I’m pretty sure that most knowledgeable people know that someone who claims to be an atheist is just making an overstatement about his/her own beliefs. As most knowledgeable people who claim to be atheist probably know that even the most recognizable faces of atheistic propaganda, such as Richard Dawkins, admitted publicly that they are less than 100% certain that God/gods don’t exist.
My question is: Why would anyone who calls himself an atheist make a statement like that?
colewd,
Hardly. The human-chimp common ancestor (for example) being almost certainly non-human, then by any reasonable measure you get human DNA (and incidentally chimp DNA – why does no-one give a shit about our furry cousins?) without any undue troubling of universes.
Go on, tell me you doubt even that nodal common ancestry, all evidence notwithstanding. Something about chromosome 2 being a bit fuzzy in the middle perhaps?
Poor Bill is forever stuck in the idea that large DNA sequence = impossibly improbable for natural processes (which he unknowingly equates to full randomization)
He also doesn’t realize how he begs the question when he refers to “the first human DNA” and “design requirements”
I agree with you. Unfortunately, the goal of guarantees of religious freedom including freedom from religion is not shared by a significant percentage of theists in the U.S. Their idea of religious freedom is the ability to use government force to impose their beliefs on children in public schools and via laws restricting a variety of behaviors.
I’ve often thought that if theists really believed their particular religion is well supported then they’d be willing to wait until their children were 18 before exposing them to it. They know, though, that would guarantee near complete destruction of all mainstream religions within two generations. If they don’t get the kids before they have critical thinking skills, they’re very unlikely to get them later.
Agnostic by what definition? You are studiously avoiding the distinction between knowledge and belief. Why is that?
Part of your confusion stems from the concept that there was a first human.
“You stand on the shore of the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia, facing north, and in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother’s hand, and so on. The chain wends its way up the beach, into the arid scrubland and westwards on towards the Kenya border.
How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles.”
— Richard Dawkins, Gaps in the Mind
Very well put. Some people just can’t imagine that others pay as little attention to their weird little beliefs as they pay to others’ weird little beliefs.
Please provide your detailed calculations for identifying the “design requirement”. An operational definition would be helpful, too.
A metaphor I can identify with.
Atheism is like not being a bricklayer. Or not being a shoe salesman.
There’s another side to this that I think is important. I’m not an MD.
But I’m named after a grandfather who was an MD. My father was and MD. My brother is an MD. Not being an MD is significant in my life in a way that not being a bricklayer is not.
I’m thinking that this is how religion works in people whose family and friends are religious. There are people whose psychology revolves around taking up or not taking up the family trade.
I like it, too. It’s not mine though. WordPress messes up attribution sometimes.
keiths,
The origin of human DNA is not well understood is an assertion. This is based on my opinion that there is not a good explanation of the origin of.
-consciousness
-language
-complex thought
-planning
The current explanation is a story that is becoming more doubtful since the discovery of differences in gene expression, alternative splicing and new DNA sequence differences.
This is one of many problems facing evolutionary theory. Simply stated, we have not been able to experimentally verify any evolutionary transition that makes up the hypothetical tree of life. So as Walto stated this is an argument from ignorance but as the ignorance widens I become more skeptical that there is a “inside universe” explanation.
This idea that science will eventually figure this out is a scientism of the gaps argument. There is too much here to deny that we ultimately need an uncaused cause to make sense of all this or face an infinite regress.
colewd,
Amazing how many fallacies you’re able to pack in a single word salad
How would an uncaused cause explain it?
By being really smart?
So how do you ensure that it will be really smart? Or uncaused? Or a cause at all?
Why is nothing at all considered to be marvelously capable by those who assume that it’s something? It’s like, well, we know of no limits of something beyond the universe, therefore it’s omnipotent. Not actually a warranted conclusion.
