Wright and Ruse on Creationism

My theory is highly conjectural...

I was out in the pasture behind the cattle barn this morning and I stepped in a big pile of highly conjectural.

It is unclear why an increase in extremism would shift the centre of gravity of a poll. If a big-ender becomes more extreme, then he's still a big-ender; similarly for little-enders. You don't suddenly get 6% of the population opening the other end of their eggs just because Gulliver is eating all the country's produce.

This explanation explains nothing without some kind of further elaboration, and ideally evidence. This site is called scienceblogs; please do some science.

The problem with Ruse is one of strategy; he has tried to exclude creationism from public schools by claiming it is religion when he should be claiming it no longer is the best fit to the evidence. If one looks at the issue historically, then 200 years ago, creationism was perfectly fine science.
That many atheists accept evolution and many christians do not has nothing to do with whether or not the evidence actually does support evolution and whether evolution should be taught in public schools.

As I pointed out on PZ's blog, Gallup's polling methodology changed a good bit between this result and the last one. They added Spanish speakers, started weighting for Hispanics, and greatly increased their cell phone quota. The difference could very easily be due to changes in their polling model. Of course, that doesn't tell us what the "true" answer is, but it would explain the sudden jump.

>"A few decades ago, Darwinians and creationists had a de facto nonaggression pact: Creationists would let Darwinians reign in biology class, and otherwise Darwinians would leave creationists alone."

Is this guy living in the real world?

I mean that statement alone is probably outlandish enough to disqualify him from being taken seriously on any issue ever again.

test

Ian Kemmish:

I advise you to read Robert Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians". It's a summary of his research into the psychology of people who prefer authority.

One of the many findings he reports on in that book is that not only are authoritarian people more likely to perceive the world as hostile or dangerous, people who do not normally show signs of having an authoritarian sort of personality will become more authoritarian if they feel threatened. This explains the sharp increase in support for social conservative policies seen after 9-11.

Similarly, a tanking economy makes people feel threatened by the prospect of unemployment and other such things, so they will tend to become more authoritarian, and in the modern USA, that generally means becoming a right-winger.

"he has tried to exclude creationism from public schools by claiming it is religion when he should be claiming it no longer is the best fit to the evidence"

Since it is both wrong AND religion, *either* rebuttal would do.

Why is "it's a religion" be wrong?

"It is unclear why an increase in extremism would shift the centre of gravity of a poll."

One side is extremely pro something and the other side extremely uninterested would be one way

The status quo is that religion doesn't go into state schools.

How can you get more extremely fine with the status quo?

More practically, if i may --- according to evolutionists, we're all just a collection of atoms. My question then is do our atoms control us or we we control our atoms? But, all we have to control our atoms are our atoms -------------- hey ------- So what's controlling our atoms?

Read up on "emergent properties" chas.

And your question is only hard because you don't (wish to) think clearly about it.

If I push you, you push me back (Newton's Law). But still you move, we don't end up stationary just because there are two equal forces operating in opposite directions.

Now, let me ask you a question: if something other than our atoms is operating on our atoms, how come it doesn't have any effects that can be seen? If it is not seen to have any effect on material objects, but our body is a material object, how can it affect our body?

Evidently you're not an evolutionist . They make it quite clear that there's no scientific evidence of anything beyond atoms. I stated quite clearly "according to evolutionist".

Do you have scientific evidence of something operating on atoms beyond other atoms, gravity, magnetic fields, light waves -----

Evolutionists clearly state otherwise.

A cat is not an atom.

And why are you asking me to prove what you've been saying?

Keeping it simple for you ----------

Back to my original question ---- do we control our atoms or do our atoms control us?

If you merely want to know what is controlling our atoms, its our atoms.

But its a pretty silly question, barely formed and ill-posed.

However as given the answer would be our atoms.

And the answer is 'yes'.

So you are your atoms. So your atoms determine what you can & cannot do.

When you decide when you want to get to the point, let us know.

Not another cop out.

It is a fact that atoms (located in evolutionists brains) identical to the atoms that first organized themselves into energy-producing, self replicating groups are trying to figure out how those first atoms organized themselves into energy-producing, self replicating groups.

I find it quite amazing ------

Atoms that first organized themselves into energy producing, self replicating groups are trying to figure out how they first organized themselves into energy producing, self replicating groups and study how they continue to reorganize themselves.

Another cop out, chas?

Now all you're doing is making statements about your summarisation of evolution and abiogenesis.

Nothing there asking a question, so how can I be avoiding a question?

What are you looking for? A pat on the head?

This thread appears to be a discussion of a poll about evolution vs creation. And i'm assuming this is a blog about evolution as it is called EvolutionBlog.

My point is that all these discussions & threads are being created by atoms(as is this comment). In fact the same atoms that first organized themselves into energy producing & self replicating groups and continue to reorganize themselves. Which seems fairly significant as I haven't seen this point made before.

So you've made the point.

But why did you complain: "Not another cop out." I can't "cop out" of a point you make.

Mind you, if you've moved on and just want to say it's amazing, you'll not get anything other than agreement.

Well, not by the anti-science types.

I don't have any problem with word games as long as they are from atoms.

Yet, atoms that first organized themselves into energy producing, self replicating groups are studying how atoms could have organized themselves into energy producing, self replicating groups.

And atoms that continue to reorganize themselves study how atoms continue to reorganize themselves, aka evolve.

1 control atom manipulates the rest to conform?

No?

self-appointed authoritarian? It was a musing friend.

And I was responding. Seems like it's only you allowed the freedom to post.

Rather Stalinist of you...

No it was the mock nature of your response that annoyed me. Pointless to argue though. It is my belief that the infinitesimal operates on the same principle(s) as the enormous...I'll get right to my hypothetical...is an atom conscious?

Apparently not only are you Stalinist in thinking you're the only one allowed to post here, you also get childishly annoyed when anyone else tries.

The answer to your question you pretend was mere musing is "No".

Apparently you don't like that answer.

A grown-up would have found out not all answers are the answer you'd like. Get over it.

There has never been a time when creationists were inclined to let evolution go unchallenged in public school curricula.

Dr. Rosenhouse, to be fair, I believe the creationists - in fact, evangelicals as a whole - were pretty quiet for a while following the Scopes Trial, which humiliated them (even though technically, they won). They receded into the margins for several decades until their leadership, responding to Nixon and the Republican Party's "Southern Strategy" (and, I think, largely as a reaction to Roe v. Wade) got them all riled up in the mid-to-late seventies. Of course, they were subsequently largely responsible for voting Reagan into office, and nothing has been the same since.

If only there were a way to force them back into those margins...

JDE wrote:
I believe the creationists – in fact, evangelicals as a whole – were pretty quiet for a while following the Scopes Trial, which humiliated them (even though technically, they won).

The creationists didn't just technically win, they won in fact and practice. It was still illegal to teach evolution in Tennessee, and by 1927, 17 states had introduced similar bills. Most of them were never implemented, not because creationists ran out of steam, but because they were unnecessary. By 1930 70% of public high schools omitted any reference to evolution, and most textbooks that had previously had sections on evolution and even pictures of Darwin were altered to omit them.

This lasted for the next 30 years, and as late as 1959 Harvard Professor of palaeontology George G. Simpson, in a lecture entitled "One Hundred Years Without Darwin are Enough", observed that "Most [US high school science textbooks] relegate evolution to a single section, preferably in the back of the book, which need not be assigned."

Stephen Jay Gould recalled, (in his book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes) how, as late as 1956, "In a year of biology, ... the teacher granted Mr. Darwin and his entire legacy only an apologetic two days at the end of a trying year." His textbook that year contained one chapter on evolution, on racial development of all things, at the very end of a 662 page book.

The popular idea that Scopes was a great victory for evolution is just not the way it played out on the ground.

The creationists didn’t just technically win, they won in fact and practice...

The popular idea that Scopes was a great victory for evolution is just not the way it played out on the ground.

Yes, that was my point.

As for the rest, I grew up in Massachusetts in the sixties and early seventies. There was never any problem with the teaching of evolution. Perhaps it was because it was a liberal state, but I never heard a word about creationism being promoted in public schools until the evangelicals began to seize power in the late seventies.

Jde, i believe tom is saying that creationists were silent at the time because they'd got what they wanted.

They never stopped demanding evolution not be taught in schools.

