Ron Dean wrote:

Burkhard wrote:

Ron Dean wrote:

Vincent Haycock wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2024 15:01:28 -0400, Ron Dean
<rondean-noreply@gmail.com> wrote:

Vincent Maycock wrote:

On Tue, 7 May 2024 22:47:15 -0400, Ron Dean
<rondean-noreply@gmail.com> wrote:

Vincent Maycock wrote:

On Mon, 6 May 2024 23:53:05 -0400, Ron Dean
<rondean-noreply@gmail.com> wrote:

Vincent Maycock wrote:

On Mon, 6 May 2024 15:29:30 -0400, Ron Dean

<snip>

I understand the obsession to "explain away" these deserters, but >>>>>>>>>>> honesty over bias needs to be the ruling objective not excuses. >>>>>>>>>>

No, there's nothing to explain away.  There will always be >>>>>>>>>> crackpots
amidst the more reasonable background of mainstream science. >>>>>>>>>>

You call them crackpots, but as I pointed out they are just as >>>>>>>>> educated
with the same credentials as mainstream scientist. The question >>>>>>>>> is what
are your credentials to pass judgement on these intellectuals >>>>>>>>> including
scientist holding PhDs. Probably nothing more than extreme bias. >>>>>>>>

No, a PhD is not a license to believe in nonsense, although some >>>>>>>> people act like it is.  You've made the error of argument from >>>>>>>> authority here, since even PhDs can easily get things wrong.

You called them crackpots.

So do you believe that crackpots exist, or are all claims to
scientific validity  equally worthwhile, in your view??

Of course crackpots exist. However, calling them crackpots because they >>>>> offer a different point-of-view from one's own view is protective and >>>>> self-serving.

I call them crackpots because they're out of step with mainstream
science without adequate grounds to be that way -- not because they
offer a different point of view from my own.

This is they way any contrary evidence to
scientific theories IE evolution or abiogenesis is dismissed without >>>>>>> knowing or understanding anything about the case they bring against >>>>>>> evolution. When one relies strictly on on sided information and
based on
this, they are in no position to pass judgement. It's exactly
parallel
to a case where the Judge hears the prosecution, then pronounces I've >>>>>>> heard enough - _guilty_! I strongly suspect this describes you
knowing
nothing about actual ID or the information

Okay, why don't you fill me in about what I'm "missing" in the field >>>>>> of information science as it relates to Intelligent Design?

I don't know that you are familiar with anything ID proposes, or the >>>>> case against evolution and especially the impossibility

You don't know that.

of life from inorganic, dead chemistry. There are over 500 known
amino acids
know in nature, but all living organisms are made up of only 20
different amino acids.
What what was the odds of this happening without deliberate choice?

It's just the number of amino acids that happened to be in the
earliest genetic code, obviously.  If there were 25 amino acids in
living things, you'd ask the same question.

And all are
left-handed, but if they were the result of blind chance, purposeless >>>>> and aimless natural processes about half of the amino acids should have >>>>> been right-hand.

This was probably the result of a "frozen accident," where the
earliest life forms were left-handed by chance, and all their
descendants were also as a result of that.

This is not the case. Exactly what was the selection
process that selected this particular set of 20 out of 500 known amino >>>>> acids? Of course there are educated guesses, hypothesis and theories, >>>>> but no 0ne knows.

So you agree that Intelligent Design is not known to be the answer to
these kind of questions?

Each protein is expressed by a particular order or
arrangement of amino acids. The smallest protein known, the saliva of a >>>>> Gila minster is 20 amino acids. What are the odds of these 20 amino
acids having the correct sequence on just one protein by chance?
The number would be greater than the number of atoms (10^80) in the
known universe. What is so incredible is that there is about 1 million >>>>> proteins in the human body each made up of a specific order of amino >>>>> acids.

Obviously, the proteins didn't poof into existence all at once. You
would start out with something that only vaguely resembles the protein >>>> you're concerned with, and then natural selection will turn it into
that protein over time by removing what doesn't resemble the target
protein and retaining what does.

