Occasionally a theist makes an argument so amusingly stupid that it would be a shame not to share it with a larger audience. This is one of those occasions.
On another thread, we’ve been discussing the unloving way in which God — supposing that he exists at all — is treating the victims of Hurricane Harvey (and the soon-to-be victims of Hurricane Irma, unfortunately). In the course of that discussion, fifthmonarchyman — a Christian — made the following, er, memorable argument:
I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
– Isaiah 45:7
keiths:
Yes, and creating disaster for his children is exactly what every loving father sets out to do. Right, Mung?
Nothing says “I love you” like drowning someone or wiping out their possessions.
At that point fifthmonarchyman got the bright idea that he could defend God by arguing that God is not our father. He wrote:
quote:
the Originator of the heavens and the earth! How could it be that He should have a child without there ever having been a mate for Him – since it is He who has created everything, and He alone knows everything? – Sura 6:101
and
and say: “All praise is due to God, who begets no offspring, and has no partner in His dominion, and has no weakness, and therefore no need of any aid” -and [thus] extol His limitless greatness. – Sura 17:111
end quote:
That’s right, folks. Fifthmonarchyman quoted the Quran to argue against the idea that God is our father — forgetting that the latter idea comes straight from Jesus. What are the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer? Our Father.
Seeing fifth — a Christian — use the Quran to argue (unwittingly) against Jesus is one of the stupidest moves I’ve seen in a long while. I therefore renominate fifth for the title of World’s Worst Apologist.
After posting his comment, fifth belatedly realized that he had just thrown Jesus under the bus. He tried to undo the damage:
Get it keiths ?
A loving father is not the default understanding of God. Not by a long shot.
To know him as Father you need to have met his Son. Once you have met his Son you are simply not dissuaded when bad things happen.
peace
It’s a bit too late to backpedal, fifth.
This is a good time to quote Augustine again, on the topic of Christians who make fools of themselves:
…we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
The inanity goes even deeper. I’ll elaborate in the comments.
OK, explain the nested hierarchies.
Glen Davidson
Hey, don’t let him off the hook with the biochemistry. The almost universal genetic code across all species is not to be lightly dismissed.
And the genetic derivation isn’t biochemistry? Or evo-devo?
Biology is practically all biochemistry at a sufficient level of detail.
The universal genetic code matters, sure, but then it’s part of the nested hierarchies as well. Above the domains, even.
Glen Davidson
colewd,
What – even though ‘the biochemistry’ shows evolution in every nook and cranny?
GlenDavidson,
Dunno! It’s the not-quite-perfect replication that gives you adaptation, speciation and extinction. It’s all important and it all fits the pattern.
Glen is right, Alan. When he asks colewd to explain the nested hierarchies, he isn’t in any way letting him off the hook with respect to the biochemistry.
“Hey, don’t let him off the hook with the biochemistry.” was in response to Glen’s “OK”. Fuck knows why I’m bothering to point out to the ironically-challenged that “Hey, don’t let him off the hook with the biochemistry.” was ironic.
GlenDavidson,
Explain nested hierarchies in the light of convergent evolution.
Allan Miller,
Like a spliceosome puffing into existence 🙂
We’re discussing biology in the theodicy thread and theodicy in the biology thread? What is happening here?
colewd,
If one’s nested hierarchies possess a degree of homoplasy, one can easily correct for that by adding characters to the analysis (genes, if it’s a molecular study). One doesn’t need to explain the hierarchies in the light of their anomalies. Better to explain the anomalies in the light of the strongest signal.
colewd,
Spliceosomes display evolution in every nook and cranny. They map well onto phylogenetic trees based on other characters.
Of course not:
Except, filling buckets with rain is a proven fact. Evolution of spliceosomes and many other complex systems by mutation and selection is not. You’re so steeped in your faith in evolution of complexity by mutation and selection, you think it is well established as rain filling buckets. You seem quite oblivious to the distinction of fact vs. your own faith.
So what I said is not a stupid argument as you claim, if anything I’ve shown you’re blurring of actually accessible facts with your faith in an unproven and unprovable theory.
On the other hand if one describes God as being able to deliver a bunch of pain suffering and torment, we’ve got lots of samples in this present world!
This is what Jesus also promised: famines, disease, wars and rumors of wars.
I think Jesus is going to deliver on that promise.
Good grief, Alan.
