One of the best things about following the antics of creationists is that it gives you a better appreciation of the creative power of the human mind…which isn’t anywhere near as powerful as reality. Here’s another example of creationist rationalization that doesn’t hold up well under even casual inspection.
With the notable exception of the American Bison most mammals have two separate pleural or lung cavities. As we all know, one side of our chest can be penetrated collapsing that lung, but the other side remains intact and the remaining lung can support life. The bison has what is called an incomplete mediastinum, that is there is but one pleural cavity containing both lungs. Thus the problem for the Native bow hunter with or without a horse is solved. An arrow must only penetrate the chest at any point and both lungs collapse. The fatally wounded animal would only continue a few yards providing unlimited food, clothing and tools. Before the availability of horses bison could be shot by stealth from a blind or other hiding place. One problem is solved yet another serious comes to mind…a problem seldom mentioned, yet demanding an answer.
The problem is for the evolutionist. Other than providing food for hungry people, of what selective advantage is an incompletely divided mediastinum? From an evolutionary sense this makes absolutely no sense. Indeed conventional wisdom would argue for its elimination from the gene pool. Yet it did remain and fed a continent of Native American for centuries. It must indeed require faith and dedication to remain an evolutionist. I am glad I know the Creator of Bison and Native Americans. You can know Him too.
So, wait…God hates bison? Doesn’t this create a logical problem for the creationist, in that God has made the primary large game animal targeted by the Native Americans exceptionally fragile?
And let’s question that assumption: bison aren’t particularly weak, and there’s no reason to assume that selection would work to promote the evolution of dual compartments in the chest cavity — that’s almost certainly an embryological accident in the first place. How many wild animals are running around with only one lung? Not many. If you’re attacked in such a way that your chest cavity is perforated, the only difference between a separated and unseparated mediastinum is whether your death will be slow or quick.
And of course, I thought the Hebrews were the chosen people. How come God didn’t give the Middle East a population of big game animals they could knock over with a good sharp poke?
Canadian Cynic has a nice sharp rebuttal: “…if God had really cared about native Americans, he might have given them immunity to smallpox.”
This assumes, of course, that if the bison had such a “complete” chest cavity it would no longer be a viable food source. So I would argue that either type of chest cavity was irrelevant; the Native Americans would still have been able to kill them. And since when is a single bison an unlimited food supply? WTF?
Having butchered numerous deer, done open heart surgery on rats and dogs, I don’t recall any of them having a completely septated mediastinums. I was alway under the impression that it was primates that were the exception.
Inanity knows no bounds. Bison have one lung, therefore my god made them. If the bison had 48574 lungs, do you think the conclusion would be any different?
Unfortunately, this somewhat nightmarish site has no comment section.
Professor, the very fact that you’re not willing to obtain your own consecrated Host proves to me that something tells you it is something more than a “frackin’ cracker.” May God give you the grace to see the blasphemy you are committing. In any event, I pray He forgives you and has mercy on your eternal soul. God bless you.
I don’t know the exact numbers as far as the ratio of Bison to hunter populations. I do know that the bison herds numbered in the millions of individuals and I’m sure the number of hunters was conciderably less. So the chance of a single individual bison being killed by a hunter was not too great. I’m sure someone in this forum can come up with some precise figures on this.
May God give you the grace to see the blasphemy you are committing. In any event, I pray He forgives you and has mercy on your eternal soul. God bless you.
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Can someone please tell me what good things atheism has brought into the world?
I’ll spot you a quarter point for PZ’s beard.
People Who Say “Evolution isn’t a Fact” Should Be Naturally Deselected.
Seriously, how do people this stupid manage to breathe? I want answers from reputable medical journals, ’cause DAMN!
Can he really be a Doctor? -Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
This is basic evolution 101.
Is a cat falls, how often do they get seriously hurt? Rarely, if at all, but of course it does happen. If it does, the cat cannot survive and often dies. This is selection against wimpy cats…
How about a prey animal? If a gazelle or bird gets taken down it often breaks its legs, or even its neck in the case of many birds. Why isn’t there selection against this? Because the cat already caught the mutha fucka. Once that has happened, the animals does not even get a chance to be selected for its ability to survive falling or getting bit. The selection is for the animal not to get caught in the freakin’ first place. Why don’t they evolve to a point where they never get caught? because selection os working on the cats ability to catch the damn things at the same damn time…
Heleen, No comment area-however his email is linked on his home page.
If God hadn’t made bison meat so tasty, Native Americans wouldn’t have hunted them. God must really hate bison.
God created fragile bisons so that native americans could kill them all easily so that good christians could kill native americans more easily. obvious, no ?
Simple: the bison is infinite. And how could an infinite beast occupy a finite space? That’s impossible, which goes to show that it could only have been created by an almighty god that is not bound by the laws of geometry. Oh, and who got himself incarnated in his own son and died for our sins. That’s totally necessary too.
BTW, there’s a t-shirt over at EvolveFish that says “Ask Native Peoples about ‘Christian Love’…”
I also like the one about “Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism Since 1492”
So god hates Europeans and Asians. The equivalent and related animals in the Old World are the horses and wild cattle, the Aurochs. Both were hunted for food by early man using the same technology as Amerinds.
He must also hate middle easterners and Africans because he didn’t give them any bison either.
And he must really hate the Jews because he gave all the oil to the Arabs.
There is something about simple minded fuzzy reasoning that just guarantees it is both stupid and wrong.
According to the creationist, the continued killing of the bison over many years by Native American arrows was supposed to help in the selection of two separate pleural cavities. Since this did not happen, it disprove the theory of evolution. That makes sense to a creationist.
lol, i like those sectarian religionists with their pompous questions that totally sidestep whether or not their ideas conform to reality. I guess these people would worship a turd as long as it smelled nice.
every day, I have less and less faith in humanity. In retrospect, it was a bad idea for me to watch Idiocracy. Creationists remind me of the product Brawndo from that movie. “but plants need water!”
“no, they need Brawndo.”
“but why?”
“it’s got what plants crave.”
“but the plants are dying.”
“…but Brawndo’s got electrolytes. Brawndo. It’s what plants crave…”
There is a place in the prarries that prove that evolution doesn’t work quickly either. Buffalo Jump (I think the full name is Big White Bones Buffalo Jump), poor things are about as aerodynamic as bricks and never once did they evolve wings on the way down.
I wonder if they’re any good on crackers.
“…if God had really cared about native Americans, he might have given them immunity to smallpox.”
Not true, because while God does care about Native Americans, he cares about White European settlers more. If Native Americans were immune to smallpox, our ancestors would have had a more difficult time fulfilling Manifest Destiny and feeling like their God favored them in some way.
Also, God did give the Hebrews an unlimited easy to obtain food supply, manna from heaven. Of course they then went and prayed to a golden calf and fucked that all up. See God is more knowledgeable than man, all hail Vishnu
I liked their article on the natural pregnancy test. Before EPT and the rabbit test, a woman could walk outside, look at the stars and just know that she was pregnant. Wow! And who says women don’t have magical powers?
“i like those sectarian religionists with their pompous questions that totally sidestep whether or not their ideas conform to reality.”
Which ideas don’t conform to reality? can you demonstrate that?
Just to keep up to date, is the bison the new atheist’s nightmare?
I’m ok with this. It’s easier to conjure up fear of a giant hoofed animal than a banana.
Never mind that hunting loose herds with projectiles was only the last (and one of the shortest-lived) in a long line of bison-hunting methods.
Oh, and that only Plains Indians ever got to hunt bison. Lots more Indians ate acorns, to the point of acorns being a staple food, than ever ate bison. I wonder what the creationist excuse is for all of the tannins in acorns? Perhaps to keep the Indians from gorging oak-trees into extinction?
#21 – I think you may mean Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump, in Alberta, Canada
When I was in high school and I had to write a research paper, I would do my research, collect and organize all the facts and information that could be used to support my stated position, and ignore anything that contradicted or didn’t support my position. As long as my position was supported by the teacher, or my paper was on a topic the teacher wasn’t particularly familiar with, it would get good grade every time.
It’s pretty easy to support a bull$ position when you use high research paper quality argument.
‘Can someone please tell me what good things atheism has brought into the world?”
Well, curious you should ask, Curious. Advances in every branch of science; exposure of charlatans, religious bigots and zealots; the courage to dispel the tyranny of mysticism and superstition; and the advancement of reason and rationality. Somehow, though, I’m sure this is lost on you and you’re not truly curious at all.
It’s obvious to me that God favors the Great Plains natives over the Eastern Seaboard natives, because He didn’t put any bison east of the Mississippi.
Seriously. God Hates Cherokees. And Iroquois. And any other Indian tribes I have forgotten, but are included herein and incorporated herewith by this reference.
This must also mean an Intelligent Designer created bingo and casino gaming.
The primary method native Americans used, before the white man reintroduced the horse, was to stampede the bison off a cliff. Nor was the hunting conducted in little aboriginal groups, but instead huge endeavors lasting up to eight-months and could involve groups as large as 3,000 Indians who were part of a sophisticated trade network.
Not that he’d learn that in a History Class.
Our history doesn’t tell us the truth because as long as Indians are cast as primitive, dark-age losers we can continue to gloss over the truth of our genocide and the smug superiority that led to it. Including, of course, the role of the Catholic church in dehumanizing Indians and officially okaying slavery and genocide. After all, they’re the ones who pre-absolved Columbus of his sins and gave him carte blanche to do as he would to the native americans.
Ironically, this (along with other hypocritical issues) helped spur the Protestant Reformation and gave birth, in part, to the Anabaptist movement which held that slavery, in any form, was abhorrent and non-Christian (and to their persecution at the hands of other Christians – catholic and protestant – who did not take that view). Sort of a 15th Century “blowback” as it were.
*Sigh* Yet more of the “every single thing must be a distinct genetic advantage for evolution to be true” fallacy.
>>>’Can someone please tell me what good things atheism has brought into the world?”
Sure, the crusades, the inquisition, suppression of science and reason ……no wait, that was religion.
#31: LOL!
I wonder if the IDer worked out a cut of the daily take?
Um, also, you know, like, human technology is really, really, really recent, and hasn’t been around for the millions of years often involved in large evolutionary changes.
Bison on toast, anyone?
I wonder if the incomplete mediastinum thing is even true? Or unique?
I don’t know how well known the great whale nipple “proof” of ID is (see http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.1774577.0.whales_as_evidence_of_intelligent_design.php )but this feels kinda similar.
@DRB I wonder what the creationist excuse is for all of the tannins in acorns?
Well obviously it shows the Native Americans did not have the sophistication to create a nice red wine. Which just shows why the Xians were able to easily defeat a non-red wine drinking culture.
Asking what good atheism has brought into the world is roughly analogous to asking what good failure to believe in any silly concept has brought to the world.
Moreover, it has no bearing on what’s actually true.
Before humans came to North America, the continent was home to mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, llamas, giant beaver, and horses. Why didn’t The Big Guy In The Sky let these megafaunal food sources survive?
Yeah! And if God didn’t design bison specifically for human consumption, why are they made of meat?
