Last night, we watched "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," (which is basically a documentary hosted by Ben Stein on the possibility of Intelligent Design and how the mass scientific and media communities are "expelling" anyone who considers the possibility because they're pushing evolution). Now, I'm not a big science person, but there's one thing that one of the evolutionists (William Provine) said that made me really sad. He said basically that if you believe in evolution, then you cannot believe that we have a purpose in life or that there's any free will.
He said exactly that: "It starts by giving up an active deity, then it gives up the hope that there's any life after death. When you give those two up, the rest of it follows fairly easily. You give up the hope that there's a-an-imminent morality. And finally, there's no human free will. If you believe in evolution, you can't hope for there being any free will. There's no hope whatsoever of there being any deep meaning in human life. We live, we die, and we're gone. We're absolutely gone when we die." (emphasis his)
What a bleak perspective on life! Dr. Provine has a brain tumor. In the movie, the he had the brain tumor many years ago and it was dormant. He said that if it came back (and Ben Stein informed us that a few months after the interview, it did come back), he wasn't going to suffer...he was going to shoot himself in the head before he suffered increasingly until death.
But my mind keeps twisting around his words...if you believe in evolution, then you cannot believe that we have purpose in life. You live and you die and that's the end of it. We have no free will. He also accused ID as being really boring earlier in the documentary. He said that ID is so boring, that he can't hardly bear to think about it. It's boring to think that we have a purpose? It's boring to think that we have choices in life? Isn't this what America was founded upon? Freedom and the ability to make choices? Well, if we don't have free will, then what's the point of thousands upon thousands dying to preserve freedom? We live and we die and then it's all over. Is that what we want?
Isn't freedom what we all work so hard for? Isn't it what every person desires? Why do we have these desires if there is no free will? Why are we here, with wisdom and reasoning, if there is no purpose for us? Why do we care about a better future for the future, if there is no purpose to life?
Believing that there is no purpose to life is unbearably depressing. I cannot fathom how anyone can bear to go through life with the mentality that they have no purpose. There MUST be something better for us. We cannot simply live and die without the ability to make choices. There must be something better.
Your argument is a classic example of a logical fallacy known as the argument to consequences. A thing is no more true (and no more false) because you don't like the consequences of the facts, whatever they may be. It is what it is. If you are being chased by a hungry tiger, I am certain that it would be more comforting to believe that all it wants from you is to get you to play with a ball of yarn. But if the tiger catches you, your belief to the contrary will not stop you from being eaten, all the same.
I grant that being an atheist can sometimes be a little depressing. Resisting the intellectual gravity of nihilism can be a constant stuggle for some atheists (myself, included). But I disagree with the assertion that "if you believe in evolution, then you cannot believe that we have a purpose in life or that there's any free will." The difference for many atheists is that one's "purpose" is not handed to you on a silver platter. You have to find your own purpose, and there is a lot out there to live for, even if you don't have an invisible friend to help you along. I find "purpopse" in the love of my family and friends...from the beauty of the world around me...from the desires of my mind to grow and expand.
In the absense of any actual, objective evidence to the contrary, I would suggest that we have exactly the same things to give us "purpose" in our life as do our theistic friends. Our minds are just as capable of imagining "purpose" for us as just as yours are for you. We are surrounded by the same people, the same places and the same things. The difference is that atheists tend to realize that our "purpose" in life is self-directed, while theists shift the blame for their persepctive (or lack thereof) onto a supernatural scapegoat.
To quote a the famous Richard Dawkins...
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But what purpose is there, truly? If you find purpose in loving your family and friends, who are products of millions of years of evolving, the so-called "beauty" of the world, which. again, is only product of evolution?
If everything in this world came from evolution. then it follows that the emotions we feel come from...where?
Saying that atheists have "self-directed" purpose is close to what I say politically, and I've gotten weird looks from it. I don't believe in high taxes, so that automatically makes people think that all I care about is MY money and that I have it all. That's a self-directed purpose, or so people say.
CHRISTIANS (which is what I think you mean what you say "theists", though there are people out there who do believe in GOD and not JESUS) don't place purpose on a "supernatural scapegoat" as if to say that we're too intellectually retarded to take our own lives in our own hands.
"Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.." - Tom Stuppard
Read and comment as you like.... http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/starving-musician
The theory of evolution makes no claim that "everything came from evolution". The theory gives evolution credit for diversity of various life forms. Incredibly beautiful things like the Grand Canyon or the blue sky filled with a brilliant orange sunset are explained by various other theories
And how are the graceful and geometric spirals of valved natilus any less beautiful if they were created through the process of evolution then if they were molded from clay by the hands of God? I see the source of their creation to be totally independent from their marvelous beauty.
I actually refer the idea that my emotions are the product of synaptic responses that were genetically programmed through the process of evolution. Depite this programming, my emotions are uniquely MINE. In response to the identical situation my emotions including perception of beauty are entirely different from other people's responses.
But under your faith, your emotions are given to you by God. You are essentially a puppet dangling from an invisible set of strings with everything you think, feel and do being controlled by some divine puppeteer controlling you like a marionette playing your role in some pre-ordained comedy. I guess that is comforting to those who can then blame their actions and their failures and disappointments on something beyond their control.
But what purpose is there, truly?
The only "purpose" we have is that which we choose for ourselves. The evidence suggests that this true whether you are an atheist, or a theist.
If you find purpose in loving your family and friends, who are products of millions of years of evolving, the so-called "beauty" of the world, which. again, is only product of evolution?
You say "only [a] product of evolution" like it isn't a vast and fascinating subject. For those humans who are interested in understanding themselves as a species, the study of the Theory of Evolution can be quite fulfilling.
If everything in this world came from evolution.
"Everything in this world" didn't come from "evolution." The Theory of Evolution attempts to describe the biological diversity found on our planet. That's all. Granted, it covers a LOT, but not everything.
then it follows that the emotions we feel come from...where?
Emotions come from the biochemical responses in our brains.
CHRISTIANS (which is what I think you mean what you say "theists", though there are people out there who do believe in GOD and not JESUS) don't place purpose on a "supernatural scapegoat" as if to say that we're too intellectually retarded to take our own lives in our own hands.
No, when I said "theist," I meant exactly that. Chritianity isn't the only religion that looks towards an imaginary supernatural figure to "inform" its followers' sense of "purpose." And yes, if you are saying that your "purpose" comes from the direction of a supernatural power, then you are scapegoating that imaginary figure, and refusing to take responsiblity for your own mental state.
"Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.." - Tom Stuppard
I wonder if Mr. Stuppard has ever produced a piece of actual, objective evidence that would suggest that "god" exists. Somehow, I doubt it.
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How, may I ask, do you believe that life began?
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. - John Locke
...since the Theory of Evolution does not deal with the origin of life. There are a number of competing theories regarding that question, known collegtively as the study of Abiogensis. In any case, call me old-fashioned, but I tend to favor the primordial soup theory.
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...since the Theory of Evolution does not deal with the origin of life.
"The Origin of Species" ~ Charles Darwin
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No. Species are reproductively isolated groups of life forms. Darwin's book is about explaining why species have the properties they do. You know, survival of the fittest, etc. That said, I don't see any reason the theory of evolution should be restricted to living things - as long as there are forces selecting for certain traits in non-uniform populations (of viruses, chemical compounds, etc.) those traits will tend to appear. Evolution in this sense is the best explanation of how mud and dust turned into us.
Clearly, you haven't read the book. Personally, I wouldn't advise it. I only got through a couple of pages myself. It's really boring. I'd suggest a more up-to-date, better written book. "The Beak of the Finch" is a great one, from my non-scientific perspective.
As fungus said, there is a difference between species and life. Life existed before it diversified. That's that common ancestor that all life shares. Evolution just talks about how life diversified into multitudes of species.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
What a throwback to freshman year :)
"A person doesn't die when he should but when he can." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude Fudge"It's the hard-knock life..."
I hated biology. I had lousy teachers. My favorite science was chem and the semester I took of astronomy. Actually, I had initially wanted to go into science, but my first three years of high school killed that, which was probably for the best, but I only really got interested again a little while ago.