To explain the nested hierarchies, colewd has to address the biochemistry. As Glen explained to you.
For once, could you try not to let your insecurities run rampant? You made a mistake. That’s all. Deal with it.
stcordova,
Spliceosomes have clearly evolved since LECA. That evolution follows the phylogenetic trees of the genomes in which their sequences are embedded. So, if someone were to show me a ‘miraculous spliceosome’, this would not invalidate evolution. It would not even invalidate an evolutionary origin of the original spliceosome … but, it certainly wouldn’t invalidate evolution, as a real process changing genomes globally. That would be over–extension of a single observation.
Let’s try another: I make an Easter Island statue appear out of thin air. Would that explain all Easter Island statues?
Allan Miller,
You’re telling yourself this is the strongest signal. You cannot explain a complex adaption evolving once let alone twice.
Anomalies have another name called contradictory evidence and you guys continue to ignore it.
This simple to complex story is a fable. Simple life is an oxymoron.
And you just make stupid stuff up.
1. It doesn’t take a genius to prophecy that there will be famines, disease, wars, and rumors of wars. You might as well predict that oceans will be salty and bears will shit in the woods.
2. Isn’t a god who delivers all that can of whoop-ass a pretty nasty sort, unworthy of veneration? He seems more like Hitler than Gandhi, wouldn’t you say?
3. And please don’t bring up the bizarre sympathetic magic of substitutionary atonement. You will only embarrass yourself.
colewd,
I’m telling myself it’s the strongest signal because it’s the strongest signal. If molecular homoplasy were the rule
a) You couldn’t do phylogenetic analysis
b) You couldn’t detect molecular homoplasy.
Goalpost shift. This has nothing to do with phylogenetic analysis.
No-one has ignored homoplasy. It certainly wasn’t discovered by a Creationist.
I have to agree with Allan here. I just don’t understand YEC arguments. YEC’s accept evolution. And special creation. So obviously there is no conflict between the two.
One good thing: I remember a time when Bill presented himself as an unbiased student of the world without an opinion on such things. At least he’s come clean now as a creationist. Still not sure if he’s going to go whole hog for biblical literalism, but give him time.
It’s the universal common ancestry of the gods. It fits into either category, or both.
You’ve never explained anomalies or signals.
There’s no excuse for that at all, if you think you have a reasonable belief.
Glen Davidson
That got old–and untenable–quickly.
Glen Davidson
John:
From February of 2016:
You crack me up, Bill.
This OP alludes to a paramount, if not the utmost, issue that the great majority of world’s religions today struggle to answer:
Why a loving God and father would allow his children to suffer if He has the power to prevent it?
Using prevalence of suffering and evil, atheists and agnostics alike try to justify their beliefs that God doesn’t exist…
This argument is false, because at best, it can indicate that God decided not spare his rebellious children from the consequences of their ability to use free will that led to sin; hence suffering, pain and death…
It seems this feebleminded argument is supposed to make the theory of common descent and evolution more believable?
And I used to accept it.
But then I grew up while learning a whole lot.
Glen Davidson
What amazes me the most is how incapable the creationists are at realizing that goddidit or “immense intelligence designed it” explains nothing at all. How is that any better than saying that a giant magic unicorn pooped out humans and all of the rest of life?
But no matter how many ways you say it, non-explanation remains a lot better than explanation to them. I guess it seems strange because I really thought that creationism explained things until it occurred to me that maybe it didn’t, and then it quickly became apparent that it doesn’t at all. I never was holding to creationism as a religious necessity (I thought it was based on evidence), while apparently the creationists here do
But this inability to see non-explanation as a fatal flaw is why it’s never much more than beating our heads against brick walls when discussing evidence. Evidence never had anything to do with their preferred beliefs (other than straws to cling to whenever anyone questions their nonsense), or they never would have had those beliefs in the first place.
Glen Davidson
Allan Miller,
Sure it does. If convergent evolution can’t be explained then the nested hierarchy claim has no legs. You have a clear contradiction to the theory that you are not dealing with.
Allan Miller,
Show me where it has been debated as a possible falsification of the theory?
If. Of course it can be explained.
Some convergence (homoplasy) is just random. For example, given that there are only four possible states for a nucleotide site, independent site mutations in different species will produce the same state fairly often. (Given enough time, that will even eliminate all phylogenetic information. Fortunately, there’s enough sequence for which there hasn’t been enough time.)