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
“Well, curious you should ask, Curious. Advances in every branch of science; exposure of charlatans, religious bigots and zealots; the courage to dispel the tyranny of mysticism and superstition; and the advancement of reason and rationality. Somehow, though, I’m sure this is lost on you and you’re not truly curious at all.”
Are all of those things done in the name of atheism, I don’t think so.
I’m also pretty sure most of that hasn’t happened on a large scale, and when it has, it’s resulted in millions of deaths.
a similar vein Casey Luskin over at the DI has failed to comprehend the Nature paper about flatfish. Apparently having an asymmetric head that isn’t as asymmetric as modern flatfishes isn’t enough to be a transitional form.
Considering that bison are extinct or near-extinct — I would say that natural selection held up its end of the bargain pretty soundly.
The allele that made it easier for them to die off is being eliminated by the selective pressure of native american archers.
Where’s the problem with this?
“Other than providing food for hungry people, of what selective advantage is an incompletely divided mediastinum?”
What’s the selective advantage of a gene that kills people that go on airplanes in a very, very painful manner, and is almost always fatal in the homozygous state?
Oh yeah, it confers some immunity to malaria. Don’t assume the phenotype you’re observing is what is selected for/against.
Following this deranged logic, endangered species are just asking for it. Look at the volcano rabbit. ‘Ksake.
Ah, yes. When it’s a benefit, it’s “not in the name of atheism”. When it’s harmful, it is.
Make up your mind.
[“bigger pile of bodies” argument starts in 3 .. 2 .. 1]
Matti @ 39
Then why, when the Vikings settled on the mainland of North America, did they call it Vinland?
Perhaps somebody should turn Curious’s comment (#8) round and throw it back at him: namely, what good things religion has brought into the world?
And Bach’s music doesn’t count. Bach was more or less an atheist (as much as anyone could be in the C18th), and wrote music to commission. So did Mozart.
So, apart from various works of art, how about it? In over 2000 years what good has religion done civilisation, except to make it generally less civilised?
The US Constitution?
“Ah, yes. When it’s a benefit, it’s “not in the name of atheism”. When it’s harmful, it is.”
Deal. Straight up: what good things have been brought into the world in the name of atheism?
Hmmm, that’s funny. I never heard of a one lunged bison before, so I did a quick google search. Hmm What’s this? The information I found is very contradictory to said xtain’s claims. I read that in the days of rifles and sport hunting (that’s like . . .today) that bison are very DIFFICULT to take down. With people gravitating to high powered rifles and full metal jackets. Oh NM He saiz GOD DID IT! He must be right! Long lived the one lunged bison cuz gawd made it special!
Atheism is not a religion. We don’t do things “in the name of” atheism. That’s stupid. That’s was religious people do. We do things for their own, individual, reasons. Not some dogma.
Now, if you want things done by ATHEISTS, you need only look at the past 150 years of science to find suitable examples.
God hates bison.
God hates fig trees.
God hates the platypus.
The question is not, in any way, meaningful.
What good things have been brought into the world in the name of not collecting stamps?
And you can’t do things “in the name of atheism”, Curious, you nincompoop. It’s not another religion, it’s the lack of any religion. That’s clearly a very difficult concept for idiots to grasp, so read it again slowly.
You can, however, do things in the pursuit of truth and human happiness without any religious conviction, and that understanding is largely what brought us science and technology and medicine and democracy. Without “atheism” in that sense, I’d currently be washing nappies in a river and wondering if I’d lose my tenth child to polio.
@ #44
Curious, there aren’t a lot of things done “in the name of atheism”. Atheism isn’t a belief, it’s a lack of belief. And Dinesh is wrong. Those things weren’t done “in the name of atheism”. They were done in the name of tyrannical megalomaniacs and in the name of the “State”. Substituting the “State” for a religion isn’t atheism.
Oh look everyone! Curious thinks himself to be intellectual and is posing a serious question to all the people who find belief in gods to be of human construct and rather silly.
Curious, just read through the archives here and learn something. Your ignorance (and arrogance) obviously knows no bounds.
“Now, if you want things done by ATHEISTS, you need only look at the past 150 years of science to find suitable examples.”
You do know that most of the scientists who made lasting contributions to the world had religion of some type.
Advancements in evolutionary biology have not resulted in any advancements for the world.
Just to expand on this: if the answer to your question is “nothing”, what exactly do you think that means?
Well, Curious. Actually, atheism per se didn’t bring any benefits, except in allowing some folks to ignore their culture’s superstitions when it would interfere with progress. How many benefits would you expect to come from not believing in leprechauns?
In a later post you indirectly referred, presumably, to Pol Pot and Stalin. Did they kill folks who weren’t atheist, or did they kill folks who were a threat to their political power and didn’t toe the party line? Did a belief in God have anything to do with the Crusades, or the Twin Towers Bombing?
Offhand I can’t think of any advance in human society which wasn’t secular. The inventor may have been a theist, but he or she had to do it without recourse to religion. Some advances thru the centuries include the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, vaccinations, landing on the moon, sterile surgical techniques, the internet, and a few million others. Many of these non-religious advances were by atheists, some by Christians, some Muslims, Hindus, many pagans.
There’s religious music and other art, but great musicians have produced music about anything that’s important to them. Bach wrote great religious music, true, but he also wrote the Coffee Cantata.
Can’t think of any advances offhand which were religious.
Kermit
Okay PZ (or anyone else) I have a question here because I don’t think my reading comprehension skills are so good today:
Are you saying that the “dual lung” physiology that we think of for most animals is an “embryological accident”? Does that mean that you’re saying that it doesn’t really provide a benefit that would be selected on for the animal in question? If so, why is it so widespread across species? (I ask this in all sincerity in an attempt to expand my layperson’s understanding of biology, and not as someone trying to throw out a strawman, so I understand that this might be a stupid question).
On a completely different note – the rationale from the creationist biologist above seems really odd to me given than it’s been my understanding that Natives hunted bison by herding them off of cliffs to their demise, and not by going after them “one on one” with a bow and arrow.
What good have bald people brought to the world ? Who has ever cured disease in the name of baldness ? And look at Mussolini. He was bald, and he was a bad man. Franco did not have much hair either, and he was not very nice.
I am fed up with all these fundamentlist bald people!
Take that back!
Except in modern medicine… and in improving our knowledge base.
And precise dating of fossil strata for the mining industry. And the use of genetic algorithsm to find solutions for problems in computing. And in vitro evolutionary processes to design new drugs and antibiotics.
But yeah, what have the evolutionary biologists ever done for us?
Ah so genetics, the heredity portion of the evolution “equation”, has not brought about any advancements?
Oh really? I guess that those polls showing that >90% of the members of the NAS do not believe in a personal god are part of an atheist conspiracy? Or maybe you think that the members of the NAS haven’t contributed anything meaningful to science?
I don’t know how you put up with your comment threads, PZ… every time I stop to read one, I have to stifle the urge to yell.
I would like to point out that, when commenters argue, they’re not really arguing to convince each other. There’s no way Curious would change its mind even if we present it with a perfect argument.
We’re really arguing for fence-sitters, and to keep ourselves active and in the game. I think that’s important to remember.
Again with the double standard: Scientist with no religion doesn’t count as “in the name of atheism”. Scientist with religion counts as a religious advance. You’re not even pretending to be reasonable.
Wow. Just, wow.
With the notable exception of the American Bison most mammals have two separate pleural or lung cavities. As we all know, one side of our chest can be penetrated collapsing that lung, but the other side remains intact and the remaining lung can support life. The bison has what is called an incomplete mediastinum, that is there is but one pleural cavity containing both lungs. Thus the problem for the Native bow hunter with or without a horse is solved. An arrow must only penetrate the chest at any point and both lungs collapse. The fatally wounded animal would only continue a few yards providing unlimited food, clothing and tools. Before the availability of horses bison could be shot by stealth from a blind or other hiding place. One problem is solved yet another serious comes to mind…a problem seldom mentioned, yet demanding an answer.
The problem is for the evolutionist. Other than providing food for hungry people, of what selective advantage is an incompletely divided mediastinum? From an evolutionary sense this makes absolutely no sense. Indeed conventional wisdom would argue for its elimination from the gene pool. Yet it did remain and fed a continent of Native American for centuries. It must indeed require faith and dedication to remain an evolutionist. I am glad I know the Creator of Bison and Native Americans. You can know Him too.
Has this guy considered the possibility that for most of the millions of years that bovids evolved, they didn’t have to worry about primates making projectiles to kill them?
Besides, if Yahweh/Allah/Jesus truly was looking out for the Native Americans, She would have made sure they worshipped HER, not Quetzalcoatl, Maka-akan, and other homegrown Native American deities. Or is there some evidence that pre-Columbian Native Americans practiced an Abrahamic religion that the archaeological community has not brought to public notice yet?
I like to think I know something about the history of science. I cannot think of a single scientific advance made in the name of religion. Sure, I can think of all sorts of advances made by religious believers, but they weren’t working for the greater glory of Judaism or Islam or Rastrafarianism.
Another creationist not understanding the fundamental concepts of Evolution.
Wait, did we pretty much take the American Bison out. Isn’t that selection right there? It has a lung that makes it easier to hunt. We hunted, now it’s gone. Sounds like selection to me…
Yes I’m sure I do mean that. For years someone near me called it the wrong one and it stil sticks in my mind as being marginly more reasonable for a place name. I think I’ll go reread the map of Newfoundland to remind me that no matter how lovely and wonderfull I think Canada is, reasonable place names have nothing to do with it whatsoever. Road trip to Dildo anyone? *sigh*
Curious @61 “Advancements in evolutionary biology have not resulted in any advancements for the world.”
Well, except for managing wildlife refuges. And understanding changes brought about by climate change. And dealing with predictions of the expression of genetic diseases and their management. Tracing human migrations throughout prehistory. Developing vaccines for next year’s influenza. Developing more robust and nutritious crops. Controlling pests and plagues. And cancer – ask an oncologist if his/her practice would be imaginable without evolutionary science to inform it. I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but knowledge for its own sake is considered desirable by many of your fellow humans. Indirectly, anything done in biology if founded on the understanding of evolution and its processes. To mention just a few off the top of my head.
Try going to Pennsylvania some time.
“How many benefits would you expect to come from not believing in leprechauns?”
No one does things because they believe in leprechauns. Perhaps someone will chase a rainbow, but so. Making anologies to other objects that someone does or doesn’t like is irrelevant.
“In a later post you indirectly referred, presumably, to Pol Pot and Stalin. Did they kill folks who weren’t atheist, or did they kill folks who were a threat to their political power and didn’t toe the party line? Did a belief in God have anything to do with the Crusades, or the Twin Towers Bombing?”
If you’d like to argue the body count, you will lose. Pol Pot and Stalin killed both types of people and for both reasons.
“Offhand I can’t think of any advance in human society which wasn’t secular.”
Modern music notation is owed exclusively to Medieval monks.
“Some advances thru the centuries include the Magna Carta, the US Constitution”
I’m pretty sure both of those had something to do with the inherent dignity of man, which didn’t come from not believing in anything.
