I have just wasted 29mins 20 secs watching this only to asked to repeat blgrblmrgrbrrrggrrr . Why does science attack christianity? There are so many religions but they chose to attack christianity. All these satanic illuminati and Bilderbergers using science and education to reach their goals.The main agenda, insert confusing and rid of God. New religion being atheism and the law "Do what thou wilt". Very soon we will eat each other for food since we all animals according to science.God help us
Well you could've spent the 29 mins 20 seconds and probably many couple of more hours to understand , instead of wasting your time Not understanding Except the blgrblmrgbrbrrrggrrr part !
@HexagonalAttachment I dont see the logic in science anymore.its as if, they have successfully convinced people science is the truth, and there is no need to question it anymore. they have also successfully linked science and atheism and people think to be normal you have to be atheist. what a whole lot of sheepish world we are in.Dont people see all these politicians practising satanism? dont anyone see cooked mainstream is always a lie in this generation of TV and science?
@HexagonalAttachment lol...all those scientists who believe in God never had proper scientific education I guess, and am sure that is your guess too. Anyone who believes in God cannot be a scientist. lol. what a dumb statement.
More than 70% of Prominent US scientists are Atheists.
this should ring a bell for you . having a more accurate and enhanced view of the world eliminates the need for theism , and thus , the better you know , it's less likely you become a theist ( statistically speaking ) .
@HexagonalAttachment prominent lol. I choose the 30%. Its not about mainstream. Its about the absolute truth. Its about me, whether am making the right choice. If I die and there is no God, I wont be concious to even know that. But If I die and there is God, like the 30% are saying, then that will be unthinkable considering eternity in hell. So I choose the 30%. To be wise and to be intelligent, I choose to be wise.
ّI'm sorry dude , but science is not a Social hype or Fashion , or a matter of ideology , you might choose your clothing based on that (and maybe your religion , because it's a matter of your opinion)
but Electrons and protons , and Chemical reactions don't give a Shit about the local Trends of your society .
they behave their own way , and science's job is to Discover them .
Your analogy is of no vlaue!
By the way , how do you know SHIVA or RA or THOR is not the true GOD ?
@HexagonalAttachment if one scientist says there is God and the other says there is no God, on what basis do you say there is no God? Atheism is not science and people who think being an atheist makes them very scientific is laughable. You cannot use science to prove or disprove God, because we still dont know a lot of things. that is why lots of theories like the string theory are being developed. abiogenesis is in shambles. big bang is dying, evolution is being questioned.
You claim God exists , Go on and provide evidence that god exist . after scientifically evaluating your evidence and your claim , science will tell you if your claim has any truth to it , or not .
So far , no such claims have been scientifically proven ...
Also "Argument from ignorance" is a long falsified argument.
Atheism really isn't a 'thing' in the way you make it sound. It's just rejection of an idea. Most scientists see no evidence for any kind of God- so atheism IS the position that's most scientific. You don't see much evidence of God making its way into the journals!
@GodTheHypothesis What then distinguishes atheism from agnosticism is atheism is simply the absence of belief in God or the gods? It seems to me that very many atheists do in fact put forward elaborate arguments against the propostion 'God exists' and when such atheists do this it is no longer a question of an absence of belief but an assertion that there is no such thing as "God" and here are my reasons for supposing that He doesn't exist.
Regarding atheism/agnosticism, I'd agree with what Penn Jillette says in this vid: watch?v=NGw_IY-5dsA
Well "evidence" is a matter of science so if it's in philosophy journals it's probably not evidence. Mediocre atheism? Go on then, impress me with your refutations of the God Delusion. I agree that it's just a popular book, and mostly written for people who aren't too sophisticated- but I don't think I'd disagree with him on anything especially, except maybe the 6.9/7
@GodTheHypothesis Hmmm. You have not answered my question, so please do so in your own words. It seems to me that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You cannot claim that God doesn't exist on the basis of the alleged fact that there is no evidence for his existence (even though there is) and since atheists maintain that there is no such a thing as God then atheism cannot logically be simply an absence (that would be agnosticism).
Well the video answered your question so watch it again- I get very bored of repeating this since almost every theist in the modern world uses this same trick of trying to make "atheists" agree with the definition "the claim that there is no God" rather than "the disbelief in a God". It's frankly a childish tactic and one I won't waste another word on.
@GodTheHypothesis It is not at all a "childish tactic"- in fact, it is not even a "tactic". I am passionately interested in the truth, whatever that might turn out to be. This is one of the reasons I deplore Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennet. I have read them and I find much of what they say embarrassingly inadequate. If I ever became an atheist it would be because of Marx, Nietzsche and Camus, not the angry, rhetorical rants of embittered rationalists.
@GodTheHypothesis It is impossible to refute an entire book in a single posting. Terry Eagleton summaries 'The God Delusion' quite well: "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology". It is that mediocre a book.
Richard Dawkins claims that the central argument of his 'The God Delusion' is this: 'who designed the Designer?'. The ineptitude of the...
As for the who designed the designer- I think the point that he's getting at is that however the regress is terminated, it's far more likely to be with something simple and that if the idea of something necessary (as you suggest) IS a coherrent concept, why couldn't there be a necessary simple cause? We don't know that the universe is contingent at all- the assertion that the big bang was the absolute origin of our universe is one that has no evidence at all.
@GodTheHypothesis You claim that "the assertion that the big bang was the absolute origin of the universe is one that has no evidence". I am sure you must have heard of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem? They were able to prove that any universe, which is on average expanding throughout its history, cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past space-time boundary; and this holds independently of any physical description of the early universe. Therefore, even if the "Big Bang" is not the...
@GodTheHypothesis ... the absolute beginning, even a multi-verse must have an absolute beginning. So, according to Borde, Guth and Vilenken the universe cannot be a necessary being.
Dawkins- because he is ignorant of theology- is unaware that the great theologians of the Church understood God as being ultimately simple: that is, a mind which is not composed of parts. Remember to distinguish the simplicity of the mind and the minds thoughts (which can be complex). I refer you to Aquinas.
@GodTheHypothesis ... the question, which is supposed to be unanswerable, is staggering. Dawkins erroneously assumes that for an explanation to be a good one you need an explanation of the explanation; but if this were followed to its logical conclusion it would bring an immediate stop to the scientific enterprise, for it would bring in its wake a need for an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed.
@GodTheHypothesis Richard Dawkins doesn't seem to be comfortable with the idea that there must be something whose non-existence is impossible, as Immanuel Kant affirmed. Kant thought that this necessary being might be the universe rather than God; but given "Big Bang" cosmology it looks as though the universe is a contingent, non-necessary being, in which case the universe itself cannot be the something whose non-existence is impossible.
And I don't think he's comfortable with the idea of a necessary being because it's just philosophical nonsense- how on earth do you know if something's a necessary being?? It's just a plain assertion. If the definition of the Christian God entails that he created the universe and the definition of Zeus is the same, how come just the one you prefer is the necessary being? Maybe Zeus is a necessary being. Maybe there's an impersonal necessary cause.It's a useless concept!
@GodTheHypothesis It is interesting that atheists are now decrying the idea of a necessary being when it looks quite likely that the universe is not the necessary being that atheists once assumed it to be. The point is that there has to be something whose non-existence is impossible, otherwise you have the problem of an infinite regress (look at Hilbert's proofs that actual infinites are impossible) or that the universe just miraculously produced itself, which defies all logic and sense.
Hilbert proved that actual infinities are impossible?? Ok so as a mathematician- I now say WHATTTT? You can't "prove" things about nature because the universe isn't in axiomatic system- or we have no way of knowing if it is. So lets hear this "proof"!
@GodTheHypothesis You know as well as I do that I was using the term "prove" equivocally, not in its strict mathematical sense.
I suggest you read David Hilbert's 1926 paper "On the Infinite". This is what David Hilbert says, "The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite...is solely that of an idea...". There are all kinds of paradoxes which result from real infinities.
Well no, when you say "prove" in mathematics, it does have a specific meaning. The fact that hilbert didn't think infinity could exist is not a proof that it couldn't. He's not even alone. Quite a few mathematicians agree. The problem is, a lot of them wouldn't!!! I suggest watching the BBC horizon episode about infinity- they ask a selection of mathematicians if they think the universe could be infinite. Some say yes, most say "I don't know", maybe 1 of them says no.
@GodTheHypothesis I suggest that you read David Hilbert's "On Infinity". It is not just a question of what some mathematicians say, the Borde, Guth, Vilenken Theorem prohibits an infinite universe (or multiverse for that matter). Besides, I do not trust the BBC as they have a secular agenda. That is well known and uncontroversial.
Well yeah it is just a question of what mathematicians say because there remains no certain answer. The BGV theorem doesn't prohibit an infinite universe at all. It prohibits a past eternal spacetime, that's all. The inflationary theory that it's based on usually implies an infinite universe in the future too (so the existence of infinity is implied by it). That's nonsense about the multiverse- Alex Vilenkin's latest book was actually on the multiverse!
@GodTheHypothesis When I mentioned an "infinite universe" I was of course referring to an infinite past time universe. Vilenken says, "It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning" (Many Worlds in One, p.176). A cosmic beginning...
@GodTheHypothesis ...is all I was attempting to establish here. If there is an absolute beginning then the universe (or multiverse) is a contingent being and as such cannot be the something whose non-existence is impossible. It seems to me that the reason some scientists are nervous about an absolute beginning and want to avoid it is precisely because- contrary to most rationalists and atheists- the universe isn't a necessary being. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth".
The BBC is paid for by the public, they have no agenda at all! There's plenty of pro-religious material on the BBC. Robert Winston's "Story of God" comes to mind. That's just plain nonsense.
@GodTheHypothesis Oh please! That is very naive indeed. I am aware that the BBC is paid for by the public, but every organization has an agenda. You mentioned Robert Winston's "Story of God"- this proves my point! Robert Winston is an avowed atheist and secularist. For anyone who has received an education in theology and religion Winston story was anything but objective!
It is not just me who complains about the Biased BBC. The Catholic Church is frequently slighted on BBC programmes, etc.
@GodTheHypothesis I really deplore the flase comparisons between mythological gods such as Zeus and the God of classical theism. If Zeus existed he would be a finite creature within the universe (as all the storys about him suggest); but what we mean by God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, the reason there is something rather than nothing. There are no arguments for the existence of Zeus nor could there be; but there are for God as defined by me.
Well that's just semantics. It's true that the concept of this kind of timeless spaceless God is a modern invention but you could easily just suggest that actually the character of Zeus was actually referring to your necessary being which wasn't within time and space. If you're too pedantic to accept Zeus, just use another God- it's not hard to imagine one.
@GodTheHypothesis No, you are completely wrong. The idea of a "timeless spaceless God" is not "a modern invention". With respect, this reveals your ignorance of philosophy and theology. The idea of that than which nothing greater can be thought (God) is already present in the work of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero (to name but a few). Augustine and Thomas Aquinas developed the most sophisticated conceptions of this timesless spaceless reality, so its not 'ad hoc' at all.