I guess I missed a lot growing up in, as I say, a liberal state. From what I've seen over the course of these past three decades, I could have done without it entirely.

Ah, the "stupid and proud of it" gambit.

Tell me, redneck, what universe are you reading this blog in? Because there's nothing on this thread that, talks about liberal states in this reality until you brought it up.

Tell me, do you know what 'non sequitor' means?

"biologists as Richard Dawkins"

Problem with Dawkins though is he actually believes in himself to the extent he has become a religion in its own right.

His book ' the god delusion' to be honest would make anyone relgious that read it, the argument is a school boy rant against the machine and is as believable as the bible!

He never is exposed to rational critique and behaves like some pope of medical science. This is unfortunate, he was quite an interesting anthropologist but he has moved into other spheres using theories that have got beyond him into woo land.

He is another vaccine believer that needs to go to India to see what has happened with Bill and melinda's polio vaccine fuck up and then report back.

Ah, the “stupid and proud of it” gambit.

Tell me, redneck, what universe are you reading this blog in? Because there’s nothing on this thread that, talks about liberal states in this reality until you brought it up.

Tell me, do you know what ‘non sequitor’ means?

You've completely misconstrued what I said. I was agreeing with you.

JDE, I wouldn't worry about it wow or blue wode is pathologically unable to grasp even simple concepts and just defaults to being very rude. Toys and prams spring to mind.

He willl start quoting the septic bible soon, dismissing anything he can't cope with using: Straw people, edgar Allen appeals, and other septic soundbites that have become a sort of knee jerk mantra response to any challenge.

comments awaiting moderation is another one, groups of them sit in huddles with nicotine patches trying to decide what to delete, quite sad really.

He is an armchair dipping stool scientist.

Chas, if the wow blue wode hasn't got an app for it it won't exist, even if it is eating his leg. He is not a rational thinker, it's a word game. Next he will start quoting pubmed and if it is not there it doesn't exist!

Bit like the bible really but online.

Maybe so, JDE, but this has naff all to do with liberal (either politically or sociologically) with liberal or liberalism. And it only manages to cause an extreme "us and them" mentality by those who identify as republican to ensure they see teaching creationism as a party-political issue.

PS bouquet, I would cut down on the crack, you're brain is already half-fried; are you yet another sock puppet of buckthetrend?

Some reflections from the Lord.

An atheist will go catch a big fish that will keep him in food for a week, whilst a religious man will die of starvation praying for a fish.

Rumor has it that God is writing the Dawkin's Delusion.
Since reading the God delusion God has become an atheist. Dawkins is terrified of roasting in Heaven.

Moses was perfectly justified in having a village full of Hittites killed as his people were desperately low on meat.

Lot and his missus were wetting themselves with fear when they did a bunk from Sodom and were thus in a state of hypersuggestability. When he turned around to check the missus he saw a pillar of salt and assumed that the Lord had turned her into it for looking back, whereas she had actually fallen down a hole. He didn't give a stuff really as she was no good in the cot.

Archeologists are intensifying the search in Israel for the missing eleventh commandment.

Here endeth the demented ravings of Paul the Blasphemer, favorite son of the Lord.

Jesus I love it the way you bastards put shit on each other. Is there anything I can to inflame the rift so you rip each other's jugulars out. Listen you mongrels, come and laugh at my jokes or I'll tear your intestines out.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he maketh me to lie down in pastures new. "Hey get your filthy paws off me you bastard."

There is not ONE single contradiction in the bible anywhere. Paul said on one hand "That which I would do I do not, and that which I would not do I do. Oh wretched man that I am who can rescue me from this body of death" Then later he says. "If any man is in Christ he is a new creature, behold old things pass away ALL things are become as new." Those are NOT contradictory. They are merely a reasonable juxtaposition between two apparently irreconcilable contradictions, for a catatonic schizophrenic.

There is no contradiction between God being one of infinite love and burning some deviant in Hell forever for playing with his pecker. After all YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED of the consequences if you do. Just 'cause God put high octane pecker juices into us, and made very succulent lovelies to make it stand up rock hard, sweat pouring down our brows doesn't mean we cant leave it alone. Ice cold baths every half hour, looking at horrifically deformed porn, electric shock, bromide, cyanide etc. Boxing gloves with razor wire on them when you go to bed. If these don't work then cut the bastard off and stick it in the blender so there's no chance of some bloody surgeon sewing it back on again. Remember, "It is better to be peckerless than burn." You don't need it up in Heaven after all as there's none of that hankey pankey up there. Wonder why they call it Heaven then?

The eleventh epistle of Paul the Blasphemer, beloved eunuch of the Lord.

science revealed today that wow is a massive poo jabber

I like Paul Hill

Ah, so someone who makes fun of god *and* atheists you like, right?

Or is it you like him burying any thread in crap?

GlaxoSmithKline pays $3 billion to settle fraud case

How about some medical biblical hypocrasy for a change wow, I see the naughty monks over at SKB have been shagging the nuns again, and at tax payers' expense.

Good job we have medical peer review to repent our natural hygiene sins!

So cos they can pay with our money the medix get away with it, just like the RC church who screw kids too, but not with vaccines. Lots of lost data there, bit like Roche losing all the Tamiflu data during the swine flu scamdemic, it goes on and on boys.

GLAXO SMITHKLINE PAYS $3 BILLION DOLLARS TO SETTLE FRAUD CASE
In what is considered the largest case of healthcare fraud in U.S. history, the pharmaceutical giant claimed non-approved uses for various drugs and also failed to give the FDA safety fata about the diabetes drug Avandia. Eventually, GSK agreed to plead guilty to three misdemeanor criminal counts. NBC’s Pete Williams reports.

A certain man said unto his soul, SOUL tonight we will drink, eat and be merry. He had a few bottles of champers on ice, made a heap of horses doovers, rung the whorehouse for a hooka to to come around, stipulates no rubbish. He and the pecker and getting all excited.
Doorbell rings. He rushes to open the door. Wowee, what a smasher. Look at them boobs. Pecker goes berserk.. 'Come IN' he says in a really slimy voice.
SUDDENLY he's having difficulty breathing, clutches his chest as dreadful pain radiates out. 'THOU FOOL FOR TONIGHT THY SOUL IS REQUIRED OF THEE'.
Drops dead onto carpet. What a bloody killjoy is our Lord.

Moses and Josh have a bit of a problem. The mob are getting very unruly, thieving off each other, killing and eating each other he Manna doesn't arrive. Then there are the orgies, heaps of sodomy, buggery with the sheep and camels and whatever else they can catch.. New and highly exotic STD's are spreading like fire and they are afraid that they'll end up covered in far worse sores than Lot could ever manage, peckers falling off even. Gotta put a stop to all this somehow.

Then Moses hatches a plan. Some really vicious laws on a coupla rocks, that look real bona fide. Now Josh is a stone mason which is very handy. So they wait till Mt Sinai is blowing it's stack, great clouds of smoke billowing nout of it, brimstone pouring out of it. Since Moses did his thing at the Red sea he knows the importance of effects.

So when the time is right Him and Josh whip up into the mountain, lot's of lightening dodging brimstone. Josh has his lump hammer and chisels. They get to a spot where they are out of sight and Josh finds a coupla lumps of rock and dresses them up. However, he forgot to bring his chisels and can't sharpen the chisels, but he presses on. He shows the tablets to Moses who says, oh shit, they're a bit ordinary aren't they. How are we gonna con the mob with these crappy commandments.

Josh apologizes but reckons they might do. So they reckon they'll give it a bash. So down the mountain they go onto to be greated with the wildest orgy ever.

Moses blows his stack and throws the tablets down and smashes them to smithereens. Good excuse to get rid of them go back up into the mountain and do a decent fresh set after Josh rushes back to his tent and grabs his files. If you wanna know the rest of the story go watch the movie. Now you know where your rotten constitutions comes from. Moses and his brother Nathan ruled with a rod of iron. A one party state. Executed all those immoral bastards that had STD's just so THEY didn't get a load.
Wasn't that a lovely story, as it's NEVER been told before and it's completely kosha.

Paul the Lawmaking Blasphemer beloved of noone.

