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Aqfaq wrote:
ars4326 wrote:
I don't like the tone of your remarks
When you start to criticize someone's tone instead of the arguments, then you have surely agreed to the arguments. Otherwise you would tell us why Warp is wrong instead of claiming that his tone is something you don't like.
Sorry, Aqfaq. I don't see things that way. If I don't like somebody's tone in a response to me, I'll let them know.
I also don't appreciate being accused of being a liar and creating "straw-man" arguments. I'm just not going to engage with someone in a discussion if that's how they're going to conduct themselves.
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
Joined: 4/8/2005
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Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
ars4326 wrote:
I also don't appreciate being accused of being a liar and creating "straw-man" arguments.
I don't think you are accused of being a liar. But you are representing a straw man version of evolution whether it is your own idea or not. You are not talking about evolution at all! You are talking about something else entirely, just like feos does. For your own sake, educate yourself on the topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution (You are not talking about this when you think you are talking about evolution.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man (This is what you do with evolution. Whether you like to hear this or not, you actually ARE representing a straw man version of evolution.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance (The discomfort you experience in a situation like this is due to cognitive dissonance.)
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Let's start from the good part.
Aqfaq wrote:
What method do you use for deciding what is true and false? Do you maybe compare the different explanations that various sources give you? Do you then choose the best explanation that makes most sense to you and requires least amount of extraneous assumptions? If so, you use the same method that I do. Edit: At least that's what I try to do, but it is impossible to avoid all cognitive biases and other shortcomings that I might have.
My method is this:
1. Meet a problem that can't be resolved right away.
2. Spend some time on resolving it basing on already present knowledge.
3. Have hard time figuring out what it really is about, what misinterpretations or lack of knowledge on my side were used by that problem when it appeared.
4. Collect some of those and try to apply to the problem, just as a check.
5. Figure out more and more things of different importance, that could break the solution again if not considered.
6. Resolve the problem and hear it click.
7. Remember the feeling, compare it to what I felt when I first met that problem, and to what I thought before and during solving it. Figure out what of those appeared to be correct, fix the rest in my head, and make a mental picture of the resulting feeling. It is called common sense.
8. Once other problems like that are met, try to resolve it right from step 7, and if it doesn't work right away, improve my notion of common sense by executing 1-7.
Wow dude! You spend so many words on telling me about those bad creationists and stuff, even though I never said I'm one of them. You seem to be obsessed with dualistic vision of the world, where it's either evolution, or divine creation, and since divine creation has no direct scientific proof, it's obviously evolution. And to help you agree with that, you have to tell yourself how bad (or wrong) creationists are. LOL.
You know what? The method I described to you in the beginning of my post doesn't agree at all with the entire evolution idea (except for those tiny tweaks). We'll see what it ends up with.
Now the worst part. I have written 2posts for you, and you haven't bothered to reply (only to the first one before it was edited).
Warp wrote:
Given how easy it is to use Google today, you present an amazing amount of intellectual laziness and, quite frankly, intellectual dishonesty.
I can never stop wondering how much irony is there in our life. While one person was ready to discuss our notions and provide links, the other one, who's never able to use google even after being told to do so within a few pages of a hot discussion, is now telling me to just go use google. Ahahahahahahaha!
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Are you asking me to give you a rundown of the ways that the church is patriarchal? Or do you just want justification as to why this patriarchal system is a problem?.
I dunno, you mentioned "the problem of church patriarchy", I asked what's problematic about it.
Pokota wrote:
I actually do try to stay out of creationism/evolutionism arguments because people expect me to pick a side and I like to point out "Why can't [Diety] have instituted evolution?"
(I do enjoy watching people when their brains short circuit on a question like that)
Because evolution is basing on death, and death didn't exist before sin. How much pleasure did my brain deliver you?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
And Warp, I'm going to be frank with you and state that I don't like the tone of your remarks, nor do I appreciate your claims that I'm being dishonest or attempting to present a "straw-man" argument of some sort.
If that's the way you choose to conduct yourself, fine. But don't expect any further responses from me if you're going to operate that way in this thread.
When you call the theory of evolution a "belief system", then you are using the archetypal creationist straw man, whether you realize it or not. The fact that you show zero respect towards the life work of thousands of people, who have worked hard to increase our understanding of this world, elicits no respect from me.