"Beak of the Finch"=good book. :) Not the most up to date (I think it was written in the 90's), but I'd advise it to anyone.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
Biology at Penn, but I hated all the professors, it wasn't that they sucked, it was more like they were robots who really did not care much other than just teaching the curriculum and assigned topics, and I can not stand that.
This is why I loved my race relations course because professor Gunn was like the anti-professor, and also, that class only had about 15-20 students :)
"A person doesn't die when he should but when he can." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude Fudge"It's the hard-knock life..."
I've mostly had really good teachers, so I guess I'm lucky.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
as to why you had really good teachers, but it'd be a waste of time and effort
I'll just show you how I feel about the disparity.... :-|
"A person doesn't die when he should but when he can." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude Fudge"It's the hard-knock life..."
:hmph:
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
:ouch!:
"A person doesn't die when he should but when he can." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude Fudge"It's the hard-knock life..."
...for obviously never having read the book, but I see that afungus amongus and jsaj beat me to it.
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I'm just saying that it doesn't make sense to me why we'd have these emotions and desires if we don't have a purpose.
I didn't make that assertion. Some evolutionist did.
I believe that I can direct my purpose. After all, today, I can choose to do my school or not. If I choose not to, then I'm directing my life towards the purpose of sitting on my bum and watching tv because I'm too lazy to do anything else. However, if I strive for doing my best in school, I'm allowing myself to make my purpose something much greater. However, having a purpose far beyond myself lifts me and energizes me.
Speaking of Richard Dawkins, he appeared quite a bit in this movie...interesting man.
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I didn't make that assertion. Some evolutionist did.
An evoluitionist who just happened to appear in a movie that was anti- theory of evolution that was produced by a person who was trying to cast the theory of evolution in the worst possible light.
Does this movie deserve any more credibility then a propaganda piece made by Michael Moore or Al Gore?
In my opinion (MY opinion), I thought the movie was well-done. Ben Stein manages to be skeptical and interesting. I thought he did a good job of piecing together what a variety of people said.
I wish I could find the movie clip on youtube...I can't remember the guy's last name, so that's not helping me much. But anyway...the way he explained it was that if you start with evolution that doesn't believe this, then you won't believe this, and it went on until you got to purpose and free will. This guy was really enthusiastic (and IMHO, he seemed kinda off his knocker...)...I'm mentioning him because I thought his viewpoint was really sad.
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"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
A movie that, through the use of cheap clips and dramatic music, compares the scorn the ID movement faces (and rightfully so, considering their scientific stupidity) to Nazism and communism is not a source I would trust, even if Stein didn't have to lie to get evolutionists and atheists to appear in it.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
Didn't you say that you only watched 10 minutes of it? If so, then I would suggest you watch the whole movie before criticizing it. Especially since he wasn't comparing the scorn of ID to Nazism, he was showing how evolution led to Nazism, although he made it quite clear that not all evolutionists are Nazis and that sort of thing.
Right...because Ben Stein's really going to go up to the leading atheists/evolutionists and say, "Excuse me, sir? I'm making a movie that shows the blatant cover up of evolutionists and the way that they are expelling ID. This movie is going to portray evolution in a negative light, so would you give me an interview and spill your guts out?"
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"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
Right...because Ben Stein's really going to go up to the leading atheists/evolutionists and say, "Excuse me, sir? I'm making a movie that shows the blatant cover up of evolutionists and the way that they are expelling ID. This movie is going to portray evolution in a negative light, so would you give me an interview and spill your guts out?"
I'm sure it would sound more professionally worded than that, but, I don't think there's anything wrong with it and I'm sure most people still wouldn't have a problem talking to him. People confident in their beliefs don't normally have an issue with giving out their knowledge, even to people who disagree with them.
The movie started with dishonesty before it even started filming. The producer(s) of the movie clearly don't have problems with lying and trickery, so there's really no reason to believe they started being truthful and acted honestly once the cameras started rolling, and while they were editing the end results.
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Well, I think that if Stein took their words out of context/twisted them, the interviewees would have a problem with it. If they've said something, then there would be reason to question it, but if they haven't, then they obviously don't have a problem with it, so why should anyone else?
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Most of the people in the film were actually active supporters of the Intelligent Design / Creationist movement (with direct links to the psuedo-scientific Discovery Institute), and so would have no reason to complain about the pro-I.D. bias of the film. The few that weren't...Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins and PZ Meyers have criticized the movie's producers for misleading and misrepresenting them...
Shermer actually wrote an in-dept article in Scientific American calling this mocumentary "science-free," and criticized the movie on almost every level.
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Personally, I think the evolutionists are harping on the whole "they didn't tell me this!" in order to take away from the point of the movie. Also that quote says that they're outraged with the people for not being honest, but it doesn't say that their views were misrepresented.
Michael Shermer...he's probably just mad because Stein criticized his skepic abilities. However, IMHO, he seemed to conduct himself well. If I recall correctly, the only thing Shermer really spoke on was whether or not someone should be fired on the grounds of different opinions.
Finally, the movie wasn't meant so much as to prove ID or totally disprove evolution. It was to show that ID is a possibility and that evolutionists are ignoring this and that some people are being "expelled" from science, media, and teaching for even giving ID a thought.
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The Science:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiNGK3y5Ypg&feature=related
Yes, it's a little over the top, but the positions are satisfactorily explained.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
Personally, I think the evolutionists are harping on the whole "they didn't tell me this!"
Of course they are. The editors of Expelled solicited answers in a specific context, and then changed that context through editing in order to present an inaccurate, incomplete and imprecisely expressed versions of experts' actual opinions. It was dishonest in the extreme, and as I have said many times if you have to lie in order to convince someone to agree with you, then they probably shouldn't. An honest thinker who really believed in the scientific validity of Intelligent Design would have no need to advance his cause with this kind of deception.
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Right...because Ben Stein's really going to go up to the leading atheists/evolutionists and say, "Excuse me, sir? I'm making a movie that shows the blatant cover up of evolutionists and the way that they are expelling ID. This movie is going to portray evolution in a negative light, so would you give me an interview and spill your guts out?"
He would if he wanted to have an honest and intellectually sound discussion of the issues. You mentioned in the original blog that Expelled is a "documentary." Presenting only one-side of the argument, and intentionally editing the opposition's responses to make them appear less convincing are not qualities that one expects from a good documentary. Such tactics are common to propganda, but not to honest and intellectual sound discussions. In fact, this tactic is a logical fallacy, known as a Straw Man Argument.
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Have you seen the movie?
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I've read a great deal of secondary material...reviews, articles, etc., but I haven't found a free copy to watch yet (I'm still looking). If we weren't actively discussing it, I wouldn't even bother, though. The I.D. crap has been fully aired in every imaginable forum, and its pseudoscientific bullshit, period. Its proponents deserve no more attention and frankly no more respect than flat-earthers and raylians.
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It's on watch instantly on Netflix.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
Well, you might want to watch it to understand it better. Your opinion may not change after you watch it, but I think if you do watch it, you'd be able to see how it's not all about ID as much as it is about the expelling part.
For free, I'm guessing you don't want to support the makers...check out the library, Nexflix (that's how I saw it), and if nothing else, you could always buy it used on Amazon or something, because then you're not supporting the maker.
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by Sternberg and Gonzalez long before Expelled came out. Nothing I have read to date leads me to take their accusations seriously. Crazy people who try to advance long discredited and un-scientific ideas, and who stops publishing in respected journals, rarely keep their positions in the academia. The others are less familiar, but I doubt their claims are any more credible. I do intend to watch the video though, now that it has been pointed out that I can get it on netflix.
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But even Dawkins admitted in the movie that he thinks that it's possible that life was seeded on earth by a more intelligent being. ID doesn't necessarily have to be the Christian God; it could just mean aliens (although, IMHO, I think God's a more likely candidate, but whatever *shrug*). Considering that evolution is not a FACT, then ignoring even the possibility of other solutions is ridiculous, and that's what the movie says. Some of the people have lost their jobs for merely mentioning ID, and that's the problem.
