Why do NeoAtheists deny the practice of atheism is a religion?<<MOD WARNING>>

actually it does explain a considerable amount. It is not "irrelevant" it is entirely germane to the process of evolution. And you obviously have not understood the concept as it applies to evolution. It doesn't completely trash the notion of gradualism, it sits beside it as yet another vector of speciation.


For instance, inheritable adaptive advantages can arise from all kinds of environmental conditions (both external and internal). Externally, the main agent of change is climate. It some instances its selects for smaller forms to consume less calories, in others growth for more abundant calories.

We can see how punctuated equilibrium works in current populations like Papua Kingfishers and Bermuda Land Snails.

Darwin did not have the capacity to observe "what is going on inside". However, we've come a few light years beyond Darwin's capabilities, and can readily see all kinds of things that are "going on inside". LIke mapping the human genome and beginning to understand its "non coding instruction set", and the advances in our understanding of the biological process that the expression of those genes creates, in trait heritability, to inheritable mutations not just in dna, but such things as protein and hormone uptake. Do we have all the answers - not by a long shot, but so far, there has been not been a single discover of dispositive evidence of the theory. Not a one.

Perhaps you should be looking at bit more at all that science that lies under the covers of the theory.

 

Except that it does. Saying that you do not believe in something is exactly the same as saying you believe in not something. If you say you don't believe in unicorns, you are saying you believe unicorns do not exist. There's no escape from that reality. And it's not a false dichotomy, what you are doing is a false dichotomy, trying to separate two statements that are the same and saying they are different. They aren't.

 

you sure do love your fallacies. I suppose you are such a student that you also know that a logical fallacy can also be true.

 

this is true, but it doesn't mean you believe in a religion to go with it

a theist is not the same as every other theist

a atheist is not the same as every other artiest (some are Buddhists as an example)

in fact most theists disbelieve in almost all the same God's Atheists do

 

Sorry but that is nonsense. This difference in monozygotic twins can be readily explained by epigenetic or somatic changes AFTER separation.

https://www.bionews.org.uk/page_95408

I realize that it may not be your cup of tea, but I strongly recommend you look up a scientist named Robert Sapolsky on YouTube.
I'm almost finished his 24 lectures on human evolutionary biology and behavior, but there are lots of other vids of him in interviews and presentations to choose from. (an unabashed plug for my current favorite scientist).

 

You take all of this on faith but can't see that it is faith and not reason. Your Papua kingfishers and Bermuda land snails are examples of punctuated equilibrium, but they don't actually explain anything. Why did they "evolve" in the way that they did rather than in some other way? Why do some animals adapt and others disappear? Why do some traits become so extreme that they doom their possessors, like sabre-toothed cats' canine teeth? Why do some island species grow to enormous size (the New Zealand eagles, for example) while others shrink to pygmy size (the Borneo elephants, for example)?

Another quote from your section on disproving evolution: "If it could be shown that selection or environmental pressures do not favor the reproductive success of better adapted individuals." So then the dodo is proof that evolution is false? The dodo was probably the least adapted species ever known, wiped out within a few years of discovery. What we can say about a great many island species is that they have devolved rather than evolved, losing many of the "evolutionary" advantages they had when they were on a continent. They become less well adapted for survival in the absence of predators. So I guess that means evolution is false.

Pure speculation. They had no evidence of any epigenetic or somatic changes after separation. The test showed they had identical DNA. And that wasn't what was called for in the "proof", all it said was that two beings with identical DNA would show different traits, and there it is, in black and white.

You're right, not my cup of tea. I actually believe in nature much more than nurture, that you inherit far more of your traits than you pick up from your environment, and as I noted in a previous post, I don't have a good alternative theory to evolution, but I don't believe evolution works as a theory. It has far too many holes, flaws, and unanswered questions to be convincing. All the attempts such as punctuated equilibrium to make evolution work seem to me to be grasping at straws when they should actually be looking for a better theory.