Could the above two be removes as they spontaneously posted by some mysterious force.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
Moses and Josh have a bit of a problem. The mob are getting very unruly, thieving off each other, killing and eating each other when the Manna doesn’t arrive. Then there are the orgies, heaps of sodomy, buggery with the sheep and camels and whatever else they can catch.. New and highly exotic STD’s are spreading like fire and they are afraid that they’ll end up covered in far worse sores than Lot could ever manage, peckers falling off even. Gotta put a stop to all this somehow.

Then Moses hatches a plan. Some really vicious laws on a coupla rocks, that look real bona fide. Now Josh is a stone mason which is very handy. So they wait till Mt Sinai is blowing it’s stack, great clouds of smoke billowing out of it, brimstone pouring out of it. Since Moses did his thing at the Red sea he knows the importance of effects.
So when the time is right He and Josh whip up into the mountain, lot’s of lightening dodging brimstone. Josh has his lump hammer and chisels. They get to a spot where they are out of sight and Josh finds a coupla lumps of rock and dresses them up. However, he forgot to bring his files and can’t sharpen the chisels, but he presses on. He shows the tablets to Moses who says, 'Oh shit, they’re a bit ordinary aren’t they. How are we gonna con the mob with these crappy commandments.'.

Josh apologises but reckons they just might do. So they reckon they’ll give it a bash. So down the mountain they go only to be greeted with the wildest orgy ever. Moses blows his stack and throws the tablets down and smashes them to smithereens. Good excuse to get rid of them go back up into the mountain and do a decent fresh set after Josh rushes back to his tent and grabs his files. If you wanna know the rest of the story go watch the movie. Now you know where your rotten constitutions comes from. Moses and his brother Nathan ruled with a rod of iron. A one party state. Executed all those immoral bastards that had STD’s just so THEY didn’t get a load.

Wasn’t that a lovely story, as it’s NEVER been told before and it’s completely kosha.
Paul the Lawmaking Blasphemer beloved of noone

and low the atheist looked back on his life and wondered for a fraction of a second what it was all about, Lord Dorkins tells us we all came from a big bang...................bang he drops dead and no one gives a toss.

People need to relax and learn to take differing opinions as simply that. In the end, everything is everything. Whethere Atheist, Creationist, Satanist, Scientologist whatever; there are still may gaps in what you call your conclusions...All i know is that if everyone helped everyone no one would need to engage in a misplaced bout for self-preservation. We're all imperfect and all wrong. Once we recognise that, we'll all be right!

Why?

You can have a wrong conclusion all you want, but it neve, no matter how many times you say it, right.

Creationism is wrong by any possible measure of fact.

So is GMO, no scientist is qualified enough to second guess nature wow, you can remarket it as many times as you like.

If Gates is involved it's a guarenteed disaster area, look at the latest balls up over Polio vaccination in India.

"So is GMO"

What on earth are you on about?

People can conclude there are GMOs and the conclusions are correct.

People can conclude that creationism exists and the conclusions are wrong.

"People can conclude there are GMOs and the conclusions are correct."

Uhh.wow, I thought a scientist didn't assume that all conclusions must be correct, that's a religious contention is it not?

You're Buckthetrend again, aren't you.

So the conclusion you exist is not necessarily correct, bucker?

Why the Hell don't you guys all loosen up a.bit. Too serious, pedantic even. Slag each other with tongue in cheek. More entertaining. A tip for atheists. Be really friendly when talking about Noah's Ark. Be open with them to the possibility of there having been one. Then slowly discuss the logistics, ie a 5,000 ft high tree for the keel of the million ton Ark in order to put two of every animacule on Earth in it. A 100 ft bar chain saw to cut it down. A huge forest for all of the wood. 10,000 slaves to build it. Then there is getting it into the water without a thousand bulldozers.
Then there is the 10,000 boats needed to pick up all of these animacules, crews, navigation gear etc. Once at the various countries, port facilities will have to be built to load them on. Roads will have to be constructed, thousands of miles of them.
All this will take at least 50 years by which time the Ark will have rotted away and all of the animals will be dead. The Christian will be going along with all this, agreeing with the problems and the absurdity of it.
THEN SUDDENLY he will realize that he is blaspheming by doubting the Bible. But it will be too late for him because once reason enters one's head it is impossible to get rid off it. He'll be buggered, between a rock and a hard place, on the slippery slope into reason or Hell. Next, tips for Christians.

We're plenty loose.

We don't, however, have loose screws.

Your postings have been pointless drivel and there's absolutely nothing of humour in them, only annoyance.

Does anyone think that James Randi looks like God, apparently his interest in children puts him on a par with Roman Catholic priests, maybe there is something in it?

Hey Paul
Be kind when dicussing the big bang with septics. Then point out the logic, man with white beard, fake identity, underaged same sex lover, conferences called TAM with no women to speak of present.

Stones and glass houses ring a bell?

Apparently the ORAC went to the TAM, do you think he's a player too?

Optimus = buckthetrend

Evolution is real, but so is the soul. A scientist is open to the idea of extra dimensions, but not open to concepts of ethereal realms. You're all correct, but incorrect in your arrangement of the points of fact. Look it like a dot-to-dot of sorts. The human mind should have evolved to a point where it can look at the broader picture, rather than clinging to one dot. The picture is incomplete. I scientist can never disclose anything without proving absolutely the subject's disclosure one way or the other. Religious people must stop falling back on the cop-out 'thats where faith comes into it'. How can one expect to measure the infinite with tools of the finite, and how can one even expect to recognise something profound with a mundane outlook? Its obvious there is a marvelous universal design here. Things are precise. The odds of existing as a human being are so remote its a wonder i'm even writing this and that you're reading it. The scientific community is afraid to admit their intuitive feelings in terms of the spiritual as they feel it will reflect negatively upon their collective and individual intelligences. Its not as if scientists havent been astute enough to stand by unprovable theories in the past to be correct in the end. Gallileo comes to mind. Religious folk fear that adopting new information into their dogma will corrupt the fundamentals of their teachings. The individual fears he/she will be labelled a heretic by his/her community and then exiled.

Fear is the preventative to change. Change is progress. Change is evolution.

Mekke, who gives a toss. When we see scientists trying to tell us to believe in vaccination cos Bill and Melinda have shares in the drugs and priests telling us that theres is the only way, believe in big bang or the bible, there isn't a lot of difference.

Most of the drivel written here is dogmatic septiscism, just look at the picture of optimus, sort of sums it up really, loads of computer nerds who think if it's on google it must be true.

I wish the world we lived in abolished capital gain and allowed everybody to have whatever they needed (and wanted, within reason), where medical care was free and proper advancement funded (and i mean stem cell therapy as a fundamental in medicine), where everyone receives an education (one that reflects truths without bias) if they want one, where nature and technology are equilibrius in their symbiote circle, where space exploration is the utmost in endeavour...the sciences are right before us...we can live forever, heal the sick, develop anything we desire...all for the benefit of human kind, and the earth as a whole...i dont know why we aren't doing this???

We're not doing this because since the 80's, neocon dogma (typified by Ayn Rand and the libertarian screed) have insisted that the only reason why people get rich is because they deserve it.

The GOP picked up on this bigtime in the past 20 years and have made it basically the new-age feudalitiy: They are rich and powerful because God made them do this.

And, since science doesn't leave any room for God having any activity on this world AT ALL, they have had to become anti-science.

To woo the religious, they have to pander to several things not pertinent to their goals such as banning stem cell research and birth control/abortions (which would otherwise be profit centers for the corporations), but they gain far more than they've lost: a base that only need a few dogwhistle phrases to come to order and shout down any discontent.

And since education for all means that there is less belief and more skepticism and less belief in God, they have had to come down on education.

For the masses, anyway.

That's why we aren't doing it.

take over the asylum

lol

Read 'the god delusion' by Dawkins, I have never been particularly religious at all but reading this book made me consider that religion had more to offer than Dawkinism. His theories of why and where are no different really than creationism of a sort so the book kind of backfired.

I am very annoyed that the bloody book made me consider creationism when previously I had no issue with not being interested. That is a big problem with the science gurus, they can't actually see that they have a belief system too, sometimes that leads them to supporting stupid ideas like vaccination and then corrupting all the research to support their idea of reality, insert RC or Islam here and you get the same result.

Of course then all they have to do is 'quote' the pubmed for the ultimate truth, sanctioned by the holy CDC or NIH, a law unto its own and all will be revealed.