Let me know what you think after you see it, regardless.
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...about the fact that his answers were manipulated. I think he does a better case that I do in criticizing Expelled. I would suggest that you read...
Lying for Jesus? by Richard Dawkins
...and...
EXPELLED! by PZ Myers
Or if you want, here is a video made by Dawkins and Meyer together, discussing their experiences...
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I read Dawkin's article, but all it was was a bunch of whining about how he didn't know what his stuff was going to be used for...and one small paragraph about how he didn't mean for his words to be taken seriously about the aliens thing. Well, he didn't say that he said that he was joking about it at the time. He had a serious look on his face when he was discussing it. So although the ways of getting the responses were shady, there's still no reason to believe that they portrayed the interviewees poorly.
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I replied below
"What a crazy random happenstance!"
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...that Dr. Dawkins was solicited under false pretenses, and that the producer used "bait and switch" tactics to get an answer they could manipulate out of the good Doctor. The producers specifically asked Dr. Dawkins to speculate as to a possible scenario that would explain one of the basic tenets of intelligent design. Dawkins responded humorously, but gave a game response. The producers then edited the response to seem more serious than it was, and painted over the fact that this was not an hypothesis that Dr. Dawkins had ever seriously put forth. Its basic dishonesty.
You know, for someone who claims to a devout follower of a religion that considers lying to be a sin, you sure don't seem to have a problem with it when people are lying in order to support a position that you want to be true.
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Had they come to me (not that the would have *shrug*) and wanted my opinion on how they should deal with Dawkins, I wouldn't have told them to lie to him. However, since I don't know all the details on either side, I'm not going to really get into it, because there's no point. All we have to go on is one opinion vs another opinion and we have no real way of knowing who's right and who's telling the truth. However, I do think that Dawkins & co. are using the fact that they were manipulated into giving their interviews as a way to have people assume that the movie's just a load of crap, so they're manipulating people, as well. Since both parties are getting into the whole manipulation thing, I'm just going to ignore both complaints...especially since my blog post wasn't about the movie, it was about what Dr. Provine said.
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...and so I will respond to you, below.
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What Dawkins has said about this is that it is hypothetically possible, that we might discover some evidence, say that aliens had created life, gotten the ball rolling, on Earth.
If you read something he wrote that is not in a creationist film, you might understand his position better.
First of all, it's tongue in cheek. It is a jab at the suggestion, by ID proponents, that ID is not referring to the god, specifically the christian god, a fact that is not only fairly obvious, but is actually documented. Creation Science books started becoming ID books right after the 1987 court case banning creation science. The notorious example is "Of Pandas and People", the ID textbook in the Dover case.
Secondarily, it is saying that, even if aliens did create us, ID still fails, or winds up appealing to the supernatural, because then the origin of these aliens must be explained.
He doesn't actually think that aliens started life.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
So basically, you're knockin' ID because it doesn't explain how life began, EVEN THOUGH evolution doesn't either.
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I am not knocking ID because it doesn't explain how life began. The argument the alien thing is from is two-fold. First, ID doesn't really explain much of anything. Every single one of their accusations has been answered with the possible exception of a view very specific questions on the evolution of certain organelles, organs, etc. The reason those might not be answered is because there might not be very specific evidence about how these things evolved. However, that does not mean either that evolution, on the whole, is wrong, or that ID is right. If it meant evolution was wrong, then ID would be in trouble because it would mean that ID would be wrong unless it could explain exactly how everything was designed, something it doesn't even try to do.
It is also an attack on the hypocrisy of the ID movement. ID claims that this designer isn't necessarily god. This is clearly not the case and, as I said above, there is evidence of this.
And, ID should explain how life began because it talks about the designer of life. Yet, it doesn't explain anything about the designer. All it does is say "this seems to complex to have evolved by chance (ahhh! misrepresentation of evolution! ahhhh!). Therefore, it must have been designed by something, but we don't know what or how or anything else."
Evolution doesn't explain the origin of life because that is not the point of it. It explains the diversification of life. Abiogenesis is the origin of life, and most scientists I've heard are quick to admit that abiogeneis is not very well understood. That is why it isn't taught in high schools.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
We're not knocking I.D. because it doesn't explain how life begin. We're knocking it because it doesn't explain anything. The evidence points away from the assertions of I.D., not towards them.
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Could I have an example? I mean, you guys keep saying that there's no reason to believe in ID, but that's it...oh, and can you do me a huuuuuuge favor and make it a rather simple example, as again, I'm not a big science person?
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Produced by NOVA. It is primarily about the legal case of Dover v. Kitzmiller, but it goes into some detail about the basic arguments of I.D., and illustrates why they don't stand up to scientific scrutiny.
Judgement Day - Intelligent Design on Trial
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:( But I can't watch videos very well on my compy. We have this beyond retarded thing called satellite internet that slows our compy down beyond measure if we watch too much stuff on the internet. Besides that, I just don't have two hours to spend on the compy.
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Umm....the type of internet you have shouldn't change the performance of your computer unless your computer is infected with adware/spyware and/or one or more virus.
Unless your computer is older than dirt (like...you're running something other than Windows XP or Vista, or running something like OS9 if it's an Apple, or whatever), then you might want to get your computer checked out.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
No, it's that our internet providers "punish" us by making our compy run unbearably slow for 24 hours. It's ridiculous and we HATE it.
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"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
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I think I mentioned it before, but I'd recommend this book called "The Beak of the Finch". It isn't really up to date; it was written in the 90's, but I would still suggest it. It doesn't directly go into the ID/evolution debate, and there is a lot of evidence that it doesn't deal with, either because it is not entirely relevant to the book or because it hadn't come to light yet. But it does give a great, easy to read and understand picture of what evolution is.
I'd also join Blackout in recommending Judgment Day, but if your computer has problems with videos, I'd recommend the book by Ken Miller, who testified in the trial that judgment day is about and, btw, is also a devout Catholic, called "Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul".
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
Well, then I double my case. Science doesn't make anyone do anything. Comparing a scientific theory to a political ideology is even more idiotic that comparing the "censorship" of ID to the said ideology. And, the reason I say what I said is that he actually did compare, in his own words, the state of ID in America to Jews in Germany.
You are a Christian. Ben Stein is Jewish. Which commandment is that about bearing false witness? :grin:
How can you possibly defend his actions. That said, how can anyone, theist or otherwise defend his actions. He LIED, so he could get scientists to talk to them in order for him to LIE again, by twisting their words, and use them in a propaganda movie.
Further more, Stein has no business making any kind of movie about evolution, since he doesn't even know what it is, and this comes from listening to his interviews. He talks about Gravity, and physics, and the origin of the Universe, and astronomy, and abiogenesis quite a lot. Evolution has NOTHING to do with any of these things. If he doesn't know that, then he shouldn't be making movies about it.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
I have seen this movie as well and thought that it was very well done. Obviously, respectlife does not have the time to detail every person interviewed in the documentary, she was only bringing up one particular person. I suggest that you see the film for your self as it features many important figures from both sides of the debate. "Expelled" does not attempt to disprove evolution or prove creationism; it only points out that creationism has valid arguments which are being ignored and even ostracized in the scientific community.
P.S. Your completely right, Michael Moore and Al Gore movies are complete propoganda.
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. - John Locke
Why does everyone want to attribute things to evolution that it doesn't actually claim?
Evolution simply states that everything is constantly changing in order to adapt to the circumstances, even if those changes are minute or take a long time. Evolution then attempts to connect the dots between various species and their ancestors.
No, there's no "inherent purpose" just given to us, but that means we're not necessarily "destined" to be any particular thing. We're not told what to become. We become what we make of ourselves. What you do with your life is your choice, and yours alone. If you have no purpose, it's no one's fault but your own.
Even death serves its own purpose. When we die, our bodies become food to other creatures, thus allowing them to live and helping us give back what we took during our lives. The bodies that don't go away completely, thanks to fossilization, may help future generations understand us and our time, allowing us to sort of "live on," even if only in the ideas and speculations of a future version of humans (or even another species).