Here's another hole in evolution: mate selection. Evolution does not take into account the importance of mate selection in the driving of change. In a great many cases, mate selection works opposite to the evolutionary pressure of survival of the fittest, pushing creatures to adopt more and more outrageous appearances and behaviors to attract a mate that end up making them more susceptible to predation rather than less. The tail feathers on male peacocks have reached such ridiculous proportions that they are barely able to fly. The brilliant colors of many male birds make them easy prey for hawks and eagles. Many creatures sing or otherwise make noise to attract a mate, but also manage to attract predators the same way. Some birds engage in complicated flight displays to attract a mate, but have to be in open air and visible to predators to do so. If evolution is true, why don't females choose males that are drab, silent, and motionless, and therefore invisible to predators? There's a lot more going on in the world of the living than the simple formula, "survival of the fittest".

 

Excuse me, but it is entirely reason and science, not faith. Of course it don't explain anything about the changes, it merely explains a process of speciation over a period of time. Its an ADDITION to the theory explaining observations that contradict the then accepted notion that all evolution was one of gradualism.

"If it could be proven" is a falsification. The dodo was exterminated in a matter of a couple of decades. You surely can't be suggesting that because of an external predatory threat over such a short time period, it disproves evolution.

Pullleeeze. No evidence? OF COURSE NOT. There was no way to observe it. And it seems you are unfamiliar with how genes are expressed. It isn't "proof"? Come on, stop with the semantic nonsense. Apparently you aren't familiar with either epigenetic or somatic changes to gene expression that we have scads of hard scientific evidence for.

I totally agree that much of human behavior and what we call "free will" is biological. Of course there are holes in the theory. However, your opinion that there are too many holes in it to be explanatory is contrasted by the fact that there has been no dispositive evidence uncovered. Your feelings notwithstanding.

Mate selection does not work in opposition to "evolutionary pressure of survival of the fittest", it works in complete harmony with it.

For instance, take the peacock. How does a female select the male most likely to produce successful offspring? It does this by the size of the plummage and coloration of the male. And, if you know anything about animal behavior when a male **** extends it tail it more than doubles its perceived size. Many many predators will not take on potential prey if they are bigger than they are - iow, its a survival benefit.

It works the same for all those wildly colored animals. In fact there are all kinds of animals whose coloration is extreme - its a warning to predators that trying to eat them will result in death, as well as a method of mate evaluation.

It also appears as tho you have a mere semantic understanding of the phrase "survival of the fittest". Fittest does not necessarily mean the fastest, strongest, most camouflaged or not, as can be seen throughout the animal kingdom.

A shame it's not your cup of tea, because you'd learn one helluva lot to fill in the various holes and gaps in your knowledge and provide you with a far more informed opinion.

 

Evolution does not even necessarily contradict the notion of God since God is the "unmoveble mover".

 

why because you insist?

I would need more than your insistence

 

Yep. In fact the ToE doesn't say much about god at all. IIRC, Darwin only references God once directly and a few times in descriptions of other's work.

Evolution does not make any judgement about the existence of god or gods. It does however directly oppose the bible and other religion's scriptures about creation and the emergence of humans.

 

Can we please use the term ‘believing’ to mean ‘An assertion held or made without evidence’?

 

Lee Smolin wants to tell us it ain’t that simple. Putting aside for now the subjective swamp of order sometimes being claimed as in the eye of the beholder he focuses on the knotty intersection of quantum mechanics, relativity and cosmology. One theory, loop qunatum gravity, suggests the laws of physics are mutable and evolve in lines we might describe as ‘cosmic darwinism’. Most physicists claim time is an illusion, Smolin insisted that it’s real. One is reminded of the philosopher Gottfried Leibnitz ( Leibnitz if I remember correctly invented calculus along with Newton). Essentially he asserted there’s fixed backdrop within which the Universe functions, no ‘substance’ of space. (stuff?). Space he suggests is just a handy way of describing relationships. Maybe I shouldn't go on for fear of paraphrasing Smolin inaccurately but here goes. Anyone interested in tracking down this side-stream of cosmology etc can read Smolin’s “Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution”.
Philosopher Roberto Unger warned of ‘the cosmological fallacy’, the mistaken belief that we can take theories that apply to sub-systems and scale them up to the universe as a whole. Sometimes I find all this difficult to digest as it suggests we need a theory that doesn’t rely upon an observer or anything outside the system. How such is possible is the question I can’t answer but hey, I’m no physicist. I can only guess this refers the notion we need a theory of processes, causal relationships and sequences rather than ‘things that are’. The worrying aspect of accepting all this is we’re asked to look at things from inside the universe constituted of relations among events. I confess I can’t get my head around it.
This is all new to me so I’d be happy if anyone corrects my limited understanding of what’s being claimed by Smolin.
My tiny brain wants to simplify all this as nature wanting to maximise variety, however I find myself objecting to the idea of nature ‘wanting’ anything.
Maybe I should stick with simpler subject matter?

