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Americans Are 'Different' From The Rest Of The World
In most wealthy countries, people tend to believe in evolution. But, as Vox.com notes, The US is an exceptional lonely dot far, far below the others, as this chart from the now-defunct webcomic Calamities of Nature shows:
How many Americans believe in evolution depends slightly upon how you frame the question. Tony Piro, who created this chart, used a question that refers to human beings developing "from earlier species of animals." Other polls that simply ask whether humans have evolved over time (without referring to animals) find a slightly higher percentage of Americans believing in evolution, around 60 percent. That would still make the US an outlier among rich countries, though.
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Why did they do the graph in crayon???
People as uninformed and as gullible as Americans have no future. Americans are a dead people that history is about to run over. - Paul Craig Roberts
yes, may natural selection take out the weakest links, deadwood for flames to consume...
Actually nobody should "believe" in evolution, but understand how this theory explains nature now and in the past and accept it as a valuable tool in science. You don´t believe in theories, this is science and not religion.
Oh boy. Que the religious arguments. My magical sky fairy is the strongest, yours sucks.....
The sky fairy battles is what gives faith a bad wrap.
Every night I write in my journal 'I truly and deeply believe in Darwin and his theory of evolution'.
Yet I get no richer.
Evolution Explained
have you seen the angel tooth fairy graph?
"That would still make the US an outlier among rich countries, though."
haha, that's a funny statement - since when is a bankrupt country considered "rich"?
rich would be russia or china or switzerland.
Not surprising considering the same people believe Obongo was born in Hawaii.
Someone needs to do a graph correlating belief in evolution and living at mom's house in their 30's.
Yes, the chart was clearly sketched by a neanderthal..
And likely invests in barberic relics.
From the number of down votes on the space fairy conundrum, it appears many ZHers still beieve in fairy tales and myths..
The data is out there, all you have to do is rationalize the reality of the matter and throw 2000+ years of myths out the window... Which in the history of this planet is but a blink of the eye...
In the immortal words on Jack Nicholson, "You Can't Handle the Truth"...
So bring on the down votes... I fart in your general direction...
That chart is as convincing as the one showing a correlation between pirate activity and global warming.
http://falkenblog.blogspot.com.tr/2008/11/pirates-and-global-warming.html
How about a chart showing how America is "different" from the rest of the world in believing in the metric system and that soccer is an "exciting" game worth watching.
America Fuck Yeh!. We're different. Or maybe exceptional. Also heavily armed irrational and violent.
Enjoy your coming socialist multicultural sharia law heaven Euro pussies.
HE BOILED FOR YOUR SINS!
REPENT! ! REPENT!
Fear me, I am legion.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parent...
Don't mind the down votes. Not everyone will be touched by his noodly appendage. :)
FSM FTW!
If no God exists how do we explain things like miracles?
Example:
Bruce Van Natta: Saved by AngelsHe was pinned under a massive logging truck. Bruce was certain he would die until the miraculous happened.
The explanation is simple and well known. The mind controls the body. Most of the time the subconscious mind runs the autonomic nervous system, but in extreme conditions, the conscious mind can take over every function of the body, including pain response, heart rate and repiratory rate.
Some people in history have cultivated this ability of the conscious mind deliberately, such as Yogis in the subcontinent, and can put their body in a state of suspended animation.
It is no surprise that these abilities are unknown by the American redneck, but in civilisation, they have been known for thousands of years.
So, you're saying a movement that has lasted, say, 2000 years, is completely falsified. Let's examine that.
Let's say Christianity is a fairytale. Alright, but it makes references to historical figures - Pontius Pilate was, in fact, the governor of Judea at the time, and we have FACTUAL, REAL EVIDENCE that this man existed. If the Bible is simply a work of historical fanfiction, using real people as characters, it begs the following question:
If Pontius Pilate did, in fact, exist, then is there a chance that this Jesus person also did, in fact, exist?
If you are open to that suggestion, then there are only 3 options. If Jesus existed, he was either a liar, a lunatic, or he was telling the truth.
Judging by the fact that many of the people that lived during the time period did not debunk the New Testament (which was widespread and in paper circulation by AD 60-80), and there were no competing manuscripts that called it into question, one could assume that either the story was considered truth at the time, or it was deemed irrelevant by those who didn't follow it.
However, the apostle Paul went so far as to say "Hey, there are people still alive who were there. Talk to them. I can only testify to what I have seen with my eyes, and what I have heard with my ears", so he was either a very ballsy charlatan, or he was absolutely convinced that he was right. This all points to one conclusion:
Something happened around AD 20-30, and you cannot deny that it occurred. You can only nitpick at the narrative.
Outside of the bible, no historian of the era even mentions Jesus besides Josephus and his small entry in his writings is believed to be false. It was inserted by early Christians. If Jesus was running around Israel walking on water and performing all his miracles, how come no mention of him by other historians?
One of the Roman governors, Tacitus, who persecuted the christians, also mentioned Jesus in his writings.
OffTopic..but I came to the conclusion that Jesus was one of the elightened ones, even if he was not God. But I believe there is evidence that he was the real deal and he knew what was going on..and even then allowed them to kill him..in a rather ugly way.
it was a lie and a power grab like every other religion...ever.
Actually, the power grab came later with the Catholic Church. The fossil record has never supported the theory that one species evolves into a whole other species, it does support that a species evolves within its own species. The stories in the bible are, at the very least, archetypal truth. As quantum theory evolves, it draws closer to the reality that there is only one consciousness and we are simply mirrors of that, experiencing itself subjectively in order to acheive individuality and supervenient evolution.
