periods in several thousand years past, the changing with each Pope Vatican's interpretation, and various splinter groups of Christianity, and also, people's own personal interpretation.

My own, as I still consider myself a Roman Catholic, is that I adhere to the principles and tenets of Christianity which allow me to live what I consider a good life.
Things like treating others how you would like to be treated, care, compassion and respect for others, etc.
It doesn't matter to me that the Bible or Pope push other tenets that are incompatible with me living what I consider a good life, nor do I think/believe there's an omnipotent  bearded old man with a shepherd's staff, who created the heavens and Earth in 6 days, impregnated a virgin by sheer will, and she bore him a son, which he would allow to be killed and then resurrected.
And this somehow absolved us of an original sin which was committed ( by entrapment ) of His original creation.
( it sound so silly that you have to wonder if the people who came up with this sh*t were high )

I suspect that you live by the same principles and tenets, but you may call them something else. I myself am flexible on what to call them, but I have called them Christian beliefs at various times; then again, I am an evidence and facts kind of person who doesn't place much significance in 'beliefs'.
I would think Dimreepr does call them Christian beliefs, and no one can say he is wrong, as it is a personal subjective belief, that doesn't need to account for anyone else's beliefs.

So if your quote was, or wasn't, meant to be a dig at Christians, I understand what you mean, and this time I'm not biting 🙂 .
( making a half-assed attempt to bury the hatchet )
 

On 10/3/2024 at 9:33 AM, dimreepr said:

There's no evidence that science will continue to evolve, tomorrow.

I was all ready to remove the neg point until I read this.

Science is, by definition, an evolution of thinking.
As new evidence presents itself, our thinking, and science, changes or evolves.
Unless you are prepared to argue that, at some point in time, no new evidence or observations will be made, there is a big hole in your argument.

Oh, what the heck ... maybe you learned something from this ...

Edited October 5 by MigL

[sethoflagos]

2 hours ago, MigL said:

I like that.
I'll have to remember to use it next time someone points out that life decreases ( local ) entropy.

In this thread, as almost universally elsewhere, the word 'chaos' is being misused. As a scientific concept it is a blundering shorthand for 'deterministic chaos' or a bounded degree of uncertainty in the evolution of certain systems. It does not imply 'utterly random' as in common usage and theological context.

Monkeys evolve directly into slightly different forms of monkey: not guppies or petunias. 

It's a red-flag word for me, so wherever the likes of Dim exploit the ambiguity of 'chaos' for their own nefarious ends, I automatically substitute 'diversity'. It usually helps lift the fog. 

 

[dimreepr]

21 hours ago, MigL said:

I was all ready to remove the neg point until I read this.

Science is, by definition, an evolution of thinking.
As new evidence presents itself, our thinking, and science, changes or evolves.
Unless you are prepared to argue that, at some point in time, no new evidence or observations will be made, there is a big hole in your argument.

Oh, what the heck ... maybe you learned something from this ...

I think you've misunderstood my point, humanity is necessary for science to exist (as we know it), but if we assume our continued existence, why would it be true that science, a single facet of human thinking, continue unabated in the choas of human politics?

"look on my works, ye mighty and dispair"

[MigL]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

humanity is necessary for science to exist (as we know it)

Science is the process of observing an effect, and drawing predictions and relationships grom that observation,
Humanity is not necessary; animals do it also.
The gazelle on the savannah have deduced that where the grass is greenest, water may be found.
Predatory fish know that where there is garbage, other fish, who eat garbage, may provide a meal.
Birds have figured out to take advantage of thermal drafts and the Earth's magnetic field, to navigate long distances.

Science is just a word we humans use; the process we call science is undertaken by almost all life.
On the other hand, the word, and concept, of religion is strictly human ( as far as I know ).

[dimreepr]

23 hours ago, MigL said:

Science is just a word we humans use; the process we call science is undertaken by almost all life.
On the other hand, the word, and concept, of religion is strictly human ( as far as I know ).

Indeed, that's kinda the point I'm making; it's a strange word to base a philosophy of humanity on...

After all, we are one external, almost catastrophic event, from a re-definition of the word religion; and we start praying/preying for a faverable el-nino...

Edited October 7 by dimreepr

[Harrot]

On 10/6/2024 at 4:40 PM, MigL said:

Science is just a word we humans use; the process we call science is undertaken by almost all life.
On the other hand, the word, and concept, of religion is strictly human ( as far as I know ).

Science need INTERSUBJECTIVITY and CONCEPTUAL REPRESENTATIONS that are SHARED using some complex langage and that can be VERIFIED using EXPERIENCE. If not, this is just "having the same opinion about something".

Quote

Intersubjective verifiability is the capacity of a concept to be readily and accurately communicated between different individuals ("intersubjectively"), and to be reproduced under varying circumstances for the purposes of verification. It is a core principle of empirical, scientific investigation.^[1][2][3]

Although there are areas of belief that do not consistently employ intersubjective verifiability (e.g., many religious claims), intersubjective verifiability is a near-universal way of arbitrating truth claims used by people everywhere. In its basic form, it can be found in colloquial expressions, e.g., "I'm from Missouri. Show me!" or "Seeing is believing". The scientific principle of replication of findings by investigators other than those that first reported the phenomenon is simply a more highly structured form of the universal principle of intersubjective verifiability.

Subjective experience

Each individual is a subject, and must subjectively experience the physical world. Each subject has a different perspective and point of view on various aspects of the world. However, by sharing their comparable experiences intersubjectively, individuals may gain an increasingly similar understanding of the world. In this way, many different subjective experiences can come together to form intersubjective ones that are less likely to be prone to individual bias or gaps in knowledge.

While specific internal experiences are not intersubjectively verifiable, the existence of thematic patterns of internal experience can be intersubjectively verified. For example, whether or not people are telling what they believe to be the truth when they make claims can only be known by the claimants. However, we can intersubjectively verify that people almost universally experience discomfort (hunger) when they haven't had enough to eat. We generally have only a crude ability to compare (measure) internal experiences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersubjective_verifiability

Edited October 7 by Harrot

[Night FM]

On 10/3/2024 at 12:47 AM, LuckyR said:

I'm still waiting for the OP to share his observations on why MOST theists believe in cloud fairies.

It's a moot point, because people would come up with the idea on their own that there is a God even if all existing religions disappeared.

Edited October 20 by Night FM

[LuckyR]

7 hours ago, Night FM said:

It's a moot point, because people would come up with the idea on their own that there is a God even if all existing religions disappeared.

True, in antiquity (when gods were invented), less so today, though I grant that a subset of the number of current theists would invent their own gods if all religions magically disappeared.

[Phi for All]

13 hours ago, Night FM said:

It's a moot point, because people would come up with the idea on their own that there is a God even if all existing religions disappeared.

Certainly NOT moot. Better education opportunities in modern times would reduce the gullibility factor necessary to invent supernatural beings. Many modern folks have a more reasonable stance, especially wrt omnipotent beings who curse us for the flaws they supposedly created us with.

[dimreepr]

37 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Certainly NOT moot. Better education opportunities in modern times would reduce the gullibility factor necessary to invent supernatural beings. Many modern folks have a more reasonable stance, especially wrt omnipotent beings who curse us for the flaws they supposedly created us with.

Indeed, but with the caveat that "Better education opportunities in modern times would reduce the gullibility factor necessary to invent supernatural beings." gambler's are often from the better educated (with their own god), who's decision's often force those less well educated to prey pray to the same god.