@GodTheHypothesis What do we mean by Zeus or Odin or any of the other mythological gods? We surely mean an anthropomorphic being with tremendous power (even the supreme being) who occupies time and space and occasionally interacts with mortals. This is not even remotely analogous to what classical theists mean by God, so its quite useless to compare them. God is by definition sui generis (that is, utterly unique), unlimited in all perfections, beyond time and space, etc.
Well I think you're deliberately missing the point of the comparison to zeus or odin. The point is, you could imagine various Gods that have the exact same metaphysical status as the christian God but have different character. For example, I think the being which nothing greater can be conceived, necessarily created the universe with the intent of creating bacteria. The universe is far more fine tuned for bacteria than it is for humans...
@GodTheHypothesis What we mean by the term "God" is "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" and the reason why there is something rather than nothing. Therefore, the only thing that God thus defined has in common with the mythological gods of ancient Greece and Rome is the term "god". Zeus was never thought of as being that than which nothing greater can be conceived nor the reason why there is something rather than nothing. Besides, Cicero thought of Zeus as a personification of God.
@GodTheHypothesis What I find most extraordinary about modern atheists is that they seem to believe (what a leap of faith this is) that anyone who believes in God must be closing his eyes to all evidence and common sense, as Dawkins asserts. What blind faith you atheists often possess! Do you really think that Polkinghorne, F Collins, A McGrath, A Plantinga, K Ward and so on, don't possess good reasons for adopting the beliefs they do? Its just ridiculous.
Ok well now you've given up on the actual arguments and just resorted to yet more argument from authority- yes yes many smart people have believed in God. Congratulations- it must be true! I'm slowly losing patience, I thought you actually had some genuine arguments.
@GodTheHypothesis You misunderstand. I am not saying- and if you look at what I actually wrote you will discover this- that because intelligent people believe in God therefore God exists. I never said that, so please don't have the temerity to claim that I did. What I was reacting to is that "new atheist" absurdity that all religious believers are simply closing their eyes to the evidence, as though people like John Polkinghorne and Alvin Plantinga are just ignorant "faith heads". Its ridiculous
Well I'm not sure who actually said that these people are ignorant faith heads. I certainly didn't and I don't recall any of the "4 horsemen" doing so. Although in response to this accusation, I'd actually point out the fact that this supposed "evidence" for god is agreed upon by hardly any of the scientific elite, certainly DOES act as an authority against it.
@GodTheHypothesis Richard Dawkins, C Hitchens and Sam Harris have all spoken of religious people as if they were hopelessly stupid and woefully ignorant- not to mention childish and superstitious. It was Dawkins who coined the perjorative term "Faith-heads" as a particularly nasty comparison with "crackheads". The fact is that Dawkins and his ilk are enraged that Modernity's expectation of the immanent demise of religion has proved a false hope- if anything, religion is growing, not fading.
Well hitchens talked about everyone who disagreed with him like that- so I'm not sure you could read much into that. As for Dawkins, he does specifically say that his book is aimed at people who are already nearly atheists rather than the religious. So the fact that you're annoyed about it is exactly what he wanted- he didn't write the book for YOU. He's also been hugely successful- more than any of the others. Religion is only growing in poor and uneducated places!
@GodTheHypothesis It makes no difference for whom Richard Dawkins wrote his rather embarrassing book "The God Delusion". The fact that he belittles all religious people in his books, articles and debates bespeaks his failure to engage seriously with intelligent and thoughtful religious thinkers, such as Alvin Plantinga (who is considered to be one of the finest philosophers in the contemporary world). You cannot refute something by setting up strawmen arguments- something hes fond of.
@GodTheHypothesis This sounds like Western imperialist arrogance to me. "Religion is only growing in poor and uneducated places", so people in places like South America are basically ignorant and need a healthy dose of Western style rationalism?! Please, give me a break!
Besides, even in Western countries religion is still a potent force, it is just that people are no longer expressing their religiosity by attending Church and other institutional forms of religion.
@GodTheHypothesis Science in itself cannot answer the question "Does God exit?", so it is strictly irrelevant what the so-called scientific elite think about this particular question. I think we can both agree that science studies physical processes and as such, it cannot adjudicate on a metaphysical question. That is not to say that philosophers and theologians cannot use evidence from science to either bolster or undermine theism, but science qua science is restricted to the physical.
Well science can't currently answer the question of whether God exists. I don't see any reason to think that it couldn't in principle. I'd also add that theology and philosophy have failed to answer the question. If they had, we'd all be theists!!!
Well no you can't use the idea of evidence and claim it's theology or philosophy. Evidence is the domain of science. Saying something is "evidence" for God doesn't make it so. That's why we have the scientific method.
@GodTheHypothesis Science can NEVER adjudicate on the question of God for the reasons I have already given. If science deals with physical processes of change within the universe, then how on earth is science going to be able to adjudicate on the question of a non-physical, non-temporal, non-spacio reality. Pls answer that question.
There are good reasons to believe in the existence of "that than which nothing greater can be thought". The problem you have is that your epistemolgy is scientism
@GodTheHypothesis In my experience most atheists are unwittingly logical positivists, which as you probably know is an outdated epistemology embraced by virtually no serious contemporary philosophers. Do you subscribe to this philosophy? It is sometimes referred to now as "Scientism"; I would describe Dawkins and his ilk as subscribing to this narrow and outdated epistemology.
I don't think I've heard any of the atheists claim any kind of epistemology like that. Labelling someone with an epistemology is a classic way of trying to just show that they're somehow fallacious- it's such a see-through and boring trick. I don't think many scientists bother with such philosophical absolutes. The only epistemology I think "we" would agree to- is that the only reliable way to demonstrate a scientific claim is through empiricism.
@GodTheHypothesi This is a ridiculous comment! Everyone has either an explicit or implicit epistemology, that is how we make decisons regarding what to believe.
Interestingly, you then go on to admit to being an empiricist, which is itself an outmoded and rather narrow epistemology.
@GodTheHypothesis For me Sam Harris is the least serious of the well-known atheists writing today. Interestingly, the "New Atheists" have taken the moral high-ground in recent debates, but look at what Sam Harris has written: "Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live". What he means by dangerous beliefs are religious beliefs.
Erm no, in that quote he was referring to the religious extremists when they're in the position to cause great harm- like it being ethical to kill osama bin laden if we could've. You do get the silver medal in quote-mining though!
@GodTheHypothesis There is evidence for the existence of God and it does find its way into journals (obviously philosophy of religion journals where such evidence belongs). If you are one of these rather naive people who have bought the mediocre atheism of the "Four Horsemen" then I suggest that at the very least you buttress your atheism with more sophisticated fare, such as Satre and Camus. Dawkins' "God Delusion" is a popular book that is easily refuted.
I think you need to really sit down and think about whether the idea of a God who sends people to hell simply for not-believing, is a concept worth taking seriously. If God really is like this, I don't wanna go anywhere near him anyway. It's what you'd expect from a hormonal teenager.
The blatant attack on Christianity is interesting to me. It is curious that when he speaks of the Bible verse, "In the beginning was the Word," that he makes no reference to the fact that beginning may be interpreted several different ways (beginning of humans as we are now), and in light of the context of the original audience for whom the Bible was being written (no science yet). Beginning can mean more than the beginning of the universe or of the world...Dennett inserts that meaning.
naturalpreservation and Gravelandart. :) You gentlemen had too much time a week ago. I hope since then you moved away from the computer and enjoyed life a bit.
In agreement with your earlier suggestion of culminating this exchange, I'll leave you with this: Be happy that the Judeo-Marxist media compltely supports your "blame whites" narrative and perpetuates this inaccurate narrative incessantly. But don't be surprised when the nascent rumblings of a white awakening blossoms and then cascades into a full blown movement whose collective will and goal will be the the eradication of those political/govt/media forces that orchestrated the current policy..
@Gravelandart ..this long standing anti-white policy of genocide. When this time comes, and it will NP, you'll have alot to answer for with your empty nostrums and complicit contribution to this transparent policy of white genocide. Stay tuned.
Although I disagree with almost everything you say up until the last few comments your expressions hovered around the moderate(ish) but to talk of white genocide is:
(1) a tad extreme, and
(2) historically it's a little two-faced. You are cautioning me about a white genocide that may/not occur and yet you seem very reluctant to acknowledge the real genocides and industrial violence underpinning colonialism, imperialism and white instrumental power abuse.
There is very little 'natural' throughout the social world of humankind. For sure there is a character and ways of lifestyle that are familiar but 'natural' in this sense only means 'common' and/or 'familiar'
Your argument falls back on 'naturalness' and the history of society is one where humans shape the direction (artificial selection) not nature/organic (natural selection).
If you want to preserve what you see as racial purity (or similar) you're going against the current.
And when I say you are going against the current I mean you are going against the trends that are becoming normal and for some 'natural'. Nation states refer to 'natural' rates of inward migration but this is not anything 'organic' in a deeper sense but 'common'.
Again, this only makes the position you're arguing even more problematic and ropey. You seem to hark back recalling an age before technology and travel but these are cultural realities now Grave, peoples are on the move.
There are tensions for sure across the world and the speed of inward migration is an issue especially during economic hard times but the lasting tension (which Marx was prophetic on) is that of rich/poor, no matter the colour.
It's entirely possible for those who want to preserve racial purity (if that's the phrase) in the future but it's living in sects and enclosed villages in order to avoid the current direction (the 'natural'/common) way of things in the current, Grave.
Humans establish their own 'natural' and this is seen perhaps most vividly in designing and enforcing their own laws. Humans make their own 'nature' (conditions and norms). Laws change with the cultural tides and you'd be going out on a limb saying that changing laws was rooted in biology and/or genes.
The movement you refer to if it was unable to influence law-making processes wouldn't be arguing from anything 'natural' just arguing from the marginal.
If indeed such a collective movement does emerge it will be borne out of experience from cultural learning, and the influence of changing socio-economic conditions. Such a movement would be a product of culture, not of biology and again at a slightly deeper level this would undermine the very intellectual foundation that racial preservation movements would/could have.
Again, whites of lower S.E.S consistently outscore blacks from higher s.e.s. backgrounds on IQ tests. The Bell Curve, Dr. Glayde Whitney and many other sources have documented this categorically. Spearman's "G", although subjected to the worse type of hysterical hyperbole from pseudo-scientific crackpots hellbent on proving that "race is a social construct", has not been debunked or even approximately answered in a proper sociological riposte.
You certainly won't here me saying that race is non-existent, but due to the weight from the interaction between mind and culture in relative concert 'ethnicity' is a much more effective measure of differences between peoples and cultures. The meanings that cultures generate (and the primary source of human behavioural software) moves around much faster than biology and operates to imperatives that humans collectively create and design themselves.
Do yourself a favour babe and look back a few pages. My last comment on here was two months ago. Someone replies and it goes to my e-mail address and then I've responded.