"If things seem hard for religions now, it’s just going to get worse. The issue is that the velocity of interconnectedness between people and the pace of discoveries is just going to keep increasing. Religions already look like they’re being reduced to justification exercises, where adherents spend all their time explaining why modern findings do not contradict their faiths. The only way to do this is to keep generalizing their beliefs. Eventually this will become so frenzied that it’s going to become an exercise in ridiculousness. That’s where things seem to be headed. ET, machine consciousness, genetic reprogramming, massive privacy questions – some really tough stuff lies ahead. A lot of people also connect ethnicity and religion together and that too will suffer as global interconnectedness increases."
All is not lost:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parent...
"It's a tough lesson for theists to come to grips with but god only exists in thoughts passed from generation to generation. That's why all this shit makes no sense, why there is so much in the world that defies the existence of god in the external physical world. All the stuff that theists must ignore in ordre for their internal universe to match the external. This is where statements like "What a tradegy that little Johnny died of cancer at 8, god must have had a special place in heaven for him" come into play.
The fascinating thing is that the "meme" or idea of god includes the concept that god exists in the external physical world. Once this idea is implanted in the early human mind and reinforced over and over again the thought itself becomes physically instantiated in the brains neural network. By then, in a sense, you can say that god does exist in the physical world but we seldom distinguish god as a mesh of neurons and axons bathed in Serotoniun and Dopamine among a miriad of other chemicals.
If there was a god humans would be aligned absolutely, categorically and completely with each other in their belief and worship, this is surely self evident. This is one of the most pwerful indicators that god is nothing more than a cultural tradition passed from generation to generation. Most ironically ther very notion of god and belief and worship is subject to evolution. If there was a god this also would not be the case. Worship would be static and unchanging.
I would has it a guess that nobody really has a clue what caused the universe to arise. Even if some super advanced alien civilisation knew what caused it and wrote it down in a book and gave it to us I suspect even then we wouldn't understand it because our language is rooted in the macro world and vastly limits our ability to understand anything beyond it.
Let's say for arguments sake that there are trillions upon trillions of universes like ours popping into existence and evolving over trillions of years, some to expand forever and eventually fizzle out, some to exist in a steady state, others to eventually collpase back in on themselves. Let's say for arguments sake that throughout these universes there have been trillions of advanced civilisations that would make humans look like cockroaches in comparison. What then. Is there a god that gives a particular rats ass about humans.
No, the atheist does not deny the existence of god due to some misplaced guilt or non-realisation of some obvious truth, they deny the existence of god because it's stupid.
Maybe the universe is teaming with free-willed beings. Maybe life is inevitable as day following night. Maybe it's not something special at all. Always, people are consumed with emotional bias based on their meagre experience. If there are a trillion civilisations in just this universe what then.
Just look at the world around you and take the fliters of emotion off. Just look with no preconceived ideas about sunsets being a gentle caress from gods paint brush for example. Just look. I don't see a god. If a big face appeared in the sky then I'd change my mind but so far, nothing."
As much as I dislike separatist religions (all Abrahamic faiths), I dislike the atheist. Although much of what you say is true, it is true in the sense there are truths in the books of the Abrahamic religions. By that I mean, there is some historical fact, although presented with spin and often outright lies.
Atheists do not understand that God is energy. God is singular and is part of everything in the Universe. That means that you and I and even aliens in a distant galaxy are all part of the one. The soul is mass intelligence / consciousnous and is not monopolized by humans. If it is aware, it has a soul. Do you have children? Do you remember when your son or daughter was first brought into the "outside world". You could see the pure soul in the eyes, eager to develop personality based on the influence of its environment. The child then went to sleep, REM, dreaming... of what? Bunnies? No, the child was already conscious prior while in the womb. The instant the mind and the heart connects, is the instant the soul begins. That is God. The ability to impart life into an otherwise lump of proteins. The ability to impart consciousness.
As for the material realm here on earth, the mother is the closest thing you will find to a God. She creates and gives life. The father is merely a deliverer of blueprints.
some good points in the posts above, I'm going to reply to yours SamAdams, because you bring up what I consider to be important distinctions.
I'm with you on the "energy" ideas, but don't you then wonder why "energy" gets a capital "G" God label? and how whenever anyone sees the capital "G" God label, INSTANTLY the trained mind goes to an ancient robed White Father figure? virtually anyone, atheist or believer, will have that global image implanted in their mind, with some details personalised, yes, but mostly uniform imagery.
I reckon THIS is why the Father God and his backstory, etc. was created. because men seek dominion over All, and will persecute and kill, wars, rapes, destruction, in order to feel in Control of their worlds. history proves this as a fact. the Gods invented by these men also contain their agenda - "For I am a jealous God" etc. - these gods have tantrums and punish and test their faithful, etc.
that which creates life - and it takes two to do this, but the woman carries and births - must be locked down like a prized farm animal, it must be OWNED and CONTROLLED. . . like a resource, like the money craved, the possessions sought, the power over desired.
for me, that's the tell in all this "religion" professing - the power over structure inherent in patriarchy, that is the global meme pushing wars, poverty, pain, murder, destruction for profits, accumulating "riches" and stuff as they go. and for most Godly, women are just more stuff to have control over. . .
Does energy not manifest in different forms?
Whether electrons flowing thru copper wire, a waterfall, ice cube, snowflake, fog... different speeds if you will.