“vaccinations”
Pastuer pretty much invented vaccination, he was a very devout Catholic. http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/rosarymarkings12.html
“Many of these non-religious advances were by atheists, some by Christians, some Muslims, Hindus, many pagans.”
Care to name a few?
“There’s religious music and other art, but great musicians have produced music about anything that’s important to them.”
No one’s music had a lasting impact on culture because it was important to them.
“Except in modern medicine… and in improving our knowledge base.”
What advancement in modern medicine is do to evolutionary biology?
So we know something that lacks application or potential for it, big deal.
For one thing, lasting contributions to computer science (notice that machine you use to spew your hateful nonsense here?) were made by an atheist scientist.
“No seriously, straight up….”
(facepalm)
An incomplete mediastinum? If Zeus (that’s who we’re talking about, right?) had wanted to engineer bison to be food for humans why did he give them legs? He could have given them stumps, so that a hunter only needed to walk up to it and smash its head in.
Oh, and for all the good it’s going to do, DON’T FEED THE TROLL!
I think one should feed trolls until they get old and boring, and then put them down. It’s kinda the opposite of geting a puppy for Christmas.
“bigger pile of bodies” argument. Meaningless.
Double standard. What part of their religious teachings gave them the ability to devise the notation?
You’d be wrong.
What part of Catholic teachings told him how to develop vaccinations?
Flat out wrong.
Several have already been listed.
Curious @ 77
Wow… just wow… my daughter is in 9th grade and could run circles around you on arguing any of those points. I’m not about to give you a lecture in 11th grade biology, or 10th grade world history… but that’s really all it would take to answer most of your issues. I’m sure others here will gladly answer your questions, fully and completely, and you will dismiss the answers with some increasing level of ignorance, as you’ve done so far.
Please look up “Willful ignorance” and perform a little self-diagnosis. Then again, it’s fairly clear that “looking up” information is not your strong suit. Less of course it’s in the Bible. Right?
So what? They didn’t do it in the name of religion, and their knowledge and ideas certainly didn’t come from a religious text. Seriously, the religion of a scientist or lack thereof is irrelevant to this issue.
The bit about Bison is odd coming from people who believe those Indians who hunted them are burning in Hell because they were to lazy to cross the ocean and find about Jesus. With the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” mentality of the fundies that would mean American Indians are Satanists.
Following that logic then bison lungs are proof the existence of the Devil.
“For one thing, lasting contributions to computer science (notice that machine you use to spew your hateful nonsense here?) were made by an atheist scientist.”
I don’t think my computer is based on a Turing machine as that was just recently shown to be capable of performing all computations.
He became an atheist because his friend died, it’s always something, what happend with you? and why are you still bitter about it?
“”Now, if you want things done by ATHEISTS, you need only look at the past 150 years of science to find suitable examples.”
Obviously this douche is unaware of ‘The Age of Reason” or Cicero or any history at all. He’s obviously too dense to be aware he’s dense.
You’d be wrong. In a very big way.
Ad hominem, loaded question, red herring and probably three or four other logical fallacies, all in the space of one sentence. Well done!
I am firmly of the opinion that letting him spew ignorance without refuting it is far more harmful than increasing the thread length. Even if he doesn’t really believe what he’s saying, dollars to doughnuts someone does.
PZ has really hit the big time now. He just made the front page over at DailyKos
#86 “I don’t think my computer is based on a Turing machine as that was just recently shown to be capable of performing all computations.”
My Computer is capable of performing all computations.
Someone call SomethingAwful.com, I’ve got a new meme for them.
Curious @ “He became an atheist because his friend died, it’s always something, what happend with you? and why are you still bitter about it?”
Here we go with the failed Job arguement LOL.
What happened to us god-botherer was we started thinking. That’s were we went “bad”. You theists really need to shut down the schools, the internet and burn all the books, just like your co-travelers the Taliban.
“I don’t think my computer is based on a Turing machine as that was just recently shown to be capable of performing all computations.”
Of course it based on a Turing machine. What a stupid thing to say.
And actually the Turing machine was designed to show there are some problems that cannot be computed. Check out the non-halting problem.
Another thing the Turing machine demonstrated was that given suffcient storage any programmable computer can be made to behave in such a way as to behave like any other computer. Not in terms of speed, we are talking in theory here. But there is no problem a modern super computer can solve that a basic Sinclair ZX81 could not solve in principle.
JoJo at 72,
Well, I’ve gotta disagree with you and say there may be one. I think we can maybe attribute the working calendar to religion. Maybe. Of course, that’s really not that impressive given the tens of thousands of years religion’s been around, but I’m trying to be nice today.
Somebody tell bric(#43) that his Bob Marley CD is skipping again.
windy(#78): Not only atheist, but also GAY! Oh teh horror…
(#51) El’d Herring (now de-Woo-ed),
Citation, please. P’rhaps I’ve just drunk too deeply of the cool-aid, but I find the idea of Bach being an atheist hard to swallow. It’d be hard to find a bigger icon for Lutheranism.
Mozart was most likely quite unorthodox, yes. I think the whole having to be a confessing Christian to join the Mason’s is only part of the Scandinavian Rite.
Not an impfressive argument on either side.
If I wanted to use this as evidene for ev, I woudl ask whether a single cavity might not anhance the animals ability to run.
OTOH, since bisom evpolved long before the bow and arrow, it is hard to understand why the selction mech would have eliminated the feature.
If I wnated to argue vs. evolution, I would weiden the perspective and say that the bison appear to have evolved into an ideal animal to sustain human exisktance. They have no natural preditiors so why were they made into a kind of rolling seven-eleven?
Oh my God, how did you guess… I wasn’t going to tell anyone… but my family was killed by a herd of rampaging bison… CURSE THEM AND THEIR INCOMPLETELY DIVIDED LUNGS!
cat coffee | nose > keyboard
“Double standard. What part of their religious teachings gave them the ability to devise the notation?”
Retarded standard: what part of being an atheist enabled Turning to make a computer?
ditto for the Pastuer remark.
No one says, “I like this Mozart work because it was his favorite.”
Re: historical documents, have you read them?
Which comment lists the medical advances due to evolutionary biology?
Re: Turning machine. I don’t doubt he had contributions to the field of CS, good for him. His machine was just proved to be a complete computing machine last summer, you can look that up.
Celtic_Evolution: I weep for your daughter.
“it’s always something, what happend with you? and why are you still bitter about it?”
(reply to Curious at a level he’ll understand)
Yeah, Curious, but what happened between your mom and me made me mad at God, because He made her such a pitiful, ugly-ass lay… ( ad hominem attack)
or
Perhaps you like the “Ever tasted a dick sweeter than mine?” loaded question.
It takes a reasonable and rational mind to recognise that religion/gods are all made up.
You are equipped with little of either. You are willfully ignorant and a boor/bore. Read the archives.
Blah, blah, blah.
You still haven’t answered the question: if there are no advances attributable to atheism, what exactly do you think that means?
This was true 151 years ago.
“Re: Turning machine. I don’t doubt he had contributions to the field of CS, good for him. His machine was just proved to be a complete computing machine last summer, you can look that up.”
I have read the original paper, which is more than you seem to have done. The Turing machine is not capable of solving all mathermatical problems for the simple not all such problems can be solved. Turing’s genius was to develop the concept of the Turing machine that showed this. He was able to demonstate there are some problems that would never cause the machine to halt, ie, were indeed unsolvable. At the time this was important as it was only starting to become clear to mathematicians that some problems had no solution and that it was possible to design a formal system in which you have a legal statement that you cannot prove to be a legal statement.
These “merits of atheism” debates don’t make sense since the religionists are automatically ascribing the general claims of religion to non-religion, find there is nothing there, then post wild-eyed outraged posts decrying the lack of religion in non-religion.
It’s a spectacle to watch really.
Maybe we should move the debate to where it should be. What has free inquiry, skepticism and the scientific method done for us lately vs the qualities of such things as faith, dogma and supernaturalism.
Hmm… Put a human and a buffalo in the Thunderdome, with only the weapons God gave them, and see which one wins in a fight to the death.
God gave us spears you say? And swords and knives and guns too? How nice of Him!
But you have to wonder why God made humans so easy to kill. Obviously, if evolution were true, we’d all be bulletproof by now, so He must have made us so vulnerable on purpose…
But I’m sure He’s got a good reason for that.
Ahhh… So nice not to be trapped in a rational world…
“You still haven’t answered the question: if there are no advances attributable to atheism, what exactly do you think that means?”
Atheism, besides from being intellectually dishonest and unteneable, is useless and atheists should stop behaving like they have a monopoly on the ability to learn/perform science.
Curious at 77,
“Some advances thru the centuries include the Magna Carta, the US Constitution”
“I’m pretty sure both of those had something to do with the inherent dignity of man, which didn’t come from not believing in anything.”
Oh please try to understand this! Being an atheist doesn’t mean you don’t believe in anything. It means you don’t believe in a god. How can this be difficult for you to understand? How can it be made any simpler for you polluted mind to comprehend? Maybe.
Atheism = not theist
Does this help? It doesn’t say anything else about your beliefs, whether you’re conservative, liberal, like sushi, don’t like gin and tonics, etc.
Feel free to print the little equation above and tape it to your mirror in the morning so you see it every day. Maybe it’ll sink in eventually.
#43:
The scientific name for the American bison is Bison bison bison. Science is very emphatic about it not being a buffalo.
Not believing in things for which there is no evidence is untenable? I don’t believe in your god for the same reason you don’t believe in leprechauns, unicorns. Prove they don’t exist.
Who made this claim?
@ Curious
Retarded standard: what part of being an atheist enabled Turning to make a computer?
NONE, that’s what we’ve been trying to TELL you. Are you thick? We’re not the one’s trying to attribute discovery to any doctrine. Had the Turing machine been invented by a christian, his being a christian would have been just as irrelevant to the discovery as his being an atheist. The only reason it was even mentioned is because YOU asked us for an example of something relevant done by atheists… you posed the question, and now you’re using the very argument we’re trying to make you understand? Ugh… my head hurts.
Oh, and ditto for Pasteur.
Which comment lists the medical advances due to evolutionary biology?
Why should we pander to your laziness? It would take you 10 minutes of searching to find this answer… why should we do the work for you when you clearly would just turn a blind eye if you saw them anyhow? Please.
Celtic_Evolution: I weep for your daughter.
Yes… I’m quite sure you weep regularly in the sight of actual intelligence. It’s scary… I know…
Nothing. The only thing being an atheist means is he didn’t believe in a magical sky-faerie.
And where’s this mountain of evidence in favor of theism?
I wonder if he’ll still be saying buffalo are weak when one is charging at him at 35mph. I would seriously consider supporting this, I mean I’m not one for murder, but buffalo have had a hard time of it for the last 200 years, it’s about time they were allowed some revenge.
(late joke for yesterday)
Mmmmm, them host crackers is G-O-D good!
And where’s this mountain of evidence in favor of theism?
The sophisticated theologians haz it. RLY!