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I get it that you tube is a major component in your life style and you trawl, troll and spam your way each day but don't hold everyone to your rather sad and shallow standards. Now, if you've quite finished. I'm trying to have a conversation while you're interrupting with your (sadly common on you tube) nothingness
You're still stalking me, like I've said before I find this a subtle blend (genes don't blend) of flattery and icky all at the same time. Go away child, the adults are talking,
. The known universe 14,000,000,000 BCE . Earth 5,000,000,000 BCE . Fire (applied) 2,000,000 BCE . Homo sapiens 250,000 BCE . The underlying law of nature (discovered & applied) 2003 CE
He's asking people to give up not their potential for purposeful action but the dualism they imagine is a prerequisite for that potential to exist.
Mind-body dualism is no different than the dualism that was supposed necessary to give life to organic beings. There is no question that life is nothing more 'at it's root' than self sustained reactions of organic molecules. There is no reason to suspect that 'mind' is somehow more special than life itself.
Very well put. Dennett is a master at using humor to convey complex ideas to laymen like me. But I agree- The 'mind' is nothing but the product of ordinary matter arrayed in complex formations in the brain.
I don't feel any sort of showing off when I watch this video. How smart he is is obvious and I'm sure he isn't going through any extra effort to prove it.
He's clearly not that smart. In 1995 he dogmatically asserted that culture MUST have a Darwinian origin and yet this is an awareness he hasn't been able to realise. Certainly not through the cut & paste pseudo-science of memetics, nor any other evolutionary approach to culture over the last 151 years, and counting.
There is no illusion of design in the social world of humankind, humans are intelligent designers, even Dawkins acknowledges this.
Gee, stunning insight indeed. You've said nothing there, nothing.
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We've had Dennett denying top down design for decades and here he now concedes it does exist. Moreover, he acknowledges now (and Dawkins is also a convert to this position) that humans are the only/first intelligent designers on the tree of life. With a tree of life of 100s of millions of species that's quite comparison for the enquiring mind.
Like I said Dennett's best days are behind him clearly. You may well like your popular science convenient, I prefer my science conclusive and over the last 151 years neo-Darwinism has consistently failed to crack culture. That might dent Dennett's neo-Darwinian pretension (and yours even), tough, big questions take time.
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He's still shaking the tambourine of memetics, the pseudo-science without a Journal, doesn't even have an on-line Journal. It shut down in 2005
So you can dismiss my remarks as snide but I'll out that down to someone who reverses Dennett and can't take on board the idea that what he is saying (especially on culture) is quite misplaced, and at times total garbage.
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Cuture is a relative process and the whole approach from memetics and Dawkins/Dennett's dogmatic brand of gene-centrism rooted in replication is a very, very poor basis with which to understand culture's relative, transforming, propulsive character.
@naturalpreservation --that is all GNOMES does, he surfs Youtube looking to lambaste those he identifies as conservatives, "fascists" or "racists" and then he unleashes a cascade of vitriol against them. NaturalP--you and I may disagree on things but we present reasons, evidence, etc. and then draw conclusions therefrom. GNOMES m.o. consists of a sustained crusade against those the media taught him to have disdain for. In essence, he is the quintessential bigot because the people he denounces
@naturalpreservation ...are precisely the people that the media indoctrinated him to hate : "nazis", "fascists", "conservatives", etc. His politics are the politics of popularity and nothing else.
After reading your views you couldn't really have a more different world view that me. You don't really get the power of culture, traditions and the weight of economic power.
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Slavery began in North America in 1619 and it's only been outlawed since 1865. If it took the same time to achieve balance than the total period of slavery then African Americans would achieve relative parity in 2111.
@naturalpreservation --no, I believe you are errant on your presumption of cultural prerequisites. Culture is always, in various forms, a derivative of race. Likewise, economic systems, convention and traditions are products of races and manifest themselves accordingly. Also, your notion of parity is flawed in the sense of it's inherent lack of an objective standard. What is "parity" for you iis conversely white slavery for others.
The entire premise of your argument fails to comprehend the causative transition through the evolutionary proces which can be shorthanded to 'biology to belief'. A conversation is not 'held' in the biology, it is an ebb and flow between the people having the conversation. To understand culture is to understand the grand, society-level conversation people have 'in perpetual motion' and this facilitates the fluid and changing character of values and opinions.
So it's worth it at this point in asking you if all conversations are 'held' in the genes? Do you believe that? It's a simple point that will give me a feel for where you are coming from?
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The position you are advocating is old school on several levels. Intellectually and acacdemically crude gene-centrism is the past and more interactive, systems and cybernetic ways of understanding of the human condition (rather than human nature) are the clear direction of thinking nowadays.
@naturalpreservation -the forced imposition (integration is clearly forced)of blacks into white societies has had an adverse and negative effect upon them. And although IQ has shown marginal increase in Africa, the longstanding disparity in IQ which consists of on average 15-25 below white median, continues in spite of socio-economic status. Indeed, poor whites of lower s.e.s. consistently outscore blacks from upper middle class backgrounds.
Your position which is rooted in biology has real and lasting problems with social and cultural phenomena like zeitgeist, schools of thought, social attitudes and changing values because as I have said these are rooted in the over capacities we can date back 40,000 years with the dawn of culture and behaviourally modern humans, and that includes humans from all ethnic backgrounds.
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Another question, do you think that 'zeitgeist' emerges from cultural milieu or from biology?
Furthermore, I don't think you give enough weight to the power of politics, politicians and special interests. People used to say similar things about women as you are saying about blacks and the evidence from around the world shows that where there is parity and equal opportunity, and I mean real equal opportunity differences soon even themselves out.
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You could refer to IQ differences but even on this measure they are rising in Africa as development and nutrition improve.
Science (and this includes physical, natural and social sciences) are without a general theory of culture. For sure it's not going to come from memetics, a crude cut & paste job from gene-centrism but the power of culture to influence directly on life chances is poorly understood.
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My view is that mind and culture in relative concert are more telling on people's thought and behaviour than biological factors and with your views on media you would agree to a point on this.
@naturalpreservation --you need not adopt a minimalistic intrepretation of the profound and immutable paramount importance of genetics. If you incorporate the science of genetics into your preordained set of beliefs of course your chosen taxonomy will classify it as "crude". Your views on "mind and culture" are partially correct, you err when you artificially extract those from the synthesis of racial composition. Your preference to disregard the empirical reality of race is arbitrary.
I do understand the function of genes as the recipe for the unfolding, embryological and developmental of organisms. However, you'd be going out on a limb saying that a recipe made a restaurant, it's a factor but clearly not the prime mover and certainly there are other movers in there.
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1950s and we've got the structure of DNA cracked, 1960s Bill Hamilton work on genes and behaviour, 1970s Dawkins (selfish gene) Wilson (sociobiology) all endorse zeitgeist and history Grave.
@naturalpreservation --again NP, I believe you either miss or purposely circumvent my primary assertion: zeitgeist, convention, culture and historical processes all reflect the innate and intrinsic character of race , they are manifestations of racial/genetic derivation. They are inextricably bonded and attempts to isolate them using empiricist methodolgy immediately translates into a sort of arbitrary/artificial taxonomy.
Your comment about zeitgeist, culture and historical processes reflecting innate character remains just that, a comment. It's been 151 years (and counting) and culture remains a mystery for all the neo-Darwinian attempts to explain culture. Darwin wrote several times that natural selection (and it is you that is using human nature here) is much diminished in civilised societies and that is because culture/mind increasingly set the agenda and direction.
I get it that you would like to talk (and convince) people that intelligence is like eye colour, height, etc but it's something much more general that emerges from interacting parts and this includes mind and culture. Added to that mix is a realisation that intelligence can only be displayed without a set of terms and conditions.
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The globalised world is broadening out those terms and conditions and non-whites are catching on whites across the board. Capacity not trait Grave.
@naturalpreservation --again, you concoct assumptions about my position based on your own prejudices. I never said that the exchange within culture (which is always a derivative of race), doesn't benefit or impact evolutionary understanding of intelligence. Again, these things are part of the whole. You really ought to study National Socialism. I fear you inadvertently, partly through omission by a biased anti-German/National Socialist media, have not realised the import of the works ...
@naturalpreservation ...of Martin Heidegger, Alfred Rosenberg, Carl Schmitt and other writers who had a more realistic understanding of culture and it's concomitants than your myopic, doctrinaire notion of culture which attempts to extract race as a variable from the equation. You wish and hope that blacks are what you want them to be, you hope with all your heart, but reality and forensic evidence suggests otherwise.
@naturalpreservation --ergo you are left with a tenuous, purely theoretical definition of culture which denies the prodigious mountain of inventions given to the world by Western Culture ( synonomous with the white race), and replaces that with a protracted narrative of "blacks are oppressed" and that their comparative lack of progress (by Western standards) is solely due to environment or of an imaginary persecution of whites.
Haeckel took the ideas (not genes and or biology) from Darwin's theory into Germany and Europe but was more aggressive in promoting them to account for society at large. Although Darwin referred to 'savages', 'barbarians' and 'half humans' in his anthropological 'The Descent of Man' he realised that natural selection was "much diminished" when it came to civilised societies, but others have pushed another agenda, the one you seem to be arguing.
By point out A story I am not saying it is the ONLY story, and that is a mistake on your part. I come from Scotland and pound for pound it's as creative as any other nation in the history of inventions so I'm well aware of the creative power of all peoples. I was making the point (which is deeply historical) that your argument depends on a selective naturalism which has benefitted from taking other people's instrumental power. That is historical fact.
@naturalpreservation -you are correct on one point however. Indeed, the recognition of the unequivocable importance of race is not popular in contemporary society. The Judeo-leftist media has efficaciously created an environment of hysteria and censorship concerning eugenic, racial/genetic research. Look at how Nobel prize winning Dr. James Watson, pioneer of the genome project itself, was treated a couple of years ago when he commented that Europeans should preserve their genetic inheritance.
You mention Watson who is now discredited and I've mentioned Crick. After cracking the DNA code Crick moved on to human consciousness with the prevailing thinking it would be cracked within the next decade. We're still waiting.
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You seem to appreciate that technological media can influence and shape thought and behaviour, but technology is a dimension of phenomena that is not biological/genetic. Again, you flit between the artificial (human condition) world and the natural.
Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) point made 100s of years ago still stands and that is the different between natural power (which is the basis for your argument) and intstrumental power (which includes all the artificial, the verty stuff of the social world of humankind).
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You are moving back and forth as it suits but the supremacy (which I think you are arguing) of whites over blacks has been historically boosted by instrumental means, which makes a 'natural' argument pretty flimsy.
What we've got now going on all around the world is an 'evening up' process as the third world develop more towards Western standards. Any dogma rooted on the idea that there are significant biological/genetic differences is undermined day by day by non-whites (Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, Africa, etc) making relative gains across a range of measures and indices as conditions improve.
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It's more a matter of human conditions and terms and this is culture and ethnicity not race
You have your view and I have mine. However, I'm on pretty solid ground and quite independent of this conversation (which is an emergent from, not 'in' anywhere) the globalising world proves my point as well as the direction.