"If you want to know the secret of the universe...
energy
frequency
vibration
Tesla
I can very easily see the "God" in everything. It's man's insatiable appetite for control that perverts, e.g. organized religion or the arrogance in thinking nature can be controlled. Some may prefer to use the term "Multiverse". It leads to the same path IMHO.
aye, "energy" is the key, naming and framing that energy is an attempt to explain and control it.
first energy, then the named definitions of energy - then the namers claim special knowledge of the named energy, and get to explain it to believers, etc. etc.
beware the white coats, and other similar be-robed patriarchal institutions, eh!
and that word "God" - capital-ise it, make capital, profit from a patent on God, an invention used for profits. . .
I love the word "multiverse" by the way, infinite multi-verse-all. . . seems to have a melody, a song, unique in each mind, tones and melodies.
Paul was not an apostle. I wasn't there, but it doesn't seem like he even met Jesus. He did write a lot of The New Testament, but that's about it. As the story goes, he was a Roman tax collector named Saul who was fond of persecuting Christians who fell off his horse while on his way to Damascus, had a change of heart changed his name to Paul and decided to join them. Maybe he did, or maybe he simply changed tactics. IMHO if you toss out his contributions to The New Testament, there are a lot less contradictions.
Something happens every year. People are born, people die. Fortunes rise and fall. Of course no one can deny that SOMETHING happened around AD 20-30. But so fucking what?
Dude. The Shroud of Turin.
Do you believe in the miracles that were allegedly performed by Jesus such as the resurrection?
If you do, you are delusional.
It would honestly be in your best interest to stop poking the relatively harmless modern Christians and begin the study of the modern malignant Mohammedans.
Your future mussy overlords will appreciate your effort and foresight.
If their religion was removed, many would have to be straight-jacketed and diapered.
Darwin was a patsy whose work is full of self-doubt.
It is still a THEORY, not Darwin's law.
Most of the proofs have been proven to be hoaxes (the Plymouth Moth as an example).
Darwin was from a group of people who believed in (and probably practised) Eugenics.
Darwinism gave a basis for what was to come..... predatory capitalism...
FRAUD science....do your research...
Sure, yet they are interesting theories, however contrived.
OrI
Me thinks your personal impairments are showing.
How Darwin is used, or the batshit crazy ways in which he and others have mis-used the basic tenet of evolution - natural selection - is seperate from the core ideas which I think are correct. Remember, even Hitler, for all his atrocious faults was good with animals, and we can acknowledge that.
I didn't down-vote you, 'cause I love you, man.
Thanks for the love Brother I. But truth be told (from my own reading/research), Darwin and his ism have been thoroughly and completely debunked as fraud science (we are not the result of mutuant probability, no linking species, existance of Giant skeletons, which incidentally the Smithsonian has recently acknowledged)...on and on.....
Darwin was set up to say what he said and wrote what he wrote...Marxism and Predatory capitalism both use it as their Bedrock and in fact, I do believe Marx dedicated Das Kapital to Darwin...
Creationism as sold to us by Churchianity is equally scary, but there is a story that ties the threads together.
It lies buried in the Vatican acrhives, soon to be revealed.
;-)
It's a complex argument and I'm no biologist, so we'll agree to disagree, yes?
Later
"If things seem hard for religions now, it’s just going to get worse. The issue is that the velocity of interconnectedness between people and the pace of discoveries is just going to keep increasing. Religions already look like they’re being reduced to justification exercises, where adherents spend all their time explaining why modern findings do not contradict their faiths. The only way to do this is to keep generalizing their beliefs. Eventually this will become so frenzied that it’s going to become an exercise in ridiculousness. That’s where things seem to be headed. ET, machine consciousness, genetic reprogramming, massive privacy questions – some really tough stuff lies ahead. A lot of people also connect ethnicity and religion together and that too will suffer as global interconnectedness increases."
All is not lost:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parent...
"It's a tough lesson for theists to come to grips with but god only exists in thoughts passed from generation to generation. That's why all this shit makes no sense, why there is so much in the world that defies the existence of god in the external physical world. All the stuff that theists must ignore in ordre for their internal universe to match the external. This is where statements like "What a tradegy that little Johnny died of cancer at 8, god must have had a special place in heaven for him" come into play.
The fascinating thing is that the "meme" or idea of god includes the concept that god exists in the external physical world. Once this idea is implanted in the early human mind and reinforced over and over again the thought itself becomes physically instantiated in the brains neural network. By then, in a sense, you can say that god does exist in the physical world but we seldom distinguish god as a mesh of neurons and axons bathed in Serotoniun and Dopamine among a miriad of other chemicals.
If there was a god humans would be aligned absolutely, categorically and completely with each other in their belief and worship, this is surely self evident. This is one of the most pwerful indicators that god is nothing more than a cultural tradition passed from generation to generation. Most ironically ther very notion of god and belief and worship is subject to evolution. If there was a god this also would not be the case. Worship would be static and unchanging.
I would has it a guess that nobody really has a clue what caused the universe to arise. Even if some super advanced alien civilisation knew what caused it and wrote it down in a book and gave it to us I suspect even then we wouldn't understand it because our language is rooted in the macro world and vastly limits our ability to understand anything beyond it.
Let's say for arguments sake that there are trillions upon trillions of universes like ours popping into existence and evolving over trillions of years, some to expand forever and eventually fizzle out, some to exist in a steady state, others to eventually collpase back in on themselves. Let's say for arguments sake that throughout these universes there have been trillions of advanced civilisations that would make humans look like cockroaches in comparison. What then. Is there a god that gives a particular rats ass about humans.
No, the atheist does not deny the existence of god due to some misplaced guilt or non-realisation of some obvious truth, they deny the existence of god because it's stupid.
Maybe the universe is teaming with free-willed beings. Maybe life is inevitable as day following night. Maybe it's not something special at all. Always, people are consumed with emotional bias based on their meagre experience. If there are a trillion civilisations in just this universe what then.