NonyNony: Are you saying that the “dual lung” physiology that we think of for most animals is an “embryological accident”? Does that mean that you’re saying that it doesn’t really provide a benefit that would be selected on for the animal in question? If so, why is it so widespread across species? (I ask this in all sincerity in an attempt to expand my layperson’s understanding of biology, and not as someone trying to throw out a strawman, so I understand that this might be a stupid question).
Have you heard of historical contingency? The vulgar understanding of evolutionary science is that everything is “adapted”.
That isn’t strictly true — genes are adapted in context, and that context is in part historical accident.
Do we have terribly “designed” spines because God is a horrible engineer, or because adaptation doesn’t work? Neither, it’s simply because adaptation works with what’s at hand, which unfortunately meant a spine designed for quadrupeds being re-adapted to bipedal use — enough to keep us reproducing, but not enough to keeps us from chronic back problems (unlike say birds, who are fortunate to be descended from a line that lucked out in it’s redesign).
Not everything can be tried — and every change has a cost on other parts of the system.
If your really interested, grab some of SJ Gould’s book — he was a very good popularizer of the constraints of evolution.
So, to hand wave, the lung physiology of bisons could be tied to numerous other anatomical traits, which were selected for; or it could be that the price paid for them is so low that their arrangement isn’t selected against; or their ancestors may have made a genetic commitment earlier which is irreversible.
Why don’t we have three or four arms? Clearly, that would be superior for human beings (anyone with children could tell you). Because we’re committed to two arms and two legs — there’s no evolutionary path from here to there.
Turning machine
Pastuer
I wonder if it were a religious person or an atheist who invented the spellchecker.
In either case, it certainly hasn’t resulted in advancements for the world of creationists. But it makes me wonder: if creationists refuse to accept the advancements of both evolution and spellcheckers, how is that supposed to invalidate them?
Let’s take spellcheckers (or their original analog versions, dictionaries): creationists, like our friend Curious here, have refused to acknowledge their existence likely since their invention. Yet I know spellcheckers and dictionaries both exist. I’m looking at two examples of them as I type. What’s more, if I hand a dictionary to tsg, for example, (s)he’ll likely agree with me on the materialistic characteristics of the book: its colour, the number of words it contains, or whether one could use it to brain an illiterate like Curious. Furthermore, if I were to write these characteristics down for posterity, later generations of scientists could attempt to replicate my dictionary, and they’d probably do quite well, given sufficient diligence on both our parts. Even more remarkably, unlike the existence of gods, the acceptance of the existence of the dictionary has no genetic component. My future scientists, be they Japanese, Javanese, or just java junkies, would produce the same dictionary as the one I described, as long as they can read English.
Thus we have empirical, objective, and replicatable evidence of dictionaries and spellcheckers, yet creationists refuse to acknowledge their existence.
Given this, why should any of us worry overmuch what creos like Curious refuse to accept?
“the inherent dignity of man, which didn’t come from not believing in anything.”
Believing that a skydaddy poofed your ancesters into existance to play some surreal mandatory game until you die sure does give man a lot of dignity.
Please demonstrate that you have the ability to learn/perform science.
@97
“If I wanted to use this as evidene for ev, I woudl ask whether a single cavity might not anhance the animals ability to run.
OTOH, since bisom evpolved long before the bow and arrow, it is hard to understand why the selction mech would have eliminated the feature.
If I wnated to argue vs. evolution, I would weiden the perspective and say that the bison appear to have evolved into an ideal animal to sustain human exisktance. They have no natural preditiors so why were they made into a kind of rolling seven-eleven?”
If I wanted to make a strong argument, I’d start by learning to spell. And exactly how would a bison being the perfect prey for humans disprove evolution? We hunted them to near extinction, kind of goes with the whole natural selection thing. They are at a disadvantage once humans learned to hunt, and their populations dwindled. And the “they have no natural predators why would they evolve into a natural 7-11” What? If they had no natural predators, then a trait like a single lung cavity wouldn’t cause any loss, so it could move on through the generations, until something like genetic drift might make it common place. Remember drift is responsible for more speciation then selection.
The stupid question that creationists ask, with this as an example, is “why didn’t evolution do x?” They want evolution to be conscious, god-like, where it isn’t. The simple answer: it didn’t have to. Sometimes the answer is that it couldn’t choose to, not being conscious.
The question that we ask is “why didn’t god do y?” They again want something to be conscious and god-like. They don’t give simple answers.
I see that these kinds of people accuse atheists of using or worshiping evolution as a god, but in truth they give evolution god-like characteristics like consciousness, omnipotence, and ratiocination, but accuse atheists of believing in those things. I call idolatry.
Yep.
an add-on to jj’s comment, with which I agree…
um… lots of things hunt/hunted bison. Always. Wolves for example…
P.S. Are you typing with your feet?
tsg has hit this nail right on the head. Dr E. Norbert Smith’s (Christ, I just realised he’s PhD!!! WTF) argument is that having a single plural cavity provides no survival advantage to the buffalo so therefore evolution is incorrect.
This is a version of the argument from love, or humour viz. love/humour (or whatever) provides no survival advantage [we can dispute the truthfulness of that of course but it’s really neither here nor there], therefore evolution is incorrect.)
What he fails to understand (somehow) is that all that matters is that a species is strong enough to survive DESPITE being vulnerable in various ways. All that matters is that its members survive long enough to procreate and nurture it’s offspring while they are vulnerable, in sufficient numbers to keep the cycle going generation after generation.
No, a particular vulnerability, whether it’s a single plural cavity or a vulnerability to a particular bacteria does not give that species a survival advantage. So what…? The fact that I’m not a fast runner has not given me a survival advantage but I have other survival advantages. Judging by their numbers in the 19th century so did the bison.
Brownian: According to the Wikipedia article, the first spell checker was developed by linguists from Georgetown University–a Jesuit college. Ironic that it’s the god-botherers among us who don’t seem to be able to grasp the concept, really.
Well, PZ didn’t let this creationist buffalo him!
I wonder if this man ever has buffalo burgers on the backyard grill? I am sure he thanks his creator that the buffalo only has one lung!
To be fair, I think a most spelling mistakes (in general, not just by creationists) are from not caring rather than lack of ability to spell.
My position is: if you can’t be bothered to make your communications clear and easy to read, why should I bother to read them?
Talk of buffalo always remind me of that semantic conundrum – irrelevant of course but so much is. The reasons for Alan Turing’s atheism also don’t seem very relevant, but for what it’s worth according to Andrew Hodges’ biography Turing was still a believer in 1933, 3 years after Christopher Morcom’s tragic death, and became a ‘forceful’ atheist before 1936 when he was working on ‘On computable numbers’. Personally I am quite sure I didn’t become an atheist because of the church’s attitude to homosexuality (I was a baptised and confirmed member of the Church of England, like Turing) but rather because of a growing awareness of the absurdity of the things I was required to believe; however being gay has certainly coloured my perception of religions.
@ David-James # 124
Exactly. The bison’s large size, heavy coats, and other adaptations were all more than enough to overcome the relatively minor vulnerability of the single plural cavity to survive in the American Plains. And as has already been pointed out before, records indicate that the popular method for hunting bison through most of the early native-American tribes was by hoarding them over cliffs. And to repeat what’s already been joked about… why doesn’t this guy make the argument that God obviously made them for man’s sustinence else he would’ve given them wings. Or big springs on their feet.
Maybe cause that somehow sounds more ridiculous than his initial supposition… well, not from where I sit. They are equally ridiculous.
Mine is purely a result of typing furiously because SIWOTI and then hitting send before realizing there are little red lines under all number of words in what I just hammered out.
Yes. I am guilty of that as well. Let me add “or being distracted by stupidity” after “not caring”.
I am a notoriously bad speller when I’m “angry typing”. It does happen. Even to a former English major and high-school spelling champ. Heh.
@#129
Well he does think bison “roll” (‘rolling 7/11’ comment) so apparently they’ve been equipped with wheels at some point. Springs would be dangerous, imagine fields of enormous bison bounding along on springs… we’d be wiped out or smashed flat in no time, thus endangering the human race…
“And God so loved the Native American people that he surrounded them with bison, and wolves and grizzly bears and pumas and rattle snakes and deserts and prickly cactus and rugged terrain and harsh sun and freezing snow and then, when he realised life was a bit easier than he’d anticipated, he surrounded them with Europeans. And on the seventh day, he grinned then rested.”
If the bison is the only animal designed to be killed by spear, how were other civilisations killing food at that time? Vaccination?
Refusing to believe in a falsehood need only ever have one purpose or benefit: the avoidance of error. Perhaps Curious has trouble understanding that some people actually value truth for its own sake and need no additional incentive to believe it.
Yeah, if you believed that bison had evolved in any way, you’d expect to find some traits that would help them fend off predators, etc. You know, something like thick skins, the ability to run fast, horns, pack mentality, and maybe even eyes set on the sides of their heads allowing them to see a larger area. But of course all of these things are missi…
OK, you evil-lutionists this one’s yours, but I’ll be back!
** no self-respecting ape is religious **
The falsity of ‘intelligent design’ is proved by the existence of those who believe in it.
bipolar2
© 2008
as to the buffalo on the back of some nickels. they were destroyed for 3 reasons:
1. to provide pelts for the then fashionable rugs and cold weather comforters — see Currier and Ives prints
2. for ‘sport’ shooting from the iron horse — the entire animal was left to rot.
3. to destroy the plains tribes — genocide via buffalo kill. the entire animal was left to rot; ethnic cleansing american style.
(guns are for killing critters, destroying inferior cultures, controlling large slave populations — what did you think the 2nd amendment was all about?)
Incurious at #444:
The claim wasn’t made.
But Mr. Pot, let’s talk about the Colombian exchange sanctioned by the Catholic Church. The Genocide of Native Americans, at the hands of Christians, is estimated to be 112 Million.
Or lets talk about the crusades and those millions…
Or witch burnings, pogroms against the Jews and even the prosaic stupidity of faith healing…
And if you want to make an argument about the evils of atheism, you’ll have stop trotting out the old horses of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Hitler was a christian, Stalin trained to be a priest and Mao raised as a buddhist, though, obviously the “good parts” of any of their religions didn’t take well enough.
And, no, the ideology of Communism is not atheist. Nor is the ideology of fascism. Communism is, in fact, the way the original Christian church operated. You’d know that if you’d actually read and comprehended the bible. And understood the Essenic (Jewish) Movement from which was a major guiding factor in the formation of early Christianity (only to be abandoned, like all empowering movements, by the scoundrels that co-opted the movements for their own purposes).
Just something to think about as you try to point fingers without noticing the rivers of blood coming off of yours.
tsg, are you suggesting that creationists lack meaning in their spelling? Something like, “If there’s a god, then what’s stopping you from just typing random letters all willy-nilly?” It never occurred to me what a sad and purposeless literary life they must lead.
Well, that’s it. I can’t stand by and watch these people fritter away their keyboards on unintelligible words and run-on sentences anymore; it breaks my heart.
A message to all creationists:
Believe in God?
