This is a complete tangent but as a sci-fi nerd one that I find very interesting. Following on the thread about dominant animal species humans aren't really that adaptable to differing environmental factors and have relied upon technology to allow us to live in different environments. So we have largely defeated the environmental selective pressures that drive biological evolution. At the sametime mutation isn't considered a good thing for us and we have used our technology to pretty much preserve the status quo of our genetic development. According to a lot of sci-fi though what we are evolving too is a state where we become one with our technology as it gets better than our biology. The next step in our evolution could be cyborgs followed by becoming beings of pure information and or energy. I'm not sure if that could be considered Evolution in the terms of what Darwin had but its a sci-fi trope that advanced species will follow that course moving from biological beings to Borg to the Q Continuum.
I read an article a while back that suggested we are doing to ourselves what we did when we turned wolves into dogs - selecting for socializing, subservient, low aggression traits. The concept that we will evolve into something bigger/better/smarter/stronger is not necessarily true.
Interesting, Ottomaton, but who has the most kids? What are we selecting for? Not sure I have the answers, but I'm not sure subservient people, etc, have the most kids. There's not a true environmental selection but simply who is choosing to pass on their genes, and who is choosing not to pass on their genes.
As long as we can eventually build something like this: We might be OK if we face another species considering wiping us out.
"the existence of a soul or higher purpose to our existence." these are things which cannot be proved/disproved... but science can explain WHY we feel these things have validity,etc.
I might like to hear Dawkins ramble a little about aliens and evolution but I wouldn't care to hear one thing he had to say about how to have a healthy, loving, lifelong marriage. Which is what interests me, as far as helping others succeed.
Otto, love the new sig... some of my favorites "Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." --Clark's Law "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Clark's 2nd Law
Why not? What precludes him from having a healthy, loving, or lifelong marriage? Or being able to help others achieve such?
This is where Dawkins starts to get really sketchy. If he can’t think of a reason why it would be beneficial to humans to evolve such beliefs then he doesn’t have a leg to stand on in saying that. He’s simply pulling that out of thin air. He’s trying to give the impression that he’s making a scientific statement when in fact his statement has no scientific content at all. In fact the logic of evolution suggests that the opposite is more likely to be true. Many religious people take one in every seven days off, for example. This is productive time lost! Surely the ones who work every day are the ones who will get ahead, and therefore attract more desirable mates etc. Surely the ones who believe in these silly superstitions, and give money to the poor and other such nonsense, are the ones who will be naturally selected out, right? This has not proved to be the case, however.
The biblical account of the earth being created in 7 days would be one, and the context would be the entirety of the Bible. The Bible uses many parables and many non-literal stories to communicate its meaning. Within that context there's no reason to believe that the 7 days of creation are literally 7 24 hour days.
Just because some widespread beliefs turn out to be wrong does not mean that all widespread beliefs are wrong. I believe this is called a false or a hasty generalization.
This contadicts this: If 3/4 of people believing in god is evidence that god does exist then 3/4 of people believing in anything means that is evidence that such a thing exists or is true. We know that is not correct.
So when you are trying resolve truth and meaning, are you hearing God tell you what he meant, or are your own logic and reasoning? If you're then using logic and reasoning, please tell me you don't believe in zombies and people that walk on water . Explain why one crazy story from antiquity of a man walking on water and coming back from the dead is better than another because Pythagoras is my favorite. He taught me something that is eternally true. I can prove it, I can discover it for myself. I don't see how you can go back and say, "well, I just believe". Believe what?
No one is suggesting that. What people are suggesting, or rather, showing as statement of fact, is that belief, no matter who or how many are believing it, does not give credence to a theory.
It is proof. It doesn’t prove it beyond doubt, but it is proof. If such a large percentage of the people on earth believe in deities you have to assume that there is a reason for that. It can’t just be a coincidence. There will be a reason for it, and the most likely reason is that there is truth to that belief. It’s not an absolute certainty that that’s the correct reason, of course, but if you want to claim that it isn’t correct then you have to make an argument of some sort to that effect. You can’t just assume that all these people are wrong without any basis for that claim. I don’t think he said that he doesn’t believe in creation. I think he just said that it can’t be proved, and by that I assume that he was talking about hard science proof. From a social science perspective, however, I think it can be proved, by which I mean that it can be shown to be likely true. Peer review is not a flawless process, but more importantly I suspect that a lot of the controversial things Dawkins says publically aren’t part of his research. I think his uses/misuses his status as a scientist to make unsupported and manipulative statements in the press to further his personal agenda. There are doubtless instances where traditional beliefs about medicines were corrupted or misguided and led to harm as well, but that doesn’t negate the fact that there tends to be a lot of truth to these beliefs in general. I’m not making that conclusion, however. I’m putting it forward as a possibility. We don’t even really know how probable that might be because we know so little about the universe. For all we know there could be a species out there that has terraformed 1 million planets like Earth. We’re not technologically advanced enough to know one way or the other, but we are technologically advanced enough to begin to conceive of how we might terraform another planet ourselves, and that alone is proof that someone could have done the same to us. We now understand that doing this is possible, in other words, and that means that it’s possible that it was done to us.
A lot of psychology is pseudoscience at best. Most of what Freud came up with was bunk. Psychiatry, which actually deals with chemicals in th brain and how medications affect them, is a different story.
No, there’s no contradiction there. If a large majority of the people on earth believe something then that is good evidence that that thing is true. However, if a large majority of the people on earth believe something then that does not make it 100% certain that that thing is true. Some percentage of the time the belief will be false. Does this help?