Just look at the world around you and take the fliters of emotion off. Just look with no preconceived ideas about sunsets being a gentle caress from gods paint brush for example. Just look. I don't see a god. If a big face appeared in the sky then I'd change my mind but so far, nothing."
Revert to 14 th century dogma and practice.
Poof, problem solved.
Cut & paste this again - we didn't get it the first two times.
ORI, truth be told (from my own reading/research) the story that you refer to that ties the thread together has been thoroughly and completely debunked as fraud. See I can write things that sound like they're based on fact, but are just my opinions.
ORI nailed it. Darwin was a bigoted idiot who believed less than 5% of the worlds population was evolving and that the rest of the 95% were evolutionary dead ends. Just so happens that the majority of the 5% worth reproducing just happened to be the aristocratic society. This gave "scientific" backing to the ideas of his cousin Francis Galton (who coined the term eugenics) and supported Carnegie et al. ideas that that they were justified in controlling society through education, etc.
I hope you self-proclaimed Darwinians (who likely never read his work) aren't Irish 'cause you boys were at the top of the list of dead ends! Some Mick must have boned his girlfriend once....he hated the Irish. Lucky for me I'm a tall, lean, blue-eyed Scandinavian. Per Darwin and Galton I should be breeding like a show dog!!! (Hope I don't need the sarc tag for all this).
Thanks to the guy who posted the link to Alan Watts youtube lectures yesterday. Very heady stuff, I enjoyed listening to him and will continue to do so.
I'm not going to go look for the link you mention - but I wanted to add to it if I may.
Alan Watts - Is This Life A Dream (Inception version) - 4:20min
I love this, from his voice to the imagery used - but mostly for the words chosen.
peace.
Jimmy Swaggart was a man who preached the Christian religion and was into prostitutes. So therefore the ENTIRE christian religion is bad because ONE of its representatives could be shown to have 'weaknesses' as a human.
I am not sure why people don't understand that Darwin is merely ONE of the voices in the 'Theory of Natural Selection' and his work has been subsequently carried on by countless numbers of scientists for over 100 years.
"Darwinism" is NOT the Theory of Evolution nor the Theory of Natural Selection. Perhaps YOU should read what the difference is.
also - a THEORY is NOT:
1. a fact
2. a natural law
3. a simple conjecture
a theory is a collection of studies (i.e., hypotheses and corresponding experiments) that are typically across a number of different disciplines of (scientific) study that help to explain how we, as humans, currently explain certain phenomena we observe in the world around us.
in many instances ... a theory contains such gigantic preponderance of evidence to support the overreaching idea(s) given by the theory (e.g., natural selection as a way of explaining how species adapt and change over HUGE swathes of time) that it is pretty close to being accepted as 'fact' or a 'natural law'...but it still cannot be 'proved' to be such...it's still a theory.
so if the main crux of your argument is that the ENTIRE theory of evolution/natural selection is WRONG because:
1. Darwin was a bigot
2. It's not a proven fact
3. It's not a natural law
4. You don't understand what the word 'theory' really means as it pertains to science
then you really need to shut the fuck up and take a few courses in the physical sciences like Chemistry, Biology, or Physics. Because NO scientist worth his/her salt will ever say the theory of evolution/natural selection has been proven beyond a doubt. Moreover, most scientists will acknowledge that it's entirely possible that aspects of a theory or the ENTIRE theory itself may be proven to be wrong some day in the future...it's just that with the body of knowledge and techniques we have TODAY this is the best way to explain what we see in the world around us.
Evolution might be wrong in the way the Earth might not be spherical.
You caught me. I'm not a scientist, I'm an engineer. You seem like an intelligent lad, you don't need to ruin your persona by telling me to "shut the fuck up". It makes you dull and your argument look like something you copied and pasted. I've jousted with many high level scientists and none of them had to start dropping f-bombs to make their point.
Darwin believed that the Irish were inferior to the Scots and the Anglo-Saxons, but also that, left to themselves, they would predominate in the population. In other words, he believed that natural selection would select the less developed group. That is not a good advertisment for the creative power of his theory. And it was natural selection’s supposed creative power that made the theory important. No one has ever doubted that natural selection would pick off the unfit.
Now, if Darwin did not really believe that natural selection (which he understood as the main engine of evolution) worked in human beings, then he could not do what he most wanted to do – account for the evolution of human beings. Why then, bother with the Descent of Man?
My own view is that once human beings developed consciousness, natural selection would play only a very limited role in subsequent developments. Almost anything else might prevail, based on ideas conceived in the human mind.
Pharaohs married their sisters for religious reasons, Irish had large families for religious reasons, and the Dalai Lama was celibate for religious reasons. None of it had anything to do with natural selection. All these states of affairs have demographic outcomes, but they don’t originate in natural selection and would only accidentally cooperate with it.
I do know the difference, that is why my criticsm is of Darwin and not broadly the science of evolution or natural selection. Darwin gave birth to the rise of the Social Darwinists like Malthus and Galton. It is common knowledge he shared their views. As alluded to by ORI, it was he alone who gave scientific "legitimacy" to the shit-show we have today. The 1% not only believe that natural selection has entitled them to what they have, they also feel it is their duty to keep the rest from advancing their place in the social ladder.
To believe you are so great a scientist that to state if the chosen few breed with the 95% that "evolution will march backwards into the swirling mist of the dawnless past" takes a hell of an ego.