Is effective and meaningful communication in your native language missing from your life?
It doesn’t have to be. The OED News is here, and even you might one day be literate enough to receive it.
Did you know that Noah Webster gave his life (to teaching) that you should know “they’re” from “their”?
Did you know that the Chicago Manual of Style has helped millions of Americans find purpose for semi-colons?
Life doesn’t have to be without a thesis, body of arguments, and conclusion.
A message of hope from http://www.evencreationistscanlearntospell.org.
Heya Moses,
Love ya, but we’re only up to about 138 right now. I think you want next door.
I did. When I was eight.
But beyond that, you’d be wrong. People, not all of them rural either, still placate fairies in Europe.
Admittedly, it’s rare. But some of those old traditions founded of superstitions die hard. Like Christianity, which is far too common considering its lack of positive evidence and clear and unambiguous negative evidence surrounding it’s origins and claims.
Wolves.* Presumably pumas and grizzlies. Never mind dire wolves and sabertooth cats… how many species of sabertooths, actually? Did you have any Homotherium?
* Not a pretty sight. Because they’re small and have stupidly designed teeth, it takes them forever to get a bison to the point where it collapses from exhaustion, pain and blood loss. But they still do it, regularly.
Where?
“Yeah, if you believed that bison had evolved in any way, you’d expect to find some traits that would help them fend off predators, etc. You know, something like thick skins, the ability to run fast, horns, pack mentality, and maybe even eyes set on the sides of their heads allowing them to see a larger area. But of course all of these things are missi…
OK, you evil-lutionists this one’s yours, but I’ll be back!”
What? I truly hope you are being sarcastic (Poe’s law?). If you understood even the smallest bit about evolution, you’d understand how crazily stupid that sounds. Once again a creationist (or so I think) thinking evolution has some sort of control over itself. They didn’t ‘evolve’ any of these traits, because evolution is random, and they suffered because of it. Evolution doesn’t happen out of need, it happens out of random instances where one being gains an advantage (more like something changes that does not inure a loss) due to random genetic changes. This is why we have extinction, and a plethora of creatures only found in the fossil record.
Things to do today:
– feed the cat
– take out garbage
– pray to invisible friend and devour magic cracker
– feign an honest interest in open discussion on an atheist thread and then make an idiot of myself as I parade about attacking a strawman of atheism I’ve built out of my own religious insecurities and ignorance
Department of really stupid questions: All governments attempt to justify their actions through propaganda, right? So has anyone examined Maoist era or Stalinist era propaganda to see if they used the non-existence of deities as an argument? Didn’t they attempt to justify themselves on rather less ethereal grounds, industrialization or making agriculture more efficient or stopping anti-socialist sabotage or something like that?
CORRECTION:
incur not inure, sorry
@Curious #8:
Underlying your question is the assumption that one has to be a believer in order to do something good. I think the better question to ask would be, “What has humanity brought into the world despite religion?” Or perhaps, “Regardless an individual’s beliefs, what has humanity accomplished or discovered?”
Think about Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Pasteur, Laplace, etc. Every one of these men were brilliant and made incredible discoveries despite their belief or disbelief.
Re: Turning machine. I don’t doubt he had contributions to the field of CS, good for him. His machine was just proved to be a complete computing machine last summer, you can look that up.
Where would you suggest looking that factoid up, exactly? The Boy’s Own Bumper Book of Shit That You Just Made Up?
Funny that after all these posts nobody has even mentioned the European bison (which is also almost extinct, but unlike the American bison has been so for a long time). Even if these dimwits are right about other bovids having a divided cavity, it seems pretty damn unlikely that a species so similar as to be almost identical to the casual viewer would be different. So apparently God does favor Europeans as well, they were just better at killing the bison off. In fact, taking the creos’ “logic” on its face, it would be an argument for evolution: the European bison were poorly adapted, so they were wiped out. It’s also worth noting that there was at least one other species of bison in North America was was driven extinct along with the other megafauna.
There’s quite a few American sabre-tooths. One Homotherium species, Megantereon crossed and probably evolved into Smilodon, which isn’t known outside of the Americas. While the really big one, S. populator is South American, the other two species weren’t exactly small. There were several other similar species (Dinofelis, Machairodus, etc) but I’m not sure they’d be able to take out a bison, and might have been more interested in horses, etc.
Lions made it too, so there’s plenty of very effective predators. None of which are going to be killing their prey by puncturing the lung cavity.
I don’t think my computer is based on a Turing machine as that was just recently shown to be capable of performing all computations.
Actually, Turing formulated the theory of the Universal Computing Machine way back in the 30s, and it’s still the mathematical basis for today’s computers. What was found recently was the minimal Universal Turing Machine, that is, the one with the minimal instruction set.
jj at 144,
Indeed, I’m just fucking with ya.
Long time poster, long time atheist, and long time believer in evolution. I may not understand evolution to the point that Dr Myers does, but I do understand at least the points you made.
Nicely done though!
North American wolves prey on bison. It takes a whole pack to take one down, and the wolves don’t always escape uninjured.
#98 – Windy – Now we understand! Was it the rampaging Buffs that caused you to become a slut too?
I dumped the lord because he’s stupid & wouldn’t provide, the wages for strumpetry beat the hell out of pay at jezusCo. ;)
Hmm, apparently the proof of the completeness of Wolfram’s 2-3 Turing machine is disputed. So we really don’t know the minimal universal computing machine … yet.
Summarizing the Turing stuff, just because I don’t think I was clear enough in previous posts.
The Turing Completeness Theorem has been proven and well known for decades, and without it, it’s unlikely that digital computing (even Univac) could have been systematically developed.
The minimal instruction set for a Turing machine (2 states, 3 symbols) was formulated and a proof was accepted in October 2007, by Alex Smith at The University of Birmingham (UK). It appears that that proof is valid, but there are still some academic holdouts that claim there is a flaw in the proof. This will work itself out in the journals, and the flaws (if any) in the proof will be dissected and worked out. That’s the way science works.
#109, re #43, Buffalo buffalo et al.
See this article regarding this particular herd of buffalo.
re a Curious conversation
A: Show me something useful invented by an atheist!
B: The modern computer owes its existence to the work of Turing, who was an atheist.
A: He wasn’t always an atheist, and even if he was, what do his beliefs, or lack thereof, have to do with anything? Stop trying to make everything about atheism!
So far, a scientist who is religious, and does research for religious reasons, is doing research in the name of (shock!) religion. Okay. A scientist who is religious, and does research for humanitarian/secular/scientific reasons, is still a religious scientist and therefore is doing research in the name of religion. Um. Sure. How much longer before decidedly inCurious insists that any atheist scientist, doing research for any reason, is still an atheist, and completely against religion, so such research will be an attack on religion, which makes it related to religion, which means that it is research in the name of religion. So, all research is done in the name of religion. QED.
Just be careful around those zebra crossings.
Actually when all is considered…the ONLY support for cretinism/IDiocy is the fact that these bunnies have not evolved at all…they were wrong even before Bish Usher gave them indisputable tosh…and they are even more wrong now…they are in fact de-evolving…a sure sign that evolution has really got it skew whiff…and yet they have not seen that glaring proof…that smoking gun…the answer to all their prayers..a definite tangible smidgeon of doubt in the evolutionary theory they all love to hate…
They instead prefer to mutter dark and sensationalist clap trap about the natural world…which they do not understand or have any wish to understand…and misrepresent any fact they feel does not include their delusion or negates their delusion completely…if that fails then they claim foul play…conspiracy theory the refuge of the desperate and the delusional…
They feel uncomfortable around atheists because they are mortally afraid of treading in the dark and consider those that do tools of Satan cos they have not the wit to explore the path themselves…Satan is considered a handy little critter they invented to scare the kids way back when…the thing is they told the fairy tale so often that now they believe their own verbal effluent…and the crime is that their so called leaders give then the nod and the wink and encourage them into fooling themselves….Brave little soldiers the leaders be…
They can only hurl personal rhetorical abuse and the odd death threat at atheism cos they do have not the wherewithal to debate on a serious or even a rational level…
‘Facts’ they provide are more often then not manufactured to fit their story…when the facts fail to impress then outright lies and deliberate distortions are trip trip tripping from their lips…cos god wants them to lie and distort the truth…simply because he is obviously a very poor example of a deity and requires all the help and stalling tactics his little sunbeams can muster…
Scientific evidence is ignored because it embarrasses them…
They deny culpability in anything their church has perpetrated on native folks or young kids either in the past… or in some cases right now…and even claim it is god’s will…
Disreputable little angels are they not…they have no bizzyness evolving or even de-evolving anywhere in the known… or even the far reaches of the unknown… universe…they really are an abomination to the spirit of humanity…the sooner they become extinct and join their pets the dinosaurs the better…Evolution will eventually sort then out…that is my ‘faith’…
I know that Mark B will already be aware of this, but for the sake of Curious I’ll point out that the search for the minimal universal computing machine is distinct from a general Turing machine, which has been known to be able to compute anything computable since Turing’s time.
Thanks, DrFrank. That’s what I was trying to say, but I tend to be rather prolix sometimes.
Oops, actually, I was wrong – I’d forgotten that the Church-Turing Thesis was never technically proven, it’s just generally taken for granted as no one’s ever managed to find any counterexamples.
Put it down to a long day at work :$
I guess I’ll need to go and get me some Jesus crackers to fill me back up with superpowers again.
Sorry if someone’s already mentioned any of this, I’m at work and can’t read all the posts, just wanted to throw my two cents in.
PZ asked:
“So, wait…God hates bison? Doesn’t this create a logical problem for the creationist, in that God has made the primary large game animal targeted by the Native Americans exceptionally fragile?”
Unfortunately god has no care for any animals as it clearly states in genesis that god gave man dominion over the earth and even went so far as to give man the task to “subdue” earth.
Just more proof that the arrogance of man permeates even the gods they create.
I’d like to also point out another famous atheist who also had a significant impact on the development of computing technology: Noam Chomsky. Computer scientists used his groundbreaking linguistics work developing context-free grammars (the idea that grammar and syntax exist independently of meaning) to invent and refine higher-level programming languages.
Of course, he didn’t do it because he was an atheist; he did it because he discovered something noteworthy about languages that other people used to invent new things. He just happens to be someone who discovered something noteworthy who also happens to be an atheist. Much like all those other people who discovered/invented noteworthy things, but who happened not to be atheists.
Oops, actually, I was wrong – I’d forgotten that the Church-Turing Thesis was never technically proven, it’s just generally taken for granted as no one’s ever managed to find any counterexamples.
Yeah, because the general formulation of Church Turing is way too … general. But the Turing Completeness Theorem is completely provable, which states that any two Turing Complete systems are capable of doing all of the same calculations, even though they may have completely different architecture and instruction sets. One just has to be clever enough to encode the algorithm for doing the calculation on each separate machine. I won’t go into what a machine has to do to be Turing complete, but it relatively simple and was completely formulated in the 30s by Turing. (and it’s really hard not to type ‘turning’) Pretty much any conceivable computing machine turns out to be Turing complete.
