Why do people deny evolution?

You're very intolerant of other belief systems, no surprise there. Your own brand of horseshit is why we had things like the Crusades and the Inquisition.

I’d use the term 'critical' instead of 'intolerant'. Yes, I am. As are you. As it should be. I consider it a service when someone is *critical* of mine. I’m doing my duty (and nature) when I criticize other systems of thought. If my critique of yours is accurate, you’ll get my meaning.



All I can say to that is that your critique of mine is not accurate.

@ Izzy:
Your post prompted me to look at the Gnostics a little more.
Actually, if you were reading my past posts, I’m surprised you haven’t mistaken me for one.
You probably weren’t looking for any pattern in them.
Or maybe you don’t know that much about the Gnostics.

Calling something horseshit is considerably more than just being critical.

Doing a volte face and claiming to believe some of the aforementioned horseshit is just confused.

Maybe you don't know that much about what you believe.

I was going to reply to your post (Leadfoot,) but you deleted it. Never mind.

True, but I thought some might need an example rather than follow the etymology of the word 'critical'.
But of course you are right. I should explain why I’d call a system of thought 'horseshit' first. If you are interested, I’ll explain.

I'm not really interested in why you think it's fine to insult other people's belief systems. I'm sure you can say why you feel the same about other religions too.

Overall I prefer New Age to Bronze Age.

I didn’t think you wanted a real explanation. Which is probably why I didn’t bother before.

Then you haven't figured out where 'new Age" came from.
It is luciferian to the core. That is, satanic.
Research Alice Baily, then you will find out.
There are different reasons why New Age came to the play.


Still prefer the new age?

Yawwwwwwn....

A real explanation as to why you'd call something horseshit instead of misguided or mistaken, or even wrong, no I don't want one.

I'm not interested in any wisdom that could be imparted by someone who uses such inflammatory language to describe another belief system.

Interesting link. Never heard of her before but I now recognize where my 3rd ex's system of beliefs morphed from. It mystified me for awhile there...
It seems to have mixed in with the latter day conspiracy crowd (Bush did 9/11, etc), The UFO religions and the infowars crowd. What an incredible clusterfuck!

One wonders how you survive logging onto the internet with such sensibilities. But I do respect them, you may justifiably put me on ignore.

Understanding Horizontal Gene Transfer In 'The Tangled Tree'
August 11, 20188:19 AM ET

NPR's Scott Simon asks science writer David Quammen about horizontal gene transfer and how it changes how we think about humankind's place in the world. Quammen's new book is The Tangled Tree.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Is our human view of life and lineage profoundly wrong? Darwin's tree of life, by which many of us see our ancestry - with genes and traits passed vertically, root to branch, from parent to child and so on for centuries - doesn't include what science has discovered over the past couple of generations. Horizontal gene transfer or HGT - genetic matter we don't inherit but acquire sideways, if you please, virally from other organisms, even other species. Roughly 8 percent of the human genome arrived that way. The tree of life is really a web.

David Quammen traces the story and implications of this discovery in his new book "The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History Of Life." He's an award-winning science, nature and travel writer. His work has appeared in National Geographic, Rolling Stone and The New York Times' Book Review. David Quammen joins us now from Bozeman, Mont. Thanks so much for being with us.

DAVID QUAMMEN: Thank you, Scott. It's great to talk with you.

SIMON: Has horizontal gene transfer been amazingly unheralded?

QUAMMEN: It has been. It's been known among some corners of microbiology since the 1950s. But it was really the explosion of genome sequencing that revealed it during the 1990s and into the 2000s.

SIMON: What does it mean that that we are, as you call us, composite creatures?

QUAMMEN: Well, we now know because of work in this field that, as you said, 8 percent of our human genome is viral DNA acquired by infection, by retroviruses, that got into not just our immune cells, the way the retrovirus HIV does, but into our genomes, into the reproductive cells and therefore became inherited. And there are also other parts of us that come by sideways transfer, in one form or another. Every one of our cells contains a little organelle called mitochondria. And we now know those are acquired bacteria - captured bacteria going back billions of years.

SIMON: One example you provide is the gene that produces a membrane between the placenta and the fetus.

QUAMMEN: That's right. This is a gene called syncytin-2. And it is acquired from a retrovirus. In the retrovirus, it forms an envelope - a sort of a membrane around the virus capsule. But it was acquired by animals and became the gene in mammals that creates a membrane between the placenta and the fetus. So without this acquired, adapted, repurposed viral gene, it would be impossible for a fetus to come to term in a human being.

SIMON: And to understand this, we are getting genetic matter from non-human - even non-primate sources.