What do you  offered by IDest pointing put
the fallacies in abiogenesis or evolution. If you think you know >>>>>>> anything regarding this, it's no doubt from proponent of evolution. >>>>>>

No,  I used to be a creationist and I'm quite familiar with their >>>>>> arguments.

Really? What turned you against both creationism or intelligent design? >>>>

I was a young-earth creationist, so my reading of geology and
paleontology led me to the conclusion that flood geology is a cartoon
version of science with nothing to support it.

Around the same time,

I became an atheist since Christianity didn't seem to make any sense.> >>>>>>>>>>>

So, you turned to atheism and evolution, not because you first found
positive evidence for evolution and atheism, but rather because of
negative mind-set concerning the flood and Christianity.

;The fact of the matter is, intelligent design says nothing about

either the flood story nor Christianity or any religion or God for
that matter. ID observe essentially the same empirical evidence as
evolutionist do, but they attribute what they see to intelligent design
rather than to evolution. Both the evolutionist and the ID est
interprets the same evidence to _fit_ into his own paradigm. IOW the
paradigm rules. Now to clear up another situation. While IDest see
evidence which supports design, there is no known evidence which
points to the identity of the designer. One may believe based upon
faith the the designer is Jehovah, Allah or Buddha  or some other
Deity but this is belief

At one time I was also an evolutionist. In addition to a book I was
challenged to read, and to some extinct, what I discussed above I also >>>>> thought that after reading Paley, Darwin dedicated his effort to
discounting or disproving Paley's God. This seemed to be more than a >>>>> coincidence.

How do you square that with the enormous amount of research he did
into the subject?  If he was just "mad at God" you would think he
would have published immediately with only a scant amount of
supporting evidence to support his ideas.

There is something, rarely mentioned in the literature.  Darwin was a >>>>> Christian until a great tragedy befell him and his family. That's the >>>>> death of his daughter, Annie in 1851 at the age of 10.  This naturally >>>>> caused great pain to Darwin and this terrible tragedy turned him
against
religion and God whom he blamed. One could certainly sympathize with >>>>> him
on the loss of his daughter.

What's your explanation for why Annie had to die?  Is it better than
my explanation? (which is that there is no reason she died -- nothing
in the universe is out there to care whether she lived, suffered, or
died)

Everyone dies, including you and me. Some much older and others  much
younger. Annie didn't have to die, but she was exposed the the weather
or a disease which caused her death.
I personally think there is something terribly wrong with the
devaluation of human life caused by accepting evolution. We descended
from common ancestors along with chimps, gorillas, monkeys horses,
swine and dogs. Consequently, we are just animals same as other
animals. So, as animals in every respect we are of no more worth or
value than any other animal. So, we kill and eat other animals so,
from a moral standpoint, why is this more acceptable? The question was
asked in a YouTube site of young college people, "If you saw a man and
your dog, that you loved, drowning you could only save one which would
you save"? As I recall the everyone except a professor said they would
save their dog. This means they would let the man die, his life is of
no more value than a dog's life. This I'm afraid is where evolution is
leading the human race.

That is utter garbage on so many levels it's difficult to know where to
start.
First, the argument works just as much for creationism. After
all, in most creationist accounts, the God(s) design all animals
including humans. So you could just as well say "we were designed by a
common designer along with chimps, gorillas, monkeys horses, swine and
dogs. Consequently, we are just designed things the same as other
animals. So, as designed things in every respect we are of no more worth
or value than any other stuff the designer designed".

OF course theist place a much greater value on human life. "Image of
God, with the ability to know right from wrong". Animals have no moral
value that eat other animals while their victim is still alive, what
animal knows right from wrong?

Wow, I did not know one could make that many logical and factual mistakes
in such a short post, that must be a personal best for you! First,
your persistent claim has been that we know nothing about the designer,
apart from him/her/them putting the main body plans together in the Cambrian.