No natural predators for bison? What about the short-faced bear, the sabretooth tiger, the North American lion, and the North American cheetah? The bison evolved in the ice age with all of these guys and more. Then humans arrived, became predators of bison, and wiped out the competition, as we have been wont to due from time to time and place to place.
And I agree with PZ’s main point about surviving a penetrating wound to the chest. Has anyone here ever had a pneumothorax, or treated someone who did, or knew someone who did? It’s crippling painful. Without modern medicine it can be slowly fatal. One lung left to sustain life or no, if that happened to you while a bunch of armed hunters are after you, you are hosed. There is no selection pressure on this trait.
(Note a spear into the lung could also produce a hemothorax, which can be even worse. And if you hit the left side, you might get the heart as well.)
Sorry if someone already said this, I don’t have time to read through the whole thread:
It seems to me that to near extinction of the bison shows that evolution is very much on display. In fact, it appears as if evolution clearly selects against a single pleural cavity.
Otherwise, it would have been much more difficult for a hairless biped less than 1/10th their weight to wipe them out.
It’s not like evolution stopped in 1800. We can actually see (in just the last two hundred years!) the hazards of an evolutionary disadvantage.
The biggest consequence of the Turing Completeness Theorem:
If a computing machine can do a few simple things, it can solve all of the same problems that a much more complicated machine can. In fact, the minimal machine is just as powerful as the most complex machine imaginable, for the purpose of solvability of any computable problem. The differences is just going to be software and the time required to complete the computation.
| “Well, I’ve gotta disagree with you and say there may be one. I think we can maybe attribute the working calendar to religion. Maybe. ”
There’s a pretty good, nicely concise book about the development of the calendar (I think it’s ‘mapping time’ but I really can’t remember the title today) that goes into some detail about this. A lot of the impetus for a calendar was the church’s need to regulate people’s lives – after all we can’t have people doing what they want when they want, now can we ? – and of course there was a need to timing crops planting etc.
Now I sometimes wonder how come we have the day-names we have;
Hmm. If we’re arguing about relative god-strengths I’d say the Aesir are in the lead there.
Thanks for the clarification, Mark: I’m rustier on this stuff than I initially thought. I’ve passed a lot of water since doing this in my degree ;)
Christ on a bland cracker, when are you people going to learn that G-d only cares about one thing: Me! Me! Glorious Me!
If you add to that Pangloss’ dictum: “everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds”, baby, you got the whole of the Law.
Brian #5 Writes:
“May God give you the grace to see the blasphemy you are committing. In any event, I pray He forgives you and has mercy on your eternal soul. God bless you.”
Brian,
Tell me you will not get enjoyment thinking about your invisible friend torturing PZ for eternity? Why even make a comment on this board? Just sit back and relish the thought of eternal torture? If I am mistaken and you really do “pray he forgives”, does that make you more merciful than your invisible friend? Or perhaps it suggests your invisible friend is clueless as to what to do and needs your counsel or a tally of “votes”? Perhaps your invisible friend is in your head… which then makes you twisted and evil for thinking of internal punishment for finite “crime”, from which the outcome was to insult one’s delusion?
Dahan @ 108
From where does the inherent dignity of man come?
Curious “He became an atheist because his friend died, it’s always something, what happend with you? and why are you still bitter about it?”
Do you still believe in Santa, then? Or are you mad at him because you didn’t get that toy you wanted when you were eight? There can’t be any other reasons… You can’t be angry at something you don’t think exists. I suspect you really are too conceptually crippled to understand this.
Fundamentalists are congenitally incapable of seeing the world thru another person’s eyes, so Curious and his ilk try to imagine what would motivate them to act the way they think we act. They can ape the form of informal academic discourse, but because they don’t understand the *content of the conversation, they inevitably get it wrong after a couple of sentences.
Kermit
@ Curious # 173
Wow… you get better and better. Sidestep / ignore all the valid points and statements made thus far and respond with a vapid and flawed premise:
From where does the inherent dignity of man come?
What the holy heck makes you think dignity in man is inherent? I once worked at a criminal courthouse and I can tell you firsthand that THAT premise is most certainly inherently flawed.
“creationists, like our friend Curious here”
I never said I was a creationist. But that was marvelous philosophical exposition on the didactic value of typos.
“My position is: if you can’t be bothered to make your communications clear and easy to read, why should I bother to read them?”
I’m pretty sure no one had any difficulty understanding the words I misspelled.
“Please demonstrate that you have the ability to learn/perform science.”
Several degrees, working on more, presented/published at conferences. You?
Kermit: I’ve never heard a witness story from an atheist that didn’t have a turning point of some unfortunate event in their lives.
Where ever fairy placating was strong before Christianity – Western & Northern Europe. And I did say it was rare so if you’re trying to make to make an issue out of a dying folk ways, don’t.
But, for example, some Irish households still celebrate the eve of May by cutting and peeling boughs from the rowan (or mountain ash) tree. This is to prevent fairies from stealing milk and butter.
In other parts of Europe, some people still put out milk to placate the fairies. With side benefit for the local cat population.
In America I’ve seen horse-shoes nailed over a barn door. Including my grandfather’s barn (he was from the Old World) and my next door neighbor’s when I was a teenager. That’s not his only old country superstition, for example he wore a nightcap to keep the light of the moon from making him a “luna”tic.
Anyway, it’s just an old carry-over of folk-ways from pre-Christian times. But there are still people who practice them. Sometimes without even recognizing what they’re doing.
Let’s not forget the Plains culture we think of didn’t start till the widespread introduction of feral horses made it possible. That was 18th century, if I remember right, and the Plains culture was shut down in the mid-late 19th century. So, considering we’re talking about ONE century (or two at most), it would be highly surprising if the buffalo *did* make such a major evolutionary adjustment in such a short period of time.
Yet another creationist who can’t wrap his head around evolutionary time scales.
Well when I’m in a foul mood I think there isn’t any inherent in anyone and it’s at best a false construct of personal conceit.
On a good day I’d say self awareness and the ability to recognise awareness in others.
Oh. My. Dog. The most rabid atheists and secular humanists could never come up with better Fundie idiocies than these people write themselves.
Has the moron who wrote this ever SEEN a bison? Ever done even a Wiki search on the physical feats they are capable of, wounded or not wounded? Ah, forget it.
#176 – I’ve never heard a witness story from an atheist that didn’t have a turning point of some unfortunate event in their lives.
Did you not read my post? and I have often been struck by the number of ‘born agains’ who find religion after drugs and drink – from one dependency to another
Hi! I was raised in the wilds of Canada by mild mannered agnostics, I assume they are agnostics rather then hard athiests but then again the subject never really comes up. Religious is strangely enough not a default setting.
Curious, my turning point came in 7th/8th grade when I took a good serious look at religion and realized it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’ve had some unfortunate events in my life like anyone else, but that wasn’t during (or right after) one of them.
“Kermit: I’ve never heard a witness story from an atheist that didn’t have a turning point of some unfortunate event in their lives.”
Oh puh-LEASE. This from a religion that makes it a point to witness to people who have just had loved ones die or are at rock-bottom of some chemical dependency or other.
But if you want a conflicting view, I’ll tell you that I’m an atheist, and it came about fairly gradually in my early teens from realizing how silly and backwards religious thinking was. And even after that I called myself an agnostic until some time in college.
“Curious, my turning point came in 7th/8th grade when I took a good serious look at religion and realized it didn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
At least you waited until you have a well-formed intelligence.
This is ridiculous. I’m out.
@ Curious
I’ve never heard a witness story from an atheist that didn’t have a turning point of some unfortunate event in their lives.
Then your sampling of atheists is obviously limited. Unless you call actually reading the Bible, plus dozens of historical accounts of religion and deciding, “blech… no thanks… this stuff is toxic” as an unfortuante event, I’m one example for you. From my point of view, it was one of the more fortunate events of my life, thanks. I think you need to get out more.
I’m pretty sure no one had any difficulty understanding the words I misspelled.
Awfully defensive of you… but I think if you go back and actually read the posts, that wasn’t even directed at you.
Several degrees, working on more, presented/published at conferences. You?
Poppycock! In any science field? Or are we talking theology / liberal arts / art / music? What fields? Which University(ies)? Which conferences? Which published papers? I’d love to review them. And this is seriously the wrong place to be questioning degrees and qualifications. There are more degreed people in this thread than there are probably any other place you’ve ever visited on the Internet in your life, I’d wager.
Curious: I’ve never heard a witness story from an atheist that didn’t have a turning point of some unfortunate event in their lives.
You clearly haven’t been around many atheists because my experience has been pretty much exactly the opposite. But if you’re still here, you’re about to hear something new (though I’m not entirely comfortable with this idea of a “witness story” … I didn’t witness a damn thing).
I just embraced atheism about 3 years ago, around the time I turned 25. I had been a Christian before that, and my move to atheism came after taking a long, hard look at Christianity over the course of about 2 years. At that point, I determined there was little truth in Christianity.
Nothing unfortunate. Nothing ugly. I’m not angry at anyone or anything, at least with regard to religion. I just believe the existence of God is unsupported by the currently available evidence. That’s all.
So there ya go.
Curious @ #176
That’s curious indeed because most of the atheists I know became so because they realized they were incapable of maintaining the cognitive dissonance necessary to believe in sky-fairy myths while living in an evidence based reality. The unfortunate event usually, if at all, comes after that when they lose family members and friends and sometimes their entire community to ignorance and they have their crisis of faith (how big it is depends on how strict and unbending their flavor of dogma was). Only a very few became atheists after some emotional crisis (death of a close loved one, coming out as gay/lesbian and being rejected by their church/family, etc). I am a lifelong atheist with a short period of intense searching and partial acceptance of various forms of woo during my early teen years. I grew out of it, though and have been much happier for it. No bitterness or even a need to be bitter or angry…why be angry at something that doesn’t exist?
OTOH, I have yet to meet a born-again xtian who “found jesus” while feeling particularly well adjusted, happy and/or generally worthwhile as a human being. Every single one I have met became born-again during a period of utter dejection/depression/addiction. That is to be expected, of course, because if you are feeling good about life and your place in it then you don’t need to be “saved,” do you?
/OT rant
David Marjanovic,
Isle of Man, for a start. For social reasons I do it when I’m there.
Curious and friends,
The practice of inoculation then called variolation was brought into Western Europe from Turkey. Jenner worked on it first and Pasteur quite a bit later. Just start with the wikipedia page for Lady Mary Wortley Montague and follow the story from there.
Jumping Jehozephat! Don’t they teach any history in the US of A?
Oh, and “single plural cavity” @ 124 just has to go into The World Book of Typos.
W-O-W !! This guy must have held an agnostic neutrality on religion until he was in college, when he thought seriously and deeply on things and finally realized that Christianity made more sense than other religions because of…well, because of some amazing evidence that the rest of us just haven’t seen yet.
Or, do you think he might possibly have been…raised to believe what he believes now? And has the gall to mock someone who actually applied critical thinking once he was starting to command that ability?
He’s probably off now somewhere, claiming that he’s just been “persecuted” on PZ’s blog.
