"48% of the American public rejects the scientific theory of evolution"

[Blurred]

At every level, indeed. And that pattern regularly involves mass murder. I guess that's what it's "proven" for?
Regardless, all those "values" can be had without religions. Or at least without belief systems that rely on supernatural powerful controlling beings that have personal interactions with humans.

Though there's a world of devils and details buried in that "can be had."

Hey cocksucker.

Prove to me love, humor and happiness exists without your stupid assed links. Can you do that? Didn't think so.

You won't learn that shit until you join the real world.

[Jer]

Yawn.

[Steven S. Dallas]

Regardless, all those "values" can be had without religions.

Word to that.

And it's irregardless, smart guy.

[Blurred]

Yawn.

Tired of not getting laid?

Have any sweet links on your frustration?

Thought all the girls would swarm you on your bike. :shrug:

[MeatPuppet]

blind faith

Is there any other kind?

Isn't all faith "blind"? Whether it's due to lack of education, lack of perception, lack of desire to learn, or the limits of human knowledge?

Science requires faith for those without the education to understand it. If your problem is with "faith"(blind or otherwise) you should have equal condemnation for those people who believe in evolution yet have never take a physical anthropology class.

[hutash]

I tried to avoid getting involved in this thread since it has been beaten over pretty good many times. I just can't avoid it though, when I see such ignorance. Evolution is fact, not theory. It has been proven based on observed, as well as, experimental data. It is a principle, not a theory. As much so as gravity, or a non-earth center universe is principle. I will concede the point of what the driving force behind evolution is. Natural selection is way in front, but there are other possibilities, even including some god like influence (the evidence for that is virtually non-existent, but lack of evidence does not rule out it as a possibility, just makes it extremely unlikely.) Because 52% of American believe something does not make it right. Facts are not open to poles. When most people thought the earth was the center of the universe, did not make it so, it just made the majority wrong.

I do not believe in god, but my belief means nothing. God exists or does not, belief is irrelevant. Just as in believing 2+2=4 does not make it right, it just does. Whether you believe in evolution or not is immaterial. It has occurred. If you choose to ignore all the data, so be it, ever American has a right to be ignorant.

I commend Crud's Uncle for obtaining an advanced biochemistry degree, and to list it here. I think it is a little scary to think someone can get such a degree without an education, but that is also an American way of doing things. I challenge anybody posting here that claims to be an expert to list their credentials. They're opening themselves to ridicule, but, I for one, am proud of my education. There, did I get their, there, and they're right?

I have a BS in Zoology, and Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine, and I have spent my entire adult life studying evolution (going on thirty years now), including having read "On the Origin of Species" several times (I am currently reading the 1st edition, to see what Darwin meant when he wrote it. Most copies are the 6th edition.) I have read most of Darwin's, Gould's, Dawkins' works, as well as many others, and study much of the ID information, which I must say is anything but intelligent, and creationism arguments. If anybody would like to debate any specific points, I would be happy to, just use an intelligent argument, with at least a few facts to support your beliefs. If you choose to believe just to believe that's fine, just don't try to debate. I have no interest in discussing 2+2=3. If you choose to believe that, fine, I just don't want to waste my time on ignorance.

[hutash]

Hey cocksucker.

Prove to me love, humor and happiness exists without your stupid assed links. Can you do that? Didn't think so.

You won't learn that shit until you join the real world.

Love, humor and happiness can easily be shown to have evolved, and how they fit into natural selection. I believe both DW and I have done that to a reasonable degree in another thread (search Jamie Pierre). Art can be broken down to mostly simple mathematical formulas, which does not take anything away from its beauty, but just explains why we find it so.

I don't know about DW, but I for one get laid regularly, and I don't have to rely on hookers to do it. Though you seem to know an awful lot about cheap nickel nights. Your insults and negligible arguments are tiresome.

[Blurred]

Your insults and negligible arguments are tiresome.

So are your and DWs logic on illogical topics.

Emotions aren't logic, but dorks wouldn't know anything about that.

[WhiteLight]

Rationalism and Logic don't give us art

Actually, they do. At least in the case of certain masterworks. Anything involving, oh, say, perspective (as in vanishing points, etc.). See the sketchbooks of Da Vinci, Michelangelo, etc. Rational, logical thinking at work there.

[Blurred]

Art can be broken down to mostly simple mathematical formulas,

You two suck at life. Do you break everything down to mathmatical formulas?

[fluffballs]

Looks like the usual cast of characters. Sorry I missed the start, or maybe I'm not.

