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THE Evolution Thread (Simplified, Take 3)

Thank Zeus he aint Hindu, or there'd be five dozen threads on here about earth being supported by 4 elephants standing on a magic turtle.
 
IIDB Seeks Surly, Argumentative Hindu Man to Teach Class on How Earth Held Up by Four Elephants Standing on Back of Turtle

IIDB (Internet News Service) — Buoyed by the success of its multiple Jehovalution threads taught by a surly, argumentative Jehovah’s Witness, the Internet Infidels Discussion Board is seeking a surly, argumentative Hindu individual to teach multiple classes on how the earth is held up by four elephants standing on the back of a turtle.

“Here at IIDB, we are always seeking a diverse array of wackadoodle theological speculations, complex metaphysical hypotheses wholly uninformed by science or logic, and just plain woo for the lulz of our users,” the message board said in news release. “Currently we have an opening for a teacher who will insist, in the angriest manner possible, that earthquakes occur because one of the elephants holding up the earth has wiggled its ear.”

The news release continued: “The ideal candidate will be totally ignorant of science, have an extremely thin skin, and an ego the size of India. He, she or they will be prone to waspish insults and childish outbursts, will refuse to answer or even acknowledge the most basic questions about their lunatic dogma, and will vanish for extended periods of time, pouting and sulking in sullen silence, only to suddenly reappear and start a new thread on how it’s turtles all the way down.”
 
pood said:
IIDB Seeks Surly, Argumentative Hindu Man to Teach Class on How Earth Held Up by Four Elephants Standing on Back of Turtle

IIDB (Internet News Service) — Buoyed by the success of its multiple Jehovalution threads taught by a surly, argumentative Jehovah’s Witness, the Internet Infidels Discussion Board is seeking a surly, argumentative Hindu individual to teach multiple classes on how the earth is held up by four elephants standing on the back of a turtle.

“Here at IIDB, we are always seeking a diverse array of wackadoodle theological speculations, complex metaphysical hypotheses wholly uninformed by science or logic, and just plain woo for the lulz of our users,” the message board said in news release. “Currently we have an opening for a teacher who will insist, in the angriest manner possible, that earthquakes occur because one of the elephants holding up the earth has wiggled its ear.”

The news release continued: “The ideal candidate will be totally ignorant of science, have an extremely thin skin, and an ego the size of India. He, she or they will be prone to waspish insults and childish outbursts, will refuse to answer or even acknowledge the most basic questions about their lunatic dogma, and will vanish for extended periods of time, pouting and sulking in sullen silence, only to suddenly reappear and start a new thread on how it’s turtles all the way down.”
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I mean, we already have a surly, argumentative wizard here. And hey, there's a surly argumentative physicist who just made a spectacle declaring superposition to be bunk.

Let's invite them, all, too!

I can go out and maybe find some surly, argumentative Thelemites? Probably not, though, they're touchier than rich Catholics.
 
excreationist said:
THE Evolution Thread post #141
You said "I know for a fact determining it is 6,000 years old from the Bible is stupid" but that's what Kent Hovind believes and you posted a video of his.

So your entire reply to this thread is 4 videos and three words - "Just for fun . . ."
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Correct. Say what you will about Hovind, he sure knows the truth about evolution. After all, he taught it for years.
 
DLH

The term Darwinism went out of use a long ways back.

While often used interchangeably, "Darwinism" specifically refers to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, while "theory of evolution" encompasses the broader scientific understanding of evolutionary change, including mechanisms beyond natural selection.
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Ignorance is bliss. or so it us said.
 
steve_bank said:
DLH

The term Darwinism went out of use a long ways back.
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So did most of the rest of it, just like the bullshit of today will. And tomorrow. Etc.

steve_bank said:
While often used interchangeably, "Darwinism" specifically refers to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, while "theory of evolution" encompasses the broader scientific understanding of evolutionary change, including mechanisms beyond natural selection.
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Ignorance is bliss. or so it us said.
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They also say a rose by any other name would smell so pungent.