And now suddenly a "theos"? Why, one could almost think you were not entirely honest when you made your frequent disclaimers. And not any old theos either.
I gave you the example of some forms of Hinduism where the believers rank the life of cows most certainly higher than that of unbelievers. Or take
deities in animal form, like Bastet. Because of her, cats were
treated as sacred in Egypt, and those owned by aristocats often dressed
in jewelly and allowed to eat from golden plates.

So when you say "theist place a much greater value on human life"
you don't really mean "theists", you mention the garbled version
of Christianity you grew up with, don't you? And boy, is it garbled.
So first you give the Imago dei concept, men in the image of its maker.
But hey, some guy on the internet told me that this is OT (Genesis
1:27 to be precise), and I cite "which was fulfilled by Jesus Christ
and set aside. The new Convent contained in the New Testament is
the one Christians are under". So you can't rely use this.


And would you not know it, that very same Internet sage claimed
that the designer just made the body plans for the Cambrian,
(and maybe a bit of organic chemistry before that) and then
disappeared. So if the creation is in his image, then the
designer/theos looks rather like this: https://loneswimmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/anomalocaris.jpg

Now, I'm rather a fan of dark Fantasy, and devoured all the
Michael Moorcock books, so strangely formed deities don't
worry me too much, but this one is quite extreme.

And then you throw in morals. But according to the Bible, that
was never the intended design, quite on the contrary. We were
designed NOT to have morals, and when we accidentally, or rather
rebelliously, acquired them (remember, the snake and apple thingy?)
punishment was instantaneous and severe.

In Richard Dawkins universe, says at the

end of chapter 4 of his book River Out of Eden, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” So, as an atheist how does one determine morally what is right from wrong?

Not from looking at the universe, that's for sure and that is
all that quote says, too.

You have (ab)used that quite before, but of course your dogmatically
closed mindset as usual ignored all the comments that received. Dawkins
says when a rock hits your head and kills you, or you catch a virus that
kills you, or you freeze to death on a cold winter's night, or die
from heat exhaustion in summer, or are bitten by a venomous snake,
then this is not because you were a bad person and the universe took
revenge on you, and neither the rock, nor the virus nor the snake, let
alone the weather, are morally culpable for killing you. Morals,
in this view, are not discovered but made, are part of human culture and
what we take to the universe, but not something we find in it.

As for how an atheists knows what's right from wrong, we went over this
before. If you don't know that killing people is wrong unless you
read it in a holy book, you are a danger to everyone around you.

Another problem with evolution, in this world survival and reproduction
is paramount. When one
person sacrifices or gives up something personal for another person,
it's because this person is kin or shares the same genes: evolution
justifies even advocated selfishness. I recently saw where a man
risked his own life to save the life of a complete stranger who fell in
in front of an oncoming train:
both barely escaped being killed. This was not a kinsman, but a person
of a different race. It did nothing to improve his reproductive
success, quite the contrary he risk his chances for reproduction. From
the standpoint of evolution this was an insane thing to do.

And you know what, I recently saw a person boarding an airplane and
flying. From the perspective of gravity, that was an insane thing to do.

Which means either that a) there is something wrong with the theory of
gravity or b) only complete idiots try to derive moral rules from
the laws of nature,

In fact, your opening gambit is directly expressed in the Bible: Judges
10:16 or Ecclesiastes 3:19: "For what happens to the children of man and
what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other.
They all have the same breath"

I question that.

You question that this is a cite from the Bible? Gosh....

But this is Old Testament which Christians turn to for
back ground, but the Old Covenant contained in the Old Testament was
like a contract which was fulfilled by Jesus Christ and set aside. The
new Convent contained in the New Testament is the one Christians are under.

