The Facts of Life: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. A Review.

New Statesman ^ | 28 August 1992 | Richard Dawkins

[PatrickHenry]

Placemarker.

[Shryke]

Changing meaning-reality via your 'logic-reason' to your fantasy-bias world-bs is called psychosis!

What???

Do/you-realize "how" impossible/it-is 'to' understand/what/the/heck-you are 'talking' about when-you-write-like/that?

And/where - did-you 'get' your degree/in -psychology?

[general_re]

[Dimensio]

Change is ALWAYS happening; right?

Well, so long as DNA replicates imperfectly, yes.

Really useful stuff is made from not so useful stuff; right?

It is more accurate to say that "more useful stuff" comes about from changes in existing "stuff", but chances are the earlier "stuff" existed because it too was useful -- it just might not have been as useful as the "new stuff", or it might not be as useful anymore as a result of changes in the organism's environment.

Therefore, if one believes evolution to be true, there MUST be a bunch of not so useful stuff just hanging around, getting ready to me made into REALLY useful stuff.

No, evolution does not follow specified "design plans". New and "better" survival traits come about thorugh changes in existing traits that also provided survival advantage. Parts of an organism that serve no useful function and have never served useful function in previous generations are not only an evolutionary disadvantage, but also unlikely according to natural selection.

[clamper1797]

Do YOU have a life -philosophy or are you going to BLINDLY follow what somebody tells you without research.

IMHO you are so brainwashed that you would NOT have an original thought if it bit you in the A$$

[Khepera]

Does this mean they will have to suffer for all eternity father or just while they are here? Eternity sounds good to me.

[Dimensio]

They assume that God isn't lying (for any number of reasons)...

[Dimensio]

Does this mean they will have to suffer for all eternity father or just while they are here? Eternity sounds good to me.

I wouldn't wish an eternity of suffering on anyone. I guess that is because I don't have Christianity to provide my mind with a solid moral or ethical framework.

[clamper1797]

Does this mean they will have to suffer for all eternity father or just while they are here? Eternity sounds good to me.

How very Christian of you wanting people to suffer for eternity because they don't buy into your religious beliefs. YOU are the exact type of person that give "Chistianity" a BAD name

[Elsie]

Am I to presume that you have TV news footage from the ressurrection of Christ?

See...... you HAVEN'T been listening!

---

Since this is a "let's just suppose" type of thread, let's just suppose that all the data, from all the news sources will, in the future, be collected into ONE big videotape. Oh heck; let's put it on a DVD, that way we can SURELY contain it all on one piece of media.

(I'm going to be typing a while, so why don't you put one of your old 8-track tapes in your computer and list to it in the background.)

Now, let's just suppose that a BIG war breaksout and our (or their) smart bombs take out ALL of our communication centers, destroying all archived tapes and film.

Years go by, and we have been re-trained to write in Farsi and pray eastward, and someone finds the DVD that 'claims' that an air crash had occured: around the 4th of July (what ever THAT is) in an area now known as Mecca-West.

---

Would THAT be enough evidence for proof?

[Elsie]

If not, then evolution is no more real than Brownian motion and random walks can take you anywhere: Maxwell's Demon makes CHOICES, and choices indicate direction, and direction indicates a plan, and a plan is a design.

I see you managed to completely ignore this part...........

[f.Christian]

Before the ashes are dumped...an eternity of suffering---peace.

The hard part is going to be the gift exchange!

The sleep is easy...

the hard part---

waking up...BIG trouble---

chaff/wheat!

Presto--bread!

[BMCDA]

LOL! I just try to imagine how they stand at the brim of heaven looking down at hell and rejoicing in the punishment of the infidels. Aw well, maybe that's the only fun one can have in heaven if this place exists ;->

[Dimensio]

Well, since your hypothetical scenario hasn't actually happened (at least not in any universe where I have lived), I can't say for certain what things would be like.

In your proposed situation, a single DVD would certainly not have the capacity to hold all of the world's media broadcasts, or even a significant collection of broadcasts of all of the major events of the world since the origin of television news, even if you used really low bitrate encoding.

I'm going off on weird tangents because I didn't take any Ritalin this afternoon.

Anyway, if there was a single data source where all news media was archived that was the only surviving vault for this stored news, then it would not constitute "proof" of previous events, as -- like I said -- they could have been faked. Whether or not someone believed the news stories therein would likely be dependent on the current state of affairs in the world, though it might be possible for someone to research the "news stories" presented in this data vault to see if additional evidence to verify the reports could be dug up elsewhere. Someone might go and see if they can't find remains of the crashed planes, or someone might seek out buried archives of print media. They wouldn't necessarily prove anything, but they might find evidence that the events mentioned in the news archives were real.

I'm still not sure what it is that you are trying to prove. Are you suggesting that the Bible is a comprehensive collection of news stories, the originals of which were destroyed in great wars?

[gdani]

Would THAT be enough evidence for proof?

An airplane crash would not be an extraordinary event. We have seen them happen and will see them happen again.

However, to say that Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, was born of a virgin, etc would mean that some very extraordinary events occurred, to say the least.

For evidence, I would certainly require more than the written words of Jesus' followers, all who have a stake in making others believe that said events occurred.

My cat is really a dog and told me that, at some totally unspecified time in the future, a great war will occur.

The above sentence appears to meet your burden of "proof".

[Khepera]

Boy that eternity thing really stirred them up father. Why do you suppose that is?

[Woahhs]

For a long time it was an accepted fact that they had circular orbits but through better observation Brahe and Kepler found out that they were rather elliptical.

And you find nothing wrong with this sentence?

[clamper1797]

LOL! I just try to imagine how they stand at the brim of heaven looking down at hell and rejoicing in the punishment of the infidels

Not only that but that hell probably contains some people I cared about on earth ... oh yeah imagine the joy. How could heaven get any better.

MY opinion ... ANY supposed God that would condemn a soul to an eternal hell without the chance of redemption just for not accepting him without proof is NO GOD

[Dimensio]

What about it? Suggesting that evolution is either a planned path or a completely random event that will result in completely random species is a false dichotomy. Mutations in DNA can be considered random in that their causes and effects are not currently predictable, but natural selection is not random.

[BMCDA]

random walks can take you anywhere

That's true but it's only one part of the equation. There is also the environment that kills those who "walked" in the wrong direction (i.e. detrimental to their survival).