Atheism

@neologist,

That's a red herring, although probably unintentional. It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest." Darwin did use it in a later edition of Origin, but likely because it has some currency by then. It is a considerably less than accurate metaphor for natural selection, however.

It applies to species, not individuals. Any individual which survives if fit, that's the definition of "fitness" for an individual. The mechanism of natural selection is that those individuals whose traits or behaviors enhance reproductive opportunities, and who reproduce and raise to sexual maturity offspring displaying the same traits or behaviors, and who subsequently reproduce and raise to sexual maturity offspring who then reproduce, etc.--leads to the evolution of a species. Therefore, the metaphor of survival of the fittest can only apply to species, not individuals. That stupidity of the putative Jesus toward the fig tree has no relation to evolution, and it is absurd to claim that it in any way reflects the mechanism of natural selection. It got blasted because Jesus was being a dick, not because any attribute of the tree doomed it.

Species commonly survive after some of the members of that species evolve. Very likely, grizzly bears and polar bears are only separate species because of sexual isolation (one of the criteria for speciation)--contemporary scientists are certain they would be reproductively successful if they interbred. Mammoths and wooly mammoths both survived at tht same time. Einkorn, emmer and teosinte (respectively, two species from which modern wheat derives and the species from which corn/maize derives) all survive today. To allege that cultivars are not products of natural selection is to indulge that silly religious tenet that man is special, and set apart from the rest of the natural world. Man is a part of the natural world, and the cultivation of plants is, therefore, an agent of natural selection. We don't claim that because ants "farm" aphids that they are the product of a special creation, and that therefore, they are removed from the process of natural selection.

You need to understand the mechanism of natural selection before you throw around that "survival of the fittest" metaphor.

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@Olivier5,

Sheesh!!! Olivier. I'm here to help hand power back to the orgiastic priestesses who were dethroned by Christians.

That a few of us were torn to pieces on ceremonial occasions was nothing compared to what happened to millions in the 20th century.

What a bunch of soft-headed misogynists we have collected on here.

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@Setanta,

I don't know why he throws it around anyway, since he disavows evolution.

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@edgarblythe,

You see that a lot with god-botherers, they like to use scientific terms to load their arguments--Gunga Dim is a really obvious example. However, i think that in this case, Neo was arguing against the claim that the fig tree is a metaphor for evolution.

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@Setanta,

Could be. I read your words, but not his.

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@Thomas,

That does surprise me. I know that in Cadarache, where they are trying to build the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER, a fusion reactor), they are aiming at heating the plasma at higher temperatures than in the sun, because they can't rely on high pressure to break the electrostatic forces barrier between two H nucleus, for fusion to occur...

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@Thomas,

Quote:

It's a good thing, then, that we are justified in concentrating exclusively on the part of the sun that produces "our" light.

I disagree with this assumption. A tiny slice of the sun plus the earth do not a closed system make.

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@Setanta,

Sorry to have once again inserted myself into this exclusive thread.

It was not I who brought up the idea of a metaphor. My comment was made simply to underscore its inappropriateness.

I realize that few see the relevance of the Bible. Fewer still will see the application of Jesus' condemnation of the fig tree directed first at the Jewish system which rejected him and later at the plethora of nominal christian religions who claim to represent him but reject his message.

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@neologist,

Why don't you drop the snotty remarks about "exclusivity," 'K? I am bemused by a claim that the putative Jesus blasted a fig tree in order to condemn "nominal christian religons" which did not then exist, and would not exist for centuries. According to scripture (which is, remember, highly suspect), he commented on the fig tree the next day, as they were leaving town, and in the context of having attempted to drive the money changers from the temple. There's no good reason to extrapolate from that a criticism of cults to come.

I understand that you were questioning the appropriateness of that failed attempt at metaphor, and if you were honest, you'd acknowledge that i defended you to EB. But this is exactly why we don't need this religious bullshit in this thread, though. It's a distraction and it's irrelevant. More than that, it draws in the trolls, like the one who very likely come here to claim he has to "defend christianity" from the evil atheists who hate and fear it.

The subject of this thread is not christianity, nor any other religion.

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@neologist,

neologist wrote:

I realize that few see the relevance of the Bible. Fewer still will see the application of Jesus' condemnation of the fig tree directed first at the Jewish system which rejected him and later at the plethora of nominal christian religions who claim to represent him but reject his message.

Are you suggesting that jesus could see through time? Because surely there weren't 14,000 denominations of christianity during his time. So how could the fig tree parable be about "the plethora of nominal christian religions"? Or are you just making up ****? Probably the latter.

So tell us, which of the 14,000 denominations is NOT rejecting his message. It would be good to know right? Since you seem to think you understand the message.

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THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT RELIGION!

Sheesh.

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@spendius,

Are we boring you with our cosmic arguments? :-)

The greatest tragedy of Christianity has been to stamp down the pagan cults, temples and schools. You've heard of Hypatia of Alexandria, right?

There was something like a golden age of religious tolerance in the Roman Empire, during Constantine and shortly after, when Christianity was not yet the state religion but was not persecuted anymore (or less than before). I wish they could have frozen that era in time, keep the religious diversity. Imagine having REAL believers and priests of pagan gods still around. (not the revival kind I mean)

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

I disagree with this assumption. A tiny slice of the sun plus the earth do not a closed system make.

Indeed it doesn't. We're still talking about an open system that leaks power into the rest of the world. Hence, the playing field is still tilted against concluding that life on earth does not break the system's entropy budget. But we have gone from a playing field that's absurdly tilted against our likely conclusion to one that's only slightly tilted against it. That's progress --- possibly enough progress to prove our point.