So when you say "theist place a much greater value on human life:, you
don't mean what you say, you mean your personal version of
Christianity, as opposed to all these "false religions" like
Judaism, Huinduism etc. Glad to have cleared that one up,

And no the old covenant is not set aside, see Luke 16,17 or
Mathew 5,17-18 And to make things even more absurd, you
yourself cited above the "imago dei" concept of the OT,
and generally relied on a (garbled version of) Genesis

so a much stronger commitment to "identity" than you find in
evolution.
That whether one accepts evolution or believes in a designer makes
no difference especially for YOUR designer.

after all you claim (not

that anybody  believes you at this point) that the only thing the
designer did was to meddle a bit with DNA and organic chemistry a few
billion years ago and gave all living things the same code, and things
like flagella to us and bacteria alike - and then disappeared. In fact,
you made the  ubiquity and early appearanceof body plans in the
Cambrian your main evidence. So from this it would follow that as far as
the designer is concerned,  we are indeed the same as, and not more
valuable than,  bacteria,
or maybe Brachiopods such as craniidas today.

Your nonsense also contradicts the historical record. Ideas
such as the University Declaration of human rights, the equality
and dignity of all humans etc are decidedly ideas of modernity, when
creationist thoughts were in decline.  Go back just
a few decades before Darwin and look eg at the legal process, the still
frequent use of torture, the death
penalty for minor thefts etc etc, Or the atrocities committed as a
matter of course during wars- the international rules of armed conflict
again coming on the scene only after creationist ideas were in decline.

This is mans inhumanity to man.

So if I give you actual data of atrocities committed before
the ToE was even around, that is just "man's inhumanity to man"
and has nothing to do with the prevailing religious etc beliefs
at the time- beliefs that you claim should lead to a general
respect for other humans (though you are apparently fine with animal cruelty...) But atrocities committed after 1856 can be attributed to
people having been exposed briefly in school to a scientific theory?
And you think that makes any sense whatsoever?



We have our free agency and this is how

we too often use it.

So nothing to do with the ToE then, thanks for clearing that
up

This is still alive today. Russia's war against the Ukraine is just one example where civilians are just
murdered.

Oh, and of course the slave-holding South, creationism
central even then, trained dogs to hunt and kill
humans (well, their human property) which gives you
a clear idea of what life they valued more.

The Slave-holding South. Southerners bought slaves from the North. What
about the Northern Slave Merchants and Manufacturers who built ships for
the cargo for the slave trading North. This is rarely mentioned in
history.

Really pretty irrelevant for my specific point, that we have a
clear record of a society where evolutionary thought was absent,
and yet people valued, contrary to your claim, the life of
animals more highly than that of (some) humans. Or are you saying
that the Northern States had firmly embraced Darwinism - decades
before he was even born?

And of course, history is written by the victors.

yah, who cares about such things as evidence when it contradicts
one's deeply held bigoted beliefs, right?

Not to mention the real cause of the US Civil War was tariffs imposed on
the South. Lincoln had no objection to slavery. In fact slavery as a
issue did not exist until 2 years after the start of the war. It was
raised by Lincoln only after Great Brittan showed an interested in
entering into the war on the side of the South. Slavery was then made a
moral issue, which deterred Britten, which earlier had outlawed slave trading.

Not that it has any bearing whatsoever on my point, that people
demonstrably, and contrary to your claim, valued (some)animals higher than (some) humans long before Darwin, and in a society firmly
committed to theism and creationism. But your knowledge of history
is just as flawed, and ideology driven, as that of biology. So
really surprise there then

Tariffs: in the year before the South started the war, 64% of the
federal income came from taxes and tariffs of one single city:
New York. Boston, with slightly above 20%, was the distant
second. The only city from the South that makes the top ten
was New Orleans on 3. With other words, the North massively
subsidised the South when it came to federal expenditure,
that's where the taxes were raised.