See my earlier comment about 'Darwinism' vs. the Theory of Evolution/Natural Selection, DADZ. I completely agree with you - many have warped/debased the main precepts of the theory into 'survival of the fittest' in societal/economic terms. Darwinism (especially 'Social Darwinism' of the late 19th and early 20th centuries) is not 'science'. It was some 19th, 20th and now 21st century quacks incorrectly applying 'science' to agree with their opinionated world view. I know the robber barons embraced it. Whether Darwin himself embraced his theories being applied to economics...I have no idea but it wouldn't surprise me if he did. I'm not sticking up for Darwin. I'm certainly not sticking up for the quackery invented by non- or pseudo- scientists called 'Darwinism' ... I am however, sticking up for the idea that the Theory Of Evolution / Natural Selection - while initially promoted, perhaps, by Darwin, is an ONGOING process of trying to understand how things work. Even if some of Darwin's suppositions in the theory are wrong and even if he was a bigot by today's standards (not surprising for the time) that still doesn't mean that the entire theory gets to be be relegated to the trash pile. The theory only gets relegated to trash pile when the great majority of the TENS OF THOUSANDS of experimentally and repeatably proven hypotheses that make up the theory are proven to be wrong; not on the basis of a few anomolies one saw on the history channel or read in a book about UFOs or some such thing.
Lacking knowledge of DNA and the interior structures of the basic cells, Darwin was incapable of realizing the inanity of his theory, and he knew of this flaw. The discovery of DNA rendered the whole theory impossible, but evolutionists keep promulgating it because they are at war with God; after all, if there is no transcendant God then there are no moral absolutes, and therefore anything is permitted.
DNA is both incredibly complex in its operation and an unbelievably dense information storage device. The existence of DNA is statistically impossible. The chances of the uncountable beneficial mutations needed to produce functioning DNA are essentially zero, and the ratio of harmful mutations to beneficial ones is such that no DNA-based organism could possibly evolve to what is observable today. Suggesting that DNA 'just happened' is like taking the rubble from WTC7 and expecting a whirlwind to reassemble it exactly. Further, DNA defies the concept of entropy. Every material object is subject to entropy. Does rust reverse itself? Do coins, which in my experience tend to be worn away, sometimes actually regain surface details when handled by people? From my point of view, backed by a scientific education, believing in the theory of evolution requires even more 'faith' than believing in God. I do, however, believe in DEvolution. Things fall apart or degrade, as witnessed by our bodies needing to be fixed as we age.
There is far too much derision hurled about on this issue here and far too little factual argumentation. Both by training and past vocation - computer systems/programming/etc. - my preferences are antithetical to sloppiness, yet we see little factual argumentation here.
ZH should avoid articles that deal with religious issues. Or perhaps there should be an article correlating America's belief in God with its beneficial effects on both its citizens and on the rest of the world. If America was/is more 'Christian' than, say, Iran, has it been more helpful to the rest of the world, or has Iran? Or China? Or Zimbabwe?
I clicked on the Evolution Explained link, Future Jim. Most of the statements in that explanation are not based on actual science. It's guesswork, not proven scientific fact.
The explanation assumes DNA evolved. We don't have any proof of whether or how DNA evolved. It's just there, so people blindly assume it evolved. But consider this: DNA is the most complex information storage mechanism known to humankind. DNA is a coding system. All coding systems require an intelligent source. There are no exceptions to this rule.
To say that DNA evolved, when there is absolutely no proof that it did or even could, requires a level of faith bordering on intentional blind adherence. When you credit evolution to random forces working purposelessly over eons of time rather than to God (its Intelligent Source), you are displaying remarkable disregard for who God is. If someone at work were to take credit for your idea, you'd be furious. And yet, you refuse to give God his props for his remarkable creation. May I respectfully suggest you consider what's at stake?
Evolution as described and taught is mathematically impossible, and insane.
Human existence proves it does not exist.
Creatures evolve to survive, with not a lot of room above that margin. That is the natural forces shaping them to evolve, so to speak.
Humans has "evolved" to obliterate every single living thing on this planet, with the possible exception of roaches and bacteria.
What natural force propelled that?
the law of MOAR
All hail...(or else).
"What natural force propelled that?"
Control as a primary force for survival without counter-balancing cerebral control to keep it focused only on beneficial tasks.
I'm one of the few on the entire Internet who believes BOTH religion and evolution are bullshit.
Strange that you say that.
The physical makeup of the universe has evolved and continues to evolve
The problem for the process of evolution is that homo sapiens has become "too good" at what he does... the combination of aggression and intelligence has allowed him to destroy any and every natural competitor ... the exponential increase in population has permitted the strongest or most aggressive in the species to continually breed for more intelligence and aggression ... and to turn upon the lesser of the same species for sustenance and support ... we are about to completely destroy ourselves ... at which point, mother nature can then begin to work on an improvement ...like ants, perhaps, which are not individually noteworthy but they are a whole lot more cooperative ....
you've written some important words/concepts, would that people here might consider them.
.
while I understand what you mean by "intelligence" I would question that the subsequent behaviours are "intelligent" - destroy competitors, yes, that's the goal of aggressive, competitive mindsets.
mentioning ant colonies,
and cooperation. for creative building of lives (construction over destruction), for solidarity, for community.
all things sought currently primed for another round of destruction, death.
because: war. hatred and war. so profitable to some, so appealing to many.
Are you saying that because the physical makeup of the universe has changed over time, "evolved", that evolution is fact?
Evolution is a paradigm of nature.
Most of the elements in your body were created inside of stars.
it's an actual, observable, fact that genetic mutations do occur from generation to generation.
it's also an actual, observable, fact that those mutations that are more suited to survival for given conditions lead those that have that mutation to survive, and those that don't have that mutation to die off.
mutations such as thicker skin, sharper teeth, larger brain, better sense of smell, etc.
why do you presume that you know what "god" is, or that somehow what occurs in nature is somehow different from "god"?