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
I'm not trying to attribute something untrue to evolution. I'm quoting what an evolutionist claimed said about evolution and explaining my opinion on that.
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
I don't believe any of the myths and there is plenty of purpose in my life.
And with respect to free will, I have always had a very tough time reconciling the apparent contradiction of Christian belief in an omnipetent GOD who knows ALL INCLUDING THE FUTURE with free will.
How can a human possibly have free will if GOD supposedly already knows his destiny? The human can never use his free will to make a choice that would surprise God. His destiny is therefore written in stone and all of his choices are pre-ordained by God's advance knowledge of them. It seems to me that free will if Christianity is to be believed is at best an illusion. Christians suffer all the pains of conscious that come along with decision making but God already knows what they will chose so they really never have a choice at all (if you believe that).
It's incredibly depressing. Before you are even born, God, because he is omnipetent, already knows how you will behave in life. He knows if you will sin or not sin and he knows if you will ascend to heaven or fry in hell. With all those descisions already made by GOD, a Christian is just left with the depressing illusion of free will and can do nothing by way of free will or choice to alter his fate.
I prefer not to believe in the myths and believe that I truly do have free will to be a decent person or not and to believe that there is no omnifiscent being who already knows what future choices I will make.
My freely made choices will have a tiny (like a butterfly beating its wings) effect on the future of my family, my nation, the earth and humanity and that is enough meaning for me.
That's definitely a mind-boggling part of religion. However, the best way I can describe it is like this...
We are given situations in life. We can choose A, B, or C. God knows what the outcome of A is, what the outcome of B is, and what the outcome of C is. However, ultimately, it is our decision. We choose what we do, we even choose what we think. I think the ability to compare our desires with what we believe God would want of us encourages us to strive for goodness and higher things.
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
So what you are telling me is that God is not omnipetent and all powerful.
It is a pretty feeble God that does not know and actually control the future.
I'm saying He's confusing and that it's a good thing that He knows more than we do. ; )
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
So now you are essentially giving me a paraphrase of the classic line: "The Lord works in Mysterious Ways! ". That is one of my favorites.
A mystery that has always bothered me is why God never cures amputees.
People get sick all the time with various serious diseases many of which usually result in death. But occassionally they get well and we here how it is a miracle and how they prayed for a miracle and how God worked his magic and he gets the credit. Of course if they die as is more often the case, it is just one of those God's will things and a confusing mystery.
I just wonder why God NEVER chooses to use his miraculous healing powers to give an amputee a new leg. I'm sure that a lot of these poor people are god fearing and that they have lived good decent lives and some of them are even totally innocent children. But they can pray as long and hard as they like but God NEVER gives them a new leg. That mystery bothers me. It's almost as if God could not give them a new leg even if he wanted to.
I don't claim to know exactly what this person allegedly said. I got through around ten minutes of expelled before Stein's voice, and the clips of Nazi's and Soviet's made me want to jump out a window. Of course, said clips are quite telling. One is clearly not watching a balanced documentary.
Again, I don't know what was said, but based on other actions of Stein and his production company, like lying to the scientists about the nature of the film, I don't find it hard to imagine that the editing room made the comments of atheists and evolutionists align with what Stein wanted them to say.
However, assuming that said atheist and evolutionist did honestly say what he appeared to say in the movie, and that you have given us an accurate rendering of that (I'm not saying that you wouldn't, but since I don't know...), all I can say is so what.
According to this one person, evolution makes life purposeless and removes free will and makes him able to shoot himself if he's sick. Well, that's his opinion. It is not the opinion of all of us.
The reason that I suspect Stein might have twisted his words is because I can imagine easy ways to get him to say what he did dishonestly. On the grand scale, I agree, that life is purposeless. Cosmically speaking, not a single one of us matters. For that matter, on the cosmic scale, humanity as a whole doesn't matter. I suppose this might be depressing if I had any particular desire to operate on the cosmic scale. Fortunately for me, I do not have that desire. I also imagine that the majority of the human race would agree on that; only megalomaniacs of the most obscene scale would want that.
On the specie level, even, I would agree that life is essentially meaningless. Taken as one entity, the purpose of any specie is basically to keep that specie going, a task that it is doomed to eventual failure. Again, I suppose that, to anyone who really wanted to operate on the scale of entire species, this would be a fairly depressing thought. However, I imagine that most people, and I know that I personally, have no desire to do this.
However, at the societal level, life can be full of purpose at a variety of different levels. A person who wants to, and has ability (and some luck) can change society. At a lower level, you can be part of a movement. Or, if grand schemes aren't your thing, then you can find purpose in friends and family and in your own personal goals.
As for free will, well nobody has truly free will, and I think atheists and theists, evolutionists and creationists, can agree with this. We are all limited in our actions by society. Again, I can see how a manipulative Stein like person can twist an evolutionists answer to make it seem like evolution denies free will, but for all I know this person may have actually said it. The inheritance of certain traits, people are predisposed to certain characteristics, both physical and mental. As I understand it, this is more genetics than evolution, although genetics does support evolution, that would be the source of this. In a way, we are all controlled by our genes. However, at a practical level, this does not truly limit us. While it does influence us and it does determine some things about us that we cannot truly change, it does not, on a day to day, or even year to year basis, have any real effect on us.
Personally, I think the big three religions have far more philosophical problems with this than evolution does. While I know that it does say, in genesis, that god created man with free will, I also know that god is omniscient and knows the future. If the future is already 100% known by anyone, than that means that everyone and everything must conform to that future. Everyone may be free to choose, but they will, inevitably, choose one thing, that thing that god has foreseen them choosing.
As for shooting himself in the head, that's his business. It is his choice to take the, comparatively, easy way. I don't think I would, at least not right away. I suppose that there are certain situations where I would choose death over life, but besides irreversible brain death (which I consider death by any practical definition), I cannot think of any such instance.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
(1) Expelled is as dishonest as a documentary can get. They obtained interviews with evolutionists on false pretenses and then edited the segments so that they give the impression that the evolutionist is advocating things they may not necessarily believe.
(2) Your title claims that EVOLUTION says there is no purpose in life. Others have pointed out to you that is not the case. Your rationalization is that an unspecified evolutionist said it was.
There is two problems here:
(A) You claim rests on YOUR paraphrase of an intentional distortion by EXPELLED. So it might not be correct.
(B) Even if the evolutionist did say that, there is no reason to believe that it is true. Fred Phelps says a lot of things on behalf of Christianity, but even I don't cite what he says as having anything to do with the beliefs of mainstream Christianity.
(3) From your description I assume the unspecified evolutionist is William Provine of Cornell University. He is an outspoken atheist, evolutionist, and he has a brain tumor. If so then you are unlikely to fully understand what he meant.
Since you do not quote him and I have not spent money to support dishonesty, we do not know what was actually said. So I went on the internet to find the most controversial thing I could find concerning purpose and free will that Provine can be confirmed to have said.
Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear -- and these are basically Darwin's views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That's the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either. What an unintelligible idea.
Provine said that in a debate on Intelligent Design between Phillip Johnson and him at Standford in 1994 LINK
I do not like debates such as these because there isn't enough time for one to explain concepts fully. But Provine said it, so let's look at it.
First of all, I would have a few quibbles with it. One thing that surprises me, since Provine also holds a position in the Cornell History Department (He teaches the history of evolutionary theory), is that Provine is wrong concerning Darwin's views.
Darwin did not feel like evolutionary biology told us there were no Gods. He wrote Asa Gray saying that it was reasonable for a theist to believe in God and evolution. His ideas on God's existence were as he, himself described, "quite muddled". He felt like the grandeur of nature did imply God's existence, but the cruelty in nature argued against it.
THAT would be my biggest quibble with Provine, however. I would have minor quibbles over purpose and free will still, but they would be minor and probably cleared up with refinement of what Provine means by "purpose" and "free will". Let's take "purpose" first.
