Sigh... I knew this would go nowhere. The mob is having a meltdown now that they realize they can't actually address the arguments I laid out. Ignorance appears to be a shared value among atheists here. It brings them together. Does it really feel that good to be included in a group?
If you can't understand that a common ancestor is important in understanding how flight evolved I can't help you.
Nor can you help yourself if you cannot understand what I have actually said. Nobody is questioning common ancestry. Nobody is saying birds didn't evolve from common ancestors. So while you're pretending that you're somehow "explaining" something that I supposedly "don't understand," with these basic Evolution 101 rants, all you're really doing is highlighting why it is so difficult to discuss any topic with you in the room. The real points get lost in the smoke of this meaningless rhetoric.
What I have said, and have repeatedly said, is that flying creatures had to have evolved by a designing influence since intelligence is required before anything can fly. Knowledge of aerodynamics is required. The principles of lift and drag are required. To illustrate how difficult it was to master, it took intelligent humans thousands of years to accomplish flight by learning these principles, and yet we're supposed to believe
non intelligent entities managed it, without any help at all, millions of years ago? Next thing you know you'll be telling me the spaghetti monster did it!
This flies right in the face of reason.
Looking at flightless birds shows how environment plays a part on how animals evolve. You think birds are the only thing that fly? Insects predated flying birds by quite a time span, as far as I'm aware.
More straw men.... never said that only birds fly.
You don't understand that I was attempting to explain some simple things, to you.
Because you like to hear yourself sound informed, apparently. I know the standard 101 steps in Evolution. I know what it proposes and what it does. My argument is perhaps more philosophical, which is probably why you're being left in the dust of confusion. So be it.
You told me my reply wasn't in response to your points - yes, it was. A few of them.
No it wasn't. And you're doing it again above with these ridiculous question, illustrating you are gong down the wrong path with me. It should be perfectly clear at this point that you have not understood much of anything that I have said or argued.
I don't want to get into a back and forth with you, personally. I'd rather debate. You don't know what you're arguing.
LOL. Yes Moniker, that has to be it right?
You again and again say that evolution has a goal. It doesn't.
According to Cambridge University Press, that isn't entirely true. (
http://www.fathom.com/feature/121813/index.html). Since there is no intellectual source within the organic cells, then of course the logical conclusion is that evolution cannot be guided. That's kinda my point. Since the end (i.e. flight) proves an intelligence was involved, and evolution states that there is no intelligent source within the fundamental properties of evolution, then this intelligent influence must come from elsewhere. So where? That is a question beyond what evolutionary biologists are ale to answer because it is outside their field of expertise. The matter takes a quick philosophical twist, as the end demands an explanation for its apparent intelligent design.
Evolution doesn't have goals in the sense that it contains coded information with a specific plan, but it does have a goal in the sense that it seeks to survive. And if taking to the air helps a species survive, then that is what it will do. You're not dealing with my argument. You're not even coming close to addressing the fact that something that requires an intelligence and understanding, cannot be accomplished without intelligence and understanding. Instead you keep avoiding it like the plague while bringing up all sorts of crazy points that have nothing to do with what I've said.
You repeat simple myths and don't even get that I'm attempting to explain the basics to you
Myths!?! Like what? You're beating up a straw man because you like to appear smarter than you are. You can't deal with the actual argument because you don't find an answer on that evolution website you're reading. So you run to the closest thing, which ends up being a straw man.
that apparently you don't get because you are hostile to evolution and run to sites that attack the theory without you even having a basic understanding of it.
I'm hostile to evolution, you idiot? I'm "hostile"? I agree with it! I simply refuse to believe evolution is unguided. You can't handle that prospect and you're doing everything possible to argue that science has somehow proven that it is unguided. On the materialistic level, yes I would agree. But the intelligence factor cannot be ignored simply because biologists can't find it in the cells.
