Re: West Virginia creationism

Ron Dean wrote:

Vincent Maycock wrote:

On Tue, 7 May 2024 22:47:15 -0400, Ron Dean
<rondean-noreply@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Vincent Maycock wrote:

On Mon, 6 May 2024 23:53:05 -0400, Ron Dean
<rondean-noreply@gmail.com> wrote:
>

Vincent Maycock wrote:

On Mon, 6 May 2024 15:29:30 -0400, Ron Dean

<snip>

I understand the obsession to "explain away" these deserters, but
honesty over bias needs to be the ruling objective not excuses.

>
No, there's nothing to explain away.  There will always be crackpots
amidst the more reasonable background of mainstream science.
>

You call them crackpots, but as I pointed out they are just as educated
with the same credentials as mainstream scientist. The question is what
are your credentials to pass judgement on these intellectuals including
scientist holding PhDs. Probably nothing more than extreme bias.

>
No, a PhD is not a license to believe in nonsense, although some
people act like it is.  You've made the error of argument from
authority here, since even PhDs can easily get things wrong.
>

You called them crackpots.

 So do you believe that crackpots exist, or are all claims to
scientific validity  equally worthwhile, in your view??

 >
Of course crackpots exist. However, calling them crackpots because they offer a different point-of-view from one's own view is protective and self-serving.

 

This is they way any contrary evidence to
scientific theories IE evolution or abiogenesis is dismissed without
knowing or understanding anything about the case they bring against
evolution. When one relies strictly on on sided information and based on
this, they are in no position to pass judgement. It's exactly parallel
to a case where the Judge hears the prosecution, then pronounces I've
heard enough - _guilty_! I strongly suspect this describes you knowing
nothing about actual ID or the information

 Okay, why don't you fill me in about what I'm "missing" in the field
of information science as it relates to Intelligent Design?

 >
I don't know that you are familiar with anything ID proposes, or the case against evolution and especially the impossibility of the origin of life from inorganic, dead chemistry.
There are over 500 known amino acids know in nature, but all living organisms are made up of only 20 different amino acids. What what was the odds of this happening without deliberate choice?  And all are left-handed, but if they were the result of blind chance, purposeless and aimless natural processes about half of the amino acids should have been right-hand. This is not the case. Exactly what was the selection process that selected this particular set of 20 out of 500 known amino acids? Of course there are educated guesses, hypothesis and theories, but no 0ne knows. Each protein is expressed by a particular order or arrangement of amino acids. The smallest protein known, the saliva of a Gila minster is 20 amino acids. What are the odds of these 20 amino acids having the correct sequence on just one protein by chance?
The number would be greater than the number of atoms (10^80) in the known universe. What is so incredible is that there is about 1 million proteins in the human body each made up of a specific order of amino acids.

 

What do you  offered by IDest pointing put
the fallacies in abiogenesis or evolution. If you think you know
anything regarding this, it's no doubt from proponent of evolution.

 No,  I used to be a creationist and I'm quite familiar with their
arguments.

 >
Really? What turned you against both creationism or intelligent design?
At one time I was also an evolutionist. In addition to a book I was challenged to read, and to some extinct, what I discussed above I also thought that after reading Paley, Darwin dedicated his effort to discounting or disproving Paley's God. This seemed to be more than a coincidence.

There is something, rarely mentioned in the literature.  Darwin was a Christian until a great tragedy befell him and his family. That's the death of his daughter, Annie in 1851 at the age of 10.  This naturally caused great pain to Darwin and this terrible tragedy turned him against religion and God whom he blamed. One could certainly sympathize with him on the loss of his daughter.

It is "rarely mentioned in the literature" THESE DAYS to be precise - apart from fake news peddling creationist websites that is. And there is a
reason for this. For people who care about things like evidence and data,
 the "Annie myth" has long be debunked.
(cf. e.g. Van Wyhe, John, and Mark J. Pallen. "The ‘Annie Hypothesis': Did the Death of His Daughter Cause Darwin to ‘Give up Christianity’?." Centaurus 54, no. 2 (2012): 105-123 or "Annie's box" by Randal Keynes. The latter gives a bit more credence to the impact of her death on
his metaphysics, but only in the sense that his work
enabled him to think of death as a natural and necessary part of
life, not something to rail against)
We know from Darwin's letters, diaries etc that he
considered himself an atheist long before Annie's death, the
late 1830 the latest, over a decade before Annie's death.
And no, the idea that he "turned against" religion is another piece of bigoted nonsense that comes from an
 "us and them" mindset that thinks that if you are not
"with us' (ie. a believer) you must be fervently against us.
That mindset was entirely alien to him (and is to most atheists, I'd say).
He never displayed any hostility to religion or animosity to
believers, and while he criticized the role of the Church in some
social ills (most notably the role of some churches in supporting slavery and
"conversion by force") he also happily worked with the CoE on other issues. For instance, he never objected to Asa Gray's attempt to reconcile the ToE with a Christian deity and the notion that God used evolution to reach His goals - not Darwin's
personal cup of tea, but also not something he found objectionable. He was, again quite typical for educated Victorians, apathetic towards religion and showing little interest in it.
Or as he describes his drifting out of the religious
mainstream, it happened at a ‘rate … so slow that I felt no distress' There is one and only one piece of writing by him, from a personal
correspondence, where he takes issues with a piece of Christian theology and that is its conception of Hell - he says (in two short sentences) that he considers the concept immoral, not because of the punishment itself, but because it means that a "good Chrisitan" would have to be the type of person who enjoys
heaven knowing that at the same time people he loved and cared about
are tortured. What contributed to his gradual loss of belief was arguably
his exposure to other cultures and religions during his travels.
He wrote eg.: "But I had gradually come, by this time,  to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, &c., &c., & from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos,
 or the beliefs of any barbarian".
In other words, he realized that what one believes is dictated
by an accident of birth rather than a rational, evidence-based
decision, and that there was no rational basis to favour one
religion over the other - which led him to conclude that they are equally false (another inference could have been they are equally true, and the resulting "philosopher's god" would
probably have been fine with him too.

 

True, but science advances, not by going along following the same path
ways that have been explored. But by taking new pathways.

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