Indeed. Some people seem to believe nature is like a football stadium and God like a coach of a football team or some other tortured way of putting it. Go into the woods, deserts, and seas and you can't help but be surrounded by God.
Cities on the other hand...
re: religion posted elsewhere.
Spirituality evolved in man's brain when theory of mind developed enough to assign agency to things that could not be comprehended.
Religion evolved from spirituality to meld differing small ingroups into a larger single ingroup to enhance power and control of those in charge. Like government does.
Of the tens of thousands of religions that have existed, how many are still around? No religion is more profound or more accurate than any other, the surviving ones just possessed a larger, more powerful, ingroup.
How do you explain real lives changed for the last 2 thousand years?
Real world examples if you dare explore them:
http://www.iamsecond.com/
There is real power in the name of Jesus, not blind faith.
the mind can be tricked like yours. peel back some layers-ah fuck you are hopeless...
The world has been a violent shithole for the last two thousand years and Christianity has been a big part of it.
The science of artificial selection was proven long before the theory of natural selection was even positied. But science itself prevents natural selection from ever being "proven" or regarded as a law by anyone other than lower functioning primates as technology and science facilitate devolution and thus eliminate the possibility of any uniform and universal application of evolution. But the arguments of both schools of malthought in the idiocrisy seem predicated on a rather linear notion of time, so we can always just wait for the next go round of the big Rinse, Repeat machine to disprove them once and for all, if we can ever manage to remember what we always seem to forget...
what do we keep forgetting?
How it worked out last time, and what we were going to do differently next time.
.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/americas-dying-malls-the-compan...
Robust Rekovery and lots of Green Shoots!
Intelligent design... only the less intelligent can actually take that seriously.
I would bet the result is inversely proportional to citizens' belief in God, but whether God exists or not is beside the question:
A belief in a higher power instills humility, and that in turn instills a deep skepticism in Man's ability to control events. America believes more in God, and less in central planning.
Who's the idiots now?
You don't need to believe in tooth fairies or Abrahamic religion tell-tales to have humility against on the world or skepticism on man's ability. I'm really skeptical of this we call intelligence (damn, take a look at comments here!), considering we're so intelligent we can't even understand our place in nature and thus try to take it all.
Humans are an experiment in genetic engineering, nothing more, nothing less... The earth is a giant petrie dish teaming with tens of thousands of varieties of life... It didn't just happen and no, a single entity called god didn't just whip it out in 7 days...
"If things seem hard for religions now, it’s just going to get worse. The issue is that the velocity of interconnectedness between people and the pace of discoveries is just going to keep increasing. Religions already look like they’re being reduced to justification exercises, where adherents spend all their time explaining why modern findings do not contradict their faiths. The only way to do this is to keep generalizing their beliefs. Eventually this will become so frenzied that it’s going to become an exercise in ridiculousness. That’s where things seem to be headed. ET, machine consciousness, genetic reprogramming, massive privacy questions – some really tough stuff lies ahead. A lot of people also connect ethnicity and religion together and that too will suffer as global interconnectedness increases."
All is not lost:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parent...
Do enlighten us with how it all works please. Start at the beginning. Certainly with it all being so scientific you can tell us how it will end, not to mention what the winning lotto numbers will be next draw.
Anyone who has spent real time in the real wilderness understands intelligent design. City dwellers, not so much.
No. What you saw are millions of years of trial and error. That's why it all fits so well. If it didn't it would simply go extinct.
So God iteratively tests and debugs, over millions of years. If you were immortal, would you care how long it takes you to engineer an improvement over the current state of the art as long as things are more or less working okay for the moment?
You call that God debugging, I call it natural laws in action.
Similarly, can you tell us by what mechanism God created everything?
Start with time if you could. It has been a constant puzzle to me.
1 In the beginning was the Word (Jesus), and the Word (Jesus) was with God, and the Word (Jesus) was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him (Jeus); and without him (Jesus) was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him (Jesus) was life; and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
I upvoted you because we get so little comedy on ZH these days.
his missing link is common sense...
Anusocracy,
Me too. Read The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. String Theory has interesting implications.
Thanks.
Time to go to the library.
I agree with the premise of intelligent design... I don't agree with the source most attribute this phenomenon to...
Here is another quesiton, explain the repeating fibonaci sequences found throughout nature, space and all creation?
If there is only one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively in order to evolve superveniently, it stands to reason there would be repeating sequences.
pattern recognition.
archetypes, and patterns, re-cognised.
once one begins to drop all the non-sense "cultures" fill the mind with since birth, and learns to see through un-trained eyes the patterns inherent all round us, the Truth emerges. . .
heady stuff, eh.
So what? Be careful what you believe since it appears we have to believe in something. Otherwise we wouldn't know how to behave since we don't have all the facts.
"If things seem hard for religions now, it’s just going to get worse. The issue is that the velocity of interconnectedness between people and the pace of discoveries is just going to keep increasing. Religions already look like they’re being reduced to justification exercises, where adherents spend all their time explaining why modern findings do not contradict their faiths. The only way to do this is to keep generalizing their beliefs. Eventually this will become so frenzied that it’s going to become an exercise in ridiculousness. That’s where things seem to be headed. ET, machine consciousness, genetic reprogramming, massive privacy questions – some really tough stuff lies ahead. A lot of people also connect ethnicity and religion together and that too will suffer as global interconnectedness increases."
All is not lost:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parent...
