Atheism

@Thomas,

Works for me. Nature has never posted a job position for a summer intern, which is (at best) what any god would be. Nature seems to get everything done fine without help.

Buckminster Fuller once mused that nature always acts with the greatest economy. An apple does not have to plot it's course as it is released from the branch, it simply complies with gravity's command and falls.

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@failures art,

An apple could fall up if God wanted it to.

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@edgarblythe,

Or not.

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@failures art,

Quote:

Buckminster Fuller once mused that nature always acts with the greatest economy.

He obviously had never consulted any real Muses.

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@failures art,

failures art wrote:

Buckminster Fuller once mused that nature always acts with the greatest economy.

As much as it saddens me to spray cynic acid onto an idealistic young friend, Buckminster Fuller was mistaken. No, nature does not act with the greatest economy. To the contrary, it's full of waste. Its arms races are especially bad that way. For example, there's no good reason cheetahs are as fast as they are. They just have to catch antelopes for food, and antelopes are fast. Antelopes, in turn, have no good reason to be as fast as they are, either. They just have to escape cheetahs for survival, and cheetahs are fast. And so on ad infinitum. Cheetahs and antelopes would both be much better off if they made a trade-union agreement: Nobody runs faster than 40 mph! They would also be much better off if they had an intelligent designer imposing a speed limit on both. But nature doesn't work that way. Nature is wasteful.

I applaud you for rejecting the bromides of religion, but don't supplant them with bromides about nature. That's just out of the pan, into the fire.

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@Setanta,

Here Setanta, I'll show you a real Kerry and Irish joke, this is the calibre of person who has brought Ireland to it's knees. This is an independent who propped up this pathetic government for the sake of the promise of a bridge and a hospital being built in his area.
They say all politics is local, he's the proof of it, and the sad thing is they will vote him in again. I'm already preparing my kids for emigration as I don't see any future in this country with gobshites like this at the helm.

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@Thomas,

I don't know if you're reading Fuller right here. He's talking about forces of nature, not the products of those forces. An apple is released from the branch, it doesn't travel upward before coming to rest on the ground. It doesn't translate laterally first on some elective recreational whim. It only abides by the forces applied. There is no extra frills.

So if you mean to inspect the cheetah and the antelope (apples), the inspection of evolution (gravity) and it's economy is demonstrated not by how fast these creatures travel. The apple falls and hits the ground. This is the product of the forced applied to it. These animals run fast. A product of evolution.

If nature would be more efficient by having a designer draw in a speed limit, then would it be more efficient to have a designer pushing the apple to the earth?

The cheetah is only represents the apple in free fall. There is no end point, only forces guiding it in transition. If being fast is something that makes it of greater fitness, then a designer might be an efficient means to an end. However what defines fit changes. So the designer would have to be constantly redesigning the cheetah and the antelope. Constantly examining the tolerances. That is not efficiency. Better to have a simple force to drive the process.

Think about software, something that is designed. Would it not be more efficient if the software wrote itself and was always optimized for individual users? Of course! No amount of software programmers could ever keep up with the programming demand for every user. That's why software is Generic. There is not a Windows 7 Thomas and a Windows 7 Art. If there was, nature would have been it's author.

*acid shield* Razz

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@Thomas,

And yet the Cheetah is "just" fast enough to catch it's food (in enough cases to survive), and the Antelope is "just" fast enough to escape it's predators (in enough cases to survive). So in that sense the whole system is very efficient.

I think you are being unfair with this particular argument when measuring "efficiency" against an external standard. However I don't entirely disagree with the premise of some excess in efficiency within the natural world, and here's why:

The Red Queen hypothesis observes that "for an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the systems it is co-evolving with". This implies that at a fundamental level within nature there will always be an "arms race" among organisms, and in a sense, this is inefficient. However, the alternative is for nothing to occur at all; the cessation of life. This is one of the deep and compelling mysteries of life, and nature.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

I applaud you for rejecting the bromides of religion, but don't supplant them with bromides about nature. That's just out of the pan, into the fire.

Perhaps my anthropomorphic bits on nature are too much. I'm only talking about science. I've always been fond of defining science as the study of nature. I'm not making nature into a new deity or even granting it a conscience. Doing so is only thematic with what I believe the origin of religion to be: A misunderstanding of nature which lead to the anthropomorphizing of it.

Nature is indifferent.

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@failures art,

Gotcha. Sorry for lecturing.

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@failures art,

failures art wrote:

If nature would be more efficient by having a designer draw in a speed limit, then would it be more efficient to have a designer pushing the apple to the earth?

Nope. Falling apples are a good example of nature sometimes finding the most efficient path from A to B all by itself. (That's assuming the apple "wants" to be in point B, which is already on the slippery slope towards anthropomorphizing.) Cheetahs and antelopes, by contrast, are a good example of nature not always finding it, which is what Fuller said.

Failures Art wrote:

Think about software, something that is designed. Would it not be more efficient if the software wrote itself and was always optimized for individual users?

Yes. That's what compilers and configuration files do.

