Of what real value is evolutionary "knowledge"?

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We did it

It is not as if he accomplished something that big. Giving a real argument should be easier than it was for him and it is not as if he even gave a good one as, like you said, you have to make the connection and do not have a high level of certitude that it is the one that he is considering.

Well, I do believe that Ragtime considered evolution spiritually harmful, but he still attacks the matter in an intellectually dishonest manner from my opinion. I never said that Ragtime was necessarily being intentionally evil, but I certainly think he is being intellectually dishonest for one reason or another.


I don't see the connection, the connection isn't proven, and not only that, but multi-dimension God does not necessarily have to exist by any arguments put forward.

It all relates together. I'm sorry if you cannot see that.



There's no "into" going on. One flows naturally to and from the other.



Is this yet another demonstration of the type of "science" you tout so grandiosely?
I'm trying to get you to see that popular opinion is NOT SCIENCE.
Lots of people believing in macroevolution does not make it scientifically proven.
Even if they concentrate really hard, and really wish the evidence bore it out.

Actually, the evidence for macroevolution is quite conclusive. You should read about it one day. Also, in science you never hear, as an explanation for phenomenon, that god did it.

Um.... no it really does not.

Umm... no, they don't. Biology and the philosophy of religion should really be pretty far apart, other than perhaps in the evolutionary psychology of religion.


No. I know that popular opinion is not science, Ragtime. Frankly though, macroevolution is the best scientific interpretation of the data. As I have stated before, science is not in the business of proving things but rather is provisional. Evolutionary theory will never be proven, but it can be very well supported, and right now, the fossil record and other things tend to support an evolutionary theory.

Well, definitely at the point where evolutionists (or shall we say "macroevolutionists" from now on? ) discredit God as the creator of the universe. That's my real beef: where scientists and teachers depart from the mutation data, and attempt to go beyond it blindly, by venturing into denouncing Christians and beliefs in God in general, like Dawkins so frequently and vehemently does through his professional position -- both in speeches in which he makes fun of religious people the world over, and in his books, like "The God Delusion". Dawkins ventures FAR, FAR outside the realm of science to attack religion -- and he claims to do so as a scientist!

That is not only professionally irresponsible to the highest degree, but is certainly pure agenda, not science.
Dawkins misrepresents himself as a scientist when he ventures far outside of science to bash religion and religous people.



"Confusing" is a 100%-subjective term, such that biological designs would not be described as confusing to most biologists.
Do you mean "complex, and beyond our understanding in complexity"? That would by definition be "confusing", but only due to the remainder of data which is still hidden from our instruments and/or realizations at present.
As to why God created organisms so complexly, I would have thought it is so that our minds, which He also created, have something intriguing to chew through. So, that challenge and our intellect our a matched set to keep us forever curious, and thus enjoying the process of scientific research into His marvellous works.



I'm suggesting that the act of teaching that we came from meaningless, lifeless matter has more to do with advancing a world view than it does strictly to help us in our scientific pursuits.

(The highlights of your responses. Personally, I like the one with five dots the most!)

Last edited by Ragtime on 12 May 2008, 3:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.

How did we do it? 'Artificial selection' implies that a concious force was selecting for a certain trait. With antibiotics, if anything the concious effort was directed at driving bactierial strains extinct, not to make them resistant to certain compounds. As there was no concious attempt to select for antibiotic resistance, functionally it is no different then natural selection.

Beyond that, it technically is not the point of the discussion. The point is to determine if the study of Ragtime's understanding of 'evolution', what ever that may be, is of real value. Arguably, even artifical selection is a form of 'evolution', since the traits that are chosen for selection still develop randomly on their own. Thus, an understanding of what I view to be the concept of 'evolution' would be useful even in the case of artificial selection.

In order for this question to be addressed, it is imperative that Ragtime give us an exact definition of what he means by evolution. He has agreed in response to my original post that at least one interpretation of the word 'evolution' is valid, though he prefered to call it 'mutation'. However, he also indicated that this was not the interpretation he was challenging the usefulness of. Thus, the correct interpretation must be determined, so the debate may continue.

Debates on the form in which god does or does not exist are interesting, but have little to do with the stated purpose of the thread, and so really should be in a seperate one. Unless someone can directly connect this issue to the usefullness of the study of a particular interpretation of evolution, then continuing on is either letting Ragtime dance around the issue, or is simply everyone picking on him, at least in my opinion.

I think you were looking for this pic?

This forum is for philosophical discussion, not you acting like a fool.

Look, everyone knows that Dawkins is stepping outside of his field by doing these things. In his book "The God Delusion" the thrust of the argument was not biology anyway, so it is obvious he was outside of his field.

I don't think that complex is what is meant. I think what is meant is the tendency in living creatures to have parts that are superfluous or where things seem to have been adjusted in an ad-hoc manner rather than planned from beginning to end. This has caused some to invoke the idea of incompetent design, and can be taken to some extent as an argument against a fine-tuning God.


Well, no, it has something to do with our scientific pursuits as it is reflective of the best understanding of existing data. I think that perhaps this should be balanced out with a class on philosophy or something else of that nature to help kids recognize the various ideas out there, but evolution is a scientific idea with some importance for biology, enough so that an overview of biology should not ignore evolution.

And I only wish that your posts actually had a highlight, rather than being an unending slog of idiocy, too contemptible to even bother ranking.

I think most people would agree that you are exaggerating the reasons why you can't believe in God.
Hyperbole?
How is it that most people in the world have found it easy enough to believe in God, yet you find it not
merely difficult, but, if I'm reading you correctly, impossible?

No, I'm not.
Most people are idiots.

Since you quoted Nietzsche, and then proceeded to call me a fool...
"The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God'." Ps 14:1a, 53:1a