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The comparative method (upon which science rests) and current trends throws up interesting possibilities for the future. Can you imagine a time when all IQ tests will be designed by Chinese and Indians? Would this be biased towards them? Time will tell.
I'll finish now on this point, and I've got the weight of the last 151 years as a period of evidence here. The idea of one-to-one mapping in terms of phenotypes and human traits is a dogmatic one. Good science is conclusive, not convenient and to understand the human condition (if that is what you are interested in) demands that we understand 'capacity' rather than 'traits' and this is especially the case with the interactive emergence that is intelligence.
I said I was going to finish on that point but the Hobbes one is worth repeating. The main reasons that whites (and Western cultures/peoples) appear to have more is because they have benefitted from:
1. instrumental power they have used to take/steal from other peoples, and
2. the relegating effect this had on other peoples/cultures.
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As those two change, the developing world makes gains on the Western world but political machinations and self-interest will try to impede that.
@naturalpreservation - Isn't it convenient to your inflamed bias that you can reduce all of the inventions, creations, ingenuity given to the world by western culture and it's concomitant, the white race, to a debased and myopic claim that they have "taken" and "stolen" from others, presumably your favored non-white race, nubian Blacks.
You are settling on a crude 'natural' argument from a position which has benefitted in great magnitude from 'instrumental' and/or artificial power. That artificial power has come in large part from nations what were victims of colonial and imperial expansion. In addition to that colonial and imperialism remains to this day with sections of Africa's West coast fishing lanes 'owned' by the European Union.
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You're trying to argue a 'natural' case from an artificially boosted one.
From where you are it seems like bias, but the human mind 'seems' the world around it/us, it's not the ribsome reading off the DNA/RNA in a uniform manner, relativity is built-in. Although Hitler called it National Socialism once we go beyond the label we can see that it had almost nothing to do with socialism. How can anyone understand a system to be socialist when he/it openly attacked minorities to the point of extermination. Have you read Ernst Haeckel?
@naturalpreservation ..you see NP, what you fail to acknowledge is that you advocate a form of cultural hegemony, a sort of theory driven supremacism which denies the various races of this world to develop and cultivate their own standards and cultures independently. Yes, the world IS a big place, and there is room for all of us. And instead of continuing a policy of genocide of the white race through massive non-white immigration into white countries and dysgenic miscegenation, we should allow.
These ideas took hold and shaped the thinking (and behaviour) to the point where an entire nation turned against what they perceived to be the race to blame for their problems (first world war reparations another conversation). There is argument here that the cultural change was some genetic and/or biological expression of who they were, it was cultural ideas taken from Darwin with a clear, although misguided ideology.
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It was not a biological manifestation Grave, but cultural
The observation that Taiwan has adopted a very American cultural lifestyle undermines your position still further Grave. By adopting the American lifestyle as their cultural model this goes against your argument that culture is (by some as yet unknown scientific process) a biological/genetic manifestation.
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If the human condition (the terms and conditions of being human) are in the culturally fluid meanings rather than bio/genes then 'race' becomes even more outmoded measure.
@naturalpreservation -I'm glad you mentioned Taiwan, I've spent an extended period there. The fact that you mention it as proof of a cultural analogue is entirely laughable and reveals much better than I ever could the lack of depth and seriousness of your cultural propositions. The window dressing of the Taiwanese "american lifesyle" does not correspond remotely in muse, style, inflection, behavior, import, mores and overall spirit.
I mentioned Taiwan but I could have referred to any 'Western' country which has adopted American values although there is always some form of syncretic fusion. In referring to American values at a deeper level of analysis we're talking about the values of consumption and on this I'm on quite safe ground. This idea that nations becoming democratic leads to consumer capitalism is not a biological phenomena but a cultural template assimilated across different places: globalisation.
Different countries have different histories, customs and traditions stored through collective expressed interest/awareness (not biologically) and the speed of change in the world around us in technology and travel all underline the fluidity and pervasiveness of cultural as a system of motion as different from nature as a system of motion acting through bodies.
The future is one that's full of colour and it will be shaped by the human condition as different from nature.
I'm glad you replied on the Taiwan point and you're reading far too much into a short period of time. Global transport is opening up, the internet generation is still young and I'm more than confident (if we stick with Taiwan) that the i-generation will penetrate not just Taiwan but all Western nations over the next few decades. This says nothing about natural power and more about instrumental power, again this undermines the narrative you're trying to weave.
Slavery in 1865 in the US, Apartheid in South Africa overturned 20 years ago result in cultural changes that are not the manifestation of biological and/or genetic factors but emergences from new dynamic social and cultural states that nature provides no precedence for.
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So I'm not denying race, but it's a very weak awareness/measure compared to the much deeper one of cultural ideas and ethnicity.
So if the numbers that I put out there are indicative of anything deeper then I've got 100 years to see how it plays out. America has a black President and in Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell we can see black influence at the top table and I'm sure that over the next 100 years (despite a lot of institutional barriers and special interests) the picture you are seeing and projecting is one that will dissolve away. The problem is much more have/have nots than whites/blacks Grave.
"America has a black president"? Wasn't he of mixed race? Colin Powell too? For that matter, so was Dr. Charles Drew the mullato man often incorrectly credited being the first to improve blood storage technique. No, there is institutional racism against whites currently in affirrmative action, job quotas, college grants, job placement and in a million other areas. The old narrative that blacks are "oppressed" has proven to be a baseless canard. The real point is that multiracial societies...
These cultural and scientific developments were not in the biology, they emerged from human over capacity and that same capacity is influenced by the experience of now:
(1) Physicists disillusioned by how science was used in the Second World War moved into neighbouring fields of biochemistry.
(2) It's no coincidence that Francis Crick (you've already commented on Watson's shunned and discredited views) was a physicist.
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This culturally booster the bandwagon of DNA science Grave.
You reference to mixed race endorses my argument of changing direction much more than it does anything you've got to say. Let's say that President Obama passes sweeping affirmative action legislation, that would be an example of someone directly influencing the national conversation through social organisation (not the genes) and again this would support my view over yours.
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Intellectually, historically, and the current all undermine your position.
Rhodesia declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1965 Grave, that's pretty recent. Britain, France, etc weren't imperial powers in Africa to help their economies but to steal at the institutional and near-industrial level and anyone who thinks that can be turned around (which back in Britain and France gallops on) in a matter if decades, should take a seat and a deep think for a while.
So I'm well aware of crucial genes are but if you take a deeper reading of the 20th Century the entire gene-centrism movement as 'proving' behaviour is looking more of it's time, and this only adds weight to my argument that understanding culture as like a conversation in perpetual motion, and not in biology, is much closer to the truth than trying to say it's all, or even mostly in the gene.
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To me it looks like your conversational point is increasingly historical Grave.
Wherever you take the argument, as long as you are using historical examples to highlight trends I think you are on to a loser. Take Spearman and his 'g' and the idea of IQ tests since. The Raven Matrix was devised by John C. Raven who was not Spearman's biological relative but a student.
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A student who went to lectures (formal academic conversations) and was duely impressed. Again, this provides more proof of the power of conversation and culture on human thought and behaviour
How do you account for the Flynn Effect? Even Raven concedes that nutrition plays a part in intelligence and over the last few decades as Africa has developed so too have IQ points increased.
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We don't need to go back to 1865 to when slavery was outlawed in the US (and debt bondage existed for decades after) we can look at more recent non-biological, human societal injustices on Africans. This all undermines your position of fairness Grave at several levels.
I'll skip on from the US in the 1950s which has society-level (not biological) administrative laws and customs against blacks. Blacks having to give up their seats on buses for whites was an entirely insitutionalised conversational point, which was changed through non-biological processes.
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We've just had the World Cup in South Africa, where apartheid (a culturally imposed system) was abolished only 20 years ago. We can look at the imperial handover as well in Africa Grave.
What you are saying isn't new, it's tired and it's been applied to other ethnic backgrounds. In 1947 (again these are very recent and real developments) India became independent from Britain. India is well on the way to becoming a superpower and that's all occured in the last 60+ years.
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China and Japan represent more non-whites who are increasingly shaping the form of the globalised world. I think wherever you look Grave the evidence is clear and the future looks colourful.
@GnomesAmok --I have presented you a prodigious mountain of empirical and forensic evidence supporting my views repeatedly and everytime you have replied with invectives ("nazi"), ad hominems and then ultimately circumvention. Look at how others on here are trying to point out to you information and you respond to them in the same fashion. Are these the actions of an individual certain in his/her beliefs? You ought to think about that. Also, you know nothing about National Socialism so refrain.
I think he addresses the importance of purposeful action in his comments about McCready's explosion in biomass. The human species partly evolves ideas, is very good at sharing these, and is also very good at consciously (or purposefully) re-applying them.
His reframing of the "design" argument by allowing the natural world to be designed and that design does not require a designer is probably going to prove more effective in debunking Paley and IDers than current approaches.
I read what you have to say but this argument 'the illusion of design' and Dawkins' coinage of the term 'designoid (for this illusion of design) further reinforced by the blind watchmaker makes the comparison all the more clear when we hold nature alongside the artificial but no less real system of motion that is culture.
Humans design, there is no illusion there and have control of direction. No evolutionary theory general theory of culture in 151 years, because there can't be one.
@bayreuth79 good points.
swandike 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis I suppose u also wouldn't like to live in a society with laws and punishment for law breakers.
swandike 1 week ago
Elaborate on your Proof.
Universe exists ( which is obvious ) SO God exist ?
how can you conclude that ?
HexagonalAttachment 5 months ago
I have just wasted 29mins 20 secs watching this only to asked to repeat blgrblmrgrbrrrggrrr . Why does science attack christianity? There are so many religions but they chose to attack christianity. All these satanic illuminati and Bilderbergers using science and education to reach their goals.The main agenda, insert confusing and rid of God. New religion being atheism and the law "Do what thou wilt". Very soon we will eat each other for food since we all animals according to science.God help us
swandike 6 months ago
@swandike
Well you could've spent the 29 mins 20 seconds and probably many couple of more hours to understand , instead of wasting your time Not understanding Except the blgrblmrgbrbrrrggrrr part !
HexagonalAttachment 5 months ago
@HexagonalAttachment I dont see the logic in science anymore.its as if, they have successfully convinced people science is the truth, and there is no need to question it anymore. they have also successfully linked science and atheism and people think to be normal you have to be atheist. what a whole lot of sheepish world we are in.Dont people see all these politicians practising satanism? dont anyone see cooked mainstream is always a lie in this generation of TV and science?
swandike 5 months ago
@swandike
you don't need to Convince anyone that science is Truth :)
people can try for themselves . that's how it works ...
and by the style of your comments i can safely guess , you've never had a proper scientific education ...
HexagonalAttachment 5 months ago
@HexagonalAttachment lol...all those scientists who believe in God never had proper scientific education I guess, and am sure that is your guess too. Anyone who believes in God cannot be a scientist. lol. what a dumb statement.
swandike 5 months ago
@swandike
More than 70% of Prominent US scientists are Atheists.
this should ring a bell for you . having a more accurate and enhanced view of the world eliminates the need for theism , and thus , the better you know , it's less likely you become a theist ( statistically speaking ) .
go figure ..
HexagonalAttachment 5 months ago
@HexagonalAttachment prominent lol. I choose the 30%. Its not about mainstream. Its about the absolute truth. Its about me, whether am making the right choice. If I die and there is no God, I wont be concious to even know that. But If I die and there is God, like the 30% are saying, then that will be unthinkable considering eternity in hell. So I choose the 30%. To be wise and to be intelligent, I choose to be wise.
swandike 5 months ago
@swandike
ّI'm sorry dude , but science is not a Social hype or Fashion , or a matter of ideology , you might choose your clothing based on that (and maybe your religion , because it's a matter of your opinion)
but Electrons and protons , and Chemical reactions don't give a Shit about the local Trends of your society .
they behave their own way , and science's job is to Discover them .
Your analogy is of no vlaue!
By the way , how do you know SHIVA or RA or THOR is not the true GOD ?
HexagonalAttachment 5 months ago
@HexagonalAttachment if one scientist says there is God and the other says there is no God, on what basis do you say there is no God? Atheism is not science and people who think being an atheist makes them very scientific is laughable. You cannot use science to prove or disprove God, because we still dont know a lot of things. that is why lots of theories like the string theory are being developed. abiogenesis is in shambles. big bang is dying, evolution is being questioned.
swandike 5 months ago
@swandike
Science is a means to Evaluate Claims ,
You claim God exists , Go on and provide evidence that god exist . after scientifically evaluating your evidence and your claim , science will tell you if your claim has any truth to it , or not .
So far , no such claims have been scientifically proven ...
Also "Argument from ignorance" is a long falsified argument.
HexagonalAttachment 5 months ago
@HexagonalAttachment the evidence that God exists is the universe itself. Unless you want me to show you where He lives.
swandike 5 months ago
@swandike
Atheism really isn't a 'thing' in the way you make it sound. It's just rejection of an idea. Most scientists see no evidence for any kind of God- so atheism IS the position that's most scientific. You don't see much evidence of God making its way into the journals!
GodTheHypothesis 2 months ago 2
@GodTheHypothesis What then distinguishes atheism from agnosticism is atheism is simply the absence of belief in God or the gods? It seems to me that very many atheists do in fact put forward elaborate arguments against the propostion 'God exists' and when such atheists do this it is no longer a question of an absence of belief but an assertion that there is no such thing as "God" and here are my reasons for supposing that He doesn't exist.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Regarding atheism/agnosticism, I'd agree with what Penn Jillette says in this vid: watch?v=NGw_IY-5dsA
Well "evidence" is a matter of science so if it's in philosophy journals it's probably not evidence. Mediocre atheism? Go on then, impress me with your refutations of the God Delusion. I agree that it's just a popular book, and mostly written for people who aren't too sophisticated- but I don't think I'd disagree with him on anything especially, except maybe the 6.9/7
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis Hmmm. You have not answered my question, so please do so in your own words. It seems to me that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You cannot claim that God doesn't exist on the basis of the alleged fact that there is no evidence for his existence (even though there is) and since atheists maintain that there is no such a thing as God then atheism cannot logically be simply an absence (that would be agnosticism).
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Well the video answered your question so watch it again- I get very bored of repeating this since almost every theist in the modern world uses this same trick of trying to make "atheists" agree with the definition "the claim that there is no God" rather than "the disbelief in a God". It's frankly a childish tactic and one I won't waste another word on.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis It is not at all a "childish tactic"- in fact, it is not even a "tactic". I am passionately interested in the truth, whatever that might turn out to be. This is one of the reasons I deplore Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennet. I have read them and I find much of what they say embarrassingly inadequate. If I ever became an atheist it would be because of Marx, Nietzsche and Camus, not the angry, rhetorical rants of embittered rationalists.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis It is impossible to refute an entire book in a single posting. Terry Eagleton summaries 'The God Delusion' quite well: "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology". It is that mediocre a book.
Richard Dawkins claims that the central argument of his 'The God Delusion' is this: 'who designed the Designer?'. The ineptitude of the...
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
As for the who designed the designer- I think the point that he's getting at is that however the regress is terminated, it's far more likely to be with something simple and that if the idea of something necessary (as you suggest) IS a coherrent concept, why couldn't there be a necessary simple cause? We don't know that the universe is contingent at all- the assertion that the big bang was the absolute origin of our universe is one that has no evidence at all.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis You claim that "the assertion that the big bang was the absolute origin of the universe is one that has no evidence". I am sure you must have heard of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem? They were able to prove that any universe, which is on average expanding throughout its history, cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past space-time boundary; and this holds independently of any physical description of the early universe. Therefore, even if the "Big Bang" is not the...
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis ... the absolute beginning, even a multi-verse must have an absolute beginning. So, according to Borde, Guth and Vilenken the universe cannot be a necessary being.
Dawkins- because he is ignorant of theology- is unaware that the great theologians of the Church understood God as being ultimately simple: that is, a mind which is not composed of parts. Remember to distinguish the simplicity of the mind and the minds thoughts (which can be complex). I refer you to Aquinas.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis ... the question, which is supposed to be unanswerable, is staggering. Dawkins erroneously assumes that for an explanation to be a good one you need an explanation of the explanation; but if this were followed to its logical conclusion it would bring an immediate stop to the scientific enterprise, for it would bring in its wake a need for an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis Richard Dawkins doesn't seem to be comfortable with the idea that there must be something whose non-existence is impossible, as Immanuel Kant affirmed. Kant thought that this necessary being might be the universe rather than God; but given "Big Bang" cosmology it looks as though the universe is a contingent, non-necessary being, in which case the universe itself cannot be the something whose non-existence is impossible.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
And I don't think he's comfortable with the idea of a necessary being because it's just philosophical nonsense- how on earth do you know if something's a necessary being?? It's just a plain assertion. If the definition of the Christian God entails that he created the universe and the definition of Zeus is the same, how come just the one you prefer is the necessary being? Maybe Zeus is a necessary being. Maybe there's an impersonal necessary cause.It's a useless concept!
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis It is interesting that atheists are now decrying the idea of a necessary being when it looks quite likely that the universe is not the necessary being that atheists once assumed it to be. The point is that there has to be something whose non-existence is impossible, otherwise you have the problem of an infinite regress (look at Hilbert's proofs that actual infinites are impossible) or that the universe just miraculously produced itself, which defies all logic and sense.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Hilbert proved that actual infinities are impossible?? Ok so as a mathematician- I now say WHATTTT? You can't "prove" things about nature because the universe isn't in axiomatic system- or we have no way of knowing if it is. So lets hear this "proof"!
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis You know as well as I do that I was using the term "prove" equivocally, not in its strict mathematical sense.
I suggest you read David Hilbert's 1926 paper "On the Infinite". This is what David Hilbert says, "The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite...is solely that of an idea...". There are all kinds of paradoxes which result from real infinities.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Well no, when you say "prove" in mathematics, it does have a specific meaning. The fact that hilbert didn't think infinity could exist is not a proof that it couldn't. He's not even alone. Quite a few mathematicians agree. The problem is, a lot of them wouldn't!!! I suggest watching the BBC horizon episode about infinity- they ask a selection of mathematicians if they think the universe could be infinite. Some say yes, most say "I don't know", maybe 1 of them says no.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis I suggest that you read David Hilbert's "On Infinity". It is not just a question of what some mathematicians say, the Borde, Guth, Vilenken Theorem prohibits an infinite universe (or multiverse for that matter). Besides, I do not trust the BBC as they have a secular agenda. That is well known and uncontroversial.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Well yeah it is just a question of what mathematicians say because there remains no certain answer. The BGV theorem doesn't prohibit an infinite universe at all. It prohibits a past eternal spacetime, that's all. The inflationary theory that it's based on usually implies an infinite universe in the future too (so the existence of infinity is implied by it). That's nonsense about the multiverse- Alex Vilenkin's latest book was actually on the multiverse!
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis When I mentioned an "infinite universe" I was of course referring to an infinite past time universe. Vilenken says, "It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning" (Many Worlds in One, p.176). A cosmic beginning...
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis ...is all I was attempting to establish here. If there is an absolute beginning then the universe (or multiverse) is a contingent being and as such cannot be the something whose non-existence is impossible. It seems to me that the reason some scientists are nervous about an absolute beginning and want to avoid it is precisely because- contrary to most rationalists and atheists- the universe isn't a necessary being. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth".
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
The BBC is paid for by the public, they have no agenda at all! There's plenty of pro-religious material on the BBC. Robert Winston's "Story of God" comes to mind. That's just plain nonsense.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis Oh please! That is very naive indeed. I am aware that the BBC is paid for by the public, but every organization has an agenda. You mentioned Robert Winston's "Story of God"- this proves my point! Robert Winston is an avowed atheist and secularist. For anyone who has received an education in theology and religion Winston story was anything but objective!
It is not just me who complains about the Biased BBC. The Catholic Church is frequently slighted on BBC programmes, etc.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis I really deplore the flase comparisons between mythological gods such as Zeus and the God of classical theism. If Zeus existed he would be a finite creature within the universe (as all the storys about him suggest); but what we mean by God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, the reason there is something rather than nothing. There are no arguments for the existence of Zeus nor could there be; but there are for God as defined by me.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Well that's just semantics. It's true that the concept of this kind of timeless spaceless God is a modern invention but you could easily just suggest that actually the character of Zeus was actually referring to your necessary being which wasn't within time and space. If you're too pedantic to accept Zeus, just use another God- it's not hard to imagine one.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis No, you are completely wrong. The idea of a "timeless spaceless God" is not "a modern invention". With respect, this reveals your ignorance of philosophy and theology. The idea of that than which nothing greater can be thought (God) is already present in the work of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero (to name but a few). Augustine and Thomas Aquinas developed the most sophisticated conceptions of this timesless spaceless reality, so its not 'ad hoc' at all.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis What do we mean by Zeus or Odin or any of the other mythological gods? We surely mean an anthropomorphic being with tremendous power (even the supreme being) who occupies time and space and occasionally interacts with mortals. This is not even remotely analogous to what classical theists mean by God, so its quite useless to compare them. God is by definition sui generis (that is, utterly unique), unlimited in all perfections, beyond time and space, etc.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Well I think you're deliberately missing the point of the comparison to zeus or odin. The point is, you could imagine various Gods that have the exact same metaphysical status as the christian God but have different character. For example, I think the being which nothing greater can be conceived, necessarily created the universe with the intent of creating bacteria. The universe is far more fine tuned for bacteria than it is for humans...
