Evolutionism

That's not the only instance in where Dawkins has said similar things, Gisteron. So no, Stein wasn't "emphasizing on points Professor Dawkins didn't make". He did make them (unless my eyes and ears have deceived me), has made them, and continues to do so. Though, I must be clear, I am not a creationist, so I am not trying to advocate that particular world view.

Admittedly, however, it is something that creationists latch on to and blow out of all proportion. I simply posted it up in order to show that there are issues within the theory of evolution, areas that need more research and explaining. It's not as straightforward/black and white as many people would like to think it is.

One of my relatives is also an evolutionary biologist (and humanist) and has been kind enough to spend many hours explaining the ins and outs of evolution to me. Evolution is a fact, but there are major issues within it also.

I made references to Jesus' teachings (as portrayed in the New Testament) before illustrating how it doesn't take big of a search to find enormous gaps and faults with them and while in comparison I know little of the teachings of Buddha, a good portion of the few I know are rather objectionable and if the rest is anything like Jesus', it is a safe bet to say one ought not take them too seriously. Jesus, in the Bible, gives explicitly awful advice and suggests disturbingly questionable behavioral patterns even in the few passages quoted to be among the greatest speaches anyone ever gave and the occasional good thing the Bible reports him to have said is usually found all around the globe centuries if not milennia before any trace of the New Testament documents came about. The only reason to follow the conveyed teachings of Jesus of Nazareth rely exclusively and entirely on the presumption of his relation to the divine and is only understandable under the coersion through threats of hell fire. The entire "Only through me" thing couldn't be possible without the notion of sinful human nature and that in turn would have no grounds without the original sin in the Garden of Eden.
So, in essence, while one may claim Christianity without creationism all day long, intellectual honesty and logical consistency isn't granted separating the two.

Rickie, to not know everything doesn't mean to not know anything. So while there are gaps in our knowledge and areas where we have to admit there is a lot we haven't discovered yet, there are still a few things we know for a fact are incorrect and a notion of genesis ex nihilo is one of them. A global flood is another.
Yes, at the end of the day what we say may not be entirely accurate, but as Lila said already, it is still pretty accurately and reliably predicting testable results. Creationism doesn't. In fact, every single prediction that could possibly come about has probably already been falsified and every piece of evidence they provide is either outdated negative presented as up to date and serious, an absurd or falsified interpretation that they claim speaks to their cause while it does for the other, or an outright fabrication and at least someone behind the scenes always knows she is lying. It would take one bunny rabbit fossil bone from the Cretacious and it would make them rich and famous, but they don't even bother digging because on every site they have they disclaim in advance that they will disregard all evidence contrary to their fairy tale of choice.
Excuse me, I won't take the accusation of close-mindedness. If I am to be tolerant of creationism, I might as well be tolerant of the Demonic Posession Theory of Desease as "another good theory" while I'm at it.

Actually, Sheuthem, yes, he was. They cut out pieces of that interview to emphasize that Dawkins would rather accept aliens than their imaginary friend while sweeping under the rug that he was pushed to suggest any remote possibility of Design and you can tell they have made cuts every time Dawkins gives an answer that seems to have nothing to do with the preceding question (like when for some reason Dawkins suddenly jumped to the origins of life after a preceding back and forth on the origins of the universe)... And of course Dawkins himself testified to the dishonesty of that editing in a public appearance not much later (google for "On the Art of Quote Mining"). This interview was before it started already intended to ridicule Dawkins rather than portray him. The movie is called "Expelled", by the way. And as for Dawkins admitting to major gaps in the Theory of Evolution, you'd have to bring up some quotations for that, for whenever I saw him touch upon that he quite explicitly expressed that by today there is no margin for reasonable doubt. At best what he said is that he couldn't definately disprove any deities.

