Most atheists do not know what science says about our origins

[Don At Work]

Hmmm.

What I gather from DOC's posts, I can simply post the same link over and over, and it will prove my "point" (Assuming I ever had one).

Actual understanding of the material in the link is not needed. Appeals to authority and emotion are the only valid means of "debate".

If someone has the AUDACITY to prove me wrong, I may simply ignore them and still claim victory!

Can it really be that simple?

 

[Safe-Keeper]

Atheism needs abiogenesis and evolution to be true.

Here's a newsflash for you, DOC: Most moderate Christians in Canada and Europe, not to mention most Jews and Muslims, I'd imagine, do not believe in a literal Creation and still believe in God just fine. It's only the fundies that fight the ToE tooth and nail because they've fooled themselves into believing that their Genesis myth with talking snakes, magic Narnia gardens and a people made from dirt and a rib is somehow supposed to be taken literally.

 

[joobz]

Here's a newsflash for you, DOC: Most moderate Christians in Canada and Europe, not to mention most Jews and Muslims, I'd imagine, do not believe in a literal Creation and still believe in God just fine. It's only the fundies that fight the ToE tooth and nail because they've fooled themselves into believing that their Genesis myth with talking snakes, magic Narnia gardens and a people made from dirt and a rib is somehow supposed to be taken literally.

Don't bother trying to discuss science with DOC. He has demonstrated no capacity of understanding the actual arguments made and he enjoys projecting his ignorance onto others.

rather, I think it better to hold him to the conversation at hand and not permit him to avoid addressing critiques of his argument that are made.

 

[Ocelot]

But modern science teaches we came from amphibians. Aren't frogs amphibians?

http://faculty.clintoncc.suny.edu/faculty/Michael.Gregory/files/Bio%20102/Bio%20102%20Laboratory/History%20of%20Life/History%20of%20Life.htm

And if we didn't come from frogs what amphibian did we come from?

Hi again Doc,

Yes the molecular evidence is unequivocal about this we have a common ancestor with Frogs.

That species is long dead. There are no living specimens, the best we have any right to expect of the fossils we have would be a close analogue or a more distant ancestor.

Disregard the pedants, I suppose a case could be made that our most recent common ancestor with frogs is not an amphibian. The most recently proposed phylogeny would seem to back this up.

http://whozoo.org/herps/tetrapods.htm

However if our most recent common ancestor with frogs were transported through time and landed on in a pickle jar on the desk of a modern day taxonomist we don't truly know what it would look like. Our speculation might have a fair amount to go on but it's still speculation. As such it might be something they would be forgiven for labelling as some sort of rare amphibian.

Looking at Ron's Publicity Photograph I'd guess he was a university student some time before the molecular evidence was available



And as an English student he was unlikely to have been formally educated with regards to evolutionary biology. Too basic an education to make the distinction between being descended from amphibians and having a common ancestor with one. Certainly if there's any benefit to be had from the distortion of information from creationists it's that it highlights where confusion can emerge (and be exploited) and thus improve the basic education we now give to people with regard to evolution (and prevent the deception by creationists). He probably was taught that we were descended from amphibians. That's only approximately correct but the distinctions can be subtle.

Also as an English student, novelist and English professor I see his use of "frog" instead of amphibian as poetic license. I know what it means.

It's rhetoric. Plain and simple. He doesn't believe in evolution and says so. He says so in an eloquent and poetic way. It's a memorable sound bite.

That's his specialisation, not evolutionary biology.

Of course it proves nothing. Rhetoric is not logic. It just has to sound convincing, it doesn't have to avoid fallacies, it doesn't even have to make any sense. We who are schooled in critical thinking know that just because a theme appears in a fairy tale, that does not mean that then when we find a similar theme in reality we must recheck our findings.

It's a new fallacy to be sure. I dub it Reductio ad Hans Christian Anderson. It's still fallacious.

In nursery school they taught me that the emperor with no clothes was a fairy tale. Reductio ad Hans Christian Anderson tell me that this means King George the VI never took his clothes off? An emperor with no clothes? Surely that's a fairy tale. Pshaw!

Clearly Reductio ad Hans Christian Anderson is clearly not a reliable indicator of truth. I have it on good authority that the English monarch always takes a bath once a year whether they need it or not.

If Ron has nothing logical, scientific or constructive to say on this issue then dare I respond on his own turf with rhetoric of my own?

Why yes I do, and as he's not a member so I can feel free to attack him personally without violating the MA - hurrah!