JohnStuartMill:
As I said, and as you completely ignored, the evidence proves something "intelligent" exists, not just something. "Assbag." You haven't even begun to deal with the evidence, apparently because you can't. You don't even seem to be aware of it because your mind is narrow and already made up. Pretty sad for someone so young. You're still trying to downplay your stupid remark above. You didn't answer the question because to do so would reveal that stupidity, and that s why you're so pissed now. The simple fact is, evidence for an intelligent source doesn't require us to know what the source is before acknowledging its exists. You said it did, which is amazingly stupid. Now that this has been shown to you, you're upset and want vengeance. Sorry to upset your applecart kid, but that's life. Live and learn.
Now you've been reduced to retreating behind the already established Einstein argument. I already pounded this to death on other threads and you know this. Einstein said quite explicitly he is not an atheist and that he believes the laws of the universe were written by a superior reasoning force, a spiritual reasoning power. He said we were like children walking into a giant library knowing someone had to have written those books. You're derailing because you cannot accept the fact that you screwed the pooch, and you absolutely refuse to educate yourself on what ID is and how it is distinguished between other theistic viewpoints such as mine, Collins' and Flew's. Nothing I have presented is uniquely ID. Nothing I have presented is necessarily ID. The article I linked to came from
http://www.atheistdelusion.net/, which is not affiliated with ID, beyond providing links to articles that make points that are not uniquely ID points. That same website contains an interview with Collins, and a detailed refutation to Dawkins by Alvin Platinga, neither of whom are ID.
It is clear now you're just diverting and obfuscating trying to hid the fact that you simply don't have a grasp of the subject matter at hand, and cannot explain how something that requires intelligence and understanding, can come about without intelligence and understanding. And you're clearly out of your league on the anthropic principle argument. Go read a few books by Leslie, Davies, Flew and Swinburne, and then maybe you'll have a decent background knowledge to have an intelligent discussion on the topic.
Antishock, why the hell would I respond to your silly interrogations when you keep responding as you do? You can't seem to come to grips with the fact you can't argue the points, you can't accept that I'm not ID, an opentheist, a Christian, or whatever it is you have on your list. I guess some people here aren't prepared to argue against original thoughts that didn't first show up on the secular web articles.
I'm done with this thread because it has clearly devolved into a cesspool. Such is often the case with rabid atheists, so this is hardly surprising.
Oh, and by the way EA, I noticed on the other thread you tried to suggest Roy Varghese was lying and that we should give Oppenheimer the benefit of the doubt? Well, hold on to your nuts, because this one is going to hurt. Why rely on Roy when we can hear it from Flew himself?
Here is what Antony Flew said about these allegations, along with a review of Dawkins:
http://www.bethinking.org/science-chris ... ws-the.htm"I have rebutted these criticisms in the following statement: “My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 per cent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I’m 84 and that was Roy Varghese’s role. The idea that someone manipulated me because I’m old is exactly wrong. I may be old but it is hard to manipulate me. That is my book and it represents my thinking.”
Ooooops? So much for all the scandalizing about how Flew was kidnapped by rabid Evangleicals and forced to sign off on views he didn't hold, after they repeatedly drugged him to intensify his demensia. Or something like that...
Professor Flew has recently written his forthright views on Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. His article, reproduced below, shows Professor Flew’s key reasons for his belief in a Divine Intelligence. He also makes it clear in There is a God (page 213) that it is possible for an omnipotent being to choose to reveal himself to human beings, or to act in the world in other ways. Professor Flew’s article is offered here as testimony to the developing thinking of someone who is prepared to consider the evidence and follow its implications wherever it leads.
Professor Antony Flew writes:
The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’).