Gisteron wrote: I made references to Jesus' teachings (as portrayed in the New Testament) before illustrating how it doesn't take big of a search to find enormous gaps and faults with them and while in comparison I know little of the teachings of Buddha, a good portion of the few I know are rather objectionable and if the rest is anything like Jesus', it is a safe bet to say one ought not take them too seriously. Jesus, in the Bible, gives explicitly awful advice and suggests disturbingly questionable behavioral patterns even in the few passages quoted to be among the greatest speaches anyone ever gave and the occasional good thing the Bible reports him to have said is usually found all around the globe centuries if not milennia before any trace of the New Testament documents came about. The only reason to follow the conveyed teachings of Jesus of Nazareth rely exclusively and entirely on the presumption of his relation to the divine and is only understandable under the coersion through threats of hell fire. The entire "Only through me" thing couldn't be possible without the notion of sinful human nature and that in turn would have no grounds without the original sin in the Garden of Eden.
So, in essence, while one may claim Christianity without creationism all day long, intellectual honesty and logical consistency isn't granted separating the two.

There are thousands of Christ conscious individuals who don't believe Christ was Jesus' last name, who believe that Christ consciouness is like the Force, present long before Jesus or the Budha ever lived. It is "through this consciousness" they believe that Jesus, Budha and many others were referring to as a means to rise out of dualistic thinking to purer awareness. Some call it the Tao to enter Qi.. . The same thousands don't believe in the model of hellfire or left out of heaven. Many of these individuals have joined creationism and evolutionism in their mind and are done with valuing one versus the other. A synthesis. They are at peace. They have compromised nothing.


In this thread, a few Jedi have made a reference to "spirit of" versus letter of the law. I am appreciative to those offerings which take thought beyond the arguments of this conceptual box VERSUS that conceptual box. I know, I know, . evoultion isn't a concept voices cry out. Okay, physically not, no problem, here. . . .

In their own right and light, ethical teachings have a value, no matter who speaks them. The fascinating thing about ethcis . . . once many religions are studied . . common threads appear. I have found one reason that many do not undertake the journey of comparative analysis is fear. Not just in one form, but in many forms.

TotJO doctrine doesn't support contempt prior to investigation, neither do scientists.

No Jedi has to live in fear of societal indoctrination. Here here is one example of how thesis,antithesis, synthesis works for me.

thesis: someone says you have to go through a guy to get to heaven
antithesis: doesn't feel right to me, doesnt make sense

open mind
study
be quiet listen

synethesis: via my desire to overcome, by studying and by internal integration, the words don't bother me anymore.

The specifics matter not for this post. . . mostly i care to share that I had the same issues and how I got beyond them.

The massive wisdom sees everything in one. The lessor wisdom breaks things down into numerous parts

Zhuangzi

Sheuthem wrote: Evolution is a fact, but there are major issues within it also.

Just a note on where we are at. We're at the point where people really don't even study Evolution as a whole it's so well understood. Instead the biologist coming out Universities are now studying individuals parts like genetics, physiology, behavior,and neurobiology. I study Behavior and Physiology.

We are still working on things like does group selection or gene selection have a stronger influence and under what condition? What are the mechanisms or sexual selection and under what conditions do they act? Still working on the exact mathematics that govern game theory. Still working on solving what exactly is consciences and how does it work in non human animals. None of these are problems they just take a lot of money, time, and people to figure out.

Vesha wrote:

Sheuthem wrote: Evolution is a fact, but there are major issues within it also.

Just a note on where we are at. We're at the point where people really don't even study Evolution as a whole it's so well understood. Instead the biologist coming out Universities are now studying individuals parts like genetics, physiology, behavior,and neurobiology. I study Behavior and Physiology.

We are still working on things like does group selection or gene selection have a stronger influence and under what condition? What are the mechanisms or sexual selection and under what conditions do they act? Still working on the exact mathematics that govern game theory. Still working on solving what exactly is consciences and how does it work in non human animals. None of these are problems they just take a lot of money, time, and people to figure out.