Having read quite a bit of Provine's work, when he talks about "purpose" he is almost always talking about natural selection. What he means is that natural selection is unthinking ... that is mutations do not occur that will automatically come up with a solution to an environmental problem. Natural selection has no forethought. It cannot anticipate problems and come up with solutions beforehand. So there is no purpose behind it. Natural selection does not have a goal it wants to achieve. It will save those inheritable characteristics that provide organisms with a reproductive advantage and it will eliminate inheritable characteristics that cause organisms to be at a reproductive disadvantage. ... Simple as that.
I suspect that Provine is going a bit further in the above quote. Here is going further to say that there is no God who is directing evolution with an ULTIMATE purpose in mind. I have no problem with that as well. I would agree that the evidence points to that. This I think is a problem for theistic evolutionists. They see the "hand of God" behind evolution.
I can't tell you the number of Christians who tell me that God created them and all humanity with some sort of ultimate purpose. They seem to take comfort in this. I find this an annoyingly apparent lack of intellectual integrity on their part. NONE of these Christians have ever come up with any ULTIMATE PURPOSE that withstands ANY scrutiny. They say STUPID things like ... it is to worship God -- This makes God into a pathetic loser with incredibly low self-esteem. Alternatively they say things like ... the purpose is to spend eternity in blissful communion with God. But if this is so ... then why are we here (earth) and not there (heaven).
Since no one can come up with even a reasonable candidate for our ultimate purpose, then I think the evidence is clear ... there is unlikely to BE an ultimate purpose.
Now having said that ... that does not mean that life is without ANY purpose. Evolution has instilled in organisms a desire to enhance their fitness. That is technical terminology for meaning that we want to have offspring. EVERY ONE of my ancestors had offspring. It doesn't matter how far back you go. They all reproduced.
Because of that we find it natural to love our children. I have a child. His interests will live on after I am gone. I want to do what I can to make his life as meaningful as possible. That gives my life purpose. But that is purpose I CHOOSE.
Or do I? If I choose it then I have free will ... right? Well, free will is a philosophical concept that I also hate. The reason I hate it is because it doesn't have a precise definition.
Generally speaking free will is the ability to freely chose between competing options when one is faced with a choice. I may chose option A, but I COULD have chosen option B, C, D or E. That is free will ... right?
Well it isn't that simple. We all FEEL like that is the case ... especially when we are faced with tough choice and we go back and forth between doing this or doing that. The question is, is that feeling an illusion.
To show how that option is a real possibility let's take a stilted example. Suppose I give my wife $2 dollars to hold for me. Later, I give her $2 more to hold for me. Then I ask her to give me the money back and she gives me $3. I ask her where the other dollar is, and her reply is sometimes 2 + 2 = 3, and it was in this case.
I have options:
Option A: I can believe that she took a dollar from me.
Option B: I can believe her explanation is true.
Now I would like to believe that my wife would not steal money from me. So I would like to believe option B. I may LIKE to believe it but I can't. No matter how hard I try I know I gave her $4 and she should have returned $4 to me. So in this case, I DON'T have free will.
Faced with those two options and being the way that I am. I can ONLY go with one and I cannot ... no matter how much I may like to ... go with the other.
Perhaps, that is the way it actually is with other choices as well. Faced with a choice given the way we are at that moment when we evaluate the options we will be forced to chose one and not the others.
How can you tell one way or the other? Unfortunately, you can't go back and be faced with the same choice, chose a different option and show that you have free-will. The reason you can't do that is because when you are faced with the choice the second time, you are NOT the same way you were when you were faced with the choice the first time. The experience of making the choice has changed you. So it is not a valid experiment. There is simply no way to tell if free will is an illusion or not.
When faced with a situation like this, it is my preference to go practical. What can be said with a strong degree of certainty, is that when faced with a choice it generally impossible to tell with absolute certainty what option people will chose. So it is best to deal with people as though they have free will. That is as far as I feel comfortable going.
Provine, however, argues that free will is an illusion. The brain is what makes our choices. Therefore our choices ultimately depend upon how ions flow across cell membranes causing neurotransmitters to be released at synapses. From those actions your thoughts (and therefore choices) arise. This process is deterministic in that it obeys the known laws of nature. Thus the determinism eliminates our free will.
I can see the rationality behind this, but the outcome of those processes depend upon NUMEROUS interactions of single ions and these are subject to quantum mechanical effects, which are stochastic in nature (ie we cannot tell even in principle how any individual event will go only what the probability of an event will be). Thus, I am not convinced that if we could somehow do the impossible experiment and role back the clock so that a person in the exact same state would face the exact same choice would necessarily come up with the same option.
Nor am I convinced that quantum uncertainty should be the basis for free will.either. What good is that? It would say that you do what you do because of random events at the subatomic level made you do it. Is that free will? I don't know. In practice I don't think it is worth worrying about.
Interestingly, it is Christians for whom real free will is important. But if Christians are right about their God existing and being omniscient, then there is a strong philosophical argument that free will in humans cannot exist.
That argument is that if God knows what we are going to do with absolute certainty BEFORE we do it, then we can only do one thing and therefore we do not have free will.
Theists have tried 2 apologetics to get out of this, neither of which work.
(1) We have free will, but God knows our inner hearts so well that he knows what choice we will freely make with 100% certainty.
This falls because it means that we really don't have free will at all. When faced with a choice given the way we are at that moment we would always chose whatever option it is that we chose. Otherwise God couldn't know our choice with 100% certainty.
(2) We have free will, but God is outside of time. He can travel freely into the future, present, and past. The reason he knows exactly what choice we will make is because he has seen it in the future.
This fails because it provides a mechanism by which your choice can be known before you make it. Which would mean that you don't have real choice.
For instance God, if he wanted to, could tell you what I would have for breakfast tomorrow. If that is the case then it is possible for you to know with 100% certainty what choice I will make BEFORE I make it. Therefore, I can only make one chose one option. I don't have free will.
So if God exists and is omniscient then we don't have free will anyway.
Cheers,
DB
===
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
Right...so you're going to give me an obviously biased site to explain why a movie is obviously biased...I'm not saying it's wrong or that Stein didn't take things out of context. I did consider that while watching, but I'm not talking about the movie in general, I'm talking about what one guy said.
My title was mainly because I knew that evolutionists would get ticked and come read this. I wanted to know what they had to say and I figured an outrageous statement like that would bring more people so that I could see the other side of the story. ; )
YES! That's his name. THANK YOU! I haven't been able to remember his name and it's been driving me crazy.
Well, that's not what he said in the movie...it was along those same lines, I guess. What he said was more along the lines of "If you believe in evolution, then you must believe this, if you believe this, then you cannot believe that." That sort of thing. I can't find what he said anywhere on YouTube. Uuuugh.
Now, I'm not trying to say that all evolutionists think this way...however, he sounds like a prominent evolutionist, and that's what he said. Like you indicated, there's no way to know for sure the context. However, seeing that he's said similar things in the past gives me the opinion that he meant it the way I took it. The purpose of my blog was simply to state that I find this reasoning really sad and really depressing and even invalid (logically), because I don't see the sense in the way we are if we have no purpose.
One of the Christian purposes you mentioned was to be eternally happy with God in Heaven and then you questioned why would they be on earth instead of Heaven. Just to clarify, we believe that we are on earth as a test of sorts to find out if we want to spend eternity with God in Heaven. If not, then we go to Hell.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,/And sorry I could not travel both..." (The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost)
I think free will is really complicated, and I don't totally understand it. However, if there is a loving God who wants all of us to live with Him for eternity in Heaven, then He would want us to do only good on earth. However, if we do wrong (relative term, but let's use the Decalogue for this case), then we are not doing His will and hence taking advantage of our free will. We CHOOSE whether or not our wills are going to coincide with God's will. So in context, it's not that ridiculous.
Anyway...so I hope that clears things up and makes you feel a bit better about my post. Again, it wasn't written to mean that all feel that way, although that's what Dr. Provine seemed to imply.
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
Now, I'm not trying to say that all evolutionists think this way...however, he sounds like a prominent evolutionist, and that's what he said.