The fault of Dawkins as an academic (which he still was during the period in which he composed this book although he has since announced his intention to retire) was his scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine which he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form. Thus we find in his index five references to Einstein. They are to the mask of Einstein and Einstein on morality; on a personal God; on the purpose of life (the human situation and on how man is here for the sake of other men and above all for those on whose well-being our own happiness depends); and finally on Einstein’s religious views. But (I find it hard to write with restraint about this obscurantist refusal on the part of Dawkins) he makes no mention of Einstein’s most relevant report: namely, that the integrated complexity of the world of physics has led him to believe that there must be a Divine Intelligence behind it. (I myself think it obvious that if this argument is applicable to the world of physics then it must be hugely more powerful if it is applied to the immeasurably more complicated world of biology.)
Of course many physicists with the highest of reputations do not agree with Einstein in this matter. But an academic attacking some ideological position which s/he believes to be mistaken must of course attack that position in its strongest form. This Dawkins does not do in the case of Einstein and his failure is the crucial index of his insincerity of academic purpose and therefore warrants me in charging him with having become, what he has probably believed to be an impossibility, a secularist bigot.
On page 82 of The God Delusion is a remarkable note. It reads ‘We might be seeing something similar today in the over-publicised tergiversation of the philosopher Antony Flew, who announced in his old age that he had been converted to belief in some sort of deity (triggering a frenzy of eager repetition all around the Internet).’
What is important about this passage is not what Dawkins is saying about Flew but what he is showing here about Dawkins. For if he had had any interest in the truth of the matter of which he was making so much he would surely have brought himself to write me a letter of enquiry. (When I received a torrent of enquiries after an account of my conversion to Deism had been published in the quarterly of the Royal Institute of Philosophy I managed – I believe – eventually to reply to every letter.)
This whole business makes all too clear that Dawkins is not interested in the truth as such but is primarily concerned to discredit an ideological opponent by any available means. That would itself constitute sufficient reason for suspecting that the whole enterprise of The God Delusion was not, as it at least pretended to be, an attempt to discover and spread knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God but rather an attempt – an extremely successful one – to spread the author’s own convictions in this area.
A less important point which needs to be made in this piece is that although the index of The God Delusion notes six references to Deism it provides no definition of the word ‘deism’. This enables Dawkins in his references to Deism to suggest that Deists are a miscellany of believers in this and that. The truth, which Dawkins ought to have learned before this book went to the printers, is that Deists believe in the existence of a God but not the God of any revelation. In fact the first notable public appearance of the notion of Deism was in the American Revolution. The young man who drafted the Declaration of Independence and who later became President Jefferson was a Deist, as were several of the other founding fathers of that abidingly important institution, the United States.
In that monster footnote to what I am inclined to describe as a monster book – The God Delusion – Dawkins reproaches me for what he calls my ignominious decision to accept, in 2006, the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth. The awarding Institution is Biola, The Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Dawkins does not say outright that his objection to my decision is that Biola is a specifically Christian institution. He obviously assumes (but refrains from actually saying) that this is incompatible with producing first class academic work in every department – not a thesis which would be acceptable in either my own university or Oxford or in Harvard.
In my time at Oxford, in the years immediately succeeding the second world war, Gilbert Ryle (then Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in the University of Oxford) published a hugely influential book The Concept of Mind. This book revealed by implication, but only by implication, that minds are not entities of a sort which could coherently be said to survive the death of those whose minds they were.
Ryle felt responsible for the smooth pursuit of philosophical teaching and the publication of the findings of philosophical research in the university and knew that, at that time, there would have been uproar if he had published his own conclusion that the very idea of a second life after death was self-contradictory and incoherent. He was content for me to do this at a later time and in another place. I told him that if I were ever invited to give one of the Gifford Lecture series my subject would be The Logic of Mortality. When I was, I did and these Lectures were first published by Blackwell (Oxford) in 1987. They are still in print from Prometheus Books (Amherst, NY).
Finally, as to the suggestion that I have been used by Biola University. If the way I was welcomed by the students and the members of faculty whom I met on my short stay in Biola amounted to being used then I can only express my regret that at the age of 85 I cannot reasonably hope for another visit to this institution.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein