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis What we mean by the term "God" is "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" and the reason why there is something rather than nothing. Therefore, the only thing that God thus defined has in common with the mythological gods of ancient Greece and Rome is the term "god". Zeus was never thought of as being that than which nothing greater can be conceived nor the reason why there is something rather than nothing. Besides, Cicero thought of Zeus as a personification of God.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Ok thanks, you just continued along the same vein which I clearly said was missing the point.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis What I find most extraordinary about modern atheists is that they seem to believe (what a leap of faith this is) that anyone who believes in God must be closing his eyes to all evidence and common sense, as Dawkins asserts. What blind faith you atheists often possess! Do you really think that Polkinghorne, F Collins, A McGrath, A Plantinga, K Ward and so on, don't possess good reasons for adopting the beliefs they do? Its just ridiculous.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Ok well now you've given up on the actual arguments and just resorted to yet more argument from authority- yes yes many smart people have believed in God. Congratulations- it must be true! I'm slowly losing patience, I thought you actually had some genuine arguments.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis You misunderstand. I am not saying- and if you look at what I actually wrote you will discover this- that because intelligent people believe in God therefore God exists. I never said that, so please don't have the temerity to claim that I did. What I was reacting to is that "new atheist" absurdity that all religious believers are simply closing their eyes to the evidence, as though people like John Polkinghorne and Alvin Plantinga are just ignorant "faith heads". Its ridiculous
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Well I'm not sure who actually said that these people are ignorant faith heads. I certainly didn't and I don't recall any of the "4 horsemen" doing so. Although in response to this accusation, I'd actually point out the fact that this supposed "evidence" for god is agreed upon by hardly any of the scientific elite, certainly DOES act as an authority against it.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis Richard Dawkins, C Hitchens and Sam Harris have all spoken of religious people as if they were hopelessly stupid and woefully ignorant- not to mention childish and superstitious. It was Dawkins who coined the perjorative term "Faith-heads" as a particularly nasty comparison with "crackheads". The fact is that Dawkins and his ilk are enraged that Modernity's expectation of the immanent demise of religion has proved a false hope- if anything, religion is growing, not fading.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Well hitchens talked about everyone who disagreed with him like that- so I'm not sure you could read much into that. As for Dawkins, he does specifically say that his book is aimed at people who are already nearly atheists rather than the religious. So the fact that you're annoyed about it is exactly what he wanted- he didn't write the book for YOU. He's also been hugely successful- more than any of the others. Religion is only growing in poor and uneducated places!
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis It makes no difference for whom Richard Dawkins wrote his rather embarrassing book "The God Delusion". The fact that he belittles all religious people in his books, articles and debates bespeaks his failure to engage seriously with intelligent and thoughtful religious thinkers, such as Alvin Plantinga (who is considered to be one of the finest philosophers in the contemporary world). You cannot refute something by setting up strawmen arguments- something hes fond of.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis This sounds like Western imperialist arrogance to me. "Religion is only growing in poor and uneducated places", so people in places like South America are basically ignorant and need a healthy dose of Western style rationalism?! Please, give me a break!
Besides, even in Western countries religion is still a potent force, it is just that people are no longer expressing their religiosity by attending Church and other institutional forms of religion.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis Science in itself cannot answer the question "Does God exit?", so it is strictly irrelevant what the so-called scientific elite think about this particular question. I think we can both agree that science studies physical processes and as such, it cannot adjudicate on a metaphysical question. That is not to say that philosophers and theologians cannot use evidence from science to either bolster or undermine theism, but science qua science is restricted to the physical.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Well science can't currently answer the question of whether God exists. I don't see any reason to think that it couldn't in principle. I'd also add that theology and philosophy have failed to answer the question. If they had, we'd all be theists!!!
Well no you can't use the idea of evidence and claim it's theology or philosophy. Evidence is the domain of science. Saying something is "evidence" for God doesn't make it so. That's why we have the scientific method.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis Science can NEVER adjudicate on the question of God for the reasons I have already given. If science deals with physical processes of change within the universe, then how on earth is science going to be able to adjudicate on the question of a non-physical, non-temporal, non-spacio reality. Pls answer that question.
There are good reasons to believe in the existence of "that than which nothing greater can be thought". The problem you have is that your epistemolgy is scientism
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis In my experience most atheists are unwittingly logical positivists, which as you probably know is an outdated epistemology embraced by virtually no serious contemporary philosophers. Do you subscribe to this philosophy? It is sometimes referred to now as "Scientism"; I would describe Dawkins and his ilk as subscribing to this narrow and outdated epistemology.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
I don't think I've heard any of the atheists claim any kind of epistemology like that. Labelling someone with an epistemology is a classic way of trying to just show that they're somehow fallacious- it's such a see-through and boring trick. I don't think many scientists bother with such philosophical absolutes. The only epistemology I think "we" would agree to- is that the only reliable way to demonstrate a scientific claim is through empiricism.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesi This is a ridiculous comment! Everyone has either an explicit or implicit epistemology, that is how we make decisons regarding what to believe.
Interestingly, you then go on to admit to being an empiricist, which is itself an outmoded and rather narrow epistemology.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
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@GodTheHypothesis For me Sam Harris is the least serious of the well-known atheists writing today. Interestingly, the "New Atheists" have taken the moral high-ground in recent debates, but look at what Sam Harris has written: "Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live". What he means by dangerous beliefs are religious beliefs.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@bayreuth79
Erm no, in that quote he was referring to the religious extremists when they're in the position to cause great harm- like it being ethical to kill osama bin laden if we could've. You do get the silver medal in quote-mining though!
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis You obviously haven't read the quote in context; please get the book and do so.
Sam Harris also asks us to contemplate nucking the whole of the Middle East. Rather disturbing, I'd say.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@GodTheHypothesis There is evidence for the existence of God and it does find its way into journals (obviously philosophy of religion journals where such evidence belongs). If you are one of these rather naive people who have bought the mediocre atheism of the "Four Horsemen" then I suggest that at the very least you buttress your atheism with more sophisticated fare, such as Satre and Camus. Dawkins' "God Delusion" is a popular book that is easily refuted.
bayreuth79 1 week ago
@swandike
I think you need to really sit down and think about whether the idea of a God who sends people to hell simply for not-believing, is a concept worth taking seriously. If God really is like this, I don't wanna go anywhere near him anyway. It's what you'd expect from a hormonal teenager.
GodTheHypothesis 1 week ago
The blatant attack on Christianity is interesting to me. It is curious that when he speaks of the Bible verse, "In the beginning was the Word," that he makes no reference to the fact that beginning may be interpreted several different ways (beginning of humans as we are now), and in light of the context of the original audience for whom the Bible was being written (no science yet). Beginning can mean more than the beginning of the universe or of the world...Dennett inserts that meaning.
jabbathe22 7 months ago
@jabbathe22
"may be interpreted several different ways"
Which itself begs the question as to whether the way in which it was originally interpreted was correct.
Compare an 11-dimensional reality with "don't eat bread that has yeast in it" and tell me which one is less arbitrary?
666arzin 7 months ago
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Memes = bad metaphysics.
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MyTomServo 1 year ago
naturalpreservation and Gravelandart. :) You gentlemen had too much time a week ago. I hope since then you moved away from the computer and enjoyed life a bit.
Elorrra8787 1 year ago
In agreement with your earlier suggestion of culminating this exchange, I'll leave you with this: Be happy that the Judeo-Marxist media compltely supports your "blame whites" narrative and perpetuates this inaccurate narrative incessantly. But don't be surprised when the nascent rumblings of a white awakening blossoms and then cascades into a full blown movement whose collective will and goal will be the the eradication of those political/govt/media forces that orchestrated the current policy..
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart ..this long standing anti-white policy of genocide. When this time comes, and it will NP, you'll have alot to answer for with your empty nostrums and complicit contribution to this transparent policy of white genocide. Stay tuned.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Although I disagree with almost everything you say up until the last few comments your expressions hovered around the moderate(ish) but to talk of white genocide is:
(1) a tad extreme, and
(2) historically it's a little two-faced. You are cautioning me about a white genocide that may/not occur and yet you seem very reluctant to acknowledge the real genocides and industrial violence underpinning colonialism, imperialism and white instrumental power abuse.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
There is very little 'natural' throughout the social world of humankind. For sure there is a character and ways of lifestyle that are familiar but 'natural' in this sense only means 'common' and/or 'familiar'
Your argument falls back on 'naturalness' and the history of society is one where humans shape the direction (artificial selection) not nature/organic (natural selection).
If you want to preserve what you see as racial purity (or similar) you're going against the current.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
And when I say you are going against the current I mean you are going against the trends that are becoming normal and for some 'natural'. Nation states refer to 'natural' rates of inward migration but this is not anything 'organic' in a deeper sense but 'common'.
Again, this only makes the position you're arguing even more problematic and ropey. You seem to hark back recalling an age before technology and travel but these are cultural realities now Grave, peoples are on the move.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
There are tensions for sure across the world and the speed of inward migration is an issue especially during economic hard times but the lasting tension (which Marx was prophetic on) is that of rich/poor, no matter the colour.
It's entirely possible for those who want to preserve racial purity (if that's the phrase) in the future but it's living in sects and enclosed villages in order to avoid the current direction (the 'natural'/common) way of things in the current, Grave.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Humans establish their own 'natural' and this is seen perhaps most vividly in designing and enforcing their own laws. Humans make their own 'nature' (conditions and norms). Laws change with the cultural tides and you'd be going out on a limb saying that changing laws was rooted in biology and/or genes.
The movement you refer to if it was unable to influence law-making processes wouldn't be arguing from anything 'natural' just arguing from the marginal.
I'm always tuned in Grave.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
If indeed such a collective movement does emerge it will be borne out of experience from cultural learning, and the influence of changing socio-economic conditions. Such a movement would be a product of culture, not of biology and again at a slightly deeper level this would undermine the very intellectual foundation that racial preservation movements would/could have.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
Again, whites of lower S.E.S consistently outscore blacks from higher s.e.s. backgrounds on IQ tests. The Bell Curve, Dr. Glayde Whitney and many other sources have documented this categorically. Spearman's "G", although subjected to the worse type of hysterical hyperbole from pseudo-scientific crackpots hellbent on proving that "race is a social construct", has not been debunked or even approximately answered in a proper sociological riposte.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
You certainly won't here me saying that race is non-existent, but due to the weight from the interaction between mind and culture in relative concert 'ethnicity' is a much more effective measure of differences between peoples and cultures. The meanings that cultures generate (and the primary source of human behavioural software) moves around much faster than biology and operates to imperatives that humans collectively create and design themselves.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@fabs038 --fabs you do realise that you haven't proferred anything substantive to the dialogue don't you?
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gusher
Do yourself a favour babe and look back a few pages. My last comment on here was two months ago. Someone replies and it goes to my e-mail address and then I've responded.
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I get it that you tube is a major component in your life style and you trawl, troll and spam your way each day but don't hold everyone to your rather sad and shallow standards. Now, if you've quite finished. I'm trying to have a conversation while you're interrupting with your (sadly common on you tube) nothingness
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gusher
You're still stalking me, like I've said before I find this a subtle blend (genes don't blend) of flattery and icky all at the same time. Go away child, the adults are talking,
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
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TedDGPoulos 1 year ago
Dennett makes cladistic mistake! Once shaven, we can see that Dennett and Darwin are completely different taxa.