Wode, you're merely pretending. You never were anything other than a godbotherer and you've never read the god delusion.

God is currently writing the 'Dawkin's Delusion' whilst Dawkins is rumored to have become terrified of roasting in Heaven. I am not one bit religious but agree that Dawkin's is stark raving bonkers in his attempts to explain the origin of life on Earth.

In his desperation to distance himself as far as he can on the opposite pole to Christian creationism he goes to the absurd extreme of everything being a result total accidents. His basic problem seems to be that for a living cell to come into being it needs very complex machinery but needs a membrane to house that machinery, but can't have the membrane without the machinery.

Some prebiotic chemists postulate oil droplets to house all this stuff as it evolves but far too simplistic. So Dawkins comes up with an analogy of a Universe full of monkeys tapping away randomly on protein coding machines. Given enough time they will come up with the most complex of all proteins, eg the tumor repressor p53. From there it goes on to a whole cell just popping into existence one day when enough chemicals in the primordial soup just happen to coincide so all of the bits and pieces of a simple bacteria suddenly assemble themselves from no prior beginning, ie no evolutionary stages prior to that. Enough time times enough chemicals and there it is, bang. That's all he can come up with in his zeal to make everything as accidental as possible. From that point to us humans it becomes increasingly ludicrous.

There still has to be a variety of basic organic building blocks formed in the very reducing primordial atmosphere, nucleic acids and primitive amino acids which fall to earth in rain, for this to happen. The Miller-Urey experiments, which replicates this atmosphere, produced such building blocks. But the jump from there to even the most primitive cell is impossibly huge. It needs a DNA genome, genome replicating machinery, machinery to transcribe the genome into an RNA template, translation machinery to assemble a protein using the template. Enzymes to make the fatty acids and proteins to assemble into the membrane to house all of this machinery as it cant just float around in the soup putting itself together. Chicken and egg needed SIMULTANEOUSLY, sort of accidental Creationism. Dawkinism on one pole and neo-Creationism on the other. You can't have one without the other.

paul is stark raving bonkers.

this kind of invalidates any possibility for accuracy in his statements.

"There still has to be a variety of basic organic building blocks formed in the very reducing primordial atmosphere"

You mean like ammonia et al, which are found on cometary bodies, paul?

You mean building blocks like you get when you have the likely composition of the early earth's atmosphere and, as likely was happening, lightning sparks?

"But the jump from there to even the most primitive cell is impossibly huge."

And the time taken from those building blocs was impossibly huge. You try thinking of a period even one million years long. Impossibly huge.

The problem is you're a tiny little man and you think that all you know is all there is to know.

"It needs a DNA genome"

Nope, the earliest viably defined life was likely RNA based. And those aren't the only ones possible, but the ones we have now ate or starved out all the non-DNA ones.

"genome replicating machinery"

Rather like saying "To fall down, rocks need a falling-down-mechanism".

Just because you personally are clueless on the subject (amongst ever other subject) doesn't mean your lack of knowledge is universal.

"Chicken and egg needed SIMULTANEOUSLY"

Wrong.

Define what it is to be "a chicken". The first chicken would have hatched by definition from a chicken egg. The layer of that egg was a proto-Chicken, not a chicken, since it was only the mutation of their child that defined the new chicken type.

"to house all of this machinery as it cant just float around in the soup putting itself together"

There are still very many organisms that don't need that.

Looks like you have touched on a nerve Paul, like questioning the bible. I read the 'god delusion' and it is no different to some rant by a religious nutpot.

Wow trying to tell us what came first is LOL. Just remember scientists came up with vaccination, if that isn't a stupid idea I don't know what it really.

It only survives because of fraudulent artificial constructs like medical peer review, in reality it's bullshit.

wowisme,
Thanks for the pat on the head. I haven't read the God delusion but I've read lots of other of Dawkin's books including the 'Selfish Gene' in which a sequence of DNA bases somehow is alive, has a mind of its own, genes slogging it out with each other during meiosis to position themselves so that they become expressed some time down the track during embryogenesis. God is dead, enter the gene as his replacement. Adam and Eve stuff. He hates anyone who disagrees with him, even Jay Gould who was a fellow Darwinist, because Gould a palaeontologist, introduced punctuated equilibrium, an explosion of evolution after an asteroid impact. Not possible says Dawkins the steady stater. Recant or I'll eat you alive. Thing is Gould could see it with his own eyes in the bloody strata, in the band of iridium.

wow,
You have just the disposition needed for the advancement of science, a more robust form of tongue in bum--sorry, cheek. Disparaging language is just the shot for enhancing your own credibility. I was just drawing your fire and knew you'd bite.

Don't trot out viruses as proto cells as they are not. Viruses need a cell to make them. I've read everything I could on pre biotic chemistry, Fox, Asimov etc. and they all start with one thing first, RNA, DNA or Protein. Fox talks about clay crystals as a primary template. Then one day about 30 years ago I read about an experiment in Scientific American that got me all fired up. It was about the proteins involved in the replication of, from memory, double strand viral RNA, plus the double strand, both being placed in a test tube containing a fluid simulating that of a cell cytoplasm. That's all. Nothing else.

Over time the RNA gradually elongated and became increasingly complex. I don't remember about what happened to the protein, whether it became more complex. This was before the retroviruses were discovered and reverse transcription jumping genes which would need DNA bases and the enzyme system reverse transcriptase as found in HIV.

What hit me was that here was evolution in a test tube involving TWO, not one, precursors. YIN and YANG. The very beginning of life, the spark, RNA wedded to Protein, a TWO way flow of information. SEMANTIC information from RNA to protein and the information of SHAPE going the other way. Can't have one without the other.

From here I built a model of RNA bases and primitive amino acids formed in the atmosphere raining down into rock pools along the ocean shore. No thermal vents as there is no dynamic equilibrium with a thermal vent model. This model needs day and night cycles, endothermic reactions, (catabolism) from the suns UV radiation, warming of the pool which contains a range of ions, sodium calcium, potassium, magnesium, chloride, sulphate etc. Dilution during rain, increased concentration with evaporation. Change, rhythm regular and irregular.

The primitive amino acids polymerise to peptides at night, (anabolism), likewise the RNA bases to polymers, chains. During the day these chains break at linkages vulnerable to UV radiation, then repolymerise to different combinations at night releasing the energy input by the Sun to the breakage point into the colder water, exothermic reactions. The two chains then begin to interact with each other. The peptides acting as enzyme to break the RNA chains and reassemble the fragments into new combinations, the new RNA chains acting as template for the assembly of new peptides, ie new enzymes. This YIN YANG interaction is vastly less complex than that in a cell but life has to begin somewhere.

However, the pair have no way of archiving their experiments in a stable form. From which they can build increasingly complex machinery. Enter DNA. Watson and Crick, being incredibly dogmatic, just like Dawkins, gave us the CENTRAL dogma. DNA begets RNA, begets Protein. Immutable, trumpets sound. Nobel prizes given, except to x ray crystalographer Rosalind Franklin who was dead from ovarian cancer.

Then shock horror, the retroviruses were discovered in which RNA begets DNA and the CENTRAL dogma was smashed. Watson and Crick tried to put a brave face on it saying what they really meant was bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. So in the beginning REVERSE transcription, much simpler than forward transcription which comes next. Without the so called parasites of the cell, the reverse transcription jumping genes or retrotransposons, disruptive rubbish according to Dawkins, WE WOULD NOT BE HERE. Just one fragment of Dawkin's insanity.

"I read the ‘god delusion’ and it is no different to some rant by a religious nutpot."

However, since you're a religious nutpot (hence your appropriation of my moniker), this hardly bears any weight in evidence.

"Without the so called parasites of the cell, the reverse transcription jumping genes or retrotransposons, disruptive rubbish according to Dawkins, WE WOULD NOT BE HERE"

Just as well we do have them, then.

Still no need for a God.

"Don’t trot out viruses as proto cells as they are not. Viruses need a cell to make them."

But they're alive, and simpler than celled organisms and don't *require* cells to make them. They just co-opt them to make themselves work more efficiently.

Viruses don't shit, don't eat, don't reproduce, don't assimilate or secrete by all other definitions they are not alive. They need a cell to even move.

God does not exist and nor does Dawkins beyond his own lunchtime, I heard he was quite a good anthropologist but as far as evolution is concerned he is just another septic dork.

