I fail to see how natural selection is at all present with human existence of today.
Study the genetics of sickle cell disease, including linkage analysis, and you'll see a flabbergasting example of natural selection.
Why does time and space need to be created? Not to mention, why does there need to be 'mind' to create these things? "Co-creators of our own reality" implies that there is something besides us that creates our reality. What is this so-called co-creator? I can see how time does not exist as a thing in itself, because I assume you are talking about space-time, but why does space not exist as a thing in itself. It seems that space may be the only thing that truly exists as a thing in itself. Everything else seems to be dependent on something else, but empty space just is.
As regards your interpretation of the 'necessary a priori', I think from my very modest understanding of Kant, if that is who you're referring to, that this is not something his philosophy would support. I think, and am quite willing to be corrected, that his outlook was one of 'transcendental realism' rather than 'transcendental idealism' in the sense that you seem to be indicating. I think he would say, not that we create time and space, but that the 'pure intuition' of time and space must always be assumed in any act of cognition. In that sense we are indeed co-creators of the reality that we experience, and that is the only reality that we know (as we cannot know the 'reality in itself'.)
I don't quite see how this has bearing upon the weakness of Darwinism as a philosophy though (even though I agree that Darwinism is great science and poor philosophy).
I think a more fruitful line of enquiry might be sought along the lines of the cosmological argument. It is one that I don't think Richard Dawkins has ever understood, let alone refuted.
I fail to see how natural selection is at all present with human existence of today. We have self-created ways of dissolving this idea within our own species, even with the animals we love and care for, often now, the strongest do not survive, whereas the weakest often do.
For example, kinfolk in the village of Limone Sul Garda in northern Italy have a mutation which gives them better tolerance of HDL serum cholesterol. Consequently this family has no history of heart attacks despite their high-risk dietary habits. This mutation was traced to a single common ancestor living in the 1700's, but has now spread to dozens of descendants. Genetic samples from this family are now being tested for potential treatment of patients of heart disease.
Another example of new variance is the Glycophorin A somatic cell mutation which has been identified in some Tibetans, which allows them to endure prolonged periods at altitudes over 7,000 feet without succumbing to apoplexia, or "altitude sickness". A different, but similar mutation was identified in high altitude natives in the Andes.
Another example of that is the CCR5-delta 32 mutation. About 10% of whites of European origin now carry it. But the incidence is only 2% in central Asia, and is completely absent among East Asians, Africans, and tribal Americans. It appears to have suddenly become relatively common among white Europeans about 700 years ago, evidently as a result of the Black Plague, indicating another example of natural selection allowing one gene dominance in a changing environment. It is harmless or neutral in every respect other than its one clearly beneficial feature. According to Science-Frontiers.com, if one inherits this gene from both parents, they will be especially resistant, if not immune to AIDS.
Similarly, population genetics is being credited as one reason incidence of sickle-cell genes in African-Americans is apparently decreasing over time.
For another example we've also identified an emerging population of tetrachromatic women who can see a bit of the normally invisible ultraviolet spectrum.
There's also a family in Germany who were already unusually strong. But in one case, one of their children was born with a double copy of an anti-myostatin mutation carried by both parents. The result is a Herculean kiddo who was examined at only a few days old for his unusually well-developed muscles. By four years old, he had twice the muscle mass of normal children, and half the fat. Pharmaceutical synthesis of this mutation is being examined for potential use against muscular dystrophy or sarcopenia.
And then there's a family in Connecticut who've been identified as having hyperdense, virtually unbreakable bones. A team of doctors at Yale traced the mutation to a gene that was the subject of an earlier study. In that study researchers showed that low bone density could be caused by a mutation that disrupts the function of a gene called LRP5. This clued them that a different mutation increased LRP5 function, leading to an opposite phenotype, that is, high bone density. According to their investigators, members of this family have bones so strong they rival those of a character in the Bruce Willis movie, 'Unbreakable'.
All of these are examples of specifically identified mutations which are definitely beneficial, and which have spread through the subsequent gene pool according to natural selection. This is one of many indesputable proofs of evolution in humans. But we've identified beneficial mutations in other many other species too.
The dawkins/dennet - ites, are surely contradicted by the fact that you can build a machine as complex as you like, but never can you build a machine to subjectively experience, and the only way such a thing can be answered is through the transcendant and the mystical.
Im not exactly sure of what you're saying - Kant certainly thought time and space were creations of our minds, and not that time and space exist independently of us, and that we experience, or intuit them if thats what you mean. (And just checking wiki quickly) he was a trascendental idealist, and not a transcendental realist. In the critique of pure reason he certainly states that time and space are mere relations that we use to structure experience.
My beef with darwinism (or probably more accurately dawkinsism) is that it imagines objects in time and space (primitive lifeforms) before any higher conscious being existed as 'all there was', and that everything about life can be explained in a process of evolution from that point. (I probably should have been more precise).
Disease? AIDs?