QUAMMEN: That's correct.

SIMON: Boy, this really revises Darwinism, doesn't it?

QUAMMEN: It does revise Darwinism. The canonical view of evolution - the Darwinian view is that evolution occurs as genes descend from parents to offspring and are very gradually modified and branches diverge. The tree of life is the model used because it chose branches diverging. But now we understand that innovation in genomes doesn't always come gradually. Sometimes it comes suddenly, in an instant, by horizontal gene transfer. And that represents the convergence not the divergence of lineages.

SIMON: Is this the way, for example, so many anti-resistant bacteria have been able to protect themselves in recent years?

QUAMMEN: Absolutely. And resistance to one form of antibiotic in one bacterial strain arises gradually. But we now know that whole genes and packets of genes that confer that sort of resistance against multiple kinds of antibiotic can move sideways in an instant from one form of bacteria, from one species of bacteria into another - from salmonella into staphylococcus, from E. coli into streptococcus. And that's why this problem has spread around the world so quickly.

SIMON: This isn't a new danger that's been set off by any genetic tinkering? This is just nature, isn't it?

QUAMMEN: That's right. Movement of genes from one kind of bacterium to another, potentially making one more virulent, that's a natural phenomenon. It's been happening forever.

SIMON: What are some of the results of what, at one point, you refer to is this relentless bacterial togetherness? What are the implications we need to know about?

QUAMMEN: Just for understanding of who we are, we humans, what human identity means or does not mean, what the concept of a species means or does not mean and all of those things have been radically revised.

SIMON: Should it make us as human beings feel less individual?

QUAMMEN: Well, I think it should make us feel humble. Each human is an individual still in a very, very important sense. But it should remind us of that important Darwinian truth - and I think it's the deepest and the darkest of Darwinian truths - that we humans are not separate from nature. We're not above nature. We're part of nature. And now we know that not only is that true in the sense that we are animals evolved from other animals, but we also contain bacteria. We contain viruses. We are individuals, but we are individuals that are mosaics encompassing other individuals.

SIMON: I mean, the implication is we look out at the world and not just see that we have a place in it, see that we're all tied up in it.

QUAMMEN: That's right. What we might have thought of as our deepest identity, our genome, is a mosaic of pieces that have come from other branches on the tree of life. Now, I think we should celebrate that. We should be happy because we humans have figured that out. That's an enormously exhilarating accomplishment for the human species.

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/11/637780618/understanding-horizontal-gene-transfer-in-the-tangled-tree

So ?

The gnostics got bad rap for their idea that there are several gods: a higher good one who either created the universe or at least inspired it (several versions there), and a lower, bad one (Yahweh) who rules the universe (or created it). The idea of YHWH as the bad guy didn't buy them friends among Catholics or Jews for that matter.

To be fair with them, it certainly does look that way sometimes..., and the Bible does tell the stories of several gods, including a creator (El), his son (Yahweh) and another son (Jesus)....

Another thing was that they didn't think of Jesus' resurection as 'in the flesh', more as a vision of Christ his best followers would have had. A most logical idea...

Why call it a bad rap, they clearly make that claim.

But that is not mainly why I fault them. Their failure (IMO) is the same as many other ideologies - it is not internally consistent.

The central theme of the Gnostics is Gnosis, this is supposedly the way that the reality of existence is revealed to an individual. In other words, by divine revelation. In this it is in agreement with the Bible which says “The Spirit will lead you into all truth.” And “ No one comes to God unless he is called”. In other places it’s called being 'born again'. It’s just a rewording of scripture or using other terms and calling it new or different.

But what I fault them for is that after telling you that you can only learn these truths as an individual directly from God, they then go on to tell you exactly what truths you must receive. Why must I accept these truths from their dogma if God tells you himself?

Not only do you have to accept their story of multiple gods but some very specific stuff like reincarnation where you are immediately sent back here if you die without learning enough. But of course you forget everything so you start over from scratch anyway. There is much more but that’s the basic idea, the New Age movement really goes for the reincarnation aspect.

Just too many inconsistencies for my taste.

Gee, how lucky!

This is what I mean about 'evolution' being indistinguishable from design. A designer would naturally reuse his design anywhere it was appropriate rather than start over from scratch. And yet reuse of design is cited for evidence of evolution. The mind boggles.

Creating completely new designs from scratch is what I would expect a random evolutionary process would do. This assumes a random process could come up with a new design in the first place, which of course we have never seen happen and is absurd. But such is what Evolution requires us to believe.

That's absurd. It's the opposite: ID should lead to a whole lot of new designs.

All religions are internally inconsistant, without exception.