Wow,
I'm not talking about God. I am a Larmarkist and my stuff doesn't need God OR Dawkins who hates Larmarkists more than creationists because we are gaining traction, especially in epigenetics. Viruses are NOT living things at all. They are simply some nucleic acid RNA or DNA, single or double strand, inside a protein capsid, some like HIV having a fatty acid coat and enzymes inside the capsid with the nucleic acid.. They only co-opt cells if you are a Dawkinists. They CANNOT be made outside cells. They are made by cells as a way of transmitting genes and are only pathogens in stuffed up Nature.

"I’m not talking about God."

Potayto potahto.

And I note you have the christian predlilition of aquiring martyrdom and seeing persection everywhere.

"They are simply some nucleic acid RNA or DNA, single or double strand, inside a protein capsid..."

And is there anything inherently forbidding them to gain the attributes you have decided to require living things to have?

If not, then your demarcation has a progression across it.

"They only co-opt cells if you are a Dawkinists"

No, they co-opt cells for christians and lamarkians (of which you are not one, merely playing one on a blogroll).

"They CANNOT be made outside cells"

They cannot REPRODUCE outside cells.

But if there were something that could metabolise, say, UV light directly, the virus could parasitise off that host.

And if that parasitisation is of genetic benefit of the host, that host will eventually mutate to closer and closer reliance on that virus and include its genetic code in itself.

Bacteria like.

"Viruses don’t shit, don’t eat, don’t reproduce, don’t assimilate or secrete by all other definitions they are not alive."

True. By those definitions.

But they show that an organism can reproduce without coming as a complete package.

An organism that lacks a cell like our living cells but IS alive by some of those definitions.

And that shows that you don't need a package of RNA/DNA and cell nucleus to create lviing organisms.

And the single celled organisms come with biplasts that show that you don't need an alimentary canal to be living.

Ants breathe through holes in their skin by exchanging molecules by diffusion. showing you don't need working respiration to be a lviing thing.

Bacteria, for example, don't shit.

Paul, I wouldn't take the wow too seriously, he is one of those new aged septics that like to think just because they can google it, it exists.

40 years of study by the cold and flu unit failed to prove the contagen theory of flu, the idea only exists in the mythology of pubmedists and medical peer reviewists.

Wow is a believer in prophets Bill and Melinda, again more computer geeky straight liners trying to tell us how it all should be.

Ants don't breathe you twat, the ratio of surface area to volume allows gaseous exchange, without which they would die.

Next you will be telling us that GMO is just like cross pollinating apples, sorry but sperm whales fucking strawberries to make them frost proof is not the same thing.

Good job most of europe saw throught 'Monsantologic', not the same as Bill and Melinda logic but on the same kind of new age septic lines.

Remember the only viruses that behave like the modern medical myth are computer viruses, there is still this little corner of the ether that believes in 'doctors know best', it will take time to wear it down but eventually they will reach witch doctor status and be gone.

Hey, it's buckthetrend under yet another name again!

wow,
You are so far off beam it's appalling. I will deal with your absurdities tonight my time. Meantime go and have a creosote enema mate

Paul all we have to remind ourselves is that the woomeister and friends are some of the only people who not only believe in vaccination they think that all artificial psuedo immunity stimulation is a miracle. They ignore the increasing pathogenicy that this shortsighted madness brings and think they can just apply the technical fix, or bend pubmed into line!

They are only capable of quoting 'research' that supports their view, they know nothing of real life. Bit like linking gastronomy to McDonalds, it's all they have.

Have you seen what has been happening with the Polio vaccine disaster in India, no impact on Polio only the name has been changed if you get flaccid paralysis after the vaccine!

Assholes like wow are keeping this woo going, we have a duty to rub his face in it.

Shall we just let you loons and sockpuppets have your little self-love-fest? You're not here for any rational process to occur.

blue cheese'
No haven't seen about the Polio virus. Any link. Wow is probably working for a drug company. This is their method which is extremely transparent.

VIRUSES
'Nature red in tooth and claw' Tennyson. Something attributed to Darwin. Competition is everything and altruism doesn't exist in the wild. Yet apparently it was Darwin's Bulldog Huxley that put all the emphasis on competition whilst Darwin not only stressed altruism a lot he also went back to Larmark before he died. If you are obsessed about competition to the point of blind dogma like Dawkins you will see it every where, including where it is absolutely impossible.

If a virus is a living thing, as both neo-Darwinists AND Dawkinist claim it is, then it competing with it's host might be a valid claim. What is a living thing? It must at least have metabolism, ie the ability to produce energy from some sort of fuel. This will enable it to have motility ie. get around. A virus has neither, no organelles, nothing, just nucleic acid and enzymes in the case of retroviruses. It is simply a message in an envelope with an address printed on it.

Yet the language of the neo Darwinist Dawkinist is that the virus sneaks up on the cell disguised as something else to fool the cell it wishes to invade and thus tricks the cell into letting it in. The cell unwittingly takes the virus in, then, realising to it's horror that it is a virus, turns on its defences, such as interferon, to block replication or to try to kill it. Once in the cell the virus takes over the machinery of the cell to reproduce itself to the detriment of the cell if the viral offspring have to lyse the cell to escape.

There is a more rational way of putting it. The virus bumps into the cell and matching receptors on both link up, the cell takes the virus in, used its machinery to make replicas of the virus from its template, it's nucleic acid. Things like interferon are used by the cell to MODULATE the expression of the virus.

What if the basic paradigm is upside down and viruses in virgin wilderness, which unfortunately no longer exists, are not pathogens at all but the means of transferring genes horizontally, as well as being a toolbox of viruses, HIV and some cancer viruses such as RAS included, whose role is inducing modifications in the way cells behave.

Viruses in the concrete jungle, which is the very antithesis of wilderness, are analogous to weeds, and like weeds have also undergone a range of mutations that make them more infectious and virulent in the transition from wilderness to the concrete jungle as well as infecting a larger range of species.

In this model a variety of viruses in wilderness form collaborative, synergistic relationships just as plants do in wilderness. There would be no such thing as single viral infections as with plagues. Same with plants, no one plant, as a weed, taking over and destroying everything else.

Nobbly,

'There is still this little corner of the ether that believes in ‘doctors know best’, it will take time to wear it down but eventually they will reach witch doctor status and be gone'.

Whadyya mean go DOWN to witch doctor status? Gimme a witch doctor ANY day. If Bill and Melina paid tax and sold their software for a tenth of the price then they wouldn't have to give 'blood money' away so they don't get their throats cut when Wall St collapses. All the mega rich are running scared now.