It’s too bad he had to speak up before thinking, and stir up an argument with people who are well-prepared to refute his position–and then walked off when the argument wasn’t going well for him. If he’d stuck around and asked reasonable questions rather than disparaging others’ beliefs, he might have learned something here.
Here’s one: I’ve never believed in god. Ever.
I have no doubt is off somewhere else spewing the same nonsense that was refuted here.
Wow, gone. Oh well, no point in wasting time in tribal arguments with Curious. “What has Ohio State done for the world? Most of the great scientists were from Michigan. Oh, some were from Ohio State, but did they do what they did in the NAME of Ohio State?” Tedious.
“Witness story”? Everyone isn’t a cryptochristian, you know.
Yeah, sad that that’s likely. I’d bet you dimes to dollars too, that even after hearing the several conversion stories given above, he’ll still be seen in other blogs saying he’s “never” heard one from an atheist that wasn’t caused by an unfortunate event in their lives.
You know, I wouldn’t have gone after him like this, but I gave him a courteous answer to his post about “witness” stories, and he chose to respond with sarcasm.
So, um what are the xians doing here?
If the gods had really cared about their followers, they would have given them brains.
If the gods had really cared about their followers, they would have given them brains.
*ARGUMENT FAIL!*
If the gods had really cared about their followers, they would have given them brains.
“So, um what are the xians doing here?”
Sorry, that should have been “So, um, what are the hate campaigning xians doing here?” Slip of the mind.
In the absence of an Christian trolls, discuss this fellow:
Reverend Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. (born 1965) is an American Roman Catholic priest, neuroscientist and writer.
Father Pacholczyk grew up in Tucson, Arizona. His father Andrzej Pacholczyk was a professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona. He earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale University and did post-doctoral studies at Harvard University.
In 1999, he was ordained a priest in Rome. He quickly became the leading church spokesman on what he calls beginning-of-life and end-of-life issues. He’s been an outspoken proponent of the Catholic Church’s positions on human cloning and embryonic stem cell research, positions which recognize the inherent dignity of the human person from the moment of conception and which oppose the deliberate taking of innocent human life. (See Declaration on the Production and the Scientific and Therapeutic Use of Human Embryonic Stem Cells.) In December 2001, he testified before the Massachusetts Senate that “embryonic human life is inviolable and deserving of unconditional respect.”
Pacholczyk is currently a priest of the diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts and he writes a monthly column for The Catholic Herald called, “Making Sense Out of Bioethics,” which gets reprinted nationally in many local church newspapers. He also serves as the director of education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, whose director, John Haas, is an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy For Life.
Fr. Tad is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. As an undergraduate he earned degrees in philosophy, biochemistry, molecular cell biology, and chemistry, and did laboratory research on hormonal regulation of the immune response. He later earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Yale University, where he focused on cloning genes for neurotransmitter transporters which are expressed in the brain. He also worked for several years as a molecular biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Fr. Tad studied for 5 years in Rome where he did advanced work in dogmatic theology and in bioethics, examining the question of delayed ensoulment of the human embryo.
If by “event” you mean a lengthy period of questioning, of desperately wanting to understand God’s ways, of reading the Bible and being struck by the cruelty of the “loving” God, of desperately praying to God to give me understanding, of fearing that I wasn’t a good enough Christian, of agonizing over the countless individuals I believed were suffering in Hell for eternity, of attempting desperately to reconcile my religious beliefs with the evidence of an impersonal world, then, yes, an “unfortunate event” was responsible for my “turning point”.
Several degrees, working on more, presented/published at conferences. – Curious
Liar. Your stupidity is far too obvious for that to be plausible.
So I e-mailed him this morning asking if how a P.H.D. could misunderstand Evolution so Dramatically. This was the Reply that I got…………
“Greetings Left Coast David,
Thank you for your response. Nope, I am not a medical doctor…my doctorate is in Zoology from Texas Tech. I also successfully completed two quarters at UCLA Zoology Department working on my doctorate. I was the ONLY incoming doctoral student that was not required to take remedial courses before starting on my doctorate. Over 80% of the questions in my oral qualifying exams were about evolution and because I have looked at both sides of the issue I passed with flying colors. Dr. Fred White (UCLA Med School) designed my doctoral research with alligators. He also attended the defense of my dissertation at Texas Tech. I have caught and studied over 200 wild alligators up to 750 pounds and use multichannel radio telemetry, which I also designed to study physiological thermoregulation. I have also put heart rate transmitter on more species of wild animals than anyone else, which is why I was invited to an international radio telemetry at Oxford as a keynote speaker. I have also been active in the creation and evolution since high school.
Again, as a YEC I do not accept the long earth age nor that bison slowly evolved over time from genetic errors. No, a chest shot will NOT bring down or kill other mammals…ONLY the bison. An arrow on all other mammals would only deflate one lung as is the case in humans.
Again, thank you for your comments. I learn most from those with a different background. Let me attach a couple of recently published papers from the Creation Research Society Quarterly.
Cheers,
Norbert
so does that mean it was gods special design to ensure the bison skull wasnt too thick for when people first started using firearms against it?
wow, im suprised it doesnt have really thin skin around the neck so that pre spear natives could simply bite their way to the main arteries!
#177:
When I read this post I immediately thought of the 14th Century prayer: From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!
“It’s obvious to me that God favors the Great Plains natives over the Eastern Seaboard natives, because He didn’t put any bison east of the Mississippi.”
There were bison in the east, iirc. Emphasis on the “were”, because they’re completely gone.
Jay Buhner (198 & 199)
Is that supposed to be some kind of argument from authority?
You should know that doesn’t fly here.
Two comments.
First, I was born an atheist and have never seen a reason to change. There are actually a lot of people like me about. My daughter is the same. I have read the bible, several times, I find it ridiculous. Same goes for the Koran and the Mormon book,
Second, a question. How does one “examine the question of delayed ensoulment of the human embryo” ?
Is it something in the eyes? How can one tell if its delayed or not? Remember children develop differently, some will have teeth at 6 months, some not til a year.
Seems as useful a project as determining how many angels dance on the head of a pin, really.
Thank you kindly
Are there any hunters here who might be able to verify this statement? It’s been over thirty years since I hunted but I seem to recall stories told of deer killed by lung shots. It just took a lot of tracking and subsequently packing to retrieve the animal.
It sounds like he doesn’t know jack about shit.
@199 Jay
Oh, please, inquiring minds want to know…
“Fr. Tad studied for 5 years in Rome where he did advanced work in dogmatic theology and in bioethics, examining the question of delayed ensoulment of the human embryo.”
Please provide links or abstracts to the research on delayed (as opposed to premature or just-right) ensoulment. At what point should a parent give up and assume their child will always be soul-less? When this happens, is it OK to drown them in the well?
P.S. Is “dogmatic theology” kind of like “pea green” or “ATM machine”?
Nah, it’s plausible. Providing, that is, the degrees are mail-order, and the presentations are of the mimeographed publications in church basements.
RickT @208 :
I’ve done a bit of hunting, and known hunters in my day.
Can’t say for bison, but you hit a deer through one lung and it’s going down. It’s actually very rare to hit a quadruped through one lung and miss the other, as the two organs are opposite each other in the chest cavity and so a shot through one typically hits both. I’ve also seen shots of bow-hunters taking deer through the lungs. The deer runs off, but dies within a few minutes.
A general comment on the entire idea of the claim:
The claim that an animal has some weakness refutes evolution is nonsense and shows a deep lack of understanding of basic evolutionary principles. With evolution, you don’t get perfect, you get what works. Parts evolve in a manner which is incomplete, imperfect and often fatally flawed.
You haven’t got a perfect spine, eye or liver, you have the ones that work.
(I’m sure PZ Myers could explain this better than I could, but I’m having a go at it. )
Where did the idea that precontact native Americans killed most or even many bison by jumps come from? Just how many suitable jump sites do you think there are on the great plains? Bison wander around and would have to wander within a few miles of the jump site to be chased over the cliff. Individual bison can be taken by covering ones self with the skin of some innocuous animal, crawling up to the animal and sticking a spear or arrow somewhere behind the rib cage, the bladder is good, and trailing the wounded animal for days until infection or blood loss brings it down. The idea that the Indians aimed for the heart or lungs is unlikely; the point is to go for a sure kill and not risk the ribs turning the projectile. Incidentally, the bow and arrow is a fairly recent invention on this continent, only beating Columbus here by about 400 years.
That’s 400 years on the east cost.The figure for the upper Midwest is about 1000 years before Columbus.
“He became an atheist because his friend died, it’s always something, what happend with you?”
I became an atheist because I was born, and like all other babies, I was born without a belief in a deity. That’s how I became and atheist – I became, an atheist.
I remained an atheist, the natural state of a human, by not ever having been infected with that particular delusion.
When I was 4, a woman tried to give me the Jesus germs, but even at that age I was able to recognize what I could at that time only call “fairy tales,” the one term for make believe I knew.
I was also able to recognize that this lady actually thought that what was obviously a fairy tale was real, which startled me – it was my first experience of realizing that some adults were just not that smart.
“Second, a question. How does one “examine the question of delayed ensoulment of the human embryo” ?
Thank you kindly”
Simple, you start with the hypothesis “an embryo does not receive a soul immediately upon conception” then explore the philosophical and theological implications of that. You can take it further by examining the implication of ensoulment at given moments of development (e.g. birth, first neural synapse, etc.)
“Please provide links or abstracts to the research on delayed (as opposed to premature or just-right) ensoulment.”
as someone said above: Why should [I] pander to your laziness? It would take you 10 minutes of searching to find this answer… why should [I] do the work for you when you clearly would just turn a blind eye if you saw them anyhow? Please.
“P.S. Is “dogmatic theology” kind of like “pea green” or “ATM machine”?”
No, I’m guessing you can look it up on Wikipedia.
Was the author questioning why having the lung deficiency was a bad mutation that shouldn’t have been selected for? More aptly, I’d say the lung defficiency didn’t affect selection until the native american hunting technique caused selective pressure, but at this point, the bison population was incredibly large and mutations take quite a while for genetic drift to take hold on the population. Likewise, a bison struck in either lung would die regardless of the deficiency.
Where did the idea that precontact native Americans killed most or even many bison by jumps come from?
From archaeologists, probably?
Just how many suitable jump sites do you think there are on the great plains?
Relatively few, therefore the best jump sites were known and used by countless people over thousands of years?
Incidentally, the bow and arrow is a fairly recent invention on this continent, only beating Columbus here by about 400 years.
It seems that you have answered your own question. Since bows are relatively recent in the plains, it makes sense that most bison over time were killed by other means.
Isn’t that the famous mistranslated word that actually means “rule the way a good king does”?
If it came from somewhere, it wouldn’t be inherent, would it?
“Published at conferences”? Jargon — ur doin it rong.
Then stop hearing and read more. Google for “deconversion” for a start.