I don't think Dennett is analogizing 'competence without comprehension' with 'intention and free will' as some are thinking?
fatandslat 1 year ago
Thanks for sharing.
TonyBtheEG 2 years ago
He's asking people to give up not their potential for purposeful action but the dualism they imagine is a prerequisite for that potential to exist.
Mind-body dualism is no different than the dualism that was supposed necessary to give life to organic beings. There is no question that life is nothing more 'at it's root' than self sustained reactions of organic molecules. There is no reason to suspect that 'mind' is somehow more special than life itself.
sammcalpine 2 years ago 15
Very well put. Dennett is a master at using humor to convey complex ideas to laymen like me. But I agree- The 'mind' is nothing but the product of ordinary matter arrayed in complex formations in the brain.
2eelShmeal 2 years ago
the first few pictures Dennett shows on the screen make me laugh, especially the one with gorilla, haha, great lecturer with great sense of humor ~:D
lullabywheat 2 years ago 2
i love him !
IsraeliAdamRusso 2 years ago
Seems to me he once again invokes a quasi-computational theory of mind based to be in accordance with his overall theory of consciousness.
There is no effect and no cause, we construct these categories.
Dennett certainly is not giving up and neglecting his potential to purposefully bash teleology.
I just don't like this peacock's hubris, to show off how smart he is.
hyperseauton 2 years ago
@hyperseauton
I don't feel any sort of showing off when I watch this video. How smart he is is obvious and I'm sure he isn't going through any extra effort to prove it.
Galactu5 1 year ago
@hyperseauton
He's clearly not that smart. In 1995 he dogmatically asserted that culture MUST have a Darwinian origin and yet this is an awareness he hasn't been able to realise. Certainly not through the cut & paste pseudo-science of memetics, nor any other evolutionary approach to culture over the last 151 years, and counting.
There is no illusion of design in the social world of humankind, humans are intelligent designers, even Dawkins acknowledges this.
Dan's best days are behind him now
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation
Your point is erroneus, you are grasping at straws, and your little snide remarks do nothing.
GnomesAmok 1 year ago
@GnomesAmok
Gee, stunning insight indeed. You've said nothing there, nothing.
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We've had Dennett denying top down design for decades and here he now concedes it does exist. Moreover, he acknowledges now (and Dawkins is also a convert to this position) that humans are the only/first intelligent designers on the tree of life. With a tree of life of 100s of millions of species that's quite comparison for the enquiring mind.
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Or not in your case.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@GnomesAmok
Like I said Dennett's best days are behind him clearly. You may well like your popular science convenient, I prefer my science conclusive and over the last 151 years neo-Darwinism has consistently failed to crack culture. That might dent Dennett's neo-Darwinian pretension (and yours even), tough, big questions take time.
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He's still shaking the tambourine of memetics, the pseudo-science without a Journal, doesn't even have an on-line Journal. It shut down in 2005
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It's history
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
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Gravelandart 1 year ago
@GnomesAmok
So you can dismiss my remarks as snide but I'll out that down to someone who reverses Dennett and can't take on board the idea that what he is saying (especially on culture) is quite misplaced, and at times total garbage.
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Cuture is a relative process and the whole approach from memetics and Dawkins/Dennett's dogmatic brand of gene-centrism rooted in replication is a very, very poor basis with which to understand culture's relative, transforming, propulsive character.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
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@naturalpreservation
Grasping. At. Straws.
You fear science, don't even talk about science.
GnomesAmok 1 year ago
@GnomesAmok --no Gnomes, your point is ERRONEOUS. Learn how to spell, you liberal, trendy dirtbag before you denounce others.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Take your filth away from this board, Nazi, this is beyond your meager processes.
GnomesAmok 1 year ago
@GnomesAmok
Typical. Shouting your mouth off in some brief childish rant which says nothing.
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How could I take such a person seriously?
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation --that is all GNOMES does, he surfs Youtube looking to lambaste those he identifies as conservatives, "fascists" or "racists" and then he unleashes a cascade of vitriol against them. NaturalP--you and I may disagree on things but we present reasons, evidence, etc. and then draw conclusions therefrom. GNOMES m.o. consists of a sustained crusade against those the media taught him to have disdain for. In essence, he is the quintessential bigot because the people he denounces
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation ...are precisely the people that the media indoctrinated him to hate : "nazis", "fascists", "conservatives", etc. His politics are the politics of popularity and nothing else.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
@Gravelandart
After reading your views you couldn't really have a more different world view that me. You don't really get the power of culture, traditions and the weight of economic power.
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Slavery began in North America in 1619 and it's only been outlawed since 1865. If it took the same time to achieve balance than the total period of slavery then African Americans would achieve relative parity in 2111.
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I think you confuse consequences as causes.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation --no, I believe you are errant on your presumption of cultural prerequisites. Culture is always, in various forms, a derivative of race. Likewise, economic systems, convention and traditions are products of races and manifest themselves accordingly. Also, your notion of parity is flawed in the sense of it's inherent lack of an objective standard. What is "parity" for you iis conversely white slavery for others.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
The entire premise of your argument fails to comprehend the causative transition through the evolutionary proces which can be shorthanded to 'biology to belief'. A conversation is not 'held' in the biology, it is an ebb and flow between the people having the conversation. To understand culture is to understand the grand, society-level conversation people have 'in perpetual motion' and this facilitates the fluid and changing character of values and opinions.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
So it's worth it at this point in asking you if all conversations are 'held' in the genes? Do you believe that? It's a simple point that will give me a feel for where you are coming from?
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The position you are advocating is old school on several levels. Intellectually and acacdemically crude gene-centrism is the past and more interactive, systems and cybernetic ways of understanding of the human condition (rather than human nature) are the clear direction of thinking nowadays.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation -the forced imposition (integration is clearly forced)of blacks into white societies has had an adverse and negative effect upon them. And although IQ has shown marginal increase in Africa, the longstanding disparity in IQ which consists of on average 15-25 below white median, continues in spite of socio-economic status. Indeed, poor whites of lower s.e.s. consistently outscore blacks from upper middle class backgrounds.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Your position which is rooted in biology has real and lasting problems with social and cultural phenomena like zeitgeist, schools of thought, social attitudes and changing values because as I have said these are rooted in the over capacities we can date back 40,000 years with the dawn of culture and behaviourally modern humans, and that includes humans from all ethnic backgrounds.
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Another question, do you think that 'zeitgeist' emerges from cultural milieu or from biology?
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Furthermore, I don't think you give enough weight to the power of politics, politicians and special interests. People used to say similar things about women as you are saying about blacks and the evidence from around the world shows that where there is parity and equal opportunity, and I mean real equal opportunity differences soon even themselves out.
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You could refer to IQ differences but even on this measure they are rising in Africa as development and nutrition improve.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Science (and this includes physical, natural and social sciences) are without a general theory of culture. For sure it's not going to come from memetics, a crude cut & paste job from gene-centrism but the power of culture to influence directly on life chances is poorly understood.
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My view is that mind and culture in relative concert are more telling on people's thought and behaviour than biological factors and with your views on media you would agree to a point on this.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation --you need not adopt a minimalistic intrepretation of the profound and immutable paramount importance of genetics. If you incorporate the science of genetics into your preordained set of beliefs of course your chosen taxonomy will classify it as "crude". Your views on "mind and culture" are partially correct, you err when you artificially extract those from the synthesis of racial composition. Your preference to disregard the empirical reality of race is arbitrary.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
I do understand the function of genes as the recipe for the unfolding, embryological and developmental of organisms. However, you'd be going out on a limb saying that a recipe made a restaurant, it's a factor but clearly not the prime mover and certainly there are other movers in there.
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1950s and we've got the structure of DNA cracked, 1960s Bill Hamilton work on genes and behaviour, 1970s Dawkins (selfish gene) Wilson (sociobiology) all endorse zeitgeist and history Grave.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation --again NP, I believe you either miss or purposely circumvent my primary assertion: zeitgeist, convention, culture and historical processes all reflect the innate and intrinsic character of race , they are manifestations of racial/genetic derivation. They are inextricably bonded and attempts to isolate them using empiricist methodolgy immediately translates into a sort of arbitrary/artificial taxonomy.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Your comment about zeitgeist, culture and historical processes reflecting innate character remains just that, a comment. It's been 151 years (and counting) and culture remains a mystery for all the neo-Darwinian attempts to explain culture. Darwin wrote several times that natural selection (and it is you that is using human nature here) is much diminished in civilised societies and that is because culture/mind increasingly set the agenda and direction.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
I get it that you would like to talk (and convince) people that intelligence is like eye colour, height, etc but it's something much more general that emerges from interacting parts and this includes mind and culture. Added to that mix is a realisation that intelligence can only be displayed without a set of terms and conditions.
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The globalised world is broadening out those terms and conditions and non-whites are catching on whites across the board. Capacity not trait Grave.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation --again, you concoct assumptions about my position based on your own prejudices. I never said that the exchange within culture (which is always a derivative of race), doesn't benefit or impact evolutionary understanding of intelligence. Again, these things are part of the whole. You really ought to study National Socialism. I fear you inadvertently, partly through omission by a biased anti-German/National Socialist media, have not realised the import of the works ...
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation ...of Martin Heidegger, Alfred Rosenberg, Carl Schmitt and other writers who had a more realistic understanding of culture and it's concomitants than your myopic, doctrinaire notion of culture which attempts to extract race as a variable from the equation. You wish and hope that blacks are what you want them to be, you hope with all your heart, but reality and forensic evidence suggests otherwise.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation --ergo you are left with a tenuous, purely theoretical definition of culture which denies the prodigious mountain of inventions given to the world by Western Culture ( synonomous with the white race), and replaces that with a protracted narrative of "blacks are oppressed" and that their comparative lack of progress (by Western standards) is solely due to environment or of an imaginary persecution of whites.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart --"correction" : An imaginary persecution by whites.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Haeckel took the ideas (not genes and or biology) from Darwin's theory into Germany and Europe but was more aggressive in promoting them to account for society at large. Although Darwin referred to 'savages', 'barbarians' and 'half humans' in his anthropological 'The Descent of Man' he realised that natural selection was "much diminished" when it came to civilised societies, but others have pushed another agenda, the one you seem to be arguing.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
By point out A story I am not saying it is the ONLY story, and that is a mistake on your part. I come from Scotland and pound for pound it's as creative as any other nation in the history of inventions so I'm well aware of the creative power of all peoples. I was making the point (which is deeply historical) that your argument depends on a selective naturalism which has benefitted from taking other people's instrumental power. That is historical fact.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation -you are correct on one point however. Indeed, the recognition of the unequivocable importance of race is not popular in contemporary society. The Judeo-leftist media has efficaciously created an environment of hysteria and censorship concerning eugenic, racial/genetic research. Look at how Nobel prize winning Dr. James Watson, pioneer of the genome project itself, was treated a couple of years ago when he commented that Europeans should preserve their genetic inheritance.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
You mention Watson who is now discredited and I've mentioned Crick. After cracking the DNA code Crick moved on to human consciousness with the prevailing thinking it would be cracked within the next decade. We're still waiting.