The idea that taxes played a role was largely a myth created
by some English industrialists and the newspapers they had bought.
In a more and more outspokenly anti-slavery society, they wanted
to keep the cotton trade with the South, so set up the "taxes strawman"
for local consumption. (Decades after the war, that nonsense was
lapped up by the Lost Cause ideologues) They fooled nobody. Here's
John Stuart Mill's contemporary take ("The contest in
America", 1862):


"The world knows what the question between the South and the North
has been for many years, and still is. Slavery alone was thought of,
alone talked of. Slavery was battled for and against, on the floor
of congress and in the plains of Kansas. On the slavery question
exclusively was the party constituted, which now rules the United
states. On slavery Fremont was rejected, on slavery Lincoln was
elected The South separated on slavery, and proclaimed slavery as
the one cause of separation "

It was only a decade or so after the war that some Southerners
created the myth that it had been about things other than slavery.
The people that had started it had been remarkably open on
that - and why wouldn't they, after all they thought they
had the God -given right to own slaves, so nothing to be
ashamed about. It was only after the military loss, when
they realised the world though of them as barbarians, that
new reasons were back-projected.


Here a few quotes that show how simple, and typical, confederate soldiers
saw the conflict when it started:
(letters and diaries form 1861-63):
"the vandals of the north are determined to destroy slavery.
We must all fight, and I choose to fight for southern rights
and southern liberty"

Another one:"A stand must be made for African slavery, or it is
forever lost"

And another: "this country without slave labor would be completely
worthless. We can only live and exist by that species of labor
and hence I'm wiling to fight to the last"

And that's how they saw Lincoln: "Lincoln declares (the blacks)
as entitled to all the rights and privileges as American citizen
So imagine your sweet little girls in the school room with a
black wooly headed negro, and have to treat them as their equal"

No doubt in their mind, then, what the fight
was about. And that was of course also the official reasons
given by the southern states at the time:

"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was
instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself
has been made destructive of them by the action of the
non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right
of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions;
and have denied the rights of property established in
fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution;
they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery;
they have permitted open establishment among them of societies,
whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the
property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged
and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes;
and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books
and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily
increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power
of the common Government. Observing the forms of the
Constitution, a sectional party has found within that
Article establishing the Executive Department, the means
of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical
line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States
north of that line have united in the election of a man
to the high office of President of the United States,
whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He
is to be entrusted with the administration of the common
Government, because he has declared that that "Government
cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that
the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is
in the course of ultimate extinction."

So no doubt, whatsoever, that the South was fighting
over slavery and slavery only. Only from the 1880s onwards,
and as an attempt to roll back the rights for black Americans
that the war had achieved, did the lost cause propaganda come
up with different rationales, none of which held any water
bt worked on the gullible and bigoted then ad now, so it
seems.

But funny you should delve into the slavery issue in a post
that also shows your bigoted views of atheists. This is
how one of the Southern intellectuals at the time framed the
issue:


"The parties in the conflict are not merely abolitionists
and slaveholders. They are atheists, socialists, communists,
red republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and friends of order
and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is
the battleground – Christianity and Atheism the combatants;
and the progress of humanity at stake.
(James Henley Thornwell, 1860)

Or the Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney:
“We must go before the nation with the Bible as the text, and
‘thus sayeth the lord’ as the answer,” he wrote. “We know that
on the Bible argument the abolition party will be driven to unveil
their true infidel tendencies.

So, as far as the antebellum South was concerned, slavery
was morally right and God given, the abolitionists therefore
infected with atheist thoughts.

Darwin stated, "The civilized races of man will almost certainly
exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the
same time the anthropomorphous apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated.
The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man
in a more civilized state, as we may hope . . . the Caucasian, and some
ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla." https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/11/darwin-and-the-descent-of-morality

Yes, and again, your point? He describes what he observed, that is the destruction of tribal societies in Southern America and
Africa. He predicts, correctly by and large, correct - how many of
the societies he observed and described in his notebook are still around
today, you think? What he does not do in endorse it, or
say it is morally right.

And his writing makes also clear what he thinks about that
dimension, this is the context for the quote, form his
observations in South America:

"an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female
slaves. I have stayed in a house where a young household mulatto
daily and hourly was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break
the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or
seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could
interfere) on the head [for having handed me a glass of water not
quite clean]; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from
his master's eye. And these deeds are done and palliated by men
who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God,
and pray that his will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil,
yet tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants,
with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty; but it
is a consolation to reflect that we at least have made a greater
sacrifice than was ever made by any nation to expiate our sin.”

