Religion II

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

I, personally, will accept the "big bang theory" when science tells me what existed before the big bang.

The fuse to the Big Firecracker?

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by hcap

What existed before god? God's father and grandfather?

I have learned to take comfort in the thought that I might not be able to ever figure out how or why I ever got here. And I refuse to spend the rest of my existence jumping from one questionable hypothesis to another...trying to satisfy the curiosity of my monkey-mind. However I got here and why is of lesser importance to me than living my life according to my ideals...so I could tell myself at the end of my life that I spent my existence being truthful to myself. "To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man"...that's my only commandment. At least for now.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Yeah, right.

You do! Excellent!! We're getting somewhere. Now you also accept Einstein's equation

E = mc^2

Right?

[dnlgfnk]

Originally Posted by hcap

I will asdmit Shapiro's concepts are intriguing, but he has not replaced natural selection with "intelligent DNA". Nor has his theories redone mainstream evolutionary theory.

James Shapiro gets evolution wrong again
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress...n-wrong-again/

...Yes, these new discoveries are exciting, but they have absolutely no bearing on two issues: 1) whether natural selection acts on these new bits of the genome, and 2) whether natural selection is the primary process that produces “adaptations” in organisms. After all, all these units of the genome are still bits of DNA residing within the genome (usually on chromosomes), and therefore must obey the laws of population genetics. And those laws say that if a bit of DNA helps the organisms’s reproduction, it proliferates. If it hurts the organisms’s reproduction, it gets expunged from the population. That’s natural selection. Ergo, all of those genomic things that regulate other genes are subject to natural selection (and, of course, genetic drift).

In fact, there’s little doubt (except in the mind of contrarians like Shapiro) that the mechanisms of gene regulation themselves evolved by natural selection.
.......................................
This is the line that severely cast doubt on Shapiro.

....the mechanisms of gene regulation themselves evolved by natural selection.

"The mechanisms of gene regulation themselves evolved by natural selection", i.e., nature selects for something =teleology, which as the overarching aspect of my citing Shapiro, is very relevant here.

The experience of the world is teeming with intentionality, "aboutness". My post is about your post, which was about my previous post, etc. In my best efforts, I cannot locate empirical proof warranting the rejection of teleology by evolutionists, but only choice and philosophy, e.g.; "All we have is teleological language to describe what is merely a function"..."It only seems like there is teleology in nature", etc.

I could propose Fodor's "Why Pigs Don't Have Wings", and the response might be the citation of some of his many critics, and our minor discussion could drag on. It's oddly funny that vis-a-vis orthodox religion, it's cutting edge stuff by some to cast doubt upon age old beliefs. Yet decades/centuries old orthodox views on theories within the philosophy of science are staunchly defended in scientific materialist comboxes versus any challengers (Fodor, Nagel, Chalmers).

Thanks for the responses, hcap.

[dnlgfnk]

Originally Posted by hcap

And the assumption of intelligent genes and DNA does very little to explain life organizing into more and more evolved forms from raw materials BEFORE THE ADVENT OF genes and DNA

Current theory estimates billions of yeas for life to form from chemicals into basic amino acids. No room for intelligent anything without a certain degree of organization and complexity needed fopr much later formed Shapiro's smart self repairing and goal oriented DNA and genomes. At least biologically speaking.

Postulate as many ghosts in the machine as you wish,

but ..............??????

Shapiro's response is contained within the article listed on pg. 46..."The Soup-Kettle is empty"...

http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/c...start-life.pdf

[dnlgfnk]

Originally Posted by dnlgfnk

Shapiro's response is contained within the article listed on pg. 46..."The Soup-Kettle is empty"...

http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/c...start-life.pdf

After later reflection, deep apologies, hcap. The response is one James A. should have offered if able, but it is actually a different Shapiro, Robert.

I suppose it's time to return to distinguishing between the Ortiz brothers rather than scientists named Shapiro.

[hcap]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Why do you have to be so duplicitous? Why can't you be honest for once in your life? You said God is undefinable. Period. No maybes. No perhaps. No possibly. Just..."God cannot be defined".

So, again, I ask you: How do you know this?

So? I said may be .....or is ineffable. I do not know the certainty of your version of god. That is not "duplicitous". My degree of my ignorance is UN-definable. A much more honest statement than your constant assurances of claiming to know what it, he, she, it had for breakfast in excruciating convoluted detail.

This entire silly word game you also used 15 years ago when we first debated "not knowing" or a form of agnosticism.

You are re-playing Apologist-ism 101.

Extremely dumb then and now.

I do not know if there is a alien from planet Melmac under your bed either. What do I need to know about aliens from Melmac, or your bed? We all can criticize unlikely scenarios without knowing the absurd details. What must I know about your car to know it does NOT use ant-gravity?

[hcap]

Originally Posted by dnlgfnk

Shapiro's response is contained within the article listed on pg. 46..."The Soup-Kettle is empty"...

http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/c...start-life.pdf

He is talking of much more complex molecules like DNA and RNA. I brought up raw chemicals forming precursors to either of these copmplex molecules amino acids. Where is the goal-oriented characteristics of those raw chemicals needed to form amino acids?

[hcap]

Originally Posted by dnlgfnk

"The mechanisms of gene regulation themselves evolved by natural selection", i.e., nature selects for something =teleology, which as the overarching aspect of my citing Shapiro, is very relevant here.