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You seem to appreciate that technological media can influence and shape thought and behaviour, but technology is a dimension of phenomena that is not biological/genetic. Again, you flit between the artificial (human condition) world and the natural.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) point made 100s of years ago still stands and that is the different between natural power (which is the basis for your argument) and intstrumental power (which includes all the artificial, the verty stuff of the social world of humankind).
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You are moving back and forth as it suits but the supremacy (which I think you are arguing) of whites over blacks has been historically boosted by instrumental means, which makes a 'natural' argument pretty flimsy.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
What we've got now going on all around the world is an 'evening up' process as the third world develop more towards Western standards. Any dogma rooted on the idea that there are significant biological/genetic differences is undermined day by day by non-whites (Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, Africa, etc) making relative gains across a range of measures and indices as conditions improve.
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It's more a matter of human conditions and terms and this is culture and ethnicity not race
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
You have your view and I have mine. However, I'm on pretty solid ground and quite independent of this conversation (which is an emergent from, not 'in' anywhere) the globalising world proves my point as well as the direction.
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The comparative method (upon which science rests) and current trends throws up interesting possibilities for the future. Can you imagine a time when all IQ tests will be designed by Chinese and Indians? Would this be biased towards them? Time will tell.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
I'll finish now on this point, and I've got the weight of the last 151 years as a period of evidence here. The idea of one-to-one mapping in terms of phenotypes and human traits is a dogmatic one. Good science is conclusive, not convenient and to understand the human condition (if that is what you are interested in) demands that we understand 'capacity' rather than 'traits' and this is especially the case with the interactive emergence that is intelligence.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
I said I was going to finish on that point but the Hobbes one is worth repeating. The main reasons that whites (and Western cultures/peoples) appear to have more is because they have benefitted from:
1. instrumental power they have used to take/steal from other peoples, and
2. the relegating effect this had on other peoples/cultures.
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As those two change, the developing world makes gains on the Western world but political machinations and self-interest will try to impede that.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation - Isn't it convenient to your inflamed bias that you can reduce all of the inventions, creations, ingenuity given to the world by western culture and it's concomitant, the white race, to a debased and myopic claim that they have "taken" and "stolen" from others, presumably your favored non-white race, nubian Blacks.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
You are settling on a crude 'natural' argument from a position which has benefitted in great magnitude from 'instrumental' and/or artificial power. That artificial power has come in large part from nations what were victims of colonial and imperial expansion. In addition to that colonial and imperialism remains to this day with sections of Africa's West coast fishing lanes 'owned' by the European Union.
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You're trying to argue a 'natural' case from an artificially boosted one.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
From where you are it seems like bias, but the human mind 'seems' the world around it/us, it's not the ribsome reading off the DNA/RNA in a uniform manner, relativity is built-in. Although Hitler called it National Socialism once we go beyond the label we can see that it had almost nothing to do with socialism. How can anyone understand a system to be socialist when he/it openly attacked minorities to the point of extermination. Have you read Ernst Haeckel?
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
*correction*
Added to that mix is a realisation that intelligence can only be displayed WITHIN a set of terms and conditions.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation ..you see NP, what you fail to acknowledge is that you advocate a form of cultural hegemony, a sort of theory driven supremacism which denies the various races of this world to develop and cultivate their own standards and cultures independently. Yes, the world IS a big place, and there is room for all of us. And instead of continuing a policy of genocide of the white race through massive non-white immigration into white countries and dysgenic miscegenation, we should allow.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart ...the freedom and emancipation of all races so they can grow and survive in this world.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
These ideas took hold and shaped the thinking (and behaviour) to the point where an entire nation turned against what they perceived to be the race to blame for their problems (first world war reparations another conversation). There is argument here that the cultural change was some genetic and/or biological expression of who they were, it was cultural ideas taken from Darwin with a clear, although misguided ideology.
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It was not a biological manifestation Grave, but cultural
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
The observation that Taiwan has adopted a very American cultural lifestyle undermines your position still further Grave. By adopting the American lifestyle as their cultural model this goes against your argument that culture is (by some as yet unknown scientific process) a biological/genetic manifestation.
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If the human condition (the terms and conditions of being human) are in the culturally fluid meanings rather than bio/genes then 'race' becomes even more outmoded measure.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation -I'm glad you mentioned Taiwan, I've spent an extended period there. The fact that you mention it as proof of a cultural analogue is entirely laughable and reveals much better than I ever could the lack of depth and seriousness of your cultural propositions. The window dressing of the Taiwanese "american lifesyle" does not correspond remotely in muse, style, inflection, behavior, import, mores and overall spirit.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
I mentioned Taiwan but I could have referred to any 'Western' country which has adopted American values although there is always some form of syncretic fusion. In referring to American values at a deeper level of analysis we're talking about the values of consumption and on this I'm on quite safe ground. This idea that nations becoming democratic leads to consumer capitalism is not a biological phenomena but a cultural template assimilated across different places: globalisation.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Different countries have different histories, customs and traditions stored through collective expressed interest/awareness (not biologically) and the speed of change in the world around us in technology and travel all underline the fluidity and pervasiveness of cultural as a system of motion as different from nature as a system of motion acting through bodies.
The future is one that's full of colour and it will be shaped by the human condition as different from nature.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
I'm glad you replied on the Taiwan point and you're reading far too much into a short period of time. Global transport is opening up, the internet generation is still young and I'm more than confident (if we stick with Taiwan) that the i-generation will penetrate not just Taiwan but all Western nations over the next few decades. This says nothing about natural power and more about instrumental power, again this undermines the narrative you're trying to weave.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Slavery in 1865 in the US, Apartheid in South Africa overturned 20 years ago result in cultural changes that are not the manifestation of biological and/or genetic factors but emergences from new dynamic social and cultural states that nature provides no precedence for.
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So I'm not denying race, but it's a very weak awareness/measure compared to the much deeper one of cultural ideas and ethnicity.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
So if the numbers that I put out there are indicative of anything deeper then I've got 100 years to see how it plays out. America has a black President and in Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell we can see black influence at the top table and I'm sure that over the next 100 years (despite a lot of institutional barriers and special interests) the picture you are seeing and projecting is one that will dissolve away. The problem is much more have/have nots than whites/blacks Grave.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
"America has a black president"? Wasn't he of mixed race? Colin Powell too? For that matter, so was Dr. Charles Drew the mullato man often incorrectly credited being the first to improve blood storage technique. No, there is institutional racism against whites currently in affirrmative action, job quotas, college grants, job placement and in a million other areas. The old narrative that blacks are "oppressed" has proven to be a baseless canard. The real point is that multiracial societies...
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
These cultural and scientific developments were not in the biology, they emerged from human over capacity and that same capacity is influenced by the experience of now:
(1) Physicists disillusioned by how science was used in the Second World War moved into neighbouring fields of biochemistry.
(2) It's no coincidence that Francis Crick (you've already commented on Watson's shunned and discredited views) was a physicist.
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This culturally booster the bandwagon of DNA science Grave.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
You reference to mixed race endorses my argument of changing direction much more than it does anything you've got to say. Let's say that President Obama passes sweeping affirmative action legislation, that would be an example of someone directly influencing the national conversation through social organisation (not the genes) and again this would support my view over yours.
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Intellectually, historically, and the current all undermine your position.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Rhodesia declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1965 Grave, that's pretty recent. Britain, France, etc weren't imperial powers in Africa to help their economies but to steal at the institutional and near-industrial level and anyone who thinks that can be turned around (which back in Britain and France gallops on) in a matter if decades, should take a seat and a deep think for a while.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@naturalpreservation --....don't work.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
So I'm well aware of crucial genes are but if you take a deeper reading of the 20th Century the entire gene-centrism movement as 'proving' behaviour is looking more of it's time, and this only adds weight to my argument that understanding culture as like a conversation in perpetual motion, and not in biology, is much closer to the truth than trying to say it's all, or even mostly in the gene.
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To me it looks like your conversational point is increasingly historical Grave.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
Wherever you take the argument, as long as you are using historical examples to highlight trends I think you are on to a loser. Take Spearman and his 'g' and the idea of IQ tests since. The Raven Matrix was devised by John C. Raven who was not Spearman's biological relative but a student.
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A student who went to lectures (formal academic conversations) and was duely impressed. Again, this provides more proof of the power of conversation and culture on human thought and behaviour
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
How do you account for the Flynn Effect? Even Raven concedes that nutrition plays a part in intelligence and over the last few decades as Africa has developed so too have IQ points increased.
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We don't need to go back to 1865 to when slavery was outlawed in the US (and debt bondage existed for decades after) we can look at more recent non-biological, human societal injustices on Africans. This all undermines your position of fairness Grave at several levels.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
I'll skip on from the US in the 1950s which has society-level (not biological) administrative laws and customs against blacks. Blacks having to give up their seats on buses for whites was an entirely insitutionalised conversational point, which was changed through non-biological processes.
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We've just had the World Cup in South Africa, where apartheid (a culturally imposed system) was abolished only 20 years ago. We can look at the imperial handover as well in Africa Grave.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@Gravelandart
What you are saying isn't new, it's tired and it's been applied to other ethnic backgrounds. In 1947 (again these are very recent and real developments) India became independent from Britain. India is well on the way to becoming a superpower and that's all occured in the last 60+ years.
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China and Japan represent more non-whites who are increasingly shaping the form of the globalised world. I think wherever you look Grave the evidence is clear and the future looks colourful.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
@GnomesAmok --I have presented you a prodigious mountain of empirical and forensic evidence supporting my views repeatedly and everytime you have replied with invectives ("nazi"), ad hominems and then ultimately circumvention. Look at how others on here are trying to point out to you information and you respond to them in the same fashion. Are these the actions of an individual certain in his/her beliefs? You ought to think about that. Also, you know nothing about National Socialism so refrain.
Gravelandart 1 year ago
Most enjoyable.
RhondaH 2 years ago
I think he addresses the importance of purposeful action in his comments about McCready's explosion in biomass. The human species partly evolves ideas, is very good at sharing these, and is also very good at consciously (or purposefully) re-applying them.
kascally 2 years ago
Dennett is always a joy to listen to.
His reframing of the "design" argument by allowing the natural world to be designed and that design does not require a designer is probably going to prove more effective in debunking Paley and IDers than current approaches.
fliprim 2 years ago 7
@fliprim
I read what you have to say but this argument 'the illusion of design' and Dawkins' coinage of the term 'designoid (for this illusion of design) further reinforced by the blind watchmaker makes the comparison all the more clear when we hold nature alongside the artificial but no less real system of motion that is culture.
Humans design, there is no illusion there and have control of direction. No evolutionary theory general theory of culture in 151 years, because there can't be one.
naturalpreservation 1 year ago
wow
djindox3 2 years ago 3