The concept that that mutations are not spontaneous, and thus statistically random events, and thus a effect of entropy, has not been widely accepted since the 1940s
unless you are being racist, of which I assume you are not (ofcourse you are not, as a moderator I assume your passionate), the occurance of disease in these cultures is due to their progress, they are segregated from all the ideas and creations we are not, I would at least appreciate if you would research the modern view of a current situation..
Entropy is a ever increasing vortex of chaos that re-arranges all mass.
AIDS has been an epidemic for less than 30 years, and it's only known to have been in human populations for 50-100 years. Given the human generation time, there is no way we would see selective effects from this disease yet, especially because people with AIDS can (and do) reproduce and even without therapy about 75% of their children would be uninfected. There are MANY human mutations known to be protective against HIV, with CCR5 deficiency being the famous one.
This quote makes no sense for a variety of reasons. First, spontaneity and randomness are entirely unrelated concepts and therefore it is nonsensical to tie them together. Secondly, entropy is a thermodynamic phenomenon. You are using it inappropriately. Thirdly, entropy is not an "effect". It is, again, a thermodynamic phenomenon by which energy is lost in chemical reactions. Finally, whether mutations are random or not, what is NOT random is which mutations get preserved: it is the advantageous ones that get preserved.
I'm speaking from the point of view of someone who has done published research in the genetics of the malaria-host interaction in one of the most famous such labs in the world. I'm quite literate in the genetics of sickle cell disease, which by linkage analysis has independently arisen at least 5 times in Africa in the last 10,000 years -- which is coincidentally around the time that Plasmodium falciparum emerged as a species. The geographic distribution of the sickle cell allele is almost identical to that of the malaria parasite. Heterozygotes for sickle cell are significantly less likely to die of it or experience cerebral malaria and other complications. But homozygotes for it get sickle cell anemia and in the absence of medical care will die in childhood. So this mutation is SO advantageous that 5 separate times it has arisen -- but outside of malarious areas it is so deleterious that the mutation has become extremely rare. By nearly all statistical measures, malaria has been the single most important selective force on the human genome in the last 10,000 years.
Racist? What in god's name are you talking about.
Nice, poetic, but this has nothing to do at all with entropy as it is understood in science.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that all nuclear particles are decaying. All things have half-life.
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the universal principle of entropy, stating that the entropy of an isolated system which is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium, and that the entropy change dS of a system undergoing any infinitesimal reversible process is given by δq / T, where δq is the heat supplied to the system and T is the absolute temperature of the system. In classical thermodynamics, the second law is taken to be a basic postulate, while in statistical thermodynamics, the second law is a consequence of applying the fundamental postulate, also known as the equal a priori probability postulate,[clarification needed] to the future while empirically accepting that the past was low entropy, for reasons not yet well understood.
Entropy. I didn't intend to dismiss the assumption that you could not apply it's theory to the areas of creativity it was discovered in, I only implied, that all ideas, all proposition is created from proposition, thus philosophy, and I simply proposed a extended idea, not poetry.
all you have done is interject with descartaic syllogism in attempts to provide fallacy.
No, actually, neither the 2nd law of thermodynamics nor the principle of entropy say anything about that.
If you want to talk about entropy, talk about entropy. If you want to use it as a metaphor, then make sure you're being clear that you are using scientific terminology in a way that is unrelated to its scientific definition.
By definition I did not give a syllogism. Syllogisms are logical constructs. I did not give a logical construct. I gave an empirical example that is evidence-based and the inference of ongoing human evolution is easily deduced from this evidence.
No, actually, neither the 2nd law of thermodynamics nor the principle of entropy say anything about that.
It's also worth pointing out that the law specifies an isolated system, and therefore isn't relevent to things that occur on the planet earth - which receives energy from elsewhere.
We are a isolated, all inclusive, integrated system, of infinite proportions, energy is conserved, it cannot be created or destroyed, thus converted, e=mc^2. Thus we are a infinite set, who's sub-sets are simply conversions, and the whole is present within each of its parts, thus powers of infinity.
Again, symbolic fallacy and individual interpretation.
We are very literally in a fish tank, and there is a pump that recycles a flow in and around us.
It is safe to assume the black hole, is a symbol of our entire process, mass spirals in very aggressively at first, toward that same pull of singular oneness, and violently crashes against the event horizon, exploding into a single state of energy, as it is all very quickly released, until it finally gets so close that it is instantly released, and pops out of existence.
"Everything objective, extended, active, and hence everything material, is regarded by materialism as so solid a basis for its explanations that a reduction to this (especially if it should ultimately result in thrust and counter-thrust) can leave nothing to be desired. But all this is something that is given only very indirectly and conditionally, and is therefore only relatively present, for it has passed through the machinery and fabrication of the brain, and hence has entered the forms of time, space, and causality, by virtue of which it is first of all presented as extended in space and operating in time."
It is interesting how hard it is for many scientifically-educated commentators to appreciate the breadth of this spectrum and the various shades of meaning to be found in it.