I'm a Christian (hutash, I'm no expert, but I've devoted the majority of my life to it) and I have no problem with evolution, I don't think we completely understand how it works, but we've got the right idea. I don't see how it threatens God at all. Jesus constantly used metaphors, why should I have to believe the creation story has to literal instead of symbolisim?

[MeatPuppet]

At every level, indeed. And that pattern regularly involves mass murder.

For the first 5900 years of recorded human history everything had a religious component to it. So by the same token, religion has provided the framework for nearly every stable society that has ever existed. You got to take the good with the bad.

I guess that's what it's "proven" for?
Regardless, all those "values" can be had without religions. Or at least without belief systems that rely on supernatural powerful controlling beings that have personal interactions with humans.

Sure, they can now.

Historically though, show me a civilization that didn't have a strong religious component to it.

For most of human history religion served a purpose. Since the rise of the scientific method the role of religion has had to change and adapt. Change doesn't come easy and the clash between old and new world views is what is at issue here.

[Jer]

Isn't all faith "blind"? Whether it's due to lack of education, lack of perception, lack of desire to learn, or the limits of human knowledge?

Science requires faith for those without the education to understand it.

A key point.

No single person can thoroughly examine and test all the rules and views that run our societies. (Never mind that many of those rules and views are not yet understood, period.)

So most of us will accept many things on faith. We'll basically adopt a set of myths and base our decisions and actions on them. Whether those myths be political ideologies, religions, pseudo-scientific theories or some mishmash of all these ideas, simplified, mangled and transmitted through popular culture.

Given that - it may be possible for some people to derive the "values" provided by religions from non-religious sources. Especially for people who live in stable, comfortable societies, with the spare time and inclination to ruminate 'bout such things.
(edit: as you say, they can now. But when the shit hits the fan ... ?)

But it may not be possible for everyone, or even most people, under all circumstances, or even under circumstances a bit less comfortable than those in Europe today.

Maybe some circumstances require a stronger, simpler set of myths to weld a population into a functioning society. A nation that can fend off threats from societies with similarly irrational myths. Or conquer them.

That don't make it right. It just makes it the way it is.

[WhiteLight]

Ok, a question:

For those who believe in god: If it were somehow proven to you beyond dispute (don't ask me how!) that your belief was incorrect, how would that impact your day-to-day life?

For those who don't believe in a god: Sort of the same q, but flipped the other way around. If you were somehow (again, don't ask me how!) shown that there IS a god, how would that impact your day-to-day life?

What would you change?

Me? I can't think of anything, really, that I'd do differently.

Just wondering...

[iceman]

Looks like the usual cast of characters. Sorry I missed the start, or maybe I'm not.

I'm a Christian (hutash, I'm no expert, but I've devoted the majority of my life to it) and I have no problem with evolution, I don't think we completely understand how it works, but we've got the right idea. I don't see how it threatens God at all. Jesus constantly used metaphors, why should I have to believe the creation story has to literal instead of symbolisim?

Fuck man, you're not the right kind of Christian for these here United States. You probably vote Democratic, you just got kicked out of the club.

[Blurred]

(Never mind that many of those rules and views are not yet understood, period.)

Like your view on Global Warming?

[WhiteLight]

P.S. God bless Sunday services for helping cut down on crowds on the slopes on that day.

[skimasterflex]

I tried to avoid getting involved in this thread since it has been beaten over pretty good many times. I just can't avoid it though, when I see such ignorance. Evolution is fact, not theory. It has been proven based on observed, as well as, experimental data. It is a principle, not a theory. As much so as gravity, or a non-earth center universe is principle. I will concede the point of what the driving force behind evolution is. Natural selection is way in front, but there are other possibilities, even including some god like influence (the evidence for that is virtually non-existent, but lack of evidence does not rule out it as a possibility, just makes it extremely unlikely.) Because 52% of American believe something does not make it right. Facts are not open to poles. When most people thought the earth was the center of the universe, did not make it so, it just made the majority wrong.

I do not believe in god, but my belief means nothing. God exists or does not, belief is irrelevant. Just as in believing 2+2=4 does not make it right, it just does. Whether you believe in evolution or not is immaterial. It has occurred. If you choose to ignore all the data, so be it, ever American has a right to be ignorant.

I commend Crud's Uncle for obtaining an advanced biochemistry degree, and to list it here. I think it is a little scary to think someone can get such a degree without an education, but that is also an American way of doing things. I challenge anybody posting here that claims to be an expert to list their credentials. They're opening themselves to ridicule, but, I for one, am proud of my education. There, did I get their, there, and they're right?