I personally would really enjoy seeing apostate Christianity adopt evolution like they did the cross, trinity, immortal soul, hell, Christmas, Easter, etc.

Make it theirs. Warm and fuzzy. Then what ya' gonna do?
 
DLH, the fact is, you're not here to learn, you're here to argue.

I am also here to argue, often enough. Apologies to the forums, you're my outlet for that. At least I admit it and try to argue honestly.

I have learned so much, but only when I started asking a specific question: What brought the persons who had great ideas and powerful minds to think the things they did? What context makes sense from a perspective of reason or insight rather than "holy revelations"?

I understand that some people come to ideas in dreams (Ramanujan), but the intelligent among them tend to also support these ideas with proof.

Darwin wrote their book filled with observations. It's long-winded and full of many technical parts describing his observations in detail with respect to co-mutation, and the like, and with variations that were observed in his day and changes over time and with relation to the scholarly communications of his peers.

I would actually recommend you read it to familiarize yourself with his observations, and evidence, even before we discovered the molecular machines that we are constructed of and which predict this behavior that he observed.

There are very few people here at all even at all sympathetic to religious terminology at all.

I enjoy existing as an apparent contradiction in as many ways as possible: alignment lawful/chaotic; atheist priest; wizard of the mundane; prophet of naturalism. All that sort of stuff.

I love complicated machines of all kinds. Understanding complicated machines of all kinds is what I like to do with all the time I wasted when I should have been doing a better job at my job.

I can say categorically that if you're barking up this tree of evolution, you need to start reading on biology before you keep going one step further. You are embarrassing yourself.

Do not listen to people who claim it is nonsense. They want you to believe it is nonsense, so they will not present it honestly enough to evaluate it honestly. You must actually do the reading and if it confuses you, you have to read it again.

This is exhausting, especially with Darwin's Origin of the Species.

Honestly, it's easier constructing it from later chemical models and seeing it as a process with process components, like a Factorio factory with a few different drone networks servicing various systems.

I would recommend you try launching a rocket in Factorio, even, or getting a fortress running in Dwarf Fortress? Test yourself to see if you are really capable of approaching these ideas, perhaps?

Your religion seems engineered to make you think all our best thinkers on the subjects of philosophy you respect were in our past, cannot be encountered in our present, will not be present in our future except in your religious organization, or ones that say what you wish they might.

Life on earth evolved from something simpler, more primitive sorts of more chaotic machines originating from more chaotic processes and weirder mechanisms that occurred rarely among far more chaotic and disorganized stuff.

This happened until they happened to organize into isolated processes working in tandem and organizing towards survival, until they formed level switching mechanisms as you find in the brain eventually resistant to heat and capable of quickly forming tight and organized processes that can be learned over the course of single life rather than many generations.

That happened, and that's roughly how it happened and also kind of why it happened that way: because it happens inevitably in this thing we call 'the universe'.

I understand that you cannot believe this; your community will reject you if you do, perhaps your family as well.

Ask yourself if this is really the work of "God", or God hardening your heart?

You appear to have sworn an allegiance.

If your book says anything worth considering, it is that hardened hearts are attributed to those who are too far damned. Empathy is not weakness. It's not too late to look at who you are casting lots with according to your religion.
 
Jarhyn said:
DLH, the fact is, you're not here to learn, you're here to argue.

I am also here to argue, often enough. Apologies to the forums, you're my outlet for that. At least I admit it and try to argue honestly.

I have learned so much, but only when I started asking a specific question: What brought the persons who had great ideas and powerful minds to think the things they did? What context makes sense from a perspective of reason or insight rather than "holy revelations"?

I understand that some people come to ideas in dreams (Ramanujan), but the intelligent among them tend to also support these ideas with proof.