Glen Davidson
colewd,
To summarize your argument:
1. I, colewd, (really want to) doubt the ability of evolutionary theory to explain the origin of humans.
2. Therefore evolution has a problem explaining the origin of humans.
3. Therefore, Jesus.
Who could dispute that?
dazz, to colewd:
It’s a Divine Gift.
keiths,
The discussion is not about Jesus, it is about whether there is evidence for the supernatural, defined as something requiring resources outside the universe. The origin of human DNA is only one of many problems that may require resources outside the universe or serve as evidence of this requirement.
Your claim that there is no evidence supporting the supernatural is categorically false.
You are evidence of the supernatural. 🙂
colewd,
I’m still awaiting an argument. Why, specifically, does the origin of human DNA require “resources outside the universe”?
I know this is a stretch, but suppose you were a scientist trying to persuade another scientist of your hypothesis. What would you say?
The origin of human DNA seems exceedingly simple to explain, as far as I can see. Just take the DNA of the human-chimp ancestor and insert around 20 million mutations of the sort we see happening all the time, mostly point mutations but also a fair number of insertions, deletions, inversions, translocations, and one chromosomal fusion. Where’s the supernatural source in that?
I am not able to parse this argument. What do you mean by “requiring resources outside the universe” and how does human DNA qualify (and why would no other DNA qualify)? Just as an example, DNA…ALL DNA…is made up of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and phosphorus. Are you suggesting that one of these elements had to come from outside the universe? Or is it that the arrangement of those elements into adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine require (in your opinion) something outside the universe? If so, what? Further, how do you come to the conclusion that something is “requiring resources outside the universe” when whatever those “resources” are are clearly here in the universe now?
Your proposition doesn’t seem well-thought to me.
Please demonstrate that there are resources outside the universe.
Then demonstrate their causal powers.
Or quit making up shit.
Glen Davidson
Somehow, even to entertain the hypothesis that there is a multiverse out there makes IDists apoplectic, although there are theoretic reasons to think it at least possible (and few think it comes to much unless evidence for the multiverse is somehow found).
If it’s “something outside the universe,” though, that’s just a legitimate inference due to the “necessity” of such an entity. And there’s no reason to suppose that such an entity exists at all, beyond their imaginations and their insistence that such an entity is necessary.
It’s not God of the gaps, it’s God of the nothingness that is known about anything “outside of the universe.”
Glen Davidson
colewd – how do you account for the enormous amount of sequence alignment between human and chimp DNA? It’s not just a set of individually aligned ORFs, the ORFs themselves are joined up the same way (including a veeery interesting pattern on our chromosome 2 … ).
I’m wondering what mechanism or process you have in mind that would account for human and chimp genetic similarity, yet that bypassed the ‘conventional’ route – by descent from a common ancestor.
keiths,
This is not the argument, it is only supporting evidence that your assertion that there is “no evidence” for the supernatural is false.
John Harshman is supporting my point by claiming that 20 million mutations over 6 million years would land serendipitously inside the ancestral genome and poof
-advanced language
-abstract thought
-ability to plan
-skin vs hair
-functional thumb
-etc
Solely from random change and selection.
colewd,
Chimps and humans, remarkably, both continue to sport both.
Plus, of course
-the ability to make up fantastic causal entitites
-the ability to ignore all of the evidence that life has the limitations of evolution
-the ability to believe in a magical entity that “explains” everything that you’ve failed to acknowledge
-the ability never to learn what evidence actually is.
How do you evilutionists explain IDists, anyway? It’s almost as if they evolved to conform to certain social cues rather than to think rationally, almost as if rationality wasn’t the goal of evolution. Surely that can’t be right.*
Glen Davidson
*Except in actual evolutionary theory, that is.
Can you provide any support for this assertion?
(Didn’t think so.)
YOUR SIDE CAN’T EVEN EXPLAIN DNA!
Sorry, something came over me there….
There’s empirical evidence to the contrary. But I think it’s only fair that you support your claim first.