The experience of the world is teeming with intentionality, "aboutness". My post is about your post, which was about my previous post, etc. In my best efforts, I cannot locate empirical proof warranting the rejection of teleology by evolutionists, but only choice and philosophy, e.g.; "All we have is teleological language to describe what is merely a function"..."It only seems like there is teleology in nature", etc.

I could propose Fodor's "Why Pigs Don't Have Wings", and the response might be the citation of some of his many critics, and our minor discussion could drag on. It's oddly funny that vis-a-vis orthodox religion, it's cutting edge stuff by some to cast doubt upon age old beliefs. Yet decades/centuries old orthodox views on theories within the philosophy of science are staunchly defended in scientific materialist comboxes versus any challengers (Fodor, Nagel, Chalmers).

Thanks for the responses, hcap.

This goal oriented purposeful evolution has been discredited by the mainstream.

Goal-directed evolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleol...cted_evolution

Religious thinkers and biologists have repeatedly supposed that evolution was driven by some kind of life force, a philosophy known as vitalism, and have often supposed that it had some kind of goal or direction (towards which the life force was striving, if they also believed in that), known as orthogenesis or evolutionary progress. Such goal-directedness implies a long-term teleological force; some supporters of orthogenesis considered it to be a spiritual force, while others held that it was purely biological. For example, the Russian embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer believed in a teleological force in nature,[12][13] whereas the French spiritualist philosopher Henri Bergson linked orthogenesis with vitalism, arguing for a creative force in evolution known as élan vital in his book Creative Evolution
.................................................. .
... Attributing purposes to adaptations risks confusion with popular forms of Lamarckism where animals in particular have been supposed to influence their own evolution through their intentions, though Lamarck himself spoke rather of habits of use, and the belief that his thinking was teleological has been challenged.

....the teleological explanation of adaptation is uncomfortable because it seems to require backward causation, in which existing traits are explained by future outcomes; because it seems to attribute the action of a conscious mind when none is assumed to be present in an organism; and because, as a result, adaptation looks impossible to test empirically.

[hcap]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

I have learned to take comfort in the thought that [I]I might not be able to ever figure out how or why I ever got here[/I]. And I refuse to spend the rest of my existence jumping from one questionable hypothesis to another...trying to satisfy the curiosity of my monkey-mind. However I got here and why is of lesser importance to me than living my life according to my ideals...so I could tell myself at the end of my life that I spent my existence being truthful to myself. "To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man"...that's my only commandment. At least for now.

That 's why I brought up "suchness" a number of times.....It may be enough to experience things directly as best as possible without getting lost in words

Tathata, which means "suchness" or "thusness," is a word sometimes used primarily in Mahayana Buddhism to mean "reality," or the way things really are. It's understood that the true nature of reality is ineffable, beyond description and conceptualization.

However words are useful and have their place in identifying the "devil in the details". Fact are still important for all of us whether scientist of philosopher.

[woodtoo]

Pope Francis speaking to italian newspaper La Repubblica

USA has " a distorted view of the world" And Americans must be ruled by a world government, as soon as possible " for their own good"

Who made the Pope "world leader on non-religious matters"?

[hcap]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

I, personally, will accept the "big bang theory" when science tells me what existed before the big bang.

Science speculates on possibilities. Understanding infinity is another matter.

So do other religions consider Infinity of the cosmos in very different ways than the Abrahamic traditions. Pantheism is an alternative in understanding infinity

According to Carl Sagan:
"The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model

A cyclic model (or oscillating model) is any of several cosmological models in which the universe follows infinite, or indefinite, self-sustaining cycles. For example, the oscillating universe theory briefly considered by Albert Einstein in 1930 theorized a universe following an eternal series of oscillations, each beginning with a big bang and ending with a big crunch; in the interim, the universe would expand for a period of time before the gravitational attraction of matter causes it to collapse back in and undergo a bounce.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by hcap

So? I said may be .....or is ineffable. I do not know the certainty of your version of god. That is not "duplicitous". My degree of my ignorance is UN-definable. A much more honest statement than your constant assurances of claiming to know what it, he, she, it had for breakfast in excruciating convoluted detail.

This entire silly word game you also used 15 years ago when we first debated "not knowing" or a form of agnosticism.

You are re-playing Apologist-ism 101.

Extremely dumb then and now.

I do not know if there is a alien from planet Melmac under your bed either. What do I need to know about aliens from Melmac, or your bed? We all can criticize unlikely scenarios without knowing the absurd details. What must I know about your car to know it does NOT use ant-gravity?

No, you did not say may be. You said, "God cannot be defined"! You certainly seemed to be quite certain about this! So, how do you know anything about something or someone that/who defies definition in order to make such a statement.

And the rest of your post is a non sequitur. If you're going to tell me what you don't know, then you should have included the fact that you don't diddly squat about God, and you certainly don't know one way or the other if he is definable or not.

In other words....You've been blowin' smoke up our butts as usual.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by woodtoo

Pope Francis speaking to italian newspaper La Repubblica

USA has " a distorted view of the world" And Americans must be ruled by a world government, as soon as possible " for their own good"

Who made the Pope "world leader on non-religious matters"?

He's a very good candidate though for the Antichrist Award of the Year.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

You do! Excellent!! We're getting somewhere. Now you also accept Einstein's equation

E = mc^2

Right?

You need a reading comp course -- like yesterday.