I have a BS in Zoology, and Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine, and I have spent my entire adult life studying evolution (going on thirty years now), including having read "On the Origin of Species" several times (I am currently reading the 1st edition, to see what Darwin meant when he wrote it. Most copies are the 6th edition.) I have read most of Darwin's, Gould's, Dawkins' works, as well as many others, and study much of the ID information, which I must say is anything but intelligent, and creationism arguments. If anybody would like to debate any specific points, I would be happy to, just use an intelligent argument, with at least a few facts to support your beliefs. If you choose to believe just to believe that's fine, just don't try to debate. I have no interest in discussing 2+2=3. If you choose to believe that, fine, I just don't want to waste my time on ignorance.

Goddamit I read this whole thing and was about to proclaim it all lame but then I read the last post, yours.

I'm and Anthropologist and I'd like to thank you for typing what I felt required to but would have been too lazy/tired to do.

One thing that may be worth reconsidering for you however is that beliefs are constructed as is the experience of reality constructed through them. It would be one thing for me to claim that an individuals belief creates his reality and his observations are determined by his intentions but I don't have to make this claim alone. Quantum Physics is making this claim today based on hard scientific evidence that electrons are motivated by observation and respond differently if observed directly than if we look at the evidence of their movements (decisions) after the fact.

It does matter what people believe and belief does make something "real" in the truest most experiencible respect of the term "real" because Real (note the capital R) as in "reality itself" as existing outside of observation is something 100% different and more complex than what we see hear taste smell and feel with our human sensory abilities, if it even exists at all in a way that our current pardigm of thought can comprehend.

It does matter what 48% of people concieve their reality as, because the other 52% of us have to live in the same world with them though our respective realities may be strikingly different.

The lack of belief in scientific principles is easily reduced to a lack of education as it has been done many a time in this thread. Likewise however fundamentalist christians reduce critically engaged minds to a lack of a different type f education and see our scientific principles in the same way we see their religious principles: AS BELIEFS.

And they are both beliefs, in that both are based on foundational ideas and if you remove this foundation the principle does not apply. In science we operate based on the foundational beliefs that we can believe what it is we observe empirically, that direct sensory observation is direct access to the Real. A christian fundamentalist can easily write off every by-product of this foundation, ie all of sciences amazing break throughs and paradigmatic shifts in thought, by simply undermining the foundational BELIEF that we can trust our senses.

Sound crazy? FKNA it does, but that doesn't make it any less the reality of our situation. When the christian right votes as a block they determine the outcome of election and legislation every day in most parts of this country.

At the base of all fact, theory, principle, idea, etc there lies basic assumptions that operate at a level that can most readily be defined as belief. We are split down the middle and each think either half is totally crazy. Where does that get us? Not any closer to a common ground from which proper funding for scientific exploration will be facilitated or critical thought will be embraced normatively by the national imaginary.

[hutash]

So are your and DWs logic on illogical topics.

Emotions aren't logic, but dorks wouldn't know anything about that.

Thank you for proving my point about insults and negligible arguments.

Evolution, god and religion are not illogical. Only belief in any of them for no logically reason are. Emotions do fit easily into the logic of natural selection. They may not be fully explained by such, but they certainly do have a certain amount of logical explanation.

Now see if you can create a logical sentence that does not involve an insult, or at least use the insult creatively. Again, your insults grow tiresome. I have nothing against insults, they are one of my favorite aspects of these TGR forums, but at least try to make them entertaining.

[hutash]

I'll further this tomorrow after a day of skiing. As for now, I intend to get laid. Goodnight.

[AbsolutStoli]

i didnt read the whole thread, and maybe theres more in the magazine story, but there was nothing at that link to indicate the poll size or where they were polling or who the subjects were.

that being said, i would like to quote fearless leader for emphasis, "is our children learning?"

[laseranimal]

I'm a Christian (hutash, I'm no expert, but I've devoted the majority of my life to it) and I have no problem with evolution, I don't think we completely understand how it works, but we've got the right idea. I don't see how it threatens God at all. Jesus constantly used metaphors, why should I have to believe the creation story has to literal instead of symbolisim?

well said

[stihletto]

If you want to reread my posts you might realize that thats exactly how I operate. I give everybody the benefit of the doubt. I am nice to everybody I meet.

I'm sure everyone can tell how nice you are to people that you meet by reading your internet posts.
"No I am a nice guy. I clearly stated it in my internet posts!"

[stihletto]

Oh pipe down you fucking JONG

you really do give people the benefit of the doubt!

At least i don't tie my kid to a leash like a dog and have him pull me around the mountain. Look at you , all ready for gaper day.JONG!

[stihletto]

But the thing is there is no more proof that there is a Santa Claus than there is that theres a God.

You are right, there is a lot more evidence to discount santa claus' existence.

What? There is no more proof that you are not adopted than that you are adopted. Is there.