Sorry, but you’re the one apparently arguing for poof. I don’t know what your alternative claim is here, because you never actually manage to make one. But if you are proposing that the human genome was carefully designed, why does it look exactly like the sort of thing you get from 6 million years of random mutation? Shouldn’t the very structure of the genomic differences between humans and chimps show clear and obvious evidence of this careful planning, something out of the ordinary? And yet there’s nothing, just a collection of slight differences in various spots, the vast majority of them completely useless.
colewd,
As opposed to landing outside the ancestral genome?
colewd,
How does it support your claim?
You still appear to be making the same argument:
Let’s try again:
Yes, somehow domestication and genetic engineering done by humans show up well against the apparently naturally evolved background.
It’s the Supreme Designer’s efforts that blend seamlessly with the processes of nature in the genetic evidence. Maybe that’s just another bit of magic.
Glen Davidson
keiths,
The discussion was how would you (keiths) refute the claim that you (keiths) are supernatural.
-you claimed that evolution explained keiths.
-I said the origin of human DNA was a problem for evolution explaining keiths.
-I don’t think you made a coherent argument beyond this but I might be wrong 🙂
colewd,
Specifically, you said:
Hence my questions:
I am interested in seeing that evidence but fair enough.
The data from which I draw that conclusion includes:
1) The U.S. is becoming less religious and this is particularly prevalent among Millenials.
2) The same source notes that, of those that were raised non-religous, two-thirds remained so. There is a survey from Aberdeen University (that I unfortunately can’t find at the moment) that says the number could be as high as 95%.
3) Statistics from the University of Chicago show that about two-thirds of people who are religious remain in the same denomination as adults.
Those numbers show the importance of childhood indoctrination and the social bonds associated with religion. If those are eliminated, people tend not to become religious.
There is some evidence that non-religious people who do start practicing tend to do so because of marriage. They adopt, at least superficially, the religious practice of their partner. As the percentage of religious people in the population decreases, this motivation also becomes less important.
For a non-evidential reason, consider the case of a Muslim family. If all of the children are raised without exposure to Islam and all are given equal quality secular education, what percentage of young women would choose to accept second class status at the age of 18?
Family and community pressures are powerful reasons for a person to assume the religion of their parents. Absent those pressures, far fewer people will do so.
keiths,
Why do you change my words from “may require” to “require”. I don’t think you need to invoke a straw-man to have a reasonable discussion.
“Yes, somehow domestication and genetic engineering done by humans show up well against the apparently naturally evolved background.”
That’s why Paley’s argument never made sense in the first place. If you’re walking around in nature and you see a watch and say, Aha! This is something different, because it has Design…you could only distinguish that from its natural surroundings if the surroundings lacked Design. Paley’s watch is an argument that nature isn’t designed.
But there are no smart ID arguments; Paley’s doesn’t fail any harder than the rest of them.
Good grief, colewd.
Okay, let me rephrase:
Patrick,
Let’s recall what you said, “I’ve often thought that if theists really believed their particular religion is well supported then they’d be willing to wait until their children were 18 before exposing them to it. They know, though, that would guarantee near complete destruction of all mainstream religions within two generations.”
So, complete destruction of all mainstream religions within two generations. This doesn’t permit arguments about falling church attendance. You are not showing anything even remotely close to destruction of religion.
My contrary example is Soviet Union: Active state-sponsored persecution of religion for over half a century, intense anti-religious propaganda and atheist indoctrination in all public areas of life for a few generations, yet no destruction of religion followed. To the contrary, once the atheist propaganda stopped, (at least in Russia) the masses flocked back to religion.
And you are forgetting one thing about (mainstream) religions: They require conversion. Childhood indoctrination is not enough to bring about and maintain the religiousness in true theological sense. There has to be a change of heart, a “repentance” or “salvation”. According to official dogmas, nobody is born into the religion, everybody must turn or convert to it.