If you were intellectually honest, you would approach the subject in a more serious and respectful manner than calling a well-established scientific theory with derogatory names intended to poison the well and build a straw man. Even if you don't accept it doesn't mean you have to use mockery or derogatory terms to describe it.
Consider how much respect would you give to someone saying that the Bible is nothing but a fairy tale.
Again, if you have an actual argument to make against the theory of evolution, present it, and we can discuss.
I actually do try to stay out of creationism/evolutionism arguments because people expect me to pick a side and I like to point out "Why can't [Diety] have instituted evolution?"
(I do enjoy watching people when their brains short circuit on a question like that)
Because evolution is basing on death, and death didn't exist before sin. How much pleasure did my brain deliver you?
Point.
I have an argument against that but it largely hinges on the LDS perspective, which includes "You have to die in order for the body to be resurrected" and "God created Creation for the purpose of perfecting His children", and the argument doesn't really hold up in an Evolution/Creationism dispute anyway since it's more a dogmatic argument against... I think it's against Original Sin but it's been so long since I even had to pull that one out I don't remember what it's arguing against.
Wow, a lot of interesting discussions here...
Aqfaq wrote:
Equal voting is a relatively new thing and I would imagine that we all understand why it is a good thing. Isn't it nice how some societies have developed enough to understand why that is?
Well, women are generally more controlled by their emotions than men, so some people argue that it can be a bad thing to let women vote, because also in politics, womens decitions are then based more on feelings, and that leads for example to mass immigration, socialism and communism.
Maybe it is also purely by chance that the God is referred to as "father"
The reason God is masculine is because God is spirit, and nature on the other hand is feminine, because it's material. That's why we call it mother nature, and we call material things "she".
This has nothing to do with that masculinity would somehow be better, because God is a masculine energy. The feminine energy, matter, is equally important, even though it's often associated with bad things, like "materialism", but that's just because femininity is more hidden than masculinity, so people have a harder time to understand it and understand it's true potential.
Even science today is based on masculinity (because it was invented by men), and the occult and spiritual sciences based on femininity are looked down upon as "unscientific" and whatnot.
ars4326, how is that honoring the woman? Isn't she clearly stated here to have been made for the use of man, a mere tool?
Tools are very important. We wouldn't even be able to do TASes without tools ;)
A tool is not worse than the user; an object is not worse than a subject. Object and subject are just like a woman and a man; equal but different. People look down upon objects, so that's why they often can't appreaciate femininity either.
Of course a woman is much more than a mere object. But they have more of the objective energy than men have.
Frankly, I'm sick and tired of the creationist dishonesty. They completely misrepresent and distort what the theory of evolution is and what it says, fabricate claims that it doesn't make, and include into it vast amounts of fields that do not belong to it, and keep repeating the mantra that it's a "belief system".
Basically, anti-evolutionism is effectively a conspiracy theory. It's the idea that hundreds of thousands, if not even millions, of scientists from all around the world, from different countries, cultures, backgrounds and philosophical stances, are all in a huge world-wide conspiracy to push this one agenda, all agree on it even though they know it not to be true, and can somehow coordinate to do this, and have been doing so for over a hundred years.
Evolution can't be observed in the sense that we can't observe unicellular organisms evolve into all kinds of animals we see today (like the theory claims), so it is a belief in that sense, a bit like the belief that the earth is round, even though our observations tell us that it's flat. But there is more convincing evidence that the earth is round than there is for evolution.
While the round earth theory proposes something that we can't observe, evolution goes further and, on top of proposing a thing that we can't observe, it proposes a time interval that we can't observe. The Big Bang goes even further in the speculation, further in time, but also in space, and thus the credibility goes down. The more you extrapolate from observations in the present moment back in time and space, the more likely errors become.
Then after Big Bang you have superstring theories which go even more into the ridiculous speculation based now almost purely on mathematical abstractions. At least Big Bang and evolution have some indirect observational evidence and extrapolation, and not just mathematics.
There is of course much value in the theory of evolution, like there is in the theory of creation. Both of these theories (God/spirituality and science, masculinity and femininity, yin and yang) will eventually merge together, after fighting long enough, and we will have a more complete theory, which will include things like spiritual bodies, giants from a sunken continent and how the third eye of spiritual vision atrophied into the parietal eye and pineal gland.