Darwin wrote their book filled with observations. It's long-winded and full of many technical parts describing his observations in detail with respect to co-mutation, and the like, and with variations that were observed in his day and changes over time and with relation to the scholarly communications of his peers.

I would actually recommend you read it to familiarize yourself with his observations, and evidence, even before we discovered the molecular machines that we are constructed of and which predict this behavior that he observed.

There are very few people here at all even at all sympathetic to religious terminology at all.

I enjoy existing as an apparent contradiction in as many ways as possible: alignment lawful/chaotic; atheist priest; wizard of the mundane; prophet of naturalism. All that sort of stuff.

I love complicated machines of all kinds. Understanding complicated machines of all kinds is what I like to do with all the time I wasted when I should have been doing a better job at my job.

I can say categorically that if you're barking up this tree of evolution, you need to start reading on biology before you keep going one step further. You are embarrassing yourself.

Do not listen to people who claim it is nonsense. They want you to believe it is nonsense, so they will not present it honestly enough to evaluate it honestly. You must actually do the reading and if it confuses you, you have to read it again.

This is exhausting, especially with Darwin's Origin of the Species.

Honestly, it's easier constructing it from later chemical models and seeing it as a process with process components, like a Factorio factory with a few different drone networks servicing various systems.

I would recommend you try launching a rocket in Factorio, even, or getting a fortress running in Dwarf Fortress? Test yourself to see if you are really capable of approaching these ideas, perhaps?

Your religion seems engineered to make you think all our best thinkers on the subjects of philosophy you respect were in our past, cannot be encountered in our present, will not be present in our future except in your religious organization, or ones that say what you wish they might.

Life on earth evolved from something simpler, more primitive sorts of more chaotic machines originating from more chaotic processes and weirder mechanisms that occurred rarely among far more chaotic and disorganized stuff.

This happened until they happened to organize into isolated processes working in tandem and organizing towards survival, until they formed level switching mechanisms as you find in the brain eventually resistant to heat and capable of quickly forming tight and organized processes that can be learned over the course of single life rather than many generations.

That happened, and that's roughly how it happened and also kind of why it happened that way: because it happens inevitably in this thing we call 'the universe'.

I understand that you cannot believe this; your community will reject you if you do, perhaps your family as well.

Ask yourself if this is really the work of "God", or God hardening your heart?

You appear to have sworn an allegiance.

If your book says anything worth considering, it is that hardened hearts are attributed to those who are too far damned. Empathy is not weakness. It's not too late to look at who you are casting lots with according to your religion.
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I agree with everything you’ve said here. DLH isn’t here to honestly explore or understand evolution — he’s here to argue, to provoke, and to dodge. That’s been obvious from the start. Every time he’s given an answer that meets his own challenge, he shifts the criteria, redefines “kind,” or demands something even more specific — not because he’s interested in the truth, but because he’s committed to never admitting he’s wrong.

I respect that you’ve admitted your own argumentative nature while still keeping your mind open. That’s how progress is made — not by pretending you already have all the answers, but by asking why great thinkers believed what they did, and following the evidence wherever it leads.

You’re absolutely right about Darwin’s Origin of Species. It’s not light reading, but it’s not dogma either — it’s pages and pages of observations, patterns, comparisons, and logic. Darwin didn’t ask anyone to take it on faith. He laid out what he saw, what he inferred, and how nature consistently backed it up. And that’s just the foundation — what we’ve discovered since, from DNA to molecular biology to genetics, has only strengthened that case.

Your analogy to Factorio and Dwarf Fortress is brilliant, because it captures what DLH can’t grasp: complex systems can evolve, adapt, and become highly ordered over time — without being micromanaged or dropped into place fully formed. That’s what life did. That’s what brains did. And pretending it all had to be zapped into existence at once is just a refusal to understand process.