Failures Art wrote:

There is not a Windows 7 Thomas and a Windows 7 Art. If there was, nature would have been it's author.

I think that's not efficiency, just a Windows artefact, or perhaps a proprietary software artefact. There definitely could be a Linux Thomas and a Linux Art.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

I think you are being unfair with this particular argument when measuring "efficiency" against an external standard.

I agree. Terms like "efficiency" and "economy" don't really apply to nature at all, because they imply that nature has an objective that nature is trying to achieve. And it doesn't. But that's something you'll have to take up with Buckminster Fuller; he's the one using those terms. I'm just being kind to Fuller by saying that his statement is problematic even on its own terms, without attacking the terms themselves.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

failures art wrote:
If nature would be more efficient by having a designer draw in a speed limit, then would it be more efficient to have a designer pushing the apple to the earth?

Nope. Falling apples are a good example that nature can find the most efficient path from A to B all by itself. (That's assuming the apple "wants" to be in point B, which is already on the slippery slope towards anthropomorphizing.)

I think you've stumbled on a better way for me to explain my objection to the cheetah example: There is no point B.

Thomas wrote:

Failures Art wrote:
Think about software, something that is designed. Would it not be more efficient if the software wrote itself and was always optimized for individual users?

Yes. That's what compilers and configuration files do.

I'm talking more about what evolutionary algorithms will do someday.

Since we're digressing on evolution, I'd add that the theory of evolution applies not only to genes, but also to memes and (there's a good Ted talk about this) temes (technological replication of fit data).

Thomas wrote:

Failures Art wrote:
There is not a Windows 7 Thomas and a Windows 7 Art. If there was, nature would have been it's author.

I think that's not efficiency, just a Windows artefact, or perhaps a proprietary software artefact. There definitely could be a Linux Thomas and a Linux Art.

Touché

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@Thomas,

To the atheist there is no good reason for anything. Thomas's drivel about cheetahs and antelopes is neat anthropomorphism. Pure bromide.

Nature does act with the greatest economy. There is no "waste" anywhere in it.
Waste is a human concept just as "fast" is. So with "full". "Bad". "Good reason". His post is ridiculous. It is a silly attempt to reduce unfathomable complexity to the level of his understanding.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Incredibly ill-informed. The evidence is that Franklin's 1845 expedition failed because they were the self-inflicted victims of long-term, pernicious lead poisoning from the lead solder in the cans of food they used.

Long, long before Franklin's final expedition set out, William Parry had successfully overwintered in the artic region of North America precisely because he took heed of the diet of the Eskimos (Inuit) he encountered. That was in 1819. Franklin himself first ventured into arctic North America in 1819, leading an overland expedition. That was more than 25 years before his final, fatal expedition. On the overland expedition, he relied upon local aboriginal Americans to do the hunting for his expedition, and to find and cache food for them. They would not have survived without the aid of the Amerindians.

So, i guess you really don't know what the hell you're talking about, huh?

Franklins expedition did not survive , I need not say more

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@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Quote:
To the atheist there is no good reason for anything.

Quote:
really , so there is no good reason for Humanity ?

I'm alive

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@north,

You won't say any more, i'm sure, because you can't support the idiotic claim you made. Considering the general stupidity of your posts here, that's no surprise.

I suspect that before this, you weren't even aware that there was more than one Franklin expidition.

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@north,

north wrote:

back then they about the power , intelligence , knowledge

they looked at Native People in North America as primate people ( we all are , and Natives had knowledge of their own to respect , we just didn't respect this knowledge , hence the failer of the English Artic Expedition lead by Franklin )

nowadays we know better ... I should hope anyway

This is the incredibly stupid, nearly illiterate post you made to which i responded. So you claim, inferentially, that the "failer" (you're crackin' me up with stupid **** like that) of Franklin's last expedition was because "we" didn't respect the knowledge that Natives had. Which shows how fuckin' little you know about the event.

You've never told us what "primate people" are supposed to be. Come on . . . don't be shy . . . i could use a few more laughs.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You won't say any more, i'm sure, because you can't support the idiotic claim you made. Considering the general stupidity of your posts here, that's no surprise.

I see

Quote:

I suspect that before this, you weren't even aware that there was more than one Franklin expidition.

no , so.....

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

north wrote:
back then they about the power , intelligence , knowledge

they looked at Native People in North America as primate people ( we all are , and Natives had knowledge of their own to respect , we just didn't respect this knowledge , hence the failer of the English Artic Expedition lead by Franklin )

nowadays we know better ... I should hope anyway

Quote:
This is the incredibly stupid, nearly illiterate post you made to which i responded. So you claim, inferentially, that the "failer" (you're crackin' me up with stupid **** like that) of Franklin's last expedition was because "we" didn't respect the knowledge that Natives had. Which shows how fuckin' little you know about the event.

no he didn't

Quote:
You've never told us what "primate people" are supposed to be. Come on . . . don't be shy . . . i could use a few more laughs.

primative people are those who live off the land

1 Reply

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