Other convergence, mainly morphological convergence, is the effect of selection. There is a finite number of solutions to particular environmental problems, and selection will tend to push populations faced with the same problem in a limited number of directions. And thus we get birds, bats, pterodactyls, and insects all with wings with similar aerodynamic properties. But we can often tell this through gross anatomy, because while the solutions may be similar, they are quite different in detail. The more closely related the convergent species and the more similar their environments, the more likely they are to follow similar paths. In such situations, there may not be any differences in detail at the anatomical level. But there will still almost always be differences at the level of DNA sequence; detailed molecular convergence is vanishingly rare and in all cases that I know of limited to a few bases.
So anyway, we have an explanations for convergence, and we have explanations why, at the molecular level, we expect it not to be systematic and so to be just noise from which signal can be separated fairly easily.
You mean, where scientists have understood the matter as badly as you do?
Not very likely.
Glen Davidson
Drift.
colewd,
Why did you skip my first point? It was by far the most important. How is homoplasy detected?
I love how Creationists think convergent evolution disproves evolution.
I think the problem is with unintentional equivocation.
When the folks I hang with hear “evolution” they generally think Darwinism with emphasis on the random part of random mutation.
But when folks you hang with say evolution they often just mean change over time
peace
Truer words have never been uttered
😉
peace
I think that about says it. Evolutionists consider convergent sequences to be just so much noise.
No. Convergence. Clearly. Just so much Noise.
Right! It proves that there are more targets than just plain survival and reproduction and that evolution is guided towards those targets by natural selection. 🙂
Mung,
Nope. I think you might need to understand homoplasy better. In molecular sequences, it is inevitable that chance will bring sequences closer together on occasion, even in a population pair where the overall trend is divergent. Nothing to do with selection. Convergent morphological evolution is somewhat different, but since this whole sub-sub-topic was about what ‘the biochemistry’ says, molecular homoplasy is more relevant. It’s a better term than convergence, which does carry some historical baggage of selective channelling.
fifthmonarchyman,
I wish I could hang with people who stopped using that empty term. But if ‘Darwinism’ means anything, it certainly doesn’t mean mutation, random or otherwise. Darwin’s emphasis was on selection.
Not only. Change in lineage and change of allele frequencies in populations.
colewd,
See again my first point in the post from which my quote above came. Given that you detect homoplasy (and other such anomalies) by the fact that it stands out from the background signal of consensus trees, how could it be a falsification of the theory?
Cool,
“Selection” is what agents do. 😉
In fact in the absence of random mutation “selection” becomes a downright theological concept.
peace
Even Darwin knew that much!
Sure, everything changes over time, I get it.
peace
relevant to this thread and the whole God can’t exist because he is mean idea.
quote:
In the first of two studies, 171 American adults were asked about their reasons for nonbelief, as well as emotions they felt toward a god or gods that they hypothetically imagined, and various indicators of negative emotionality. Results showed that 54% of those who self-reported that they were atheists or agnostics indicated some relational and emotional reasons for nonbelief. In the second study, 72% of 429 American adults who expressed some level of atheism or agnosticism endorsed similar reasons. In both studies, the extent to which research participants revealed relational and emotional reasons for nonbelief was associated with various indicators of negative emotionality, such as trait anger, psychological entitlement, and fearful / preoccupied attachment styles.
This new research is consistent with the results of earlier research showing that 44% of atheists self-reported that at least some of their doubts, or at least some of their decision not to believe in God, were due to emotional reasons. These individuals, whom the researchers called “emotionally engaged atheists,” were more characterized by negative emotionality, as well as stronger negative reactions to stressful events, compared with non-emotionally engaged atheists.
end quote:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-pursuit-peace/201603/the-new-psychology-atheism
peace
Allan Miller,
If the feature is not present in the common ancestor then the data is not fitting into a nested hierarchy, period. The claim of the nested hierarchy is now a failed prediction.
Calling it an anomaly is an attempt to sweep a falsifying observation under the carpet. Instead of being up front with the problem this observation is to the theory.
Presumably you made this reference to support some kind of claim?
John Harshman,
Random genetic change pushed two separate populations into finding DNA sequences that could build wings with the proper aerodynamics so both populations could fly. Or two populations built almost identical eyes. Until the feature is build there is no selection.
How do you propose two like DNA sequences that can build complex adaptions were found in almost infinite sequential space by random change even once in the history of life?