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Author | Topic: My Beliefs- GDR | |||||||||||||||||||||||
GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
I'm wondering if you really read that article you linked to.
Here is the quote you used.
quote: First off, even in this quote it makes this statement.
quote:Does that really sound like a scientific statement. They don't argue that they can show a DNA trail. It is a philosophical argument. However in addition the article goes on to say that what they are talking about there is not true altruism. That paragraph is about co-operative behaviour within a specific group and even at that they aren't dressing it up as being scientific. Once again it is based on the idea that as there is no god then there just has to be another explanation. Let's look at the two concluding paragraphs in the article.
quote: They are very clear that they are making suggestions from a psychological, or essentially a philosophical POV. The view that you espouse is not scientific. It is based on your non-god world view without any objective evidence.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Tangle Member Posts: 9516 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
GDR writes: The only possible way we can understand Tom is anthropomorphically. Then we can't undertand Tom at all can we?
The only real requirement is that Tom is a unified intelligence that is always good and always just. And yet the only thing we know about your God is what is written about him in the bible which shows him as jealous, misodgenous, racist and vicious.
So yes I anthropomorphize Tom as well as the presence of evil. It is a way of comprehending the concept even though I believe Tom actually does exist although I`m a lot less sure of Satan. Are you sure you're not just believing the things you prefer to believe?
As I believe that Tom is responsible for all life then I have to assume that he has allowed for evil to exist. If we can’t choose evil we are robots. If Tom wants to ultimately wind up with a society who have all rejected evil and embrace his vision of humble mercy, kindness and justice, then I can see where evil becomes necessary. There is absolutely no necessity for evil, it's very easy to imagine a world without it which doesn't turn us into 'robots.' There is no reason why genocide and rape have to exist, if you believe in a moral god. Christians have always tried to push this issue aside - it's their 'inconvenient fact' isn't it?Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
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Straggler Member (Idle past 95 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
GDR writes: The view that you espouse is not scientific. It is based on your non-god world view without any objective evidence. The scientific, evolutionary account of morality is scientific. Obviously..... That's why it's advocated by scientists in scientific peer reveiewed papers. You seem to have reached a point where in order to support your arguments you need to deny that science is scientific..... This is not a good place to be. In fact you are only a short hop away from the sort of position taken by the likes of Faith where genuinely scientific evolutionary conclusions are branded as some sort of atheistic world view bias.
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onifre Member (Idle past 2980 days) Posts: 4854 From: Dark Side of the Moon Joined: |
I'm wondering if you really read that article you linked to. Yes of course. The point is to not only read, but to understand what you've read so that you don't post something ridiculous in response. Which you have done. Yet again.
quote: GDR writes: Does that really sound like a scientific statement. What that statement is saying is that altruism may not be something that affects the group at all. Hey look you even quoted that very thing in your post:
quote: They don't argue that they can show a DNA trail.
However in addition the article goes on to say that what they are talking about there is not true altruism. Here's where you're going to get confused, and I knew you would when I linked the article.
That paragraph is about co-operative behaviour within a specific group and even at that they aren't dressing it up as being scientific. No, not at all. It is about whether or not altruistic behavior is something selected for, which is why they say in it that simply helping someone (ie. You donating to the Help the Dog/Third World Child Foundation) may not actually be biological altruism. In other words it may have no fitness consequences. The problem is you have confused one for the other - biological altruism and what this article is calling conscious intentions to help others.
They are very clear that they are making suggestions from a psychological, or essentially a philosophical POV. What they are doing is drawing a distinction between things that are behavioral and things that are biologically advantageous.
The view that you espouse is not scientific. Of course it is. Science doesn't deal with the supernatural.
It is based on your non-god world view without any objective evidence. If saying this makes you feel better about being ignorant about the evolution of altruism then whatever. Enjoy. But anyone following this thread can see how wrong that is. - Oni
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
GDR writes: The only possible way we can understand Tom is anthropomorphically.Tangle writes: Then we can't undertand Tom at all can we? That was hardly my point. The highest intelligent life we know is human. We have no other way of relating or understanding intelligent life other than picturing Tom as human. It has nothing to do with understanding his nature.
Tangle writes: And yet the only thing we know about your God is what is written about him in the bible which shows him as jealous, misodgenous, racist and vicious. In the first place I disagree that all I can learn about God is in the Bible and even the Bible agrees with that. I can learn about Him through nature, through human philosophy, through science or essentially through life. The Bible does paint God that way in some cases. It also paints Him as being loving, forgiving, just and merciful. I understand the entire Bible through the lens of the teachings of Jesus. Jesus repudiates the vision of God that you have portrayed.
Tangle writes: Are you sure you're not just believing the things you prefer to believe? In one sense we all believe what we want to believe. Essentially we all come to either believe that Tom exists or that he doesn’t. As I am convinced of his existence I then want to know all that I can about him while being aware of the fact that I can’t know in the same way that I know the Earth is a sphere. So yes, I learn about Tom in whatever way I can and I have come to the conclusion that he is good, and that he is just, in the way that I understand goodness and justice. In the end I do want Tom to be just and good so I worship or follow him on that basis. If Tom does turn out to be a genocidal tyrant then so be it. I’m not prepared to worship a genocidal tyrant even if he is Tom. Yes it is a faith, however I contend that it is a reasonable faith.