Thanks. Yes. In the same light, adherance to unquestioned religious systems is falling away

Mareeka wrote: There are thousands of Christ conscious individuals who don't believe Christ was Jesus' last name, who believe that Christ consciouness is like the Force, present long before Jesus or the Budha ever lived. It is "through this consciousness" they believe that Jesus, Budha and many others were referring to as a means to rise out of dualistic thinking to purer awareness. Some call it the Tao to enter Qi.. . The same thousands don't believe in the model of hellfire or left out of heaven. Many of these individuals have joined creationism and evolutionism in their mind and are done with valuing one versus the other. A synthesis. They are at peace. They have compromised nothing.

Yes, I explicitly said (responding to Lila's post, again), that there a people believing all kinds of fancy stuff. Essentially my objection was that one hardly qualifies a Christian if one doesn't believe the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as portrayed in the New Testament. I did not say that separating creationism from the label that is "Christian" is impossible, I only said it was wrong because one makes no sense without the other and is rather bad, if not evil, in either case. If "rising out of dualistic thinking to purer awareness" is what some people think the words attributed to Jesus and the Buddha, respectively, are, that's fine, but it is the opposite of any judgement that can reasonably follow reading the respective scriptures and doctrines.

Yes, it is correct that an argument, or a moral stands on its merits and not on the authority or the amount of people who speak them. That is why I can confidently proclaim that the better portion of for instance Jesus' attributed teachings are awful - I don't care so much who said those words, but the words are mostly rather abusive and some awful advice at best. Same counts for most teachings of most religions at least I looked into. Granted, I may not have been in depth into many of them, but certainly the bad things you get to see right there on the surface don't necessarily need to be there and good things underneath that surface are surely no excuse to keep the bad stuff. So maybe one day we should sit down and you show and explain me your comparative analysis so I might see what tremendous amount of information I might have overlooked and how it cancels out the horrors that jumped at my eye so soon.

As for your illustration to the issues you claim you've been having... I don't understand the example. The thesis is either true or false by the nature of the statement made within it itself. The statement you made in your antithesis is entirely irrelevant to that regard. The synthesis you made is not a synthesis of the thesis and the antithesis, its just a random other statement about how you feel about the matter.
If the point you're trying to make is that there is a middle ground to the creationism-evolution debate, well.. you're wrong. And so are the thousands who think they found it. Its a violation of the Law of Excluded Middle. And no, you have compromised intellectual honesty, logical consistency and potentially a lot of knowledge by uniting the two or choosing one over the other through mere will rather than proper examination. That sort of peace comes at a price and at one no being as intelligent and decent as a human should ever be paying.

Yeah... I said issues, not gaps. A big difference there Gisteron. You may want to re-read what I said. And by issues, I mean the following:

1.Does evolution tend to proceed slowly and steadily or in quick jumps?

2.Why are some clades very diverse and some unusually sparse (for instance the Cambrian explosion)?

3.How does evolution produce new and complex features?

4.Are there trends in evolution, and if so, what processes generate them?

But I am out of this one, I can see it's not going anywhere and people are getting caught up on things.

Gisteron wrote: Actually, Sheuthem, yes, he was. They cut out pieces of that interview to emphasize that Dawkins would rather accept aliens than their imaginary friend while sweeping under the rug that he was pushed to suggest any remote possibility of Design and you can tell they have made cuts every time Dawkins gives an answer that seems to have nothing to do with the preceding question (like when for some reason Dawkins suddenly jumped to the origins of life after a preceding back and forth on the origins of the universe)... And of course Dawkins himself testified to the dishonesty of that editing in a public appearance not much later (google for "On the Art of Quote Mining"). This interview was before it started already intended to ridicule Dawkins rather than portray him. The movie is called "Expelled", by the way. And as for Dawkins admitting to major gaps in the Theory of Evolution, you'd have to bring up some quotations for that, for whenever I saw him touch upon that he quite explicitly expressed that by today there is no margin for reasonable doubt. At best what he said is that he couldn't definately disprove any deities.

Erm... I never said that Dawkins said there were gaps. In fact, I never said that anyone said there were gaps. What I actually said was that Dawkins has said similar things to that which he said in the video.

Peace of mind has no price. . if someone had to pay . . then there would be no peace.