...the credibility of your source without a more specific reference. Who was the speaker, and what exactly did he say?
I think free will is really complicated, and I don't totally understand it.
Don't feel bad...no one really understands this crap, because it really doesn't make any sense.
TTFN,
Blackout
---
Check out Progressive PRIDE, a Gay-Straight Alliance for the Progressive U community.
The speaker was William Provine, as DB so graciously supplied.
I can't find any vids on YouTube about what he said. I could go back and watch the movie and write it down, but you'd have to take my word for what he said (unless you'd like to watch the movie ; )). I don't mind, but I don't want to go through the trouble if I'm just going to be told you're not going to believe me because you're not watching it for yourself. ; )
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
It starts by giving up an active deity, then it gives up the hope that there's any life after death. When you give those two up, the rest of it follows fairly easily. You give up the hope that there's a-an-imminent morality. And finally, there's no human free will. If you believe in evolution, you can't hope for there being any free will. There's no hope whatsoever of there being any deep meaning in human life. We live, we die, and we're gone. We're absolutely gone when we die.
Questions to ask:
(1) What starts? Evolutionary theory starts by giving up an active deity? I don't think so. Belief in evolutionary theory starts by giving up an active deity? What about theistic evolutionists; people like Kenneth R. Miller, Robert Pennock, Francisco Ayala, Theodosius Dobzhansky, even co-founder of natural selection Alfred Russell Wallace?
(2) What does Provine mean by "DEEP meaning in human life" [emphasis added]? Does he mean absolutely no meaning what-so-ever? I don't think that is so either.
Here is what I think Provine probably meant and why I think so:
Provine was under the impression that the movie was going be entitled "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion". So what Provine is saying here is NOT that EVOLUTION starts that way, but SCIENCE starts that way.
Now that would be a controversial claim too. But Provine has always been an out-spoken atheist. He like the others was specifically chosen because they do advocate this stance. I suspect Provine was expecting his role in the movie to be an advocate of his idea that there is an inherent conflict between science and religion. I suspect he was thinking his statements to be challenged by people like Ken Miller or Arthur Peacocke who are reputable scientists but advocate science and religion can be compatible. Provine doesn't think they are.
Provine case, which is undoubted NOT included in EXPELLED, is that science MUST assume methodological naturalism. In investigating a phenomenon science must assume that the underlying cause is something naturalistic, otherwise science is likely to miss it. (I am not convinced of this, but that's me ... and to explain why I not convinced of it would require a very long blog in itself). Using methodological naturalism, science has been VERY and UNIQUELY successful in explaining phenomena that previously have been ascribed to a supernatural being. Thus, science makes it such that God, if he exists, must be less and less active than he was previously thought to be. Thus, it follows that science erodes a belief in an active deity.
If there is no active deity, then perhaps there is no deity altogether. If that is so then there is certainly no life after death.
If there is no life after death then there is no making up in the afterlife for wrongs done in this life. Thus, there is no immanent morality.
I have already discussed Provine's views on free will in a previous reply on this thread. I will briefly summarize that Provine has long been an advocate that we do not have free will. His argument comes from the physiology of the nervous system which science says comes about by the process of evolution.
Notice that Provine says that there is no hope for DEEP meaning in human life [emphasis added]. From reading other papers by Provine what he means by DEEP MEANING is meaning conferred by God. And in that I think he is correct.
What EXPELLED would like for you to infer from that Provine snippet is exactly what you inferred from it ... Provine is saying that evolution makes you believe there is no purpose in life. He isn't saying that. He is saying that science leads (or should lead if you follow its methods in other areas of your life) to the belief that there is no ULTIMATE or GOD-GIVEN PURPOSE in life. That's not quite the same thing, is it?
Cheers,
DB
===
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
If there is no active deity, then perhaps there is no deity altogether. If that is so then there is certainly no life after death.
While I can understand how you can come to the conclusion that there's no life after death as Christianity and other religions that believe one joins with a supreme being of some sort see it, how do you come to the conclusion that there's not life after death at all from that?
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
If there is no deity, then there is no reason to suppose there is a supernatural realm. Thus, natural law is all that controls the universe. Natural law as we know it does not permit life after death.
Cheers,
DB
===
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
If there is no deity, then there is no reason to suppose there is a supernatural realm.
Again, though, why must the two be linked at all?
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
Let's set the problem up in formal logic. Let,
D = it is reasonable to believe a deity exists
S = it is reasonable to believe a supernatural realm exists
The argument would be:
(1) if S then D.
(2) Not D
(3) Therefore Not S.
That is a valid argument. The conclusion falls directly from the premises. HOWEVER, the validity of the argument does not ensure the argument is SOUND. The soundness of the argument lies in the truth of the premises.
If I am understanding your objection properly then you objection is that you do not think premise 1 (If S then D) is true. You are claiming that it is reasonable to believe a supernatural realm exists even if there is no reason to believe a deity exists.
The problem I have with that argument is that it explains nothing. Why should one believe that a supernatural realm exists if there is no reason to believe a deity exists. What phenomenon does a deity-less supernatural realm explain? If a deity-less supernatural realm explains nothing then there is no reason to believe it actually exists. If there is no reason to believe something exists then believing it DOES exist is unreasonable.
Cheers,
DB
===
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
OK, I edited the post...hope it helps...I had to rewind and play a billion times, but I did it : P
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
Right...so you're going to give me an obviously biased site to explain why a movie is obviously biased...I'm not saying it's wrong or that Stein didn't take things out of context. I did consider that while watching, but I'm not talking about the movie in general, I'm talking about what one guy said.
(1) Every piece of information you are ever going to get is going to come from a biased source. That does not mean it is all junk. What is the evidence behind the accusations? The website I gave you tells you what that evidence is.
(2) You are talking about what one guy said, but you do not know what led up to him saying it. EXPELLED was a dishonest movie. For instance, no one knows exactly how life started. There are many different possible scenarios. Ben Stein asked Richard Dawkins for one naturalistic scenario to contrast with religion's "Goddidit" hypothesis. Dawkins chose a scenario that was considered important back in the 1980's but I think has lost support today. His point was that even that scenario was better than "Goddidit". That scenario concerned clays which are bioenergetically capable of forming a scaffold for molecules like RNA which multiple lines of evidence suggest was the first nucleic acid that carried genetic information. Expelled presented the clip as though Dawkins was claiming this was THE WAY AND ONLY WAY that life started.
My title was mainly because I knew that evolutionists would get ticked and come read this. I wanted to know what they had to say and I figured an outrageous statement like that would bring more people so that I could see the other side of the story. ; )
When you make grossly erroneous statements then, of course it will upset people. But when YOU make the statement YOU are making the claim. You cannot shift the responsibility to someone else.
YES! That's his name. THANK YOU! I haven't been able to remember his name and it's been driving me crazy.
No problems.
Well, that's not what he said in the movie...it was along those same lines, I guess. What he said was more along the lines of "If you believe in evolution, then you must believe this, if you believe this, then you cannot believe that." That sort of thing. I can't find what he said anywhere on YouTube. Uuuugh.
I believe in evolutionary theory because that is where the evidence points ... overwhelmingly. I don't believe that life is meaningless or purposeless. I DO believe that life and evolutionary processes that cause its diversification are purposeless processes however.
Now, I'm not trying to say that all evolutionists think this way...however, he sounds like a prominent evolutionist, and that's what he said. Like you indicated, there's no way to know for sure the context. However, seeing that he's said similar things in the past gives me the opinion that he meant it the way I took it. The purpose of my blog was simply to state that I find this reasoning really sad and really depressing and even invalid (logically), because I don't see the sense in the way we are if we have no purpose.
Provine is not a prominent evolutionist in the sense that his research makes profound contributions to advancing the field. Prominent evolutionists in this regard include people like JBS Haldane, Theodosius Dobzhansky, George Gaylord Simpson, Ronald Fischer, Ledyard Stebbins, Mootoo Kimura, Niko Tinbergen, E. O. Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould, Neil Shubin, Sean Carroll, Russell Dolittle, etc. He IS prominent among HISTORIANS of the field of evolution. He is sort of like Daniel Dennett in that regard.
