Proof once and for all that there is no God

[_Buffalo]

[_Buffalo]

Also:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRV4d9LCawU

[_Panopticon]

Love it!

Seriously, though, I'm sure you have heard about Darwin's wasp.

The parasitic wasp, which lays its eggs inside a caterpillar so that its larvae can feed on it, carefully guides its sting into each ganglion of the prey’s central nervous system, not to kill it, but to paralyze it, so that its offspring will have fresh meat to eat. The victim is literally devoured alive from the inside out.

Darwin found this situation incompatible with his religious beliefs. He wrote,

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.



This obviously doesn't "prove" the non-existence of God, but I have no desire to be associated with the monster who "created" this, by mean of evolution or otherwise.

[_RayAgostini]

Love it!

Seriously, though, I'm sure you have heard about Darwin's wasp.

The parasitic wasp, which lays its eggs inside a caterpillar so that its larvae can feed on it, carefully guides its sting into each ganglion of the prey’s central nervous system, not to kill it, but to paralyze it, so that its offspring will have fresh meat to eat. The victim is literally devoured alive from the inside out.

Darwin found this situation incompatible with his religious beliefs. He wrote,

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.



This obviously doesn't "prove" the non-existence of God, but I have no desire to be associated with the monster who "created" this, by mean of evolution or otherwise.

It would have been a better idea to post more of Darwin's ideas on this, of which your quote is only a relatively small selection:

With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice... On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.

(Letter to Asa Gray [22 May 1860]); Wikinote: "the Ichneumonidae" has sometimes been altered to "parasitic wasps" in paraphrases of this passage.)

I think that would actually make Darwin a deist.

Also:

I feel most deeply that this whole question of Creation is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton! Let each man hope and believe what he can.
London Illustrated News (21 April 1862)

[_RayAgostini]

Some more clarification:

But I was very unwilling to give up my belief;—I feel sure of this for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.

And this is a damnable doctrine.

Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered.

"Fixed laws". Who "fixed" them? Darwin was forever in flummox.

Toward the end of that century, however, even Charles Darwin wavered in his optimism. According to one historian, Darwin feared that the theory of evolution “had killed God and that the consequences for the future of mankind were incalculable.”

[_Quasimodo]

The biggest crab lice I've ever seen! No wonder she's screaming.

[_Panopticon]

Some more clarification:

But I was very unwilling to give up my belief;—I feel sure of this for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.

And this is a damnable doctrine.

Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered.

"Fixed laws". Who "fixed" them? Darwin was forever in flummox.

Toward the end of that century, however, even Charles Darwin wavered in his optimism. According to one historian, Darwin feared that the theory of evolution “had killed God and that the consequences for the future of mankind were incalculable.”

Why must there by a who? Why does "fixed" imply a "fixer?"

[_Hoops]

I'm going to Joe's Crab Shack tomorrow.

[_Quasimodo]

I'm going to Joe's Crab Shack tomorrow.

Two words... Kwell lotion. It's not called a "Crab Shack" for nothing.

[_bcspace]

There is no proof for the non existence of God in this thread. For that, you'll want to research the works of Oolon Colluphid.