Posted on 08/29/2006 6:51:14 AM PDT by headsonpikes
We all know the basic alternatives that form the familiar "spectrum" of American politics and culture.
If a young person is turned off by religion or attracted by the achievements of science, and he wants to embrace a secular outlook, he is told--by both sides of the debate--that his place is with the collectivists and social subjectivists of the left. On the other hand, if he admires the free market and wants America to have a bold, independent national defense, then he is told--again, by both sides--that his natural home is with the religious right.
But what if all of this is terribly wrong? What if it's possible to hold some of the key convictions associated with the right, being pro-free-market and supporting the war, and even to do so more strongly and consistently than most on the right--but still to be secular? What if it's possible to reject the socialism subjectivism of the left and believe in the importance of morality, but without believing in God? ....
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
I've spent a lot of time wading through this crap. I should have taken out the trash and given the dogs a bath. Much more productive.
By what measure are we the most highly evolved?
Are we the most successful? Bacteria outnumber us by orders of magnitude and live in environments we cannot.
Do we affect the environment the most? Cyanobacteria and its relatives changed a atmosphere capable of supporting a narrow range of organisms to one that supports an enormous variety.
Do we have the largest genome? Hardly, even the lowly Amoeba dubia has a genome 670,000,000,000 nucleotides long.
Its pretty tough to become the 'most highly evolved' when Evolution has no preferred direction.
Nice. I need to borrow that.
I am not on either side... I am not an ecumenical atheist - - there is no such thing...
Be my guest.
We dominate the planet above all others...
Some even think extraterrestrials are here virtually unobserved (I do not agree) by the unwashed masses. But this raises a fundamental question... Is earth the center of the Universe? No.
How would the evolutionists feel about teaching life came from outer space? They already teach the Big Bang theory, which is just another immaculate conception...
There is no more evidence that any species evolved on this planet at all than there is for it to have been delivered or engineered here by an extraterrestrial intelligence in our midst.
There is no such thing as an ecumenical atheist... While I do not agree with either side (they are both based on an 'appeal to false authority'), I find the evolutionists to be much worse...
While the Evolutionists would make fun of the Creationists for believing in a "flying spaghetti monster," they forget that it is they that believe in a boiling primordial pot of spaghetti sauce.
The earth did not spontaneously exist in and of itself, it came from some place else...
silly little fellow, to quote a correct definition of a word without realizing it does not match your USAGE of the word in a sentence.
Your statement:
"Your experiences are not a religion I ascribe to."
Your quoted definition:
"2. to attribute or think of as belonging, as a quality or characteristic"
Insertion of your quoted definition into your statement:
"Your experiences are not a religion I attribute (to) or think *of* as belonging (to), as a quality or characteristic (of)"
to, to, and of WHAT?
Your sentence has no Object for the verb construct "I ascribe to", and is therefore nonsensical, as your own quoted definition demonstrates.
Being literate, I recognized your error without need for consulting a dictionary. I knew, by the context, that you meant to seem high-brow, and chose the wrong word in an attempt to express "I belong to and/or agree with."
You should have typed "subscribe"
Instead, you typed "ascribe"
Therefore, (sic).
QED
Yet you contest me.
silly, silly, silly.
A mature adult takes correction with gratitude.
A silly child attempts snotty evasion.
And such an one, when caught in an amusingly *erroneous* attempt to present himself as erudite? well... vainglory knows no shame, so 'tis no marvel that he should post the definition of "imbecile" - an attempt at mockery, but justly a depiction of himself.
nooooooo kidding.
You said dogs feel guilt. You asserted it absent any evidence. I await the evidence.
*shrugs*
some take anthropocentrism to the extremity of argumentum ad absurdum.
Yet we are brought to our knees (and our graves) by the smallest of creatures. Virii, prions and bacteria dominate us.
Even if it can be said that we dominate, you did not specify what evolutionary trait has contributed to that dominance.
"Some even think extraterrestrials are here virtually unobserved (I do not agree) by the unwashed masses. But this raises a fundamental question... Is earth the center of the Universe? No.
How does the existence on aliens on Earth suggest that Earth is the centre of the universe?
"How would the evolutionists feel about teaching life came from outer space? They already teach the Big Bang theory, which is just another immaculate conception...
If it is true that life started off Earth, that does not affect the evolution of life *on* Earth. Even if the origin of the first proto-life originated off Earth it was subject to evolution on Earth.
It does bring up the question of how life started off Earth. Natural processes work both off and on Earth; if the origin of either the first proto-life or intelligent aliens is extraterrestrials they can be explained by those natural processes. Removing their origin from Earth does not default it to non-natural processes.
Show us convincing evidence for an off Earth origin and we would be happy to teach the theory.
"There is no more evidence that any species evolved on this planet at all than there is for it to have been delivered or engineered here by an extraterrestrial intelligence in our midst.
Sorry but that isn't true. The patterns of fossils and the patterns in the genome are better explained by natural 'guess work', trial and error processes than by any straight forward design. If the genome was designed there would be patterns associated with 'intent' and 'purposeful' direction. We don't see that. What we see are partial successes along with the successes and disused currently nonfunctional portions of the genome. We see these dysfunctional sequences, sequences that are not simply 'turned off' as we would expect from a human like designer but sequences made nonfictional by mutations (including indels, ERVs, SNPs, etc.), shared by closely related but different organisms.
We recognize human designed artifacts by noting things like tool marks (markers from known human processes) and even signatures. If the designer is anything like us we would recognize those markers in the genome. (And no, complexity ain't it, nature produces many complex things.)
If evolution was powerless to produce new species then those aliens would have to be very busy little suckers since we see new species popping up in nature all the time. They would also have had to have been incredibly busy over the last 3.8 billion years, producing and killing off 99% of all species to have ever lived.
If they meddled for 3.8 billion years, what is it about Earth that is important enough to spend that kind of time on minor organisms like bacteria?
Why did they spend 3.3 billion years playing with bacteria (and relatives)?
Was the first 3.3 billion years a training session? Did they have to learn how to produce multicellular animals? If so why did it take so long? (We have learned how to manipulate genes a whole lot quicker. It will not be billions of years before we can produce a multicellular organism from scratch.) Are we smarter than they are? (Or perhaps all our scientists working with the genome *are* aliens. If this is the case then they *would* be valid authorities wouldn't they?)
Proposing aliens just pushes back the origin question.
It also suggests (t ome at least) a number of questions.
Did the aliens develop through evolution or some other naturalistic process?
If they developed through a process other than evolution what conditions on Earth prevent that same process from operating here?
How does that process differ from evolution?
If the aliens were to leave well enough alone, would that process start to operate on Earth?
Since that process obviously produced the alien intelligence could it also produce alien level intelligence on Earth?
Despite the alien meddling with life on Earth should we not see evidence of the natural process that produced them, here on Earth?
"There is no such thing as an ecumenical atheist... While I do not agree with either side (they are both based on an 'appeal to false authority'), I find the evolutionists to be much worse...
If you believe they are both based on appeal to *false* authority this implies that you know who or what would be a *true* authority. Care to share this insight with the rest of us?
"While the Evolutionists would make fun of the Creationists for believing in a "flying spaghetti monster," they forget that it is they that believe in a boiling primordial pot of spaghetti sauce.
The difference is that our understanding of the workings of the world is based on collecting data and then letting that data tell us their stories within the framework of physical laws. Creationists approach it from the other direction - they form their hypothesis, give themselves a target to work towards and then change the laws of nature to make their target attainable. An example of this is Walt Brown's Hydroplate theory and the Canopy theory. Both require major corruptions of physical laws.
The SToE does not do this, everything proposed by scientists to explain new species is within natural laws, and many of the individual processes have either been tested in the lab or calculated.
"The earth did not spontaneously exist in and of itself, it came from some place else...
Certainly it came from somewhere. Gravity coalesced elements (remnants from a star's death) into a large chunk of rock. No one claims it spontaneously formed from nothing as your statement implies.
Get back on your meds, quick! Trust me!
slumming with the Sixers?
it IS pretty sharp, isn't it? though, yes, Junior, it is a bit... graphic
your examples didn't sway it, because it doesn't "ascribe" to empiricism
there you go, spouting fact-based rational empiricism again. tsk!
if neither my old dog Sally nor poor Jones T. Cat are in heaven, God ain't God.
going by some of what has been bruited, brayed, and lowed here on this thread, evidently Kansas is a State of mind
(if one is none too fastidious concerning what one chooses to call "mind")
PRIME
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