Ron, Ron, Ron. Dear naïve Ron. When was young I learnt of many things about evolution. The simplified story I first got was similar to yours in that we were descended from amphibians which were then assumed to remain pretty much static in their evolution once they'd served their anthropocentric purpose in spawning the reptiles on their long march toward evolution's ultimate crowning glory - us! However that was long before I went to grammar school. At age eleven we got a more accurate picture of what undirected evolution was and how it affected the lineage of our amphibian cousins over hundreds of millions of years just as much as our own.

It shocks me that at an age when I and my school chums were exploring double differential equations, organic chemistry or Latin conjugations, your deprived Salt Lake city education consisted of the same fairy tales that I learnt in nursery. That you had to wait until university before you were exposed to even the most over-simplified version of evolutionary theory probably explains your present ignorance. You have my deepest sympathy. Try however, please try to take a little less pride in your ignorance. You're a Christian after all and I understand that pride is considered a sin by your kind, even if ignorance isn't.

 

[Sunstealer]

That post came from the DOC thread! That thing's still operational!

Admiral Sunstealer: We saw it. All posters, prepare to retreat.
General Safe Keeper: We won't get another chance at this, Admiral.
Admiral Sunstealer: We have no choice, General Safe Keeper! Our brains can't repel stupidity of that magnitude!

 

[skeptical]

Here is an interesting quote from Ron Carlson, a Christian apologist:

"In grammar school they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fairy tale. In the university they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fact."

http://1peter315.blogspot.com/

In Sunday school they taught me that dirt turning into a man was a fact, but I didn't believe it, I said: "if man came from dirt, why is there STILL DIRT!". They were stumped.

 

[Radrook]

Yes it does. This scientist calls it the "Ancestral Organism".

http://faculty.clintoncc.suny.edu/f...aboratory/History of Life/History of Life.htm

I have been aware of that claim for the past 25 years. So there definitely isn't anything innovative about it. Not only are we supposedly related to every other animal, but we are also supposedly related to the plants as well. I agree with you that most atheists are unaware of this. Perhaps it isn't emphasized in order to avoid turning many atheists away from evolution due to the incredulity that such a claim might generate?

BTW
By related I mean having a common biological origin.

 

[articulett]

I teach all my students that all life is related... and I show them the molecular evidence. We are in fact much more closely related to all the plants we see than the bacteria we don't see... eukaryotes are they tippy top branches on the tree of life. Understanding DNA has given a huge compendium of information that Darwin never had access too. Nobody hides the knowledge unless they are afraid of bible thumpers coming to school and making a big stink over facts so that their children can continue to believe whatever fairytale version their religion teaches.

I show my students how people have been making up such stories for years and give various examples. I point out that we can finally know the truth and only recently could we know this--that they can know information that nobody in the past could ever know--thanks to our growing understanding of DNA--thanks to science in general. I point all the cool knowledge and technology that we have that their ancestors would have found miraculous.

People in the past may not have known about our genetic legacybecause we only decoded genomes recently. Darwin never knew what a chromosome was. But our growing understanding of DNA and how it is passed on through the generation and what it codes for shows just how right Darwin was. And just how banal all the creation stories invented by primitive humans over the years were as well. Lots of creation stories have a built in "believe me" or else meme... but the truth never needs to be believed "just because". Instead the facts accumulate.

I warn them about different religious groups (namely fundamentalist Christians and Muslims) and tell how they fear eternal damnation if the understand evolution rather than believe whatever story their religion tells them is necessary to believe for salvation. I tell them to be kind to such people; such people are literally afraid of hell for non belief. I point out some of the customs of the Amish and Jehovah Witnesses and what those kids are told will happen if they do or believe certain things.

 

[godless dave]

I have been aware of that claim for the past 25 years. So there definitely isn't anything innovative about it. Not only are we supposedly related to every other animal, but we are also supposedly related to the plants as well. I agree with you that most atheists are unaware of this.

Why would you think most atheists are unaware of this? I learned it in sixth grade science class. It's not exactly kept secret.

 

[articulett]

Why would you think most atheists are unaware of this? I learned it in sixth grade science class. It's not exactly kept secret.

I think that teachers who have a lot of students with blustery parents skirt the issue... they use words like "change over time" instead of evolution and keep things fuzzy or boring so the religious kids don't quite understand the message. Radrook and DOC may be old or had a very religious upbringing where they got little understanding of evolution and a whole lot of genesis drummed into their young minds.

 

[joobz]

I have been aware of that claim for the past 25 years. So there definitely isn't anything innovative about it. Not only are we supposedly related to every other animal, but we are also supposedly related to the plants as well. I agree with you that most atheists are unaware of this.

Based upon what information? You have no basis for making such a claim.

Perhaps it isn't emphasized in order to avoid turning many atheists away from evolution due to the incredulity that such a claim might generate?