“Near complete destruction.” If children were magically insulated from indoctrination, the evidence suggests that no more than a third would acquire religion as an adult and that the percentage would fall as the overall level of religiosity falls. After the first generation there would be only one third as many believers in the population. After the second there would be even fewer. That would affect the wealth and political power of churches enough to constitute destruction to me.
Interesting example but it fails to take into account at least three issues. First, religion is always more popular when people are frightened of the future. The fall of the Soviet Union left a lot of danger and poverty in its wake. Second, the fact that religion came back so quickly suggests that children were not insulated from indoctrination at home. Third, the propaganda was intended to replace the power of the church with the power of the state. It wasn’t encouraging free thinking.
Yet over two-thirds of people who remain religious as adults “convert” to exactly the same denomination as their parents. As Dawkins said, “It is a remarkable coincidence that almost everyone has the same religion as their parents and it always just so happens they’re the right religion.”
You really know nothing about it, do you? According to your own assumption, a third of the population would have lost religion during the first generation of persecution and even more during the second generation. Home indoctrination was out of the question due to persecution – persecution of a deadly sort at least from October Revolution until the death of Stalin. By the collapse of Soviet Union, there should have been near destruction, but there wasn’t. There was comeback with a vengeance.
You are implying that there is no real conversion or that it’s irrelevant. If there is no real conversion to a religion, then there is no real conversion away from it either and atheists could be considered just a species of crypto-cultists.
Religion has always flourished when it is oppressed.
Which is why I tend to agree with Larry moran that ID should be taught in schools.
My high school sciences always started out with a week or two of history, and ID is definitely part of the history of biology.
I don’t think it’s oppression of religion not to teach ID.
I think in an ideal sense that teaching ID properly would be a fantastic contrast of the ability of science to find answers vs. the meaningless sermons of ID. In America, however, I suspect that teaching ID would involve a good many teachers telling children that ID has all of the answers and evolution doesn’t.
If I were Canadian I might favor teaching ID as well. America already has enough “God did it” teaching.
Glen Davidson
BTW, for whatever it may be worth to anybody, I was just told today that in an interview with Gary Gutting, Plantinga defined “atheism” as follows:
Based on that definition, I’m an atheist (even without knowing precisely what he means by “the theistic religions”).
I hope you realize that that’s a very misleading statistic. If there were a million Catholics, five of their kids remain religious, and four of the five stay Catholic it would be true. Nothing follows from it except maybe that the tiny minority of remaining religionists probably don’t know where else to go to church.
Here’s the Plantinga/Gutting interview:
This reminds me of my upbringing in the UK. We had the Church of England melded with the government to the extent that primary education was largely delivered by Church schools. As a child , passing through this system, I was totally disillusioned by the hypocrisy. I think maybe give the fundamentalists free rein (as the US is giving Trump free rein). A quite effective antidote. 😉
Anyway, it’s probably pointless to tell people that they shouldn’t teach their kids what a good many consider to be vitally important to their children’s well-being and eternal happiness. Then too, religion is linked to teaching kids to be good people in the minds of many religious folk. So unless one wants to follow the lead of Stalin’s USSR and ban religious instruction in home, we might just be stuck with religious freedom.
But maybe the point is that they shouldn’t, even if they will? Well, why would that be a meaningful point? And should parents not tell their children their political views, either, maybe not their favorite sports teams? Both of those are frequently quite irrational, maybe almost always. And should the religious not teach their kids what they think while SJWs do? Probably not the point, actually, but then where do we draw the line?
No, growing up in a family with parents typically means learning some perfectly dreadful drivel, and it’s still how kids should grow up, for the most part. One can complain about it, but it’s hardly going to do much good–or bad.
Glen Davidson
Thanks. I meant to provide that link–and then promptly forgot.
keiths,
The only known source if intelligence that can create a code in the universe is human. DNA is a code made up of 4 chemical letters. The sequence of those letters determines the characteristics of an organism.
There is no known entity that existed in the universe that knew the DNA codes required to build a human at the time the first humans emerge approximately 200k years ago.