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@spendius,

spendius wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:
You're merely on the other side of the coin filtering the nice things that the delusions have brought us to without mentioning the decidedly not nice things that the delusions have brought, that the critics bring up, and you criticize them for not including those nice things. You're a hypocrite.

Not at all. I have referred many times to the negative aspects of the process. And I have criticised nothing about it. Nor would I.

Maybe I was unclear here. I meant that you criticize the critics not the process.

spendius wrote:

All I have done is point out that there are "nice things" to those who only ever point out the "decidedly not nice things" which are mostly stories they can't verify and might well be propaganda.

The wars, oppression and discrimination that have been perpetrated on account of those delusions are not stories. Don’t feign incredulity.

spendius wrote:

Do you accept that the "delusions" have been to our advantage? If not what alternatives do you suggest? How else could we have got to where we are?

I don’t have anything else to compare everything that has transpired in the world up to this very moment. This is much like the inanity of Pangloss' tautological maxim "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds."

Quote:

Critics of the "delusions" must be critics of what we have got unless they can supply an alternative. Which, of course, they can't and their arrogance leads them to not even think they need to do which is intellectual wuss.

Sure, but the criticism is aimed largely at the decidedly not nice things that are based on those delusions. You seem to think that the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater by pointing out that those decidedly not nice things have been based on delusions. Your fears do not follow. The idea of "love thy neighbor" does not collapse by pointing out the unnecessariness of those delusions.

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@Thomas,

Still, my gut feeling is that you're making this more complicated that it needs to be. On any cosmic scale, and from a purely thermodynamic standpoint, life is a negligible phenomena.

A metaphors perhaps?

Engineers operating a nuclear reactor notice that a grain of sand got somewhere near the reactor, and that this grain of sand is covered with a thin layer of various bacteria. One engineer says: these bacteria are going to make the reactor fail, because they could possibly break the entropy budget of the system.

Considering the respective sizes and energy outputs of the bacteria on the one hand, and the tons of melting hot uranium on the other hand (figuratively, don't try this at home), do you think that's likely? I would just say: "Nah, they're way to small to be of consequence."

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

It [the survival of the fittest] applies to species, not individuals.

I agree that's what Spencer meant by it. But over the last 150 years, lots of reputable biologists did think it applies to species. (For details, you can search the web for "group selection".) Most modern biologists are inclined to the view that it applies to genes.

Either way, however, the connection with the Biblical fig-tree parable is spurious. When humans weed out barren fig trees, that's human agriculture, not evolution. To make this a parable about evolution, the people in it would have to leave the fig tree alone. Ten years later, lo and behold, the tree has died of natural causes, and there would never be a fig tree like it again because this one, being barren, failed to leave any descendants.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Still, my gut feeling is that you're making this more complicated that it needs to be.

If nature accorded to our gut feelings, we wouldn't need science in the first place. To think coherently about nature, we must mistrust gut feelings.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Are we boring you with our cosmic arguments? :-)

The greatest tragedy of Christianity has been to stamp down the pagan cults, temples and schools. You've heard of Hypatia of Alexandria, right?

There was something like a golden age of religious tolerance in the Roman Empire, during Constantine and shortly after, when Christianity was not yet the state religion but was not persecuted anymore (or less than before). I wish they could have frozen that era in time, keep the religious diversity. Imagine having REAL believers and priests of pagan gods still around. (not the revival kind I mean)

Christians rarely if ever reflect on Constantine and his importance to the propagation of christianity.

You really have to get into the frame of mind. Obviously there was a bar brewing and he was feeling desperate and perhaps even anxious for an outcome. It has been documented that the Romans are VERY superstitious.

It was recorded that he had a dream and in the dream he saw the symbol of the cult of christians. Which by the way was a circle with an X through it. Not todays symbol. He took this to be a sign that if he converted to the cult that he would win the war. So he had the symbol painted on the shields of his warriors and when the war came he eventually won. He attributed the win to that of the christian god who he even proclaims is the god of war and victory.

christianities history is deep in bloodshed and murder. For a god that is suppose to be all about love and mercy he sure seems to love blood and violence.

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

I meant that you criticize the critics not the process.

There are no critics here IB. There are blundering know-alls who not only know nothing but would need a brain-clean to get back to the position of maybe learning something if they could forget about the sophistries spinning off from their dick-work.

Quote:

The wars, oppression and discrimination that have been perpetrated on account of those delusions are not stories.

It is not agreed among experts what exactly causes those things. You can take it as read that I am against them just as much as you are. There is no need to wrap the flag of virtue and compassion around yourself as if it is an exclusive privilege. I am sure we are all against them.

Just as I am against filling the car up with gas, servicing the damn thing and obeying all the bloody regulations I am supposed to do. But I have the car and I do those tiresome exercises on a calculus of pain and pleasure.

Evolution is the death dealer isn't it? And we are by no means dead. Paganism is or at least it's in endangered species mode. Survivals here and there being mainly, for legal reasons, affectations of the attention seeking variety. Not that there is anything wrong with that. At least it keeps the idea alive in case its time comes again. Which is about all the bourgeois practitioners of the schtick can manage.

World Cup cricket tournament in Bangladesh with Afghanistan one of the teams and all the stadium announcements in English and not a player interviewed who wasn't fluent in our Mother Tongue. And a fantastic storm to watch live sat on the sofa with a nice cuppa.

We ain't dead. We have only just got into our stride.

I have to go.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

On any cosmic scale, and from a purely thermodynamic standpoint, life is a negligible phenomena.

The amount of information created by life is negligible compared to the amount of information destroyed by the sun? How is that intuitively obvious?

1 Reply

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