&
"It's a tough lesson for theists to come to grips with but god only exists in thoughts passed from generation to generation. That's why all this shit makes no sense, why there is so much in the world that defies the existence of god in the external physical world. All the stuff that theists must ignore in ordre for their internal universe to match the external. This is where statements like "What a tradegy that little Johnny died of cancer at 8, god must have had a special place in heaven for him" come into play.
The fascinating thing is that the "meme" or idea of god includes the concept that god exists in the external physical world. Once this idea is implanted in the early human mind and reinforced over and over again the thought itself becomes physically instantiated in the brains neural network. By then, in a sense, you can say that god does exist in the physical world but we seldom distinguish god as a mesh of neurons and axons bathed in Serotoniun and Dopamine among a miriad of other chemicals.
If there was a god humans would be aligned absolutely, categorically and completely with each other in their belief and worship, this is surely self evident. This is one of the most pwerful indicators that god is nothing more than a cultural tradition passed from generation to generation. Most ironically ther very notion of god and belief and worship is subject to evolution. If there was a god this also would not be the case. Worship would be static and unchanging.
I would has it a guess that nobody really has a clue what caused the universe to arise. Even if some super advanced alien civilisation knew what caused it and wrote it down in a book and gave it to us I suspect even then we wouldn't understand it because our language is rooted in the macro world and vastly limits our ability to understand anything beyond it.
Let's say for arguments sake that there are trillions upon trillions of universes like ours popping into existence and evolving over trillions of years, some to expand forever and eventually fizzle out, some to exist in a steady state, others to eventually collpase back in on themselves. Let's say for arguments sake that throughout these universes there have been trillions of advanced civilisations that would make humans look like cockroaches in comparison. What then. Is there a god that gives a particular rats ass about humans.
No, the atheist does not deny the existence of god due to some misplaced guilt or non-realisation of some obvious truth, they deny the existence of god because it's stupid.
Maybe the universe is teaming with free-willed beings. Maybe life is inevitable as day following night. Maybe it's not something special at all. Always, people are consumed with emotional bias based on their meagre experience. If there are a trillion civilisations in just this universe what then.
Just look at the world around you and take the fliters of emotion off. Just look with no preconceived ideas about sunsets being a gentle caress from gods paint brush for example. Just look. I don't see a god. If a big face appeared in the sky then I'd change my mind but so far, nothing."
Keep cut & pasting the same thing over and over. That's what we like here on the hedge.
lol, works for many here, and keeps the thread counts up, no?
Heh. So Get a Job.
If it made any sense no faith would be needed.
Believing in Sky Fairies it what makes you Americans special.
Sky fairies...
Those are the things that make socialism work, right? They also make govts work for the people. I think...
I want to hear from the sect of ZHers who DO believe in evolution, but DON'T believe we landed on the moon!
It takes all types to populate a planet.
I believe we landed on the moon and in Shannon's Limit.
The USSA Nazis went to the moon...what a goddamn joke!!!
In the 1960's. hahahahahahaha!!!
Stop your fucking kidding me... right!!!
Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Moonhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xciCJfbTvE4
pssst: Van Allen Radiation Belts... Hint...Hint !!!
You know there is a retroreflector that was placed on the moon right? Scientists (or amateur astronomers) can use this reflector to judge the distance to the moon. It didn't magically appear there - it was placed by astronauts from Apollo 11.
Right... Okay... Sure whatever you say.
Better learn yourself up about the Radiation levels in the VanAllen belts.
jesus - go find someone with a telescope. You can literally see evidence of the landing. Really.
What Happened on the Moon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W79mIGx9Ib4
David, I just overcame my temporarily, self-imposed observer status to tell you about the "Well, they put these laser bouncers up there ... " argument/factoid. It turns out laser bouncers, placed by the gloved hand of astraunaut man have nothing to do with the moon's ability to reflect laser light.
Mylar-walled lander, all original film lost according to NASA. Diffuse lighting. Auto focus before auto focus ...
And of course the Van Allen Radiation Belt. Nobody gets off this rock alive.
David Icke says the moon was brought here by reptilian alien lizards to put humanity in a trance. I'm not sure what his credentials are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qIZUhE25KA&index=2&list=PL1A37BDA727F41...
Apollo 11.
why, there's that magic number again, like a pair of towers. . . wonder who's paying attention?
Apollo Zero, eleven, zero zero, eleven. . . coded. . . . . . . .hahahhahahh. . .
Who Built the Moon?
pics or it never happened.
for a nominal fee, I can make the pics for you. ;-)
Watch out for that guy. He's passed the Lithium Test. Until now I never knew he was a Lunar-tic, too, so I best be extra cautious. Clearly he's on to us, so let's remember our tradecraft. And please don't tell him I got the optional "Chemtrail Switch" installed in the cockpit of my turboprop to help out my fellow B&B boys with our sheeple-dusting protocol. I want to keep something secret.
Please don't spread false information. There is no evidence of manned lunar landings. NONE.
All we have are CLAIMS by NASA, and a laughable collection of contradictory photos and videos.
Only propagada junkies, clueless idiots, and naive morons would actually believe that NASA had developed adequate technology to land humans on the moon and return to earth by 1969.
AS OF TODAY, the US does not have anything remotely approaching this level of technological expertise. I will bet the farm that the US won't have any by 2019. Forget 1969.
Gold film a few microns thick blocks radiation from the Van Allen belts.
Right !!!
But... only in your dreams.
In your ignorance. Moon landers went through the belts and didn't stay there enough as to be fried. Even the goddamn Hubble goes from time to time through the belts, although its stay is much longer than any of the landers had to go through (and has to shutdown accordingly). If that radiation was such an instant killer then no electronic object would have been able to leave Earth's vicinity.