Quite unlike what Darwin imagined the evolution of the eye, and also quite unlike what many creationists imagined the creation of the eye.
I'm also sick and tired of creationists bunching into "evolution" all kinds of things that do not belong there. Cosmology and the big bang theory are not part of the theory of evolution.
The reason for that is that the Big bang is the theory of cosmic evolution. Evolution just means change over time in this case.
Abiogenesis is not part of it.
This is also evolution, because it's the evolution/change from inorganic to organic.
Joined: 12/8/2012
Posts: 706
Location: Missouri, USA
Warp wrote:
When you call the theory of evolution a "belief system", then you are using the archetypal creationist straw man, whether you realize it or not. The fact that you show zero respect towards the life work of thousands of people, who have worked hard to increase our understanding of this world, elicits no respect from me.
If you were intellectually honest, you would approach the subject in a more serious and respectful manner than calling a well-established scientific theory with derogatory names intended to poison the well and build a straw man. Even if you don't accept it doesn't mean you have to use mockery or derogatory terms to describe it.
Consider how much respect would you give to someone saying that the Bible is nothing but a fairy tale.
Again, if you have an actual argument to make against the theory of evolution, present it, and we can discuss.
We're just not going to have a discussion, Warp.
As for everyone else, if you have any questions directed toward me concerning the Bible, I'll try my best to answer them and provide clarity.
Also, perhaps it would be a good idea if someone created a theory of evolution discussion thread (since it's getting an increased amount of attention here).
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
Also, perhaps it would be a good idea if someone created a theory of evolution discussion thread (since it's getting an increased amount of attention here).
Joined: 12/8/2012
Posts: 706
Location: Missouri, USA
OmnipotentEntity, I did see your lengthy reply (in which I do sincerely appreciate the time you took to address the objections you found in the video). I also appreciate you making a new topic for evolution. Perhaps there, I'll be able to address objections I have more specifically, and in more detail. My intent on including the Trey Smith video was to provide a bit more substance to my initial response that I'm just not a believer of it.
And to clarify my response of "Basically, the entire belief system", I meant belief system in the sense of one believing the entire body of work of something as being true. In the case of evolution, this would "basically" mean the entire body of work, research, and study that has gone into it. That wasn't me trying to be dishonest, or trying to set up a straw-man or anything unkind. It was just a brief response that was, unfortunately, taken to mean something entirely different.
Thank you for being civil. I'll strive to conduct myself the same.
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
The fact is this: Anyone who rejects the theory of evolution also rejects mathematics.
Actually, I reject the theory of evolution precisely because of mathematics. On my own I have eventually come into the conclusion that intelligence in a closed system cannot increase, and that it is a natural law much akin the law of entropy.
A closed system can not exhibit more intelligence than what was originally put into it. This is my theory. You won't find this "law" in textbooks, because it undermines the theory of evolution, which I think is, despite its near-unilateral acceptance, a hoax specifically designed for the very purpose of replacing God as the creator of the universe. I am planning to make a YouTube video / blog post centered around this topic.
Things that are related to this "law" are the Dunning-Kruger effect, or to put it in a more memorable form: Stupid people don't realize they're stupid.
It means that a person has no way of fathoming intelligence greater than their own. It is impossible to understand what it means to be more intelligent than oneself. In Biblical terms, God's ways are so much higher and more complex than man's ways that a man has no hope of comprehending God's plans. People can only think of God's plans in terms of their own reasoning processes. People can only think of other people's reasoning in terms of their own reasoning. This is especially apparent with children versus adults.
It also means that the so-called technological singularity cannot happen and will never happen. The singularity means a hypothetical event where such an AI is designed by humans, that the AI can create an improved version of itself, and the improved version again creates a better version, and it takes off exponentially.
I have come into this conclusion by the means of simulations and algorithms, which are a branch of mathematics. The only forms of AI that can discover emergent behaviors and "intelligence" not expressly designed by the programmer are those that are either heavily guided towards an "intended" solution (by disqualifying everything else, i.e. the intelligence is already there in an inverted form), or by rewarding behaviors that match a predetermined goal (in this case, the AI is interacting with a system that has the intelligence, which means it's not a closed system).
