Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Evolution is a myth? Please explain:

Shortly it will be pointed out thatthis is the Marxist position because SJG'S father was a by the book marxist..

If you don't think science is a religion just look at the man made global warming crowd.

It seems I recall a quote from Ben Stein, "Science brought us the holocaust".

Yeah you know what?.. I ain't letting any Manhattan Jew 'define' jack schit for me. That's a personal law for me.

Feel free though.

Joos! The damned science Joos that caused the Holocaust that didn't happen Israeli mofos but ain't better than Palestinian goat phucqkers walls don't work but do Christians don't harm nothing e coli bs church with rattlesnakes!

Sounds like Star Trek's Data when his speech center got struck by an energy blast from a nebula.

A.S. You seem to have done a lot of thinking on this issue and I am interested to know your thoughts. In a nutshell How did all this huge universe with an unfathomable amount of solid material come to be? I understand there is a big bang theory, but doesn't that require a compression of all this material into a critical mass that then explodes and creates an expanding universe of a huge,huge, unthinkable amount of material? A speck of which is earth that happened to be hospitable to the formation of chemical reactions that became life? Where did that material originate?

Gould is famous for "punctuated equilibrium"---the theory that tries to reconcile Neo-Darwinism with the decidedly anti-Darwinian fossil record. "Punk-eek" doesn't work either, but its hilariously funny watching the intellectual contortions neo-Darwinian fundamentalists have to go through to try to reconcile their theory with the disconfirming evidence.

An a priori assumption is not necessarily an instance of absolute or universal truth.. The issue of the killing of an innocent person is not necessarily a religious value, a God given value. If you believe that it is, you need to show why.

"Gould is famous for "punctuated equilibrium"---the theory that tries to reconcile Neo-Darwinism with the decidedly anti-Darwinian fossil record. "Punk-eek" doesn't work either, but its hilariously funny watching the intellectual contortions neo-Darwinian fundamentalists have to go through to try to reconcile their theory with the disconfirming evidence." - Tarquin

Ridiculous. Punctuated equilibrium merely asserts that there are periods of high pressure for rapid change within certain species, such as relatively sudden changes in the environment. "Rapid change" must be understood in terms of geological time scales, i.e., still very long periods of time.

In other words, it asserts that most major changes occur within a geologically short time scale, and that in between those periods are long periods of a relative absence of change (slow or no change).

An example would be the sudden gigantism among many species of birds (along with the loss of the ability to fly) that occurred after the K-T Extinction Event. This occurred because of the sudden disappearance of all of the earth's mega fauna, i.e., all dinosaurs other than birds. This left a vacuum in terms of niches to be filled, so birds grew larger to fill them, and lost their flight because they adopted the roles of land mega fauna, which didn't require flight. This change in birds happened relatively quickly.

Aside from telling us you are a barely literate antisemite, what were you trying to say, Ghost?

That's not an honest reading of Descartes.

I think, therefore I am.
I am thinking, therefore I do exist.
But there's nothing is this syllogism that makes my ability to perceive sensory input "universal". We still run into the problems of a "the brain in the box", or the more modern version "simulated brain", and the problems of hard solipsism.

Of course, if you are taking the position of the hard solipsist you've eliminated any concept of "universal" since a completely isolated brain is be part of something "universal".

As for your position on killing, which you switched to murder, and how it doesn't apply to your god, already demonstrates you have a personal Relative Morality as it applies to killing.

You don't recognize sarcasm?

An a priori assumption must be absolute within the scope in which it is applied. By definition it is beyond debate.

Didn't say it was a religious value, depends on one's concept of religion I suppose. You asked for an example and that's a very common example. Choose that assumption or don't.

But if you don't start with "I exist as something capable of thought" how can you claim that you think? Suppose you don't exist, how can you assert "I think." Is nothing capable of thinking? That's silly but by eliminating that possibility you're left with only the alternative of existence from the beginning. You must exist to make the assertion "I think."

BTW, "murder" is unprivileged killing which is generally accepted as the meaning of "killing of an innocent." A slight refinement of terms.

How's your math?

Let's start with what we do know. The process of Inflation occurred, initiated about 13.6 billion years ago. We have a very good sense of what happened back to the "planck time", a period about 1^-43 of a after the big bang when classical physics as we know them cease to be valid. Prior to that, WE DON'T KNOW what occurred. More over, IT'S OK TO NOT KNOW. What I don't consider acceptable is plugging in a God of the Gaps into our knowledge gaps. This only creates impediments to understand the real truth. Fortunately, Scientist continue investigating multiple hypothesis looking for a valid ways to drive the curtain around our knowledge back further.

As for what do I consider the leading, but experimentally unproven hypothesis regarding a potential origin of something from nothing?

Recall Einsteins famous equation: E=MC^2

We know that virtual particles can, and do create and annihilate themselves (see quantum physics), have mass, and during their creation and annihilation follow the rules for the conservation of energy. So the mass of a virtual particle that creates it self, must be offset my an equal amount of negative energy. In other words, the mass side of the equation, must be fully offset by negative energy on the other side for the universe to remain in balance.

We start with nothing so lets's reform the above equation to:

0=(MC^2)-E

With M being the mass, and E being the negative energy associated with the creation of the virtual particle.


Lets try to keep this real simple:


Think of the Mass in this equation as representing all the matter in the universe.
E = the net sum of the energy in the universe......but here's the interesting part. Gravity expresses itself as NEGATIVE energy.

So according to our best measurements we get:

E= 10^-69 joules
M = 10^52kg
c= speed of light

=

=10^-69 joules = 10^52kg(c)
=10^-69 joules = 10^69 joules

=

0= (10^69 joules) - (10^69 joules)

And there you have it. A flat balanced universe with all the mass and energy we observe, from "nothing".

No supernatural force required....

Not that simple, the definition of an a priori assumption being that something is true without further proof or need to prove it, which does not mean absolute certainty.

''However, it has a negative side: an a priori assumption made without question on the basis that no analysis or study is necessary, can be mental laziness when the reality is not so certain.''

''A priori justification seems to rest on rational intuitions, or insights, but there are a variety of views about the nature of these intuitions or insights. There are different explanations of how these intuitions provide justification, if they do. Some philosophers do not see a priori justification as resting on any evidence, either experiential or nonexperiential, and so not resting on rational intuitions or insights at all. Their idea is that in some circumstances it can be default reasonable for a person to accept a proposition, or that the person is entitled to accept certain presuppositions independent of any evidence. Of course, there are also many objections to the idea that there can be a priori justification. Finally, rationalists think that there can be a priori justification and knowledge of the world while empiricists deny this.''



I was responding to the claim of an apparent necessity for absolute values - ''It's a long discussion but in a nutshell without some universal truths you're left with moral relativism'' - nighthawk.

Right here on the 'Fire is the first place I've ever seen Antisemitism.

Define unprivileged.
Define innocent.
Heck, define killing.

Have these definitions even changed or evolved? Is their a single unambiguous definition agreed upon by everyone for each of these?

If not, you don't have a "universal truth", but one relative to the various definitions to the above words.