That's just out and out wrong. NOt only is the emphasis of the interrelatedness of life the central component to biology class, it's the entire basis for our understanding of modern medicine. Everyone should know this fact.

BTW
By related I mean having a common biological origin.

good. At least you are arguing a strawman.

Now, in a similar vein, I find it amusing that most christians don't realize that they practice ritual canabalism weekly.

 

[Ocelot]

I agree with you that most atheists are unaware of this.

I very much doubt this is correct. I was taught this at age eleven.
What's more there's apparently a slight correlation between atheism and level of education. Make of that what you will.

 

[-Fran-]

Just checking in....

DOC still thinks that "if atheists only knew the truth of what science says they would run screaming in fear to god"?........ Yep... OK...


I'm learning a lot from all you others' posts though!

 

[zooterkin]

I have been aware of that claim for the past 25 years. So there definitely isn't anything innovative about it. Not only are we supposedly related to every other animal, but we are also supposedly related to the plants as well.

You say this as if you don't believe it. Why ever not?

I agree with you that most atheists are unaware of this. Perhaps it isn't emphasized in order to avoid turning many atheists away from evolution due to the incredulity that such a claim might generate?

Again, I really don't follow you. What has being an atheist got to do with believing in evolution? Do you think there's an "atheist's creed", one item of which is belief in evolution? Why would atheists 'turn away from evolution' more than Christians who believe in evolution?

 

[Safe-Keeper]

You say this as if you don't believe it. Why ever not?

I guess incredulity. The claims of the Sun being the centre of the universe, the Earth being round, and humans and oaks being related have proven to be a bit too much to handle for fundies who like to think they're the centre of the universe and the attention of their deity.

I agree with you that most atheists are unaware of this.

You agree wrong.

 

[bruto]

I have been aware of that claim for the past 25 years. So there definitely isn't anything innovative about it. Not only are we supposedly related to every other animal, but we are also supposedly related to the plants as well. I agree with you that most atheists are unaware of this. Perhaps it isn't emphasized in order to avoid turning many atheists away from evolution due to the incredulity that such a claim might generate?

BTW
By related I mean having a common biological origin.

Utter nonsense. It's basic stuff in any biology course that doesn't deny evolution in the first place. Anyone who missed that elementary concept wasn't paying attention in class.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

I have been aware of that claim for the past 25 years.

And people familiar with evolutionary theory have been aware of it for 150+ years. Darwin wrote that all live was decended from a single or several primordial species. Anyone who looks at any website like Tree of Life Web would see that animals, plants, fungi, bacteria are all related though a common ancestor. Why are you acting like this is news somehow?

So there definitely isn't anything innovative about it. Not only are we supposedly related to every other animal, but we are also supposedly related to the plants as well.

Not "supposedly", "demonstrably are" related to every other animal and plants. See the link I provided above.

I agree with you that most atheists are unaware of this. Perhaps it isn't emphasized in order to avoid turning many atheists away from evolution due to the incredulity that such a claim might generate?

Evidence of your first sentence? How about evidence that religious people who accept science are unaware of this? How about evidence that anyone who knows anything about evolutionary theory isunaware of this?

And why would this knowledge create incredulity? If you take the link above you'll see that there are literally mountains of evidence supporting common ancestry of complex life forms - including plants and animals.

 

[joobz]

Evidence of your first sentence? How about evidence that religious people who accept science are unaware of this? How about evidence that anyone who knows anything about evolutionary theory isunaware of this?

If you take the link above you'll see that there are literally mountains of evidence supporting common ancestry of complex life forms - including plants and animals.

I'm afraid with Radrook that evidence doesn't matter. If you replaced the word evidence with "Jellybeans" it would hold the same meaning to him.
I don't say this to insult Radrook, but to highlight the fact that people who don't want to believe science do not care for evidence. They do not appreciate the difference between "wishes to be true" and having verifiable, repeatable, hypothesis testable evidence. To a scientist evidence is everything. To a believer, evidence is simply a word meaning "I believe more than you."

 

[six7s]

To a believer, evidence is simply a word meaning "I believe more than you."

This reminds me of a phrase from my dark, distant past and I have a hunch that, for many believers, you are right...

Google: Results 1 - 10 of about 2,230 for "faith conquers all"

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

I'm afraid with Radrook that evidence doesn't matter. If you replaced the word evidence with "Jellybeans" it would hold the same meaning to him.
I don't say this to insult Radrook, but to highlight the fact that people who don't want to believe science do not care for evidence. They do not appreciate the difference between "wishes to be true" and having verifiable, repeatable, hypothesis testable evidence. To a scientist evidence is everything. To a believer, evidence is simply a word meaning "I believe more than you."

I know. I know.

I just posted it for the same reason I try and keep the tone of my posts civil... for the lurkers.