You also nailed what’s going on underneath: DLH has sworn allegiance to a worldview that doesn’t allow questions. His goal is to defend that structure, not to explore the world. You’re right — communities like his often treat doubt as betrayal, and curiosity as rebellion. The tragedy is that it’s the exact opposite. Real faith, real thought, real strength — they can survive scrutiny. DLH’s ideas can’t, which is why he keeps calling evidence “bullshit” the moment it threatens the wall he’s built.

Your final point is the hardest one — and the most important. If DLH’s heart is hardened, is that really God? Or is it a refusal to let go of control? He needs to ask himself that — because if he doesn’t, he’ll just keep shouting into the wind, while the rest of us move on without him.

Thanks for your honesty, your intelligence, and your clarity. It cuts through the fog DLH keeps trying to hide in.

NHC
 
pood said:
DLH said:
pood said:
:unsure: Maybe you could tell us where and when the evangelical christian con artist who was convicted of tax evasion and domestic violence against his estranged wife taught evolution for years? Hm?
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Joe Bidden College?
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You made a claim: that a convicted tax evader and domestic abuser who is an evangelical christian con artist and evolution denier taught evolution for years. Support your claim or admit you made it up.
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[Laughs]
 
NoHolyCows said:
If DLH’s heart is hardened, is that really God?
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Well, think about it this way: every time the Bible talks about hardened hearts, its God that does the hardening and tells his people about it is explicitly so that nobody feels bad when God smites them. I am observing a specific situation in Revelation (and in Genesis) wherein God "hardens hearts" prior to sending plagues that are ostensibly justified under the fact that "they cannot believe otherwise than what is wrong, so what else can be done but their destruction?"
 
Jarhyn said:
NoHolyCows said:
If DLH’s heart is hardened, is that really God?
Click to expand...
Well, think about it this way: every time the Bible talks about hardened hearts, its God that does the hardening and tells his people about it is explicitly so that nobody feels bad when God smites them. I am observing a specific situation in Revelation (and in Genesis) wherein God "hardens hearts" prior to sending plagues that are ostensibly justified under the fact that "they cannot believe otherwise than what is wrong, so what else can be done but their destruction?"
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If the Bible’s depiction of divine judgment depends on God hardening hearts first, do you think that exposes a deeper truth about how authoritarian systems justify violence — by creating the conditions that make the punishment seem deserved?

NHC
 
NoHolyCows said:
If the Bible’s depiction of divine judgment depends on God hardening hearts first, do you think that exposes a deeper truth about how authoritarian systems justify violence
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Nah. It’s like novacaine, that hardening thing. Nobody feels bad when God smites them. But only if they’re hardened up beforehand. It’s pure compassion.
Like when you’re out hunting deer, you don’t want them to suffer so you try to drop ‘em where they stand. Probably death by god smiting is less painful than any other way. No need to feel bad. And besides - dude was a lowlife foreigner.
 
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Jarhyn said:
DLH, the fact is, you're not here to learn, you're here to argue.
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This is a discussion forum. I'm here for discussion. I assume that is why everyone is here. The collective sees themselves as such, so there is animosity towards anyone who disagrees with the collective. For the most part the topic of discussion is political, though there is a relatively small portion of the forum devoted to religion because fundamentalist militant atheist who frequent these types of forums express a sociopolitical frustration in a quasi-theocratic state.

Jarhyn said:
I am also here to argue, often enough. Apologies to the forums, you're my outlet for that. At least I admit it and try to argue honestly.
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Whatever I post is subject to public scrutiny and I'm willing to some extent to argue, but I see arguing about such things as futile exchanges, especially if those arguments have no real basis outside of ideological fixation. In other words, I don't see the point in doing it if ideology is the primary focus and reason. You can't have a reasonable discussion of that nature beyond a certain point.

The people here who focus on harassing me, and by that, I mean respond to many of my posts with the same type of ideological frustration do so in response to either a personal insult they don't like that I responded with in kind, or, more likely, their seeing me as a representative of the group their group is opposed to. I think their position, what they have to say and why they have to say it is important ONLY if it and their response is reasonable. No matter how critical it might be. I'm fair, but I can't spend my valuable time going back and forth. Tit for tat.

