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Forums - General Discussion - How many users on these boards actually support "The Theory of Evolution"?

To continue about consciousness; also, unexplainable, is the "sense of self"
Not to confuse with the 'detection' of self, but the 'experience' of self; as in, right now you are experiencing something as yourself, and tomorow, you are still that self and are still experiencing something as yourself, your body is not simply interpreting data, as that is done without 'experience' or the feeling & perception - the experience and sense of self is unexplainable via known science. It's what you 'feel' as perception. That is what seperates the subjective experience from anything deduced by cause&effect science.

And when I say Cause & effect, I mostly mean Action reaction.  If we were to make the same assumptions 'academic' scientists do, then basically everything works via action reaction. There is no 'choice', because you are programmed(through evolution, ie dna, genes, etc) to act, process information, and react, and that's it, no free will. Going from Action-reaction mechanics to free will is impossible the way we understand things now. Conciousness/free will Can be beneficial to the being, but true free will can't spawn via evolution, if you understand the science taught. If you think that we don't really have free will, well, I guess that makes us just robots, only acting and reacting the way we're supposed to, and adapting mechanically; never 'truly' having a choice.



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Just because something is unexplainable, it doesn't mean it's not evolution.



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sguy78 said:

Again, you are stating opinion as fact. You don't know that God has had nothing to do with the universe for 13 billion years. Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make it a falsehood. Where do you get these numbers of atheists being the most persecuted people on earth?

Athiests are the most untrusted group in America, even less trusted than Muslims after 9/11 (this study appeared on CNN, NBC, so it shouldnt be hard to find), and athiesm is a crime in many countries.

You're essentially asking me how do I know something that doesnt exist, doesnt exist.  Something that doesnt exist has no evidence of its non-existence, unicorns (mentioned in the Bible) do not exist so there is nothing we can find to prove it doesnt exist.  We can use what we do know, such as the law of physics, that tells us that a being with infinite energy and mass does not exist because if it did we could detect it.  Again, you could say that God resides in a different universe, but its unfounded to 'describe away' God, who was originally described as in our universe, outside of our universe.



Wind Shlavitor said:

To continue about consciousness; also, unexplainable, is the "sense of self"
Not to confuse with the 'detection' of self, but the 'experience' of self; as in, right now you are experiencing something as yourself, and tomorow, you are still that self and are still experiencing something as yourself, your body is not simply interpreting data, as that is done without 'experience' or the feeling & perception - the experience and sense of self is unexplainable via known science. It's what you 'feel' as perception. That is what seperates the subjective experience from anything deduced by cause&effect science.

And when I say Cause & effect, I mostly mean Action reaction.  If we were to make the same assumptions 'academic' scientists do, then basically everything works via action reaction. There is no 'choice', because you are programmed(through evolution, ie dna, genes, etc) to act, process information, and react, and that's it, no free will. Going from Action-reaction mechanics to free will is impossible the way we understand things now. Conciousness/free will Can be beneficial to the being, but true free will can't spawn via evolution, if you understand the science taught. If you think that we don't really have free will, well, I guess that makes us just robots, only acting and reacting the way we're supposed to, and adapting mechanically; never 'truly' having a choice.

Cause and Effect:

Not everything is a result of cause and effect, quantum physics and Heisenerg's Uncertainity Principle is well-known examle of this.  My 'free will' to choose is nothing more than an ability to think through a complex cost/benefit analysis, which on scale is the same thing a slug does when it decides which way to crawl.  And a snails ability to decide which way to crawl is a continutation of environmental responses of more simple organisms, so there is no disconnect here that you speak of.

Self:

A human has a sense of self just as a cat or bacteria has a sense of self.  A cat has a learned personality and is aware of his feelings.  A bacteria is also aware of itself, and simple chemical reactions cause the bacteria to be aware and to react.  Again, there is no disconnect.  My more complex brain just makes me much more aware of myself than a cat or bacteria are aware of themselves.



It could still be evolution, but not the current Theory of Evolution.

I don't know if slugs have free will, just like you don't. Perhaps animals have conciousness to a certain degree like we do too, I'm not denying that.

However, when it comes to what's possible to assemble considering science academically understood presently, awareness wouldn't be possible like we experience it.
We can make a robot that is programmed to receive information, analyze it, and make a course of action based on that and many other things, but there won't be any decisions, just outcomes from how it's programmed. We don't know if the slug decides to go a way, or if it's just programmed to go that way depending on the many many factors. A robot can be made to detect itself, but that form of awareness would Never reach the type of awareness that we have.
All we know is that individually we have free will. I know I have free will, and I assume that you do too.

And I agree that quantum physics isn't simple cause and effect.. and what's the say about that area by scientist? well, looks like we don't understand much about quantum physics after all. Some weird sh*t happens in that area.



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"how do I know something that doesnt exist, doesnt exist."

i think it'd be more "how do I know something that I don't know wheter it exists or not, doesnt exist."

