Posted on 07/24/2003 1:55:39 PM PDT by Mr.Atos
I was just lisening to Medved debating Creationism with Athiests on the air. I found it interesting that while Medved argued his side quite effectively from the standpoint of faith, his opponents resorted to condescension and beliitled him with statements like, "when it rains, is that God crying?" I was reminded of the best (at least most amusing)debate that I have ever heard on the subject of Creationism vs Evolution, albeit a fictional setting. It occurred on the show, Friends of all places between the characters Pheobe (The Hippy) and Ross (The Paleontologist). It went like this...
Pheebs: Okay...it's very faint, but I can still sense him in the building...GO INTO THE LIGHT MR. HECKLES!!
Ross: Whoa, whoa, whoa. What, uh, you don't believe in evolution? Pheebs: Nah. Not really. Ross: You don't believe in evolution? Pheebs: I don't know. It's just, ya know, monkeys, Darwin, ya know, it's a, it's a nice story. I just think it's a little too easy.
Ross: Uh, excuse me. Evolution is not for you to buy, Phoebe. Evolution is scientific fact. Like, like, the air we breathe, like gravity... Pheebs: Uh, okay, don't get me started on gravity.
Ross: You uh, you don't believe in gravity? Pheebs: Well, it's not so much that ya know, like I don't *believe* in it, ya know. It's just...I don't know. Lately I get the feeling that I'm not so much being pulled down, as I am being pushed.
Ross: How can you NOT BELIEVE in evolution? Pheebs: [shrugs] I unh-huh...Look at this funky shirt!!
Ross: Well, there ya go. Pheebs: Huh. So now, the REAL question is: who put those fossils there, and why...?
Ross: OPPOSABLE THUMBS!! Without evolution, how do YOU explain OPPOSABLE THUMBS?!? Pheebs: Maybe the overlords needed them to steer their spacecrafts!
Pheebs: Uh-oh! Scary Scientist Man!
Pheebs: Okay, Ross? Could you just open your mind like, *this* much?? Okay? Now wasn't there a time when the brightest minds in the world believed that the Earth was flat? And up until what, like, fifty years ago, you all thought the atom was the smallest thing, until you split it open, and this like, whole mess o' crap came out! Now, are you telling me that you are so unbelievably arrogant that you can't admit that there's a teeny, tiny possibility that you could be wrong about this?!?
Pheebs: I can't believe you caved. Ross: What? Pheebs: You just ABANDONED your whole belief system! I mean, before, I didn't agree with you, but at least I respected you. Ross: But uh.. Pheebs: Yeah...how...how are you gonna go in to work tomorrow? How...how are you gonna face the other science guys? How...how are you gonna face yourself? Oh! [Ross runs away dejected] Pheebs: That was fun. So who's hungry?
LOL! I'm not defending Marxism. I understand, of course, that you aren't defending Marxism in general either. BUT YOU ARE defending A PARTICULAR CLAIM of Marx's, namely that Darwin's evolutionary theory -- in some way that you refuse to state -- supports his (Marx's) theory of history, economics and "class struggle".
IOW, even though you don't agree with Marx in general you DO agree with him on this point.
So, the ONLY person defending Marx in this thread is YOU!
The only person filling this thread with links to communist propaganda is YOU!
Instead, why don't you just state WHY you think Marx was correct about the relationship between communism and evolution. You know no freeper is going to read all the commmunist pap you keep linking. Just summarize the argument (making the large assumption that there actually is one).
Maybe you misstyped, but you said in 2079 that, "Marx was endeared to Darwin".
No, my analogy is correct. Even if you saw a new gizmo in a store or on the street you would not think it occurred by chance. We know that certain things are made by men, and are not the products of nature.
What are we able to say about this hypothetical designer? All I've seen so far is that it has lousy quality control, and that it likes to mimic Darwinism.
Oh please, could you make a single living cell? I don't think so. So we certainly can say that this designer is a lot smarter than us. Therefore you cannot criticize the design if you yourself cannot understand it or do better. Further, it is beyond science to ascribe motives to a design. It can tell how something works, but not why someone made something. The motives of even a human designer can be quite unintelligible. Someone may create a new product to make money, another may do so just because he thought of it and wanted to see if it would work, another might have done it to benefit humanity. The motive of the designer is thus beyond a scientific discussion so it is a false objection.