 

belief can and often is evidence based. the word you are searching for is faith.

 

Possibly so but most Christian theology doesn’t make that differentiation.

 

It appears you don't fully understand the 2nd law. Living organisms are never in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. they are not considered "closed systems".

the entropy of a thermodynamic system is the measure of progress towards that equilibrium.

Perhaps this will clear up what is an obvious misconception on your part:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(order_and_disorder)

 

regrettably.

 

Perhaps the religious, although overly ambitious, may have something in the claim the universe we find ourselves in isn’t explicable without ‘stepping outside of it’. I’m suggesting however ( I’m as guilty as the next of wandering way off topic on this thread) that another thread may be the best place to speculate on such imponderables.
Maybe a good place to start would be here :- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmology/

 

No, because every thought you hold in your head as true is a belief. Every thought you hold in your head as not true is a belief. Every bit of knowledge that you hold in your head is a belief. Whether what you think is true or false, it's still a belief. You have plenty of evidence to believe that 2+2=4, but it still remains a belief.

I've explained this at length in another post, but the short answer is that you cannot not believe something without believing something else. If you do not have a belief regarding the subject under discussion, you neither believe nor disbelieve in it. Suppose someone should ask you if you believe there is some form of primitive life in the Andromeda galaxy. You're not sure, but you're not willing to say there isn't. You neither believe nor disbelieve. You cannot not believe in there being some form of primitive life in the Andromeda galaxy unless you believe that there is NOT. Consider these two sentences:

I do not believe there is primitive life in the Andromeda galaxy.
I believe there is not primitive life in the Andromeda galaxy.

There is no semantic difference between those two statements. Now consider these two sentences:

I neither believe nor disbelieve there is primitive life in the Andromeda galaxy.
I do not believe there is primitive life in the Andromeda galaxy.

In the first instance, you are making yourself an agnostic on the question. In the second, you are affirming a negative belief. There is a semantic difference between those two statements.

Let's take another example. If I say I have four legs and you say, "I don't believe it." Are you expressing an agnostic position on whether or not I have four legs or are you expressing a positive belief that I do NOT have four legs? In order to not believe something you have to believe something else.

 

that explanation sounds like bullshit.

You can go into great detail explaining bullshit, but it doesn't make it any less bullshit.

 

Correct... For the last one, we even have mathematical proof that 2+2=4.

BEAUTIFULLY worded!!! And your final few paragraphs hit the nail on the head for just how frustrating it is to reason with "lack of belief" "Atheists" who refuse to clarify that semantic difference...

It seems to me like they think that not clearly expressing their belief somehow makes their belief go away...

 

Argument of the Stone Fallacy.

"lalalalalala I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!" is not a valid argument.

 

Doubting an argument isn't fallacy

 

You are in a debate, you are required to respond or concede.

Appeal to the stone. Argumentum ad lapidem (English: "appeal to the stone") is a logical fallacy that consists in dismissing a statement as absurd without giving proof of its absurdity. Ad lapidem statements are fallacious because they fail to address the merits of the claim in dispute.
Appeal to the stone - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_stone

 

only in the respect it is part of a 'model', nothing beyond, its not real otherwise.

It most certainly is
time is meaningless to the space inside my cup.

You are confusing 'can be' successfully modeled relative to each other.
Time is independent of space, it exists without space, space exists without time, time is nothing more than the chronological interval silence between ticks of a metronome

that has nothing to do with time.

That is simply interference on the medium.

when science terminology and philosophy disagree science steps back to philosophy to sort it all out. I just did

 

We use energy and create order - to grow, to procreate, to build buildings, etc.

The system is the total universe. Thermodynamics has nothing to complain about with the above.

Later on, the sun will burn out and then we'll have an energy problem!! Or, at least we would if earth were still in existence.