Tangle writes: There is absolutely no necessity for evil, it's very easy to imagine a world without it which doesn't turn us into 'robots.' There is no reason why genocide and rape have to exist, if you believe in a moral god. Christians have always tried to push this issue aside - it's their 'inconvenient fact' isn't it? It is certainly the most difficult issue that as a Christian I have to deal with. I see it this way. This whole thing is a work in progress with the final product being a world where evil does not exist. However, in order for that to come about it requires the beings of that world to have all chosen to embrace humble goodness and justice and reject evil in its entirety. In order to get to that point the beings in this final and eternal world have to first be in a position to make the choice for themselves. Assay, we see through a glass darkly.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Straggler writes: The scientific, evolutionary account of morality is scientific. Obviously.....That's why it's advocated by scientists in scientific peer reveiewed papers. You seem to have reached a point where in order to support your arguments you need to deny that science is scientific..... This is not a good place to be. In fact you are only a short hop away from the sort of position taken by the likes of Faith where genuinely scientific evolutionary conclusions are branded as some sort of atheistic world view bias. OK. Here again is the quote by Sam Harris that you are calling scientific.
quote: Just read it. It uses words like "may thus allow altruistic behaviour" after saying that "if selection acts exclusively at the individual level, favouring some individual organisms over others, then it seems that altruism cannot evolve, for behaving altruistically is disadvantageous for the individual organism itself, by definition. " He has to come up with a reason why altruism is the exception to the evolutionary rule. Where is the DNA trail as there is in the real study of evolution? It is all supposition. Where is there any science in his statement. I'm not denying that science is scientific, I am denying that this is science.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Straggler Member (Idle past 95 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
GDR writes: Here again is the quote by Sam Harris that you are calling scientific. I'm not talking about a single quote by anyone. I'm talking about the scientific evolutionary account of morality as described (and investigated) in numerous scientific sources. Are you saying that the scientific evolutionary account of morality isn't scientific? How can it not be......?
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
onifre writes: Of course it is. Science doesn't deal with the supernatural. Where have I claimed that it does?
onifre writes: If saying this makes you feel better about being ignorant about the evolution of altruism then whatever. Enjoy. But anyone following this thread can see how wrong that is. Fine. Show me one bit of concrete evidence that altruism has a genetic foundation. Biological evolution can be shown to be true with actual evidence, not just speculation. I'll repeat the statement by Francis Collins. Now you discount him as he doesn't hold to your views so therefore he can't be trusted but he is if not the leading, then one of the leading experts in the field in the world. He say: quote: He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Straggler writes: I'm not talking about a single quote by anyone.I'm talking about the scientific evolutionary account of morality as described (and investigated) in numerous scientific sources. Are you saying that the scientific evolutionary account of morality isn't scientific? How can it not be......? I used that quote because it was the one you had used to make your case. How can it be a scientific account if it is all conjecture without evidence One of the reasons Collins became a theist was that true altruism, (not the I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine type of co-operative behaviour), was in contradiction to how evolution works. He left his atheistic beliefs behind because of that, as well as for other reasons, after completing a PHD in Physical Chemistry at Yale and then a medical degree. This wasn’t something he had grown up with. Just because an account attempts to explain on a materialist basis the reason that we can behave altruistically doesn’t make it science until there is actual evidence to support it. It is no different than if I were to make the claim that the explanation that Tom did it and call it science. Neither one of us have scientific evidence. We both look at what we do know objectively and form our own subjective conclusions. He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Tangle Member Posts: 9516 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
GDR writes: I'll repeat the statement by Francis Collins. Now you discount him as he doesn't hold to your views so therefore he can't be trusted but he is if not the leading, then one of the leading experts in the field in the world. I'm a fan of Collins, his work on the genome project was brilliant. But just like I massively admire Dawkins on evolutionary biology - his Selfish Gene stuff changed the world - I distrust them both on religion. I read Collins and still quote him now and then but I almost literally threw up when I read his waterfall garbage - his epiphany:
A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ. (Ibid, p. 225) This is a man, like you, desperate to believe in something. He even says it - "I decided to believe in some sort of God." Once you decide that, you've lobotomised yourself - you can be a fully functional, rational scientist by day, then by night throw it all away and believe that the three segments of a frozen waterfall are the trinity. Still, with a bit of luck he'll go on and do some more good stuff with DNA. (btw, he's a chemist, I'd bet my house that he knows as much about the evolution of altruism as I do.)Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
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Tangle Member Posts: 9516 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
GDR writes: I see it this way. This whole thing is a work in progress with the final product being a world where evil does not exist. However, in order for that to come about it requires the beings of that world to have all chosen to embrace humble goodness and justice and reject evil in its entirety. In order to get to that point the beings in this final and eternal world have to first be in a position to make the choice for themselves. Assay, we see through a glass darkly. So Tom has 'work in progress', sacrificing billions of souls until he gets it right? What's wrong with the Japanese method of getting it right first time? You know, he's a god ffs?Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
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Straggler Member (Idle past 95 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
No. You can't dismiss the entire scientific evolutionary account of human morality as observed by fixating on one quote in a thread of over 1000 posts!