In a closed system, intelligence can only decrease; everything can only degrade.
Bisqwit... I hate to be 'that guy', but you're hinging your argument on the premise that the universe is a closed system. Is that something that's comparatively easy (in comparison to evolution) to prove/disprove?
(I agree with you on parts of this, mind. At this point I'm just being an ass for the sake of arguing) OH. That's exactly what you were saying. I'm a dumb.
Actually, I reject the theory of evolution precisely because of mathematics. On my own I have eventually come into the conclusion that intelligence in a closed system cannot increase, and that it is a natural law much akin the law of entropy.
A closed system can not exhibit more intelligence than what was originally put into it.
If you would like to fully support this point, I'll be happy to explain where you've gone wrong. As it stated currently this is an argument from incredulity and/or ignorance (not to say you are ignorant, I certainly don't think that, that's just the name of the fallacy.)
You won't find this "law" in textbooks, because it undermines the theory of evolution, which I think is, despite its near-unilateral acceptance, a hoax specifically designed for the very purpose of replacing God as the creator of the universe. I am planning to make a YouTube video / blog post centered around this topic.
I think this is an important point. You reject evolution, and invent a conspiracy to explain it. If you didn't then you'd have to reject a belief more important to you, your Biblical literalism.
So I guess the salient question is, if you were wrong, would you want to know? Do you care whether or not the beliefs you hold with respect to your religion are true? Or would you rather not sweat the details, and you prefer the security and community, irrespective of whether or not you're actually correct?
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Bisqwit wrote:
I have eventually come into the conclusion that intelligence in a closed system cannot increase, and that it is a natural law much akin the law of entropy.
The point is: Earth is not a closed system. According to the basic understanding of physics, sun delivers energy into the system. It is the energy from the sun that ultimately drives the whole process of increasing complexity. Just like entropy can decrease locally, intelligence can increase locally.
So, yes, I agree that intelligence might ultimately only degrade in the universe, if we look at the universe as a closed system. To my understanding, that is exactly what cosmologists and physicists conclude based on the same mathematics that you use. However, there is no reason why intelligence could not increase locally.
I have eventually come into the conclusion that intelligence in a closed system cannot increase, and that it is a natural law much akin the law of entropy.
The point is: Earth is not a closed system. According to the basic understanding of physics, sun delivers energy into the system. It is the energy from the sun that ultimately drives the whole process of increasing complexity. Just like entropy can decrease locally, intelligence can increase locally.
So, yes, I agree that intelligence might ultimately only degrade in the universe, if we look at the universe as a closed system. To my understanding, that is exactly what cosmologists and physicists conclude based on the same mathematics that you use. However, there is no reason why intelligence could not increase locally.
In his defense, he said akin to entropy, not equal to. I had considered writing a similar counter argument, but I didn't want to put words in his mouth, he hasn't described the mechanism to how, when, and why his law works. Or what even a closed system of intelligence is.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
You reject evolution, and invent a conspiracy to explain it.
He just explained Intelligent Design from a programming perspective.
Aqfaq wrote:
The point is: Earth is not a closed system.
In terms of Physics, sure. In terms of information, though, we're not actually yet sure. Some say yes. Some say no. Some just throw their hands in the air and decide to do a handstand because they're tired of people killing each other over this disagreement.
I'm not kidding on this, by the way. Applying the closed/open system definitions in terms of information to human learning is the fundamental disagreement between Prophetic religions (such as Mormons) and non-Prophetic religions (such as Catholics).
You reject evolution, and invent a conspiracy to explain it.
He just explained Intelligent Design from a programming perspective.
Please explain to me how this is relevant. I do not understand your point.
EDIT: Ah I believe I cracked it. I said he rejected evolution. I did not claim why. Think of it as "You must reject evolution, and invent a conspiracy to explain it." Rather than "You rejected evolution as a result of xyz, and invented a conspiracy to explain it."
It was not addressing any specific claim, or claiming he did not make a claim as to why. In the second half of my post the "why" is irrelevant.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Actually, I reject the theory of evolution precisely because of mathematics. On my own I have eventually come into the conclusion that intelligence in a closed system cannot increase, and that it is a natural law much akin the law of entropy.