CHARLIE.
How many Darwinists know that, in his last book, Darwin does a complete about face and becomes more Larmarkist than Larmark. How many know that he suffered incredible debilitating chronic depression for a number of reasons. Apparently he'd often sit down in front of his typewriter for a long period just staring into space, then being unable to work he'd go to bed. Being rich he could afford to have a couple of nursed look after him His disciples, terrified of his (and their) status being undermined, reckoned that he was bitten by some sort of beetle in the jungles of South America. What the hell has depression got to do with credibility? There are plenty of other reasons for him being depressed.
1 He was a backslidden Christian (C of E Priest) who was doubtless deeply troubled by this as it is regarded as the unpardonable sin (a dog turned unto it's own vomit is one of the more tolerant descriptions) by many Christians for the backslider. I used to be one of these. 2 He was also a backslidden Larmarkist which was the orthodoxy at the time.
3 He may have plagiarised some of Wallace's stuff, if not he took ALL the glory for their theory. Wallace was not a 'gentleman' so there was a class element to this. 4 Darwin was married to his own cousin, yet knew from breeding pigeons that inbreeding produced 'monsters' (his term), a fact that was a foundation stone of his theory. There are sanctions against inbreeding in the Bible and if any of his children suffered congenital disorders he would have blamed himself. 5 His wife was a devout Christian who must have pleaded with him constantly to give up his atheist ideas (lest it jeopardised her own salvation and was the cause of the death of some of their children.) 6 Wilberforce, the captain of the Beagle committed suicide by cutting his throat. He had taken Darwin on board the Beagle for companionship, because he was afraid of his own suicidal depression as his own Uncle had committed suicide by cutting his throat. 7 Is it possible that he and Darwin had a homosexual relationship on board, and that was one major reason why he committed suicide and yet one more reason for Darwin's depression?
8 Queen Victoria and Conservatives in Britain backed Darwinism because it provided a justification, 'survival of the fittest', for deporting 'criminals' to the colonies, years of hard labour and whippings, often for misdemeanours, fearing they would go to the Fabian Socialist for support. Fabian Socialists, as their name suggests, believed in coming to power via the ballot box. However they would have been seen by Conservatives as snakes in lizards clothing (a brand new cliché.) They were Larmarkists in that they believed that if people were taught to behave themselves this trait would be passed on to their kids Lenin and Stalin picked up on this idea but used a slightly more coercive method of trying to get it to work. As far as I know the socialists in France supported Larmark during the Revolution for the same reason. Were shiploads of guillotines secretly steaming up the Thames?
Darwin would have feared the guillotine as much as Victoria as he was a member of the bourgeoisie at a time of MASSIVE inequality. How many people know about this great political power struggle going on between French Larmarkism and British Darwinism? Later we find the Austrian Larmarkist Paul Kammerer viciously attacked by British Darwinists by exposing his marital infidelity to discredit him. So shamed was Kammerer over this that he, a Catholic, shot himself. Lenin had offered Kammerer a lab in Moscow but he had refused The French are more laid back about this sort of thing, don't take their Catholicism too seriously and are not interested in a President unless he IS having an affair, swears a lot, and wipes himself out on the grog from time to time. To establish his bona fides he has to prove that he's not a religious fanatic.
With the rise of Soviet Russia the battle between Larmarkism and Darwinism had now become a global power struggle between Communism and Capitalism. Thousands of Soviet Darwinists were deported to Siberian Labor camps. Lysenko is held up as discrediting Larmarkism because of his lunatic ideas yet he was just a vulgar lout, not any sort of scientist. He stuck an ice pick into the brains of mice to induce epileptic fits, then see if the fits were passed on to their progeny. Bloody hell.
In 1883 August Weissman cut the tails off 22 succeeding generations of rats and when they kept being bred with tails he proclaimed that Larmarkism was utterly discredited. But they still NEEDED tails. This is the very foundation stone of all of the biological sciences and it's on a par with Adam and Eve. Yet he was a Larmarkist himself and I'd have to ask if Victoria set him up. If you couldn't discredit Larmark you couldn't undermine the rise of the Fabians. That's SCIENCE? Yet the Weissman Barrier is the very foundation stone upon which Darwinism rests. The Weissman Barrier is an absurd fairy story that Darwinists hold up as proof of Darwinism and don't even know what Weissman did, let alone the political motivation behind it. Anyway, the British monarchy survived, so Darwinism, along with capitalism, survived. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Charlie reckoned that all of the cells of the body passed little 'gemmules' containing some sort of elements of their experience back to the germline. You can't get much more Larmarkist than that. Now wasn't that a lovely bedtime story.

we are spiritual computers. subtract the dogma of all religions, insert factual knowledge of quantum communication...

Nope, we're biological entities with a complex neural net.

Which is biological too.

Just observing the atom changes its nature, We're all made of atoms. Atomic consciosness, or cell awareness is a very real thing. Quantum Physics is a sacred sicence, in the sense that the mathematical syntax is the language of the universe, and the numbers construct everything. Im not going to discount the presence of a vastly powerful intellect that religionists call God. The fabric of consciousness is the utmost when it comes to physical manifestation.

Wow, we may be biological entities, but made of atoms (mainly hydrogen), the same properties are present in water and stars...and inanimate objects, like wood, steel and plastic. We are not the body, we are the mind. A human cell and a computer chip are near identical in function- (im not going to elaborate, go do some research if your thoughts cling to the adverse). In fact, everyone go and watch the doco called Quantum Communication, otherwise continue to sling shit back and forth at each other whilst maintaining opposing viewpoints, all lacking crucial fact...How many of you have met God? And how many of you have worked in laboratories as GM. stem-cell, nanotech, pharmaceuticals scientists? Stop believing exactly as you're told by the 'benevolent bigger brother' and find your own truth. Intelligent people make more than one investment, should the others fail.

oh, and DNA is a receptor, has antennae and everything.

We were created, evolution was built into the design, we will ascend. Its probably hard to believe, and to isolate yourself from your current dogma. This is part of the pursuit of truth.

"A human cell and a computer chip are near identical in function" Well that isn't true at all whether you believe in god or Dawkins, one is alive and the other is dead!

Mekke, the atom doesn't change its nature in chemical reactions, you need nuclear ones to do that.

And read up on "emergent properties", conscious thought is no real thing like lungs, but a word given to a process.

And what dictionary has "sacred" meaning "uses maths"? And why are you talking about it making you reject god? I reject god because it has disproven itself.

We ARE the body. And the mind is the processing that one part of the body does. That is us.

And a digital computer chip isn't an analogue of our brain, an analogue computer would be much closer.

However, so what? AI ring a bell?

And many people CLAIM to have seen and met god. However, this constitutes proof of its nonexistence much like the stories of analprobing alien abductions disprove alien visitation.

"And many people CLAIM to have seen and met god. However, this constitutes proof of its nonexistence much like the stories of analprobing alien abductions disprove alien visitation." wow

And fewer and fewer 'people' CLAIM to have seen vaccinations do something useful, however this constitutes proof of fudge, much like the stories of Brian Deer, Bill and Melinda, philanthropy and bull.

The other day I had the great pleasure to correct someone on the Polio fudge up in India, after some work of their own the person concerned was very grateful that a myth had been torched.

We can only hope the wow does what it says on the tin and gets with the programme at somepoint, to that I wish you much speed and less pubmed.

You still agree that vaccines *exist*, though, right?

havent had a flu shot since i was 11....havent had the flu since i was 11

Wow-

The fundamental of science is basically cause and effect, is it not? Therefore, hypothesis demands a pre-cursor to a universal, sub-atomic exchange....ie, The Big Bang. According to scientific method, the Big Bang just occured...its almost as naive as the Creationists' take on the manifestion of time, space, matter and existence in general. There is evidence to suggest the consciousness continues beyond physical expiration...LOTS! More evidence on OBE and NDE than what caused the Big Bang...Science represents, at times when it cannot prove absolutely, the best calculated guess, and this is variable upon the apitude of the individual.

Nope, that isn't a fundamental of science. It's a truism. But not science's alone.

And since time did not exist until the big bang, talking about 'before' then in such terms is nonsensical.

If there is "loads of evidence", where is it? Go on, give your best one and we will show you how easily shot down your gullibility-derived evidence is.

PS don't bother with bucker, he's desperately pretending to be an anti-vaxxer to tarnish any real people with a concern for the over-use and abuse of pharmaceuticals thet he/she/it over-does it all the time.

So my advice would be don't bother.

Its amazing how 'Stalinist' you become once your belief system is shaken, friend. Its obvious that im not gullible, otherwise i would believe everything, but i actually doubt much...'truism' is another word for 'claim', it just sounds smarter. science claims when its unable to grasp, just like anything else. You believe in the Quantum dont you? I dont believe the creation stories, or the modern scientific solution. My opinion is that everything we knew is wrong, and everything we're discovering now is closer to what is accurate. Geez, the Earth is expanding, excuse the cliche, for God's sake, n we have only just proven this. I think the term 'spiritual' or 'soul' frightens skeptics...the human body is the hardware...your mind is the software...the brain is not a producer of consciousness, it is a receiver of consciousness...i doubt you will watch any of these videos, but i hope you do :D

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xffqiy_mind-power-quantum-communicatio…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlwyU0_M88o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuf-xct2sHk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4a_Gu49SA&feature=fvwrel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICdizzVY5h4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIawFI3-tz4

i threw this one in here because it apparently bins 100 years of physics thereom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJfBSc6e7QQ

"Its amazing how ‘Stalinist’ you become"

A) How did you arrive at the caricature of "Stalinist"???

B) How is this, basically, wrong?

If you're told your insistence that pi is 3 is just plain wrong, is that them being Stalinist? And if it were, why does that make it wrong to insist your pi=3 assertion is incorrect?

I notice that your opener had nothing to do with providing any evidence and rather appears to be a presage to insisting that any disproof of your proclaimed evidence is a priori invalid, because Stalin was a bad man.

(the logical connection to that is, as I've already asserted, imponderable)

"the human body is the hardware…your mind is the software"

And if yes, so what?