What may be a valid criticism becomes invalid.

Jarhyn said:
I have learned so much, but only when I started asking a specific question: What brought the persons who had great ideas and powerful minds to think the things they did? What context makes sense from a perspective of reason or insight rather than "holy revelations"?
Click to expand...

What if it had been "holy revelations?"

Jarhyn said:
I can say categorically that if you're barking up this tree of evolution, you need to start reading on biology before you keep going one step further. You are embarrassing yourself.
Click to expand...

Why would my presentation of evolution be embarrassing? Because I'm not conversant on the subject? I've made that clear, my disinterest isn't a criticism and I don't take the same sort of perspective of my beliefs, whether spiritual or something as mundane as musical tastes, as criticism.

I don't want or need to think that my perspective is the only or best one for everyone. The conflict of the "religious" or "scientific" ideologues is that sort of thing. Myopic control. That is what I believe your and most everyone here's objective to me is. It isn't personal. The ideologue always becomes their enemy. It requires hypocrisy.

Jarhyn said:
Do not listen to people who claim it is nonsense. They want you to believe it is nonsense, so they will not present it honestly enough to evaluate it honestly. You must actually do the reading and if it confuses you, you have to read it again.
Click to expand...

You make the assumption that I haven't? Even just in public school? Some people think my beliefs, not on evolution in this instance, but in general, are nonsense. I don't have a problem with that. I can totally relate to and therefore understand it. I wouldn't want my beliefs taught in school. I wouldn't think that it is nonsense to think my beliefs are nonsense. Would you think that way about evolution? If so, the science isn't the issue with you, ideology is.

Jarhyn said:
Your religion seems engineered to make you think all our best thinkers on the subjects of philosophy you respect were in our past, cannot be encountered in our present, will not be present in our future except in your religious organization, or ones that say what you wish they might.
Click to expand...

That doesn't even make any sense to me. My religion? You mean my religious beliefs in general or just my personal beliefs? Either way who cares? My beliefs and your beliefs are indisputable. I'll not assume yours are any more valid than mine until you assume the same of mine. If there is a sociopolitical dispute it is nothing to do with me personally because I'm irreligious, antisocial and apolitical. No group dictates or enforces my beliefs by my choice.

If, on the other hand, they would, that would be fair because it is mutual. In other words, in a democracy mob rules. The majority decides such things for the minority. In a republic the individual possesses the right for themselves. Politicize religion at your own risks.

Jarhyn said:
Ask yourself if this is really the work of "God", or God hardening your heart?
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Are you familiar with that term? How is it used Biblically? Suffice it to say that when God does something like that what it means is that he removes his spirit. So, Saul being given a "bad spirit" means that God removed himself in a spiritual sense, allowing a bad spirit to take over. He was given over to a bad spirit.

The term hardening the heart or neck basically means stubbornness. An unwillingness to listen to God. God allows this.

Evolution, in my opinion, then, is the work of God. God wants the theory of evolution no matter if it is true or not. It is a useful tool to harden the heart of people who don't want to believe. Not that its veracity is significant. With ideology, in the case of either science or religion, veracity is never the issue. It doesn't matter to the ideologue whether God or Evolution is real, true.

Jarhyn said:
You appear to have sworn an allegiance.
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I never do that. You see me as the ideological opposition to your own ideology. You see me as a theist, or believer, or Christian. Not as an individual.

Jarhyn said:
If your book says anything worth considering, it is that hardened hearts are attributed to those who are too far damned. Empathy is not weakness. It's not too late to look at who you are casting lots with according to your religion.
Click to expand...

What you really imply here, either knowingly or unknowingly, is that I don't listen. That's what a hardened heart means. I'm listening to you and anyone else here who isn't behaving like an idiot. Even though you informed me some time ago that you were ignoring me.

You see? You hear that?
 
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