"Intelligence" is an ill-defined term. "Information" is a better-defined term, especially when we are talking about the sort of information that's closely related to entropy.
Increasing the amount of information in a system decreases its entropy.
The total amount of information within a closed system cannot increase. However, there's nothing stopping information increasing, ie. entropy decreasing, locally, as long as entropy increases by at least that much somewhere else within that system.
By writing this text I'm actually locally reducing entropy. Am I breaking any laws of physics by doing so? No, because at the same time I'm also increasing entropy somewhere else by at least an equivalent amount (and in fact, by more.) (The most abundant source of entropy increment comes from excess heat from me, this computer, and everything else involved.)
We see order increasing, and thus entropy decreasing, all the time around us. And not just by the act of humans. A blob of molten lava is composed of a chaotic mess of mineral molecules. Then it cools down (thermodynamics happen), and inside crystals may form. Crystals are highly organized and ordered mineral molecules. The amount of order increased in this process tremendously. Was some kind of natural law broken in this process? No, because entropy increased by at least that much somewhere else (again mainly due to the excess heat).
Water is a chaotic blob of molecules. When it freezes, these molecules organize in highly ordered crystalline structures. Entropy was decreased. Did this break any laws of nature? No. (You know the drill by now.)
There are no natural laws being broken in the idea that life could arise from non-life via natural means. It's simply a more complex version of the two examples above. (A lot more complex, for sure, but in no way law-breaking.)
In the same way there is no physical impediment for the amount of information, even "intelligence", increasing. Our collective brains form a dynamic system that's constantly developing and selecting new random ideas, and distilling the best ones, which form new ideas, new information, new "intelligence". This just means that at the same time we are increasing entropy by at least that much around us (again, mainly due to excess heat.)
There is nothing controversial or difficult about this, once you understand the principle and the mechanisms.
Warp: In other words, it's a zero-sum game and the information I use has to come from somewhere within the system. Is that a close enough approximation, or did I make a bad assumption about the argument?
On my own I have eventually come into the conclusion that intelligence in a closed system cannot increase, and that it is a natural law much akin the law of entropy.
A closed system can not exhibit more intelligence than what was originally put into it.
Intelligence happens because of the presence of enery and matter, of which both have a defined amount in a closed system, which means intelligence units forms from this limited amount of matter and energy until no matter and no energy is here anymore to form another intelligence unit. Therefore the amount of intelligence isn't predifined, but it's limit.
Warp: In other words, it's a zero-sum game and the information I use has to come from somewhere within the system. Is that a close enough approximation, or did I make a bad assumption about the argument?
More like a "negative-sum" game, given that total entropy almost always increases, but yeah, nothing stops some of the numbers from becoming positive, as long as they are counterbalanced by other numbers becoming negative by at least that much.
Warp: In other words, it's a zero-sum game and the information I use has to come from somewhere within the system. Is that a close enough approximation, or did I make a bad assumption about the argument?
More like a "negative-sum" game, given that entropy almost always increases, but yeah, nothing stops some of the numbers from becoming positive, as long as they are counterbalanced by other numbers becoming negative by at least that much.
Actually, from the perspective of information theory. Information and entropy are equivalent. So information is *always* increasing. Analogy: A cue ball smacks into a billiard ball and some paint is left on it. This is entropy. But it's also information.
Most of the time, the information isn't useful. But entropy being equivalent to information is why computers require energy and why they produce heat.
However, intelligence is completely different from information.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
(I thought that was because "electricity is hot" but it comes out to be the same thing in the end)
So how does one go about destroying information? Is that even a thing that we can comprehend? My understanding is that even a black hole doesn't destroy matter so much as make it infinitely dense and irretrievable.
(It just occurred to me how silly it is to not consider that destroying matter, but I am genuinely confused on this point having had both "yes that's right" and "no that's not right" be given to me as the answer using the same logic of "the subatomic particles still exist but the atoms they composed no longer do")
And btw, if someone is wondering where all that "excess heat" I'm talking about comes from in the first place, the ultimate answer is the Sun. The Sun ultimately fuels all the electrochemical activity on Earth in the long run.
(This would work even if we considered the solar system a closed system. Sure, it would not, and will not work forever, but it has been working and will be working for a pretty long time. Enough for all of this to happen.)