There is no evidence for God's existence, and there is no evidence for god's non-existence. What does that leave? Speculation, basically.
It's kinda useless to debate about something that is pure speculation. Speculating itself can be interesting tho.. it's just that it never really amounts to any concrete conclusion... which is fine.
If someone want's to believe something that isn't proven either way, well that's their choice, but neither I nor you can prove or disprove them... just like they can't prove themselves either. But let's not forget that sometimes we experience something that we can't replicate or cant demonstrate, then it becomes a subjective truth, that you only know true but can't prove. It's useless to try and prove something like that.. all you can do is try to put that experience in words and hope that the people you're talking to are open enough to think it's possible, but of course the other people need to experience it too in order for it to be true to them also.

As for believing. Well strong atheism is a belief, it's the belief that god does not exist, and I find it's just as unjustified as theism. However you can be agnostic-leaning atheist (weak atheism) and that just means that you have a penchant that there's no god but remain open to other possibilities until one way or another is proven... it's a bit more logical when no evidence for either side exists. There's nothing wrong for not siding on a side, it's the best way of being both receptive and logical.



One thing i don't like about almost all religions have some kind of hell. There is a reason why: They want to keep you scared with a thread that if you leave the religion you will burn in hell forever! That maybe the biggest reasons why evolution is rejected because it's not evidence(evolution has too much evidence to be disproven)



RockSmith372 said:
One thing i don't like about almost all religions have some kind of hell. There is a reason why: They want to keep you scared with a thread that if you leave the religion you will burn in hell forever! That maybe the biggest reasons why evolution is rejected because it's not evidence(evolution has too much evidence to be disproven)

 

 Yes. If they need to induce fear in order to make you join, then you know there's something wrong.

The problem they have with evolution is that it goes against the only document that seems to remotely give their 'god' credence.

You can't disprove evolution at this point, but you can prove that it's not entirely right... or I should say, the theory surrounding the mechanics of evolution.

Some religions and religious documents do bear some interesting wisdom though. You just have to take what you associate with, and leave what doesn't.

I think anyone who's interested in spirituality but don't want to deal with stupid sh*t like religions do, should look into Buddism.



ManusJustus said:
sguy78 said:

Again, you are stating opinion as fact. You don't know that God has had nothing to do with the universe for 13 billion years. Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make it a falsehood. Where do you get these numbers of atheists being the most persecuted people on earth?

Athiests are the most untrusted group in America, even less trusted than Muslims after 9/11 (this study appeared on CNN, NBC, so it shouldnt be hard to find), and athiesm is a crime in many countries.

You're essentially asking me how do I know something that doesnt exist, doesnt exist.  Something that doesnt exist has no evidence of its non-existence, unicorns (mentioned in the Bible) do not exist so there is nothing we can find to prove it doesnt exist.  We can use what we do know, such as the law of physics, that tells us that a being with infinite energy and mass does not exist because if it did we could detect it.  Again, you could say that God resides in a different universe, but its unfounded to 'describe away' God, who was originally described as in our universe, outside of our universe.

So by your logic, you absolutely know there is no way there is any life on other planets because it can't be seen or proven. Just because you can't see something, or prove it exists, doesn't mean it does not.



Wind Shlavitor said:
Final-Fan said:

Leaving aside (for th moment anyway) the question of whether the theory of evolution assumes a strict cause-effect situation that leaves no possibility of free will ...

Why would that show that evolution is flawed?  Obviously it would mean that we don't have free will, but why would that claim expose a flaw in evolution?  Are you saying that you can prove you have free will beyond what evolution allows for, and that is the flaw?  Or is it just that you are not comfortable with that conclusion? 

As for harmful human traits, isn't it possible that those are simply negative side effects of developments that were overall positive?  It would still be evolutionarily beneficial to have those traits, even though they cause problems.  For instance, African peoples are prone to having sickle-cell anemia, but this trait helps them survive malaria, so it is a net positive to this day (I think) in areas that are prone to malaria. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_anemia

This could apply to mental conditions as well as physical ones.  I could engage in wild speculation as to what benefits accompanied the drawbacks you mentioned, but I doubt it would be too productive. 

 How can I prove it? I can't really take my free will in my hands and show you :P That's why it's subjective. Not unprovable, but subjectively provable. Don't forget that you have your own free will to look at though.. but to what degree you understand it, I dunno.

 It shows that it's flawed because it means there's something that evolution doesn't account for... meaning that there are other factors to take in consideration when trying to understand where humanity has come from. Why doesn't it account for it? Well then you have to understand that evolution Does assume strictly cause and effect..   As in:  cause&effect+time=change .   But change that's by cause and effect cannot develop certain aspects (such as conciousness).  it's like, however you program AI in a computer, you'll never get the computer to 'experience', it can only 'interpret' very complexily... and there's a giant difference between the two. Why is it like that? Because there's a limit to everything. It's the same reason scientists would believe you can't develop special magical powers, because everything is limited by what 'known' physics are. And with those known physics, it doesn't account for those... so where can that come from? Well, obviously it'd be from physics we don't yet understand, or other factors..

As for your harmful traits argument, I'll have to leave it at that for now because I can foresee arguements that I wouldn't be able to go into without more knowledge or expertise of how it's considered outside of my terms and such, so nevermind that.

Subjectively provable??  How do you know you're not just choosing to believe you have free will because it is more attractive?  How the heck do you subjectively prove something anyway? 

I think I disagree with your explanation of cause/effect absoluteness in evolution, but I have to go to work so I'll look at it more later. 



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