Now, as all Victorians, he does not distinguish carefully
enough between society/culture and biology/ethnicity, but
that mindset was well established long before his theory
came along. But it is interesting for other reaasons that
you should quote him in a post where you also peddle
nonsense about the confederacy.

Here his contemporary, the creationist Agassiz, on
slavery and black people:

"It was in Philadelphia that I first found myself in prolonged
contact with Negroes; all the domestics in my hotel were men of color.
I can scarcely express to you the painful impression that I received, especially since the feeling that they inspired in me is contrary to
all our ideas about the confraternity of the human type (genre) and
the unique origin of our species. But truth before all. Nevertheless,
I experienced pity at the sight of this degraded and degenerate race,
and their lot inspired compassion in me in thinking that they were
really men. Nonetheless, it is impossible for me to repress the
feeling that they are not of the same blood as us. In seeing their
black faces with their thick lips and grimacing teeth, the wool on
their head, their bent knees, their elongated hands, I could not take
my eyes off their face in order to tell them to stay far away. And
when they advanced that hideous hand towards my plate in order to
serve me, I wished I were able to depart in order to eat a piece of
bread elsewhere, rather than dine with such service. What unhappiness
for the white race --to have tied their existence so closely with that
of Negroes in certain countries! God preserve us from such a contact."
-- Louis Agassiz in a letter to his mother (1846),

And here by contrast Darwin:

"I have watched how steadily the general feeling, as shown at
elections, has been rising against Slavery. What a proud thing for
England, if she is the first European nation which utterly abolish is
it. I was told before leaving England, that after living in slave
countries: all my options would be altered; the only alteration I am
aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the Negros character.

-- Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (1839), Chapter V
Agassiz toured the southern states and was highly sought
after lecturer for polite society events, giving
a scientific veneer to slavery, which he explicitly
endorsed. Darwin's abolitionism by contrast is also
interesting in light of the Dawkins quote you gave above:

“If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature,
but by our institutions, great is our sin.”

That is, he makes the mirror argument to Dawkins above: Slavery
(like any injustice) is not the result of immutable laws
of nature (as Agassiz claimed) Rather, it is our moral
choice, hence our responsibility, and he saw himself
guilty by association for living in a society that
could have done more to end it. And that is of course the
right division of labour between science and morality:
science tells us only what is, the universe does not
have an imbued moral quality, Moral reasoning by contrast
tells us what we ought to do, and letting injustice like
slavery persist makes us guilty - don't blame the universe,
blame yourself is what Darwin and Dawkins are arguing.


“If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature,
but by our institutions, great is our sin.”

That is, he makes the mirror argumnt to Dawkins: Slavery
(like any injustice) is not the result of immutable laws
of nature (as Agassiz claimed) Rather, it is our moral
choice, hence our responsibility, and he saw himself
guilty by association for living in a society that
could have done more to end it. And that is of course the
roght division of labour between science and morality:
science tells us only what is, the universe does not
have an imbued moral quality, Moral reasoning by contrast
tells us what we ought to do, and letting injustice like
slavery persist makes us guilty - don't blame the universe,
blame yourself is what Darwin and Dawkins are arguing.

Conversely, people having strong emotional attachments
to their pets is documented long before modernity. A
Roman emperor had a servant who injured his dog brutally
killed, and in the early 17th century, we read e.g. that
Sir Roger de Coverley, was praised for his loyalty to
his servants like this:  "They had all grown old with him, from
his grey-headed butler to ‘the old House-dog, and . . . a grey Pad
that is kept in the Stable with great Care and Tenderness out of regard
to his past Services, tho’ he has been useless for several Years’"

So for the writer, a human servant and a service dog and
horse are pretty much treated in the same breath, their status was due
to the servant role that they shared.

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