As to mimicing Darwinism, I don't think so. Species were around long before Darwin. Perhaps it would be better to say that Darwin tried to fit the theory to what he saw in nature but did not quite succeed.
No, I was stating the facts. You were discorteous to a fellow poster in talking behind his back. Further ALS is a complying poster and you belittled him and I was objecting to your attacking him behind his back.
No scientific theory has been "proven". There are lots of observations thst occur on a regular basis, but science seeks to explain things.
Are you denying that "the Earth orbits around the sun" has been proven? Are you denying that the parent's genes are the source of the progeny's genes? Answer that. If you cannot deny it then indeed science has given proof of some things.
Unless you can deny the examples I gave, then my statement is correct. Are you denying them???? If so on what basis?
LOL!!! ALS is an intellectually dishonest troll. See 2151 & 2178.
Where did he back out from it? He is there as agreeing to it except for the troll provision which is not the subject of the matter. Secondly civility is to be used towards all posters not just against those who sign it. It was uncivil of you to treat him uncivilly according to the rules of the agreement whether he is a signer or not. There was a long discussion on that because obviously newbies would not be signers of it since they did not know about it. Thirdly - anyone is able to complain about incivility. As far as I know there are no second class citizens on FR. In fact, the agreement was to make those signing on to it the ones with the fewer rights. The agreement was to restrain ourselves.
And so you are. No "lies" on my part.
I despise Marx and you know it.
Of course I do, which is why, in the very same post, I explicitly noted that you were not defending marxism as an ideology, or marxism in general, or Marx in general. I carefully noted the one point on which you DO agree with Marx, that evolution supports communism (though you won't say how).
And I never made any such claim that I believed "Marx was correct about the relationship between communism and evolution".
Oh, puh-lease. You may not have put it in that formulation, but you have repeated, for example, the mantra (paraphasing from memory) "how can evolution support conservatism when it supports marxism?" across multiple long threads.
Now, just maybe you don't really believe that Marx was justified in claiming that darwinian evolution somehow supports his historical and economic theories, but you have put forward this suggestion in so many different forms and so persistently that either you DO agree with Marx (on this particular point) or you are willingly putting forward a fallacious or "strawman" argument even though you don't. Until such time as you withdraw this fallacious argument I am certainly entitled to infer that you do agree with Marx (on this point) for this is a clear implication of your arguments (unless they are disengenuous).
Agreement of the Willing - Free Republic Science Threads ^ |
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Posted by ALS to general_re On News/Activism ^ 08/08/2003 9:02 PM CDT #332 of 579 ^ why that's funny. so why are you trying to convince andrewc to? no sorry, the agreement I signed on to "did not pass" and I clearly stated I would not support an agreement that sanctioned name calling, as everyone knows. Post Reply | Private Reply | To 331 | View Replies |
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Agreement of the Willing - Free Republic Science Threads ^ |
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Posted by ALS to general_re On News/Activism ^ 08/08/2003 9:09 PM CDT #334 of 579 ^ It was "my baby", but what it turned into wasn't, as you previously made clear: "LOL - disappointed that your baby got pulled out from under you, eh?" I did not sign the agreement that won. Which means, an agreement I couldn't get you guys to sign on to, you happily signed on to, and all it took was a bit of child psychology, and walla! *tick tock* :) see ya at midnight! Post Reply | Private Reply | To 333 | View Replies |
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Pheobe Debates The Theory of Evolution ^ |
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Posted by ALS to jennyp On The Smokey Backroom ^ 08/10/2003 1:34 AM CDT #2,214 of 2,275 ^ I'm not a signator to the name calling agreement, dummy. Now that leaves you in the unenviable position of realizing you are in violation of your own agreement. Please take a moment to read through it, and getta clue. Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2,212 | View Replies |
You can't be serious.
I think we looked at that once and if it did occur anywhere at 40% it was in a very small area. The death toll would be tremendous from it. As to why it occurs in some places, why are there black people in Africa and Mongoloid in China? We still have many blacks in the US with the trait. A harmful recessive trait can survive in populations for a long time.
No-one said, and I explicitly denied, that hemoglobin-S is the *only* protection against malaria.
Survivability from a disease is due to many things. Few people die from the flu in their 20s and 30s but the death rate rises sharply among seniors. So it is not just one factor.
I do not deny that traits are inherited and that bad traits can dissappear from populations. What I am saying is that this is not the kind of mutation on which evolution - the transformation of one species into a more complex one - can be built upon.
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