The software in your computer is based on the collection or exclusion of electrons that rearrange in a complicit way the path of further electron flow throughout the general electrical machine called "the computer".

This doesn't make the software something non-physical, however, nor made of something of which the computer itself is not made from.

"’truism’ is another word for ‘claim'"

Nope, otherwise it wouldn't be used, they'd replace it with claim, which is more widely known.

"Geez, the Earth is expanding"

a) Is it? Prove it.
b) So what? Please look up the meaning of "non sequitur".

"we have only just proven this"

We have?

"I think the term ‘spiritual’ or ‘soul’ frightens skeptics"

Look up projection. Maybe the problem is you're frightened that you're going to die and therefore you cling to the idea of soul to stave off the realisation.

It doesn't frighten me. No more than "supercalifragilisticexpialidotious" frightens me.

"the brain is not a producer of consciousness"

The processes going on in the brain is the producer of consciousness, just like the processes going on in your computer is the producer of the web browser you're typing into.

I doubt you'll believe anything other than that those links are "proof", and will instead insist that they are incontrovertible and therefore ignore any contrary evidence, but I hope you do.

Looking at these links will wait until I've got time.

But given they are youtube clips, they are unlikely to be rigorous or contain any actual proof by evidence, merely "proof by assertion".

"The software in your computer is based on the collection or exclusion of electrons that rearrange in a complicit way the path of further electron flow throughout the general electrical machine called “the computer”.

This doesn’t make the software something non-physical, however, nor made of something of which the computer itself is not made from."

Nor does this mean that the computer program installed on that computer lives on beyond the destruction of the computer that it currently is running on.

OK first one. Woo of the bat.

How communication works on a quantum level: fails to do so, no QM at all.

Instead gets the copenhagen interpretation COMPLETELY WRONG. An observer isn't talking about needing a mind to look at a quantum event to make the event happen.

This also has nothing to do with what I asked you to show evidence for.

Second one. At least THIS one is about what you were asked to provide. Unfortunately the phenomena is adequately explained by normal biochemistry and oxygen deprivation. No proof that that explanation is inadequate.

Third one is using religion (just not christian) to demand that there is a soul. No proof, merely assertion and a description of what a hindi calls a soul.

Fourth one just asserts that it is photographing a soul. The operator of an MRI scanner does not pretend to be photographing the soul. I recall a kraelian technique that pretended the same thing. The photographs it took looked a lot different, despite that too claiming to be photographing the soul.

Fifth. See second

Sixth. See fifth.

Seventh. Silly. Mere adsertion with pseudoproof of its preconceived result picked out to "prove" it. None of it real, all faked.

i wonder if you watched all 9 videos of Quantum Communication? Dude, you're intellgient. im not trying to change your opinions. I doubt anyone could anyway.

I chose the refs very quickly. If you think there is little credit to said sciences, i beseach to you look further..You're obviously smarter than i am and well-informed, quite capable of uncovering fact and dismissing fiction.

I can admit that physical expiration frightens me. i am after all only human. if men/women didnt have that neccessity about their endeavours, we wouldnt have progressed at all. Necessity is the mother of invention. It is necessary to prolong life, and if possible, defeat death all together. First it was stemcells that had me interested, now its consciousness. Time is a bitch! Theres not enough to learn in. So yeh, bonus marks for pointing out a natural fear that most people deal with in their lives from time to time. Its easy to 'forget' you're gonna die one day, then sometimes u remember and you ask 'well, whats the point?' Why can i even question my existence? Why do keep uncovering more and more? How deep does the rabbit hole go? Our tools of measurement are so fallible, and we attempt to measure the infinite. Its like trying to take a horse-n-cart ride to Juptier...aint gonna happen.

And i agree, pseudo-proof indeed on most counts...but its more substantiated a theory than 'oh, and the big bang just happened'

And the brain is dead. the heart is dead. all systems are dead! and sometimes, even an hour later, the person myseriously reanimates themselves....what gets me is when they can recount entire conversations and map geneologies they werent consciously aware of...so you pay no credence to countless first hand accounts, but the big bang definitely just manifested like 'that'?

I wathced the first one. When it wasn't about obe or nde AND completely wrong on QM, there wasn't a need to go further.

Are you telling me that he later on in the series corrects his mistakes about the copenhagen interpretation?

And why should I do your work for you? I asked you for your best evidence since you said there were loads of it.

Turned out to be merely a pile of it....

It's not right to pretend an answer when you don't have one.

If you have no evidence, you make no claim. To do otherwise are the actions of a snake-oil salesman or charlatan.

And in you sausage you have for breakfast, there are calls that are still alive.

There are drugs that will 'kill' you. Natural versions are why you have zombie stories from voodoo.

And lastly, for the 'growing world, not plate tectonics', ask how he explains the rock strata and fossil records on the upper slopes of the himalayas.

I wathced the first one. When it wasn't about obe or nde AND completely wrong on QM, there wasn't a need to go further.

Are you telling me that he later on in the series corrects his mistakes about the copenhagen interpretation?

And why should I do your work for you? I asked you for your best evidence since you said there were loads of it.

Turned out to be merely a pile of it....

It's not right to pretend an answer when you don't have one.

If you have no evidence, you make no claim. To do otherwise are the actions of a snake-oil salesman or charlatan.

And in you sausage you have for breakfast, there are calls that are still alive.

There are drugs that will 'kill' you. Natural versions are why you have zombie stories from voodoo.

And lastly, for the 'growing world, not plate tectonics', ask how he explains the rock strata and fossil records on the upper slopes of the himalayas.

As to being afraid to die, the nearest you should get to fear is fearing not to have lived.

Nothing you can do will stop the end. But you can change how you live.

This life is all you get. It's the only true gift you will ever receive, since there is nobody who gave it to you, so you are beholden tonoone for it.

Live it well, or waste it, it,s yours. Unique. Spend it knowing that this is all you're bound to do.

Amd any meaning you wish to have for life is the meaning you put into it.

Wise words indeed. If people dont endeavour discovery, they certainly perceive next to nil. Its ok to be wrong. In fact, its all part of the learning process. I really have enjoyed engaging wits with you Wow. I wish i shared your trust in knowledge. I still think we have much to learn. It would be fantastic if we could hinder longevity's effect. Yes, fantasy is in fantastic haha. I wish you good tidings friend. Hopefully, when i'm your age, in about 20 years, i'll be near as equipped mentally to engage in debate, and negate my opponents arguements. Good form :)

I still think we have much yet to learn.

But that doesn't mean we have to pretend more than we need.

Tske the afterlife. If you act like this is all you get, live a full and interesting life, expecting it to end, the find an afterlife, that's likea free second go, innit?

If you spend all this life trying to get a seat at the next one, you'dbe feeling a bit of a numpty as having wasted your time, if it weren,t for the fact that you don't exist any more. But even if you were right, you're still down 80 years on the other guy.

Seems like no.win situation, really.

PS have a look back at a past episode of a webcomic "basic instructions". There's one where the comic goes on about the march of technology leading us alive today possibly the last ones to be destoned to die.

It's more amusing than that sounds, trust me.

Mortalty sucks. Entropy sucks...I also found Ray Kurzweil's concept of assimilating with technology in order to keep up with its advances intriguing. Coins it the 'Singularity'. What are your thoughts on this?

Coincidentally, i found another 'Basic Instructions' for altering the perception of another. I found it amusing.

http://basicinstructions.net/

"This life is all you get. It’s the only true gift you will ever receive, since there is nobody who gave it to you, so you are beholden tonoone for it." Wow

So choosing wisely to post pro vaxx shit on this site is a good move, if that's a positive use of your time what the fuck were you doing before, shagging dogs?

Ah, the whine of the petulant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVUU3p5iHMA

Mekke, please stop linking to youtube clips.

This style of post-hoc rationalisation has been debunked by an Arthur C Clarke series in the 70s.

It's no better, really, than the YECs who claim that the bible knew what science only just found out by saying that comets, mostly water, are what the bible was talking about when it said "Separating the waters above from the waters below".

Here's a thought provoking question of mostly rhetorical use for you.

If you give me 9 pieces of evidence you think proves something and every one of them has had gaping flaws in them, why do you consider that asking about a 10th will work?