You must be an American. You fit that graph very well...
Hah, no. If I were I would spew BS like intelligent design or man never landed on the moon. Luckily I was born far far away from that pitiful land.
So amateur astronomers are using a cat toy (sorry, I can't help myself,) to hit a target that appears to be the size of a suitcase from an average distance of 237,000 miles? I'll be polite and post links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment . When it appears we don't need reflectors to gauge the distance by this method anyways? http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=36712.0#.VL3OIS...
Please explain.
We certainly don't need reflectors to judge the distance - but this wasn't really the main point of the missions. These reflectors are used consistently by many astronomers around the world, and there is nearly 5 decades worth of experimental data from many different sources to corroborate their existence.
Source: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/pesky-problems-for-lunar-r...
So these amateurs are hitting the suitcase then, you've convinced us. I guess. And these University employees are measuring the number of angels dancing on a pinhead distance of the moon down to 1mm. Neat. I'm a convert, a true believer, even though I've been at university and worked for these "people."
Paul Krugman also has irrefutable data that can't be confirmed.
Um, this data can be confirmed. Many people have confirmed it, all over the world. Hobo, you have to be willfully ignorant of historical data and empirical evidence in order to have the stance that you do.
Some people have a hard time accepting that the world isn't flat, that the earth isn't the center of the universe, and that with the $trillions that the US government has squandered on wars of aggression, and corporate and social welfare, humanity could easily be on Mars or beyond by now.
You seem to have dropped the amateur angle. We're waiting. This post asserts "it can" and "many people have" and "you have to be...ignorant"
All well and good, this is science, not as I was taught it, but as I've seen it practiced, over and over. When in doubt, shout. 237,000 miles, give or take half a millimeter... this is an extraordinary claim but I'm not seeing the extraordinary evidence, just assertions. And a bit of dodging. I am actually quite agnostic on this, I'd truly like to be persuaded. Not willing to take it on faith, though. Respect for not barfing venom like cpnscarlett.
wow somebody just re-arranged the post hierarchy here in thelast 30 minutes. Trippin'.
If, Hobo, you're comparing the hard sciences like chemistry, physics to the what Paul Krugman does (economics - which is, at best, a "soft" science), then you're using the term "science" in an extremely liberal fashion. More liberally than any liberal policy Paul Krugman could dream in his wildest dream of dreams.
I am skeptic, but I am always amazed at other skeptics who take their skepticism to the point of believing nothing is true and that the world is one big conspiracy. Most, conspiracies are b.s. because the presumed conspirators are not smart enough to coordinate the execution and confidentiality of the supposed conspiracy. In the case of the moon, the staging and secrecy would be much harder than the science and execution of the actual undertaking. So it goes with most conspiracies.
Let me know how they act, not think, and then I will tell you what they believe
ha,
what about everything is true, for the individual mind that believes it.
now sit back and look at the world through the billions of minds envisioning it.
this is absolutely prove-able truth. no two minds have exactly the same perspective.
it's chaos out there my friend, be careful.
"Nothing is Forbidden, Everything is Permitted."
- Hassan bin SabbahWhat does Shannon's Limit have to do with the matter at hand? Oh, wait, it's about overcoming "noise" in transmissions.
How self-referencing of you.
I don't believe in evolution, but I "act" as if I do, because it seems to make the most sense and I can't avoid "acting."
+1 subtle, too subtle it seems. I like it.
He's entirely correct. Belief has no place in science. If something requires faith, or is properly stated as "do you believe in X", then it is not science, period.
Evolution is a theory that happens to fit the set of facts that are available. You're still free to believe in God, or believe in some omnipotent being that is directing evolution or god knows what you can imagine. You're even free to reject evolution as a valid explanation. However, in rejecting someone else's decent explanation, it's generally on the rejector to come up with a better explanation.
If you ever ask the question, "Do you believe in Evolution?" You're demonstrating you don't understand the question you're asking. It's self-detonating.
Darwin Dogma.
.
I dont know about you - but i aint no dying ape.
No, you're certainly not. But it's actually worse to think that someone designed you, considering you've got your primary recreation utilities right next to waste treatment.
Rather than an ape, a pig would fit better. They're our closest brethren. Everytime I dig those chops I doubt if I'm committing cannibalism, but hey, still tasty.
I disagree. There is much "belief" in your science. You believe man evolved from apes. That is not a scientific statement that can be proven or disproven by the scientific method. It is not like an experiment that can be done in a lab. It is an historic event that is not repeatable, observable, measurable, or falsifiable. Thus, it cannot be scientifically proven to have happened, nor can it be scientifically disproven.
3. Do not suppose for a moment that these statements are empty words: think carefully of the successes we arranged for Darwinism (Evolution), Marxism (Communism), Nietzsche-ism (Socialism). To us Jews, at any rate, it should be plain to see what a disintegrating importance these directives have had upon the minds of the GOYIM.
.
Protocol 2:2-3
You are wrong. We have the fossil record of the taxus (family) hominidae witch includes great apes and humans 2,5 million years back, when our ape ancestor are considered to have become humans and about 8 million years back when we had our last common ancestor with apes like chimps. And we have of course genetics, were we can measure and explain when and how humans evolved out of very early apes. And you can repeat those genetic data experiments over and over again, you´ll get the same results each time. You are just in a senseless and pointless denial.
Lol, you´re cute. Your simple method: deny everything. In the end you´ll deny that anything exists. What you do is not science, this is rabbulistic nonsense. I prove that something is 2,5 million years old by using accepted scientific methods. Feel free to prove those methods are wrong or produce false results, just denying them because you don´t like them is not more than meaningless drivel of morons.