I’m not trying to make an issue out of anything but my ignorance! (Or the diversity of Europe — that’d be another way of putting it.) I am not at all well informed about Irish
superstitionspre-Christian holdovers, nor about the presumably closely related ones from Man. I am familiar with horseshoes for good and black cats for bad luck, but those have nothing to do with fairies as far as I can tell. I’ve read that witches were supposed to steal milk/butter — explaining where the butterflies (which were somehow associated with witches) got their name from in English and in German –, but never fairies.Don’t you realize that the argument from consequences is a logical fallacy?
“If it came from somewhere, it wouldn’t be inherent, would it?”
If it is infused in the essence of man, it came from somewhere, but is thereafter inherent. The constant references to the death threats received by the student (most likely from a few anonymous and harmless e-mailers) assume a dignity that cannot be divorced from this student.
“Don’t you realize that the argument from consequences is a logical fallacy?”
The intent is not to determine the moment of ensoulment based on the most appealing consequences, but rather to determine the consequences a given moment of ensoulment and seek overlap. For the Christian, if one moment results in a contradiction with revealed theology, it can be concluded that ensoulment of that type does not occur.
“Published at conferences”? Jargon — ur doin it rong.
When you present a poster at a conference, that is the publishing of the poster and its contents. (I’m guessing you don’t do it at all.)
And what is the evidence of a soul ?
“Simple, you start with the hypothesis “an embryo does not receive a soul immediately upon conception” then explore the philosophical and theological implications of that. You can take it further by examining the implication of ensoulment at given moments of development (e.g. birth, first neural synapse, etc.)”
And once you’re done mentally masturbating, then what?
David Marjanovic,
If you ever do find yourself keen to know, just let me have an address and I’ll send you two practices involving the Little People – fairies are Victorian romantic woo – still in use.
In the meantime I think we should concentrate of convincing the world’s Christians that almost all of what they do at Christmas and at least 50% of Easter is pre-Christian holdover, don’t you think?
already working on it maureen.
every time some one asks me if I think we should put christ back in christmas, I tell them I think they should put christmas back where it belings, in the spring, and leave the rest of us alone.
anyone else in on the campaign?
thank you kindly
I have been atheist since I was seven, even though I didn’t even know the word. Since my father was an Episcopalian priest, I (being precociously intuitive) suspected that a skeptical question shouldn’t be put to my daddy. So I asked my mother why the bible said god created everything in six days and my library books (yes, I read a lot since the day I found I could), said the earth was billions of years old and dinosaurs were on the earth millions and millions of years ago. She hemmed and hawed and mumbled something about symbolism and instructive stories I barely understood, except that I knew I shouldn’t bring up such subjects. When I was nine, she gave me a book of the world’s greatest myths and legends, which is the only book I have kept since childhood. I didn’t realize until much later how subversive a gift that was. And irony of ironies: my father admitted his atheism to me about a year before his death! Oh, it explained so much. The lack of indoctrination within the walls of my home, the heavy drinking, the oft-rolled eyes. But he had a family to support and maintained his job till he turned 65 and retired immediately. So tell me, what traumatic event was it that made me realize it was all bullshit? I am so grateful to have been given the liberty to think for myself, and if you have a problem with that I can be found at mizlee(at)aol(dot)com.
Yeah, I have heard a few, although to be fair I think it’s an odd shot that would hit one lung but not the other (or any major artieries if not the heart proper which is actually what you’re aiming at) a prime shot is right behind the sholder parallel to the ground from about 10-15 meters with a bow poundage of 75 pounds+ it would a bit harder to get that sort of penitration on something the size of a Bison…. but back to the fact they were herded off cliffs.
And even if the deer didn’t die from the loss of the lung there is the blood loss, shock and eventual infection on the extrememly off chance it lives that long which would be right up there with winning the lottory.
No I’m not a bow-hunter (target archer actually) I just know a lot of them and have done enough feild shoots and asked enough questions to think what I’ve typed here is at least reasonable.
There’s not much obstacle for a herd animal’s traits to undergo modification via descent in the interest of the preservation of the herd rather than the individual.
You may have observed that some species of goats tend to become paralyzed and fall over when spooked. It’s not unreasonable to hypothesize that this is so that the rest may escape without injury. Perhaps it was a condition of that environment that selection towards a more self-concerned nature resulted in lessened viability of the herd as a whole.
“And what is the evidence of a soul ?”
I hope you realize that you incessant clamoring for evidence in order for something to be true doesn’t meet its own criterion. What evidence is there for evidence being required for something to be true?
“And once you’re done mentally masturbating, then what?”
Probably go find some blog where you can assert your authority to people you don’t know under an anonymous guise, but still feel good about yourself.
No Aristotelian word games please. If it is given, it is a later addition and not inherent.
Fine, that’s not an argument from consequences. It is, however, still an obvious logical fallacy: revealed theology is simply assumed instead of tested.
That is not a publishing of any work, and therefore I’ve never seen a poster called “published”. The publication is the paper or book chapter that explains the materials and methods in detail instead of at most summarizing them.
I’ve never presented a poster. I prefer oral presentations. Earlier this week I gave one at this congress, the week before at that one…
If it’s anything outside the British Isles, please do. My address is my.name at gmx.at.
Many of those I know vaguely know this and don’t care.
Isn’t that “playing dead”? As in making the predator believe that some dreadful infection is involved that the predator better not get?
Only if the rest consists of close relatives, especially offspring.
You have it backwards.
The important question is if you were wrong, how would you know?
By comparing it to your observations. If your idea contradicts reality, it’s wrong.
Science is not a quest for truth, it is a quest for all that is wrong — a quest to demonstrate that all that is wrong really is wrong.
What good is an idea if we can’t find out if it’s wrong?
Should have put the question mark in boldface, too.
“That is not a publishing of any work, and therefore I’ve never seen a poster called “published”. The publication is the paper or book chapter that explains the materials and methods in detail instead of at most summarizing them.”
Semantics aside, if it is the first public presentation of the data, that is the publishing of it.
“The important question is if you were wrong, how would you know?
By comparing it to your observations. If your idea contradicts reality, it’s wrong.”
That does not appear to be the mantra of this blog and its Ilk. Rather, they posit, if something does not correspond to reality as they see it, it is wrong, furthermore, evidence must be presented to demonstrate the truth of something, limiting the possibilities of the Universe to the grasp of the human intellect. This blog is certainly not in the busniess of accepting something until it is proven wrong.
“What good is an idea if we can’t find out if it’s wrong?”
The vast majority of ideas, and useful ideas, don’t have a truth value associated with them. One can assert “love is good”. That either follows from an argument from consequences or testimonial evidence, which about 20,000 Pharyngulans will point out are logical fallacies. You can’t find out if it’s wrong, but no reasonable person would discount the value of love.
On the other hand, a scientific hypothesis is useless if a truth value cannot be assigned to it: e.g. string theory, strict Darwinian evolution, man-made global warming.
There is often assumptions/confusion regarding the nature of religious statements. Take Genesis 1. Taken as science, very few would say that it holds water. If it is not taken to be a statement of science, but of a revelation about the human condition, those issues aren’t there.
Prior to becoming Pontiff, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, regarding this issue:
“One answer was already worked out some time ago, as the scientific view of the world was gradually crystallizing; many of you probably came across it in your religious instruction. It says that the Bible is not a natural science textbook, nor does it intend to be such. It is a religious book, and consequently one cannot obtain information about the natural sciences from it. One cannot get from it a scientific explanation of how the world arose; one can only glean religious experience from it. Anything else is an image and a way of describing things whose aim is to make profound realities graspable to human beings. One must distinguish between the form of portrayal and the content that is portrayed. The form would have been chosen from what was understandable at the time — from the images which surrounded the people who lived then, which they used in speaking and in thinking, and thanks to which they were able to understand the greater realities. And only the reality that shines through these images would be what was intended and what was truly enduring. Thus Scripture would not wish to inform us about how the different species of plant life gradually appeared or how the sun and the moon and the stars were established. Its purpose ultimately would be to say one thing: God created the world.”
“In the Beginning….” : A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Eerdmans, 1986, 1995)
Those goats are not a separate species: they are a mutant strain/breed where, if the goat becomes too excited, it freezes up, and, often, falls over. The breed persists because some humans alternatively find these goats amusing, and or take pity on them.
Actually, playing dead or feigning death thwarts some predators as some predators will not eat carrion under any circumstances, save for in captivity, when the keepers train some species to eat prekilled food, often by dangling it in front of its nose to pretend it’s still alive.
“…if God had really cared about native Americans, he might have given them immunity to smallpox.”
I could generalize that to “if god really cared about people in general, he might not have afflicted us with all these horrific diseases in the first place”.
-jcr
If God really cared about people, he would at least bother to exist.
People, not all of them rural either, still placate fairies in Europe.
That simply must be a joke! Knock on wood. *
*yes, this is a joke… yes it’s that obscure.
the mantra of this blog and its Ilk – jaybuhner
You don’t know what “ilk” means; look it up.
I hope you realize that you incessant clamoring for evidence in order for something to be true doesn’t meet its own criterion. What evidence is there for evidence being required for something to be true? – jaybuhner
Without having reread the thread, I doubt anyone said evidence is required in order for something to be true. That would be silly, or a careless slip. For purported statements of fact, either evidence, or deduction from other purported statements of fact for which there is evidence, certainly is required for something to be rationally judged to be true. The evidence for that purported statement of fact is the vast number of occasions on which such statements have been judged to be true without evidence, and have later turned out not to be.
“Evidence is required for something to be [judged] true” (the bit in brackets is mine, and is crucial), is not a statement of fact, but a methodological principle.
Thus Scripture would not wish to inform us about how the different species of plant life gradually appeared or how the sun and the moon and the stars were established. Its purpose ultimately would be to say one thing: God created the world.” – jaybuhner, quoting Ratzinger
Um, so why not just day “God created the world” and leave out all the guff?
That’s what I’m saying — the data are, for the most part at least, not presented in a poster. Posters don’t count as published. Papers and book chapters do. So does the abstract of the paper in the conference program volume — but that’s just an abstract.
I’ve never seen a scientist write that a poster was “published”.
Oh, it’s just narcolepsy?
So what? What bearing does that have on what is wrong, or for that matter on my own opinions?
One shouldn’t accept everything till it’s proven wrong. One should be agnostic to everything that hasn’t been tested yet and isn’t argued against by the principle of parsimony.
Define “good”. And once you’ve succeeded, you can probably make pretty simple utilitarian, even egoistic, arguments for love being indeed good — or desirable at least. Why don’t you try?
What, are you saying the theory of evolution and the idea of manmade global warming aren’t testable? You can’t be serious. The former would run into very deep trouble by the discovery of a single Precambrian rabbit. The latter would be disproven if any of its mechanisms were disproven, and apart from that, it’s always possible that an alternative hypothesis is more parsimonious.
Argh. Of course the last paragraph is mine.
The Essence of Man is real, baby!
This bison argument is so childish. Bison evolved and thrived in a world without human beings around, and thus no sharp sticks to fly around poking them. Once Humans did arrive, they succeeded in very short order (in biological time) in nearly exterminating them. Thus, this example seems to me to support, rather than weaken evolutionary biology.