Do you accept that there is a scientific evolutionary account of human morality as observed (altruism, compassion, self sacrifice etc etc etc)? Or not? Do you accept or reject the scientific evolutionary account of human morality?
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Tangle writes: I'm a fan of Collins, his work on the genome project was brilliant. But just like I massively admire Dawkins on evolutionary biology - his Selfish Gene stuff changed the world - I distrust them both on religion. I read Collins and still quote him now and then but I almost literally threw up when I read his waterfall garbage - his epiphany: Well the waterfall account was about his conversion to Christiainity whereas he had converted from atheism to theism much earlier as is pointed out in your quote. And again of course, this was an an adult with a degree in physical chemistry and a degree in medicine. I'd say that to call him a chemist lowballs his credentials by quite a margin. This is from wiki:
quote: Here again from wiki is his work in human genetics:
quote: Also from wiki he is a humaniratian.
quote: Here is a link to the wiki site of Francis Collins.
Tangle writes: This is a man, like you, desperate to believe in something. He even says it - "I decided to believe in some sort of God." I know that most of you atheists probably think that way but in my case it isn't true. My life was going great as an agnostic. As I said earlier in this thread I had a great wife, 3 great kids and a job that paid well and that I would have done for nothing. I had a circle of friends I enjoyed, was active in sports and so on. I just decided that essentially it was the truth. Certainly my views have evolved over the years but the more I read, observe and listen the more convinced I am about the basic truth about Tom and his existence as well as how God can be understood through the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I'm a Christian as I absolutely believe it in the manner that I have laid out in this thread. I don't believe just because I want to believe something.
Tangle writes: (btw, he's a chemist, I'd bet my house that he knows as much about the evolution of altruism as I do.) Hmmm.... well ok if you say so. He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Tangle writes: So Tom has 'work in progress', sacrificing billions of souls until he gets it right? What's wrong with the Japanese method of getting it right first time? You know, he's a god ffs? Well if those billions of life will be carrying on in the next life I don't see them as being sacrificed. As for the reason things are the way they are I answered it the post that you replied to. You are right though, suffering is the biggest difficulty that we Christians have to provide an answer for, but in the end the best way we can do is to do something with our lives that alleviates the suffering of others.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Straggler writes: No. You can't dismiss the entire scientific evolutionary account of human morality as observed by fixating on one quote in a thread of over 1000 posts! I do understand why you want to back away from the Sam Harris quote. OK, so let's go back to what you posted earlier in the thread.Straggler writes: Right - We have been over this before. But you repeatedly make this point as though it is some sort of argument clincher. So I am going to answer this in quite a lot of detail. 1) Our brains did not evolve in the environment of a globalised world economy consisting of billions of distantly related people. 2) Our brains did evolve in small hunter gatherer communities consisting of closely related others. 3) Our moral instsincts thus developed in an environment where those around us carry almost all of the same genes. 4) Our moral instincts thus evolved in an environment where, from a genes eye point of view, the sacrifice of an individual gene carrier can promote the ongoing propogation of the genes in question. 5) So when you say - "Morality can work against the survival of the genes we carry" you are making the mistake of looking at this fom the point of view of an individual in the modern world rather than the point of view of genes in our ancestral environment. I have previously called this "The Big Mac effect" - Why are we drawn to eat high fat, high sugar foods despite the fact that in the modern world these are more likely to kill us than make us successful gene propogators? Because the proclivity in question developed in our ancestral environment rather than our modern one. Same difference our moral instincts. What is scientific about that. You are looking at what we know and then subjectively drawing your own conclusions. I’ll take the same approach. 1) Our brains did not evolve in the environment of a globalised world economy consisting of billions of distantly related people. 2) Our brains did evolve in small hunter gatherer communities consisting of closely related others. 3) Our moral instincts thus developed in an environment where those around us carry almost all of the same genes. 4) Our moral instincts thus evolved in an environment where, from a genes eye point of view, the sacrifice of an individual gene carrier can promote the ongoing propagation of those who most closely share our genes to strengthen our gene pool in order to compete with the gene pools of our enemies in other hunter gatherer communities. 5) So when I say - "Morality can work against the survival of the genes we carry" I am looking at this from the point of view of genes in our ancestral environment. And, just as it was true then, it is true now. That version is just as scientific as yours, as neither version is scientific. Both views are simply speculative and without evidence.
Straggler writes: Do you accept that there is a scientific evolutionary account of human morality as observed (altruism, compassion, self sacrifice etc etc etc)? Or not? No. Science relies on evidence. What you have offered is simply a speculative account.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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