My guess is that he (Provine) meant what he said close to what he said in the pass. The purposelessness of evolution lies in the non-directed nature of naturalistic processes (mutation and natural selection primarily) that undergird them.
But for the sake of argument let's say he did mean exactly as you thought he meant. If so the reasoning may be sad and depressing (it means he thinks he is living a purposeless life), but you cannot claim the reasoning is invalid logically unless you know the details and I will GUARANTEE that EXPELLED would not have given you that. That should be a sign that something is wrong.
One of the Christian purposes you mentioned was to be eternally happy with God in Heaven and then you questioned why would they be on earth instead of Heaven. Just to clarify, we believe that we are on earth as a test of sorts to find out if we want to spend eternity with God in Heaven. If not, then we go to Hell.
And you think this withstands scrutiny???? IF the choice is between eternal bliss and eternal torture, I'll (along with EVERYTHING else that has a brain of more than 3 neurons) will take eternal bliss. That would be a simple test. But that is NOT the test. The test is between believing in a promise of eternal bliss (for which all evidence says to me is an empty promise), or believing that this life is the only one you will ever have (for which all evidence says to me is the real thing). That is the real test.
Now with that in mind if God wants us to spend an eternity of bliss with him in Heaven then why are we here and he is there NOT GIVING US UNDENIABLE EVIDENCE THAT THE PROMISE IS THE REAL THING?
God could make it so that the choice is obvious. We would still have the free will to deny the obvious (... in fact if I wanted to be snarky, I would say that YOU are using it right now), but a LOT more people would be a LOT more accepting of what it is that he has to say if he did. But he doesn't do that ... he keeps his Divine Hiddeness. There is only two reasonable answers to this conundrum as I see it ... (1) God doesn't exist or (2) God is about as inept as you can possibly be at getting people to believe what you want them to believe.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,/And sorry I could not travel both..." (The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost)
And ... ???
I think free will is really complicated, and I don't totally understand it. However, if there is a loving God who wants all of us to live with Him for eternity in Heaven, then He would want us to do only good on earth. However, if we do wrong (relative term, but let's use the Decalogue for this case), then we are not doing His will and hence taking advantage of our free will. We CHOOSE whether or not our wills are going to coincide with God's will. So in context, it's not that ridiculous.
(1) Free will is not all that complicated. It is just poorly defined. No one can come up with criteria that perfectly fit one concept and excludes all others. Theists tend to use "complicated" in place of "ridiculous" all to often.
(2) If there is a "loving" God who wants all of us to live with him in heaven for eternity, then one would think he would get off his lazy ass and give us evidence that he exists. That way that "loving" God wouldn't have to worry about all those people going to HELL for eternal torture without any hope of it abating.
(3) So in context, it is completely ridiculous!!
Anyway...so I hope that clears things up and makes you feel a bit better about my post. Again, it wasn't written to mean that all feel that way, although that's what Dr. Provine seemed to imply.
I have no doubts that the movie EXPELLED wanted you think Dr. Provine was implying that evolutionary theory meant you had to believe that your life is purposeless. I have my doubts that is what Dr. Provine really meant to imply. But in the long run ... it doesn't matter what Dr. Provine thinks; what matters is what evolutionary theory DOES imply. And for me it doesn't imply that.
If fact, for me YOUR beliefs imply life has very little meaning, while evolutionary theory endows it with a great deal of meaning.
You, yourself have said that life is a test. In fact, if your beliefs are true then all this life is, is an entrance exam into heaven. To give you an example of how trite that is ... if your beliefs are true then Andrea Yates is the bravest most loving mother ever and should be made into a saint.
She thought she was a bad mother and her kids would eventually grow up to be non-believers and go to hell. So while they were still young believers she took them one at a time to the bathroom and drown them in the bathtub. In other words, she saved salvation for them. Sure, she deprived them of maybe a 100 years of life each. But that is nothing compared to eternity.
If I am right, and this is the only life you will ever get, then for me it says that it is important to make this life the very best one you can possibly make it. If I am right then Andrea Yates is a misguided wackaloon who should be locked up and have the key thrown away.
Cheers,
DB
===
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
I totally agree...however, since Stein's movie also touched on how the media goes along with mainstream scientists and the mainstream scientists are evolution adovcates...besides, I'm assuming that you've never seen the movie. I would recommend it, if for no other reason, than to be able to properly know what you're debating.
Well, you quoted him saying things along the same lines in the past, so I think it would be a safe assumption that he meant it how he said it. Also, I'm not talking so much about the movie Expelled...if I'd wanted to do that, I would have written a movie review on it. I'm writing about what one guy said (who's apparently said similar things in the past) and how I think that's sad.
o.O I'm not shifting responsibility. I just wanted them to read my blog, so that I wouldn't continue to be an ignorant IDist.
But again, he's sad similar things in the past. Also, that wasn't the whole interview with him...there were other parts. He just made me sad to watch him, because he was without hope. Towards the end, he said that he didn't regret not having free will or that there was no God. As someone who believes in both, I find that to be even sadder...he has freedoms that he will not accept...freedoms as basic as free will.
No, the test is in your actions in seeing how you act and if you want to be with God. But I'm not trying to defend it; I was merely trying to explain it. Is He really so hard to believe? I should do a blog about why I believe God exists...but I think His "hiddenness", is part of the test...in the Bible, Christ said "Blessed are they who do not see, but believe."
Oh, haha...you said something about not being able to go back in time and change decisions, and it reminded me of Robert Frost. : )
Well, I used complicated because, since I don't understand it fully, I didn't want to argue something I didn't totally understand, although I tried my best.
But I wasn't really talking about what evolution indicates...the entire content of my post was on what Provine said and how sad I thought HIS beliefs to be.
Also, to clarify, that Andrea Yates lady does sound kookoo. We also teach the sanctity of life (hence all the abortion/euthanasia conflicts), so we don't believe in that sort of thing.
RESPECT LIFE
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"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
It's easier for other readers to read arguments when the people writing include the counterarguments with their rebuttals. Putting what part of DB's comment you're replying to in <i>italics</i> or [ quote]
quoting it
[ /quote] lets others know what you're talking about without having to scroll back and forth and trying to piece together what you're saying.
"What a crazy random happenstance!"
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Read my Blog!
Okey doke, I'll do that from now on. Thanks ; )
RESPECT LIFE
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"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
are you talking about this "small" paragraph (which is actually 3 paragraphs, and not small at all)?
Another example. Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.
This 'Ultimate 747' argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.
Well, you will have guessed how Mathis/Stein handled this. I won't get the exact words right (we were forbidden to bring in recording devices on pain of a $250,000 fine, chillingly announced by some unnamed Gauleiter before the film began), but Stein said something like this. "What? Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN." "Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE." I can't remember whether this was the moment in the film where we were regaled with another Lord Privy Seal cut to an old science fiction movie with some kind of android figure — that may have been used in the service of trying to ridicule Francis Crick (again, dutiful titters from the partisan audience).
Because that doesn't say he "didn't mean for his words to be taken seriously." It doesn't even really imply it. Which may be why he had a serious look on his face while discussing it. He wanted people to take him seriously and then use their own intelligence to figure out that if, in the unlikely even that aliens started the human race, those aliens still had to come from somewhere.
And, yes, these paragraphs do show that Stein purposefully took his words out of context and misrepresented him. "What? Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN." "Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE." These phrases deliberately shift the audiences views away from what was actually said and plants a concluding main point in their heads to take away. The addition of clips from old science fiction movies adds to this attempt to make the audience believe that Dawkins' views should be ridiculed.
I don't know what blog you read, but the rest of the blog Blackout linked you to isn't "a bunch of whining about how he didn't know what his stuff was going to be used for." The majority of it discusses how Myers wasn't allowed admittance into the showing, the bullshit reason they gave for not letting him in, and raises the question of "what are they so afraid of, that they won't allow in one of the people they interviewed?"
"What a crazy random happenstance!"
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Read my Blog!