At what point will you go "Maybe I'm not getting reliable information? Maybe I ought to consider the claims with skepticism of my own first"?

If you will never go "Hey, I guess there's no usable evidence for a soul" and stop, why should I spend time doing the work of skeptical inquiry for you?

Woo bleated - "why should I spend time doing the work of skeptical inquiry for you?" What's septical about saying that vaccination works!

The only 'evidence' for vaccination is medical peer review, considering that is an artificial construct open to publication bias, funding bias and journalistic bentism you don't have a leg to stand on wow!

Look at Bill and Melinda's polio woo in India, just disease renaming, still tens of thousands maimed but by the vaccine! I am not alone in finding your adherence to bullshit naseaus wow, I'd love to send you to India vaccinated and watch the real result.

"If you have no evidence, you make no claim. To do otherwise are the actions of a snake-oil salesman or charlatan."

Insert flu vaccine here, polio vaccine, whooping cough vaccine, Vioxx, the list is endless wow.

Your dictionary has skeptic mixed up with contrarian.

Idiot.

Show me the Big Bang. Show me why atoms mass. Tell me why my atoms don’t just disperse into swarms of infinitesimal particles. Define a universe without the Cosmological Constant. Tell me why the clinically dead are sometimes able to recall events they weren't physically present to witness, upon a seeming resurrection. (And know that 'blood on the brain', or 'oxygen deprivation' are debunked theories. All brain activity is absent. These people reanimate in morgues and on autopsy tables)
You fancy yourself the paramount source of viable information; yet, all your facts are hand-me-downs. You're not a science authority, Wow; you’re the most frequent poster on a discussion forum you feel you must dictate through a less than social means of debate.
And once evidences, or rather lack thereof, challenge an existing viewpoint, you instinctively attack the messenger's mental capacity to reason or develop logical ideas. Today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact. You’re getting pissed off with the theories im proposing because this shatters your black and white perception of things. I like your theories. Your attitude is shitty though. Words of maturity, incentive of the childish. We’re sharing knowledge here, not belittling the community.
And i know the series you refer to. I also witnessed an Arthur C Clarke, a one Carl Sagan and a Professor Steven Hawking discussing the quantum. In fact, i often watch it...I find the collective wisdom of the 3 men mentally soothing to observe and listen to.
You may have the aptitude for intelligence, it is however, difficult to come across as intellectually superior when your head is up your own arse mate...so here’s a candle, careful not to ignite the copious amount of gas and shit, and please, leave said effluence at its point of genesis rather than bringing it to the fray of this discussion under the guise of ‘fact’.

I can't show you my birth either. Does this mean I don't exist? How about yours?

Atoma ARE the indivisible particles. They stick together for much the same reason static cling makes your clothes stick together.

The clinically alive get things wrong all the time. Your decision in the brain PRECEEDS the consideration that you think leads to the decision.

And no, oxygen deprivation are not debunked theories.

Every single one of YOUR 'facts' are hand-me-downs too. Is this the proof they ate invalid, though? NO.

Snd what does frequent posting prove? Nothing. But you are made to feel inadequate and need to defend your ego and self worth, so clutch at anything to belittle others.

YOU HAVE BEEN MISLED. You weren't born "knowing" the codswallop ideas you have spouted here. Someone told you those things.

But now, for some reason, you have invested your self worth in these rubbish claims. Unskeptically you accepted them. See the shrinking globe idiocy, that the appearance of sedimentary rock on the himalayas (and their growth) are then made inexplicable by.

This slavish belief in the first thought you get told is not mature and your current petulance is immature.

You are not sharing knowledge. Your discussing hokum and getting upset.

Grow up, drop the pretense and learn from the science that is based on proven and reliable evidence, not personal revelation.

"YOU HAVE BEEN MISLED. You weren’t born “knowing” the codswallop ideas you have spouted here. Someone told you those things." wow

Yes some people actually still believe in the woo of vaccination, Mekke this site is as woo as it gets, 2 or three people masturbating over static mythologies, pretending, deluding, quoting Dorks and keeping alive dying fables. Calling them liars is giving them credit for thinking!

Someone has to help them and that's what I devote some of my time to doing, like wiping dribble from those less fortunate. This is a typical mantra -

"Grow up, drop the pretense and learn from the science that is based on proven and reliable evidence, not personal revelation." wow,

Apparently medical peer review is really honest, non biased, truthful and really really how it is, honest! From the same people who brought us financial chaos we bring you - medical facts! LOL tell that to those who died with Vioxx and all those people in India right now who have Gates variant Polio paralysis.

Nope, some have actually investigated the mechanisms of vaccination, bucker.

You haven't.

You merely parrot your party line of "it all wrong!!!!".

I love thqat final paragrapgh. Americans must be the only people left in the world who still imagine that they are (a) a democracy, or (b) that they have both right wingers and liberals.

Face ir guys, you have very few citizens who aren't either right wing or very right wing. Figure that out and you might discover someone is brewing coffee. Know what I meam nudge, nudge, wink , wink?

(Kwai Chung say: Man cannot solve problem if he not know problem exist.)

Hi Andy

Yes vaccination 'investegation' by vaccinators is no different to religious nutters saying the bible is true and blowing up people who disagree. Smithkline has recently been found to have fraudulently 'doctored' its data and actually factored in this to its costings for the bogus drug it sold. Medical peer review is probably one of the lowest forms of 'evidence' around, I find it hard to believe that people like wow and orac are still standing on the mount and spouting.

It's a shame that wow types still insist on having this Chiltern rite crap as a foundation for their 'truth', many people are being killed by this shit or worse being left completely fucked it's a crime worse than any I can think of and it's being done in the name of public good!

Horrible

"YOU HAVE BEEN MISLED. You weren’t born “knowing” the codswallop ideas you have spouted here. Someone told you those things." wow

Wow you should read your own statements, just in case you were not up to speed with current medical peer reviewed practice wow have a read of this, try not to vomit.

Glaxo SmithKline pays $3 Billion in Lawsuit
Read more at http://www.lawyerherald.com/articles/1654/20120702/glaxosmithkline-drug…

"Wow you should read your own statements"

I do.

You should try it.

"Nope, some have actually investigated the mechanisms of vaccination, bucker. You haven’t. wowser predicted.

Amazing really, well perhaps not, The wowser is able to tell what I do having never met me, how does he do this?

He assumes that anyone who points out that vaccination is failing, that medical peer review is a flat lie can't be a believer, well that's true.

The oracs of this world are like some fly on shit metaphor.

So putting that aside wowser, how do you feel about Smithlkine admitting that it lied in its research, falsified data and made millions in the process and just paid the fine and carried on!

After all these are the people you are quoting "some have actually investigated the mechanisms of vaccination" and in their own words they are liars, cheats and frauds!

How do you sleep at night feeling ok about that?

"The wowser is able to tell what I do having never met me, how does he do this?"

Because if you had investigated the mechanisms of vaccination you'd know they are not woo and have worked.

In rather the same way as I can say that someone who thinks the world is flat has not gone sailing out to sea.

Well a thorough investegation of those who propose a mechanism of vaccination success reveals, dishonesty, lies and fraud wowser, a kind of contempory creationism. Merck is up for fiddling its mumps vaccination efficacy, GSK have just paid for the largest fraud £3 billion and medical peer review is largely accepted now as being a poor marvel comic!

So maybe I missed someone out here and perhaps you could let us all know who has 'proved the mechanism of vaccination' to be nothing more than an elaborate fraud.
Here's the next scamdemic in the pipeline wowser:

Cases of Novel Swine Influenza Surging

It's not even woo wowser, it's total bollocks!

Wow, you are responding to some rather silly people.

Carry on.

Yes, though I actually think this silly bucker is pretending to be a raving antivaxxer so as to smear the reputation of anyone who doesn't think all pharma is good pharma.

Look at how the silly arse is trying to ad hom the entire edifice of proven track record just because a Big Pharma company lies, just like every wealthy big corporation does, under the aegis of neo-conservative blindness.

9 points of evidence for an Afterlife

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=mptGAc3XWPs&NR=1

Nine points of speculation. None of which explain their experience better than the materialist one.

What did I tell you about youtube links? Watching a video of complete hokum pretending seriousness is a huge waste of time and a textual account is more than sufficient to get their "evidence" across in a manner that can be digested several times faster than a lugubrious pompous video of circle.jerking.