Actually, Dawkins misquoted Stein...It was a similar thing, but it wasn't like that. Besides, what's he supposed to mean by that? If not aliens, then what? IMHO, they should be ridiculed, if he's saying on one hand that there's no way God exists and then on the other hand saying it's possible that humans were seeded on earth.
Yeah, it was whining. Admittedly, if I were Myers and Dawkins, I'd be whining about it too. But from the producer's perspective...this was a movie that he'd been working on for a while, and he probably didn't want controversial people there ruining the big debut.
RESPECT LIFE
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"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
Dawkins is not saying that there is no way god does exists. He is very skeptical of the existence of god, but that is not what he is saying.
Leading ID advocates do not, in public, say that god is the designer. The reason for this is that making god the designer takes their "theory" out of science and would make it unconstitutional. If he used god, he would be damaging ID much more than using aliens.
Also, he clearly doesn't think that aliens created life. He doesn't think it a likelihood. That is the point of the dishonesty in that interview.
If the producer didn't want "controversial" people at his screening, maybe he shouldn't have put them in his movie. Honestly, that guy should get a spine. What is PZ Meyers going to do? Attack people with his mustache? If he's going to lie to these people to get interviews and then twist their words to demonize them, the least he can do is be cordial about it.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
An addition, I've actually seen Dawkins give a speech and I've watched various little things with him in it. He doesn't really have an expressive face or a wide range of vocal tones.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
I know what the little script and what not is from the person who posted the video, but even without that, I think the manipulation of Richard Dawkins is incredibly apparent. Is there any more to the interview than this clip that would refute that?
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
The little drawn alien picture was inserted by the you tube guy, as well. Could you give some examples of how you think Dawkins was manipulated in this interview?
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
Stein would probably have known that Dawkins has talked about the whole alien thing in the past, with the point being that ID must, eventually fail unless it uses the supernatural.
Having gotten the alien response, going on to ask about all the gods is the clear manipulation. The point is to make Dawkins look ridiculous. Oh, he believes that aliens could have created life, but not god or gods. That's just a huge leap of faith.
The additions made by the video poster are very easy to make given the way in which the interview was conducted.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
Well, it doesn't make sense to me why Dawkins is willing to state that life could have been seeded on earth, all the while denying all types of Gods. I would have asked similar questions out of pure curiosity.
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
Having been asked how ID might be valid he provided an answer. Now, one might ask why are aliens more likely than gods. Here is the answer. We know that intelligent life is capable of existing. Therefore, it is more reasonable to state that other intelligent life exists and that this life could be intelligent enough to, say, start life on our planet, than it is to say that something supernatural, which is a concept we cannot confirm (equating supernatural to life here, not to aliens).
The point is that Dawkins doesn't actually believe this and his point was that ID failed regardless.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
I just don't understand how anyone can't believe in an all-knowing God. Think of the complexity of a cell, the beauty of nature, the perfectness of everything about everything. How can you live in this world and NOT believe that an all-knowing Being created the world?
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
If everything was indeed perfect, then I would probably believe in some pretty heavy weight god. However things are clearly not perfect.
There are natural disasters that claim the life of thousands. There are plagues that kill millions. The black death wiped out something like half of the entire population of Europe during the dark ages.
There's a divisive and tribal nature of humanity, a clear relic of evolution I might ad.
The complexity of the cell is evidence of god? I'd expect an omnipotent god to create complex systems in as highly an efficient way as possible for his favorite specie, but take the creationist's favorite organ, the eye.
We have a blind spot. We see upside down. The optic nerve has some ridiculously convoluted route. And then there's the fact that some animals, such as hawks see the hell out of us. There are animals that can see in spectrum of light that we can't. And, of course there's the fact that most people don't even have perfect, for humans, eyesight.
If all nature was beautiful, all complex systems as highly efficient as possible and everything was indeed perfect, then you'd have an argument. But nature is brutal, complex systems tend to be inefficient and, lets face it existence isn't perfect by any reasonable use of the word.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
What you're referring to isn't imperfection...it's suffering and death, which is a whole other thing altogether.
But seriously...if the earth was a little closer, we'd have this problem...it's a good thing the earth isn't farther or we'd have this problem. The earth goes round and round the sun. We have four seasons, each providing their own incredible beauty. Think of the human body and all it entails. Think of how everything in our universe is ordered. How can you expect me to believe that this all came about RANDOMLY?
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
Read Darwin's Beagle's blogs, he can explain it better than I can.
That said, they don't, technically, come around randomly. They are a result of reproductively successful random mutations (ie - they were random mutations that helped allow the organism to reproduce).
However, each "step" in evolution is actually a complete organism. You start out with a single-celled organism that gradually adapts (this has been reproduced) and grows. That cell then becomes several and the cells start specializing and you get a microscopic, multi-celled organism. After a few thousand years, the organism starts growing a single-chambered heart. Then it grows other organs/organelles (in the case of fauna). And the process repeats itself millions of times over a few million years and eventually you end up with things like dinosaurs and apes and marsupials.
The earth goes around the sun because the sun is bigger and therefore pulls the earth in more than the earth pulls the sun in (if it was possible to be the other way around, it would be). If you go broader, you find that the sun goes around the center of the Milky Way. Why are we here and not on some planet in Andromeda? Because of the hundreds of millions of planets orbiting the tens of millions of stars, this one happened to be able to have the right conditions to support life. There is no evidence that life can't potentially exist elsewhere that we haven't found yet (actually, there's plenty of evidence that life could exist elsewhere, given the right conditions).
The earth is also pelted, on a fairly regular basis, by asteroids. There's actually a very real chance that in a few thousand years, one will collide with earth that will rival (if not dwarf) the one that killed the dinosaurs.
As for imperfection, the fact that not everyone has 20/20 (or better) vision, or the existence of detrimental genetic disorders is, in my opinion, very clear evidence of the lack of perfection (which often leads to suffering to one extent or another). The human body uses hardly 20% of the oxygen from each inhaled breath and being upright predisposes us to back problems.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
I shall put it differently. There is clearly room for improvement in life. Anything that can be improved, as life clearly can be, is not perfect. It is true that, as part of a natural explanation of the world, I wouldn't consider suffering and death imperfection. I do consider it imperfection if there is a claim that a perfect, benevolent deity is the cause.
"But seriously...if the earth was a little closer, we'd have this problem...it's a good thing the earth isn't farther or we'd have this problem. The earth goes round and round the sun. We have four seasons, each providing their own incredible beauty."
Define 'closer'. We're dealing with cosmic scales here, so a little closer and a little farther are still pretty big numbers. Also, since the orbit of the Eart is eliptical, our distance to the sun does change.
Indeed we have four seasons, though right now I could do without winter, but this is hardly proof of god. It is proof that the Earth has a tilted axis.
"Think of the human body and all it entails."
Like the appemdix and the spine that is still not really 'built' for upright walking, thus causing back problems.
"Think of how everything in our universe is ordered."
Well, evolution doesn't deal with everything in the Universe. It deals with diversication of life.
Also, defined 'ordered'. Everything we have seen conforms with natural law. Nothing is ordered in such a way that is at odds with this. Also, on the quantam level, things are not ordered. They are random. I won't go more into that. I'll thrown in another ask DB. Quanatm mechanics is mind boggling.
"How can you expect me to believe that this all came about RANDOMLY?"
I don't. Sure there was chance. Sure there was some random stuff, but it didn't all come up about randomly. It all came about as a result of natural law.
Sure, you can use god as the lawgiver of natural law, and I wouldn't deny the possibility of that, although I'd disagree*, but in doing so, you'd have to accept that the six day creation is flawed becuase those natural laws tell us a different story.
*Why do I disagree? Because it is extra weight. It is making a rather akward addition to the idea. We may not know the origin of these laws. We may not know how they came to be. (I don't know what science has to say about that) What I do know is that, just as the evidence lacks for how those laws came to be, the evidence lacks for god. Maybe that is a gap that god will fill. However, I will make not accept that, just as I will not accept any other explanation, until there is sufficient evidence.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson