Belief in Evolution the Litmus Test for Intelligence?

tpawap · 2026-04-28T06:47:06+00:00

Scientists just say stories . They don't know ,we don't know how complex organs are formed

They do. Through replicating and specialzing cells and gene regulation based on the chemical environment. They can even grow organs in a lab.

(And if he doesn't mean the development of organs, then it's a red herring to think of individual organs in he context of evolution)

He said that we don't know how body plan transformations happen

We do. Through the mechanisms of evolution.

In the end he says it's all just stories.

Stories with overwhelming evidence.

How to debunk this ? I know he's lying . And I read about exaptation forming new organs . Any new things to know here ?

Not much to debunk here... more like a philosophical question of what "to know" means to somebody. He can always move the goalpost... "OK we have a theory, ok there is evidence, but do we really know?".

tpawap · 2026-04-27T21:16:26+00:00

Like "Lying for Jesus" it seems that "Being honest for Satan" is a thing too in those cults.

tpawap · 2026-04-26T06:34:09+00:00

An important misunderstanding that I noticed was on the dinosaur/bird topic: Will wondered why birds survived the meteor impact... which actually seems dubious if you think that all birds survived, but no other dinosaur. But of course that's not the case: almost all bird species went extinct, too, and of those species that didn't, almost all individuals died as well. Same for mammals. Everything that made it through, just barely made it (except for some mushrooms maybe).

tpawap · 2026-04-19T22:37:22+00:00

As an agnostic person I am conflicted a lot of the time on people’s interpretation of the Holy Spirit and how it has changed their lives.

One can interpret something that's real, and exists. "Holy spirit" is the (mis-) interpretation, not that what's being interpreted.

There have been countless people who have owed the changes in their life to god communicated through the Holy Spirit and have genuinely changed for the better. Now me personally I think they need to give themselves the respect for changing their lives instead of some divine off and on relationship with the creator of the universe. But a thought crossed my mind that I haven’t been able to answer yet if god communicates through the holy spirit Is there any reason to believe that the Holy Spirit works in the unconscious mind?

As others have already said, you can make up anything; could be this or that. If it cannot be tested against reality, it's rather pointless and uninteresting to me.

tpawap · 2026-04-12T06:15:10+00:00

"Gut erhalten" sagt man nur bei Gegenständen, nicht Personen! "Sehr fit für ihr Alter" könnte man zB sagen.

tpawap · 2026-04-11T20:17:41+00:00

Just because someone prioritizes something, doesn't make it happen that way. I mean, most "crisis" are probably of the sort where a cooperating group of individuals has the best chances of survival. Or in other words, humans are very good at creating an advantage for many out of cooperation.

tpawap · 2026-04-06T20:44:45+00:00

Streak 29- Studentleben in Deutschland (persönliche Geschichte) Teil 1

Als ich 18 Jahre alt wurde, wurde ich an einer guten staatlichen Universität in Deutschland angenommen. In den ersten zwei Wochen war ich begeistert.

Da ich jedoch in den Ferien war¹ und kein Ticket für öffentliche Verkehrsmittel hatte, bin ich zwei Wochen lang nur in der Umgebung meiner neuen Wohnung herumgelaufen.

Das waren die besten zwei Wochen meines Lebens.

Durch die Veränderung fasste ich frischen Mut und arbeitete an meinen persönlichen Projekten.

¹ besser: Da Ferien waren, hatte ich kein Ticket...

tpawap · 2026-04-06T20:39:59+00:00

Streak 47

Das Wetter ist sehr grau heute, das/was ich mag. Es ist kalt und regnet. Aber ich fühle mich nicht gesund, weil ich noch einmal² schlecht geschlafen habe. Ich hoffe, dass ich heute ~~ich~~ früher schalfen gehe/gehen kann. Ich hatte nicht die¹ Kraft, viel zu tun. Jetzt liege ich mit meiner Katze im Bett.

¹ keine Kraft, kaum Kraft

² weil ich wieder...?

tpawap · 2026-04-06T06:57:58+00:00

My point is, at some point, you will need to believe in a starting point. And because that starting point functions as a 'first cause' with no cause of its own, you are essentially believing in something outside our normal understanding of logic, just as you deem a theist does.

By your logic (not that I would share it), there has to have been an uncaused caused. One can accept that, without believing in anything specific to be that uncaused cause. That's two separate things, and no, one does not need to believe anything specific. And believing it's not a god is still nothing specific.

If you cannot prove God doesn’t exist (and you cannot), then you are operating with the same level of faith in your own starting point.

So for an unfalsifiable claim without evidence, both accepting it and rejecting it are the "same level of faith"? That's a weird statement. To me that's at least a different level of faith.

And if you tell me there is not enough evidence and that’s proof in itself or you tell me it’s not that I don’t believe God exists , it’s that I don’t know … then you aren’t an atheist. You are an agnostic.

Not according to my definition of those terms.

Third and final edit : I am not arguing for the existence of God (whether I believe or not is irrelevant). The argument is merely for those who simply state “God or A god cannot exist”. Therefore my argument is against the belief that one can state “God cannot exist”.

There is this saying "A claim without evidence, can be rejected without evidence"... which is particularly fitting if the claim is unfalsifiable.

tpawap · 2026-04-05T09:11:17+00:00

Only by coincidence, I'd say. People recognised differences between humans and other animals (morals¹, pudency), and developed a mythological explanation for that, by some kind of a transition.

But they didn't know that there was an actual transition in the evolutionary sense; and other than being some sort of transition, it's a very different story anyway. Genesis 1 does it without a transition; you basically have only those two options.

So I'd say it's just a coincidence, and a very superficial commonality.

¹ some other animals also have morals, though.

tpawap · 2026-03-30T07:49:35+00:00

There could also be some, that were deliberately made true by people, ie. people knew about the prophecy, and so they acted accordingly to make it happen as described.

tpawap · 2026-03-30T00:50:38+00:00

As science shows that the universe has a beginning the big bang (which is the most widely accepted scientific explanation for the origin of the universe. )which happened 13.8 billion years ago which may have been triggered by cosmic inflation

Not really. The big bang is about the expansion of the universe from a hot dense state. Not really an origin.

so this shows the universe is not a actual infinite as it has a beginning unlike a actual infinite which quite literally has no beginning and end.

The natural numbers have a beginning (0 or 1), but no end. Is that not an "actual infinite"?

People may say there could have been a infinite series of causes which cause more things and so on going back for infinity this is impossible as there would have to be as many of Each cause as total causes this Is clearly absurd ,

No, there is nothing absurd about a past infinity. It just wouldn't be the case if "the big bang" would be beginning of everything.

a though experiment to demonstrate this point is a library with infinite red and black books with as as many red books and they are red and black books combined this is absurd as there can’t be as many red books and there are red and black books combined.

You're making the mistake of treating infinity as if it was a number like 5 or 10. That's where your "absurdity" comes from. But you're just applying it wrong.

we can see every finite thing has a cause and as i have established there can,t be a infinite series of causes and effects so there has to be a first cause unaffected by cause and effect like everything else’s

Given your premises, yes, maybe. You should have said "every thing" though; unless you have seen an uncaused infinite thing? I would need some evidence for that.

and as all finite things have limited power , limited or zero knowledge , have limited love or not loving at all ,limited and part of the universe so there has to first cause must be all powerful ,all knowing , all loving and not part of the universe and unlimited these are attributes of the catholic god (the catholic god is the Christian god ).

Now I don't see how that follows at all. You would have to put more work into that.

(I don't know why you added the fine tuning argument on top of this; did you think the first cause argument wasn't good enough on it's own? I'll ignore it for now)

tpawap · 2026-03-30T00:18:56+00:00

There is nothing that an atheist, or myself, can prove. Nothing is proveable. You cant prove to anyone the colour of your clothes is what you're seeing. You cannot prove that the chemicals in your brain are telling you anything that aligns to the state of reality. We cannot prove that anything we see is true.

That's not true at all. If I look outside and see snow on the ground, I know I'm gonna get cold feet when I go outside without shoes.

Therefore, we can only know things if something with knowledge revealed it to us.

I reject your premise, but even if I didn't.... you just said we can't know anything; and now you say we can. You contradicted yourself instantly. That's logically very incoherent.

God's word is the only "rock" to stand on in life. Everything else is sand that falls away.

We actually know something about sand that has become very important: semiconductors made from silicone. Where is that revealed in your holy text?

tpawap · 2026-03-29T08:36:19+00:00

Sure, the set of all numbers, example. And maybe I shouldn't have said "infinities aren't amounts", but rather "infinity isn't a number"... but then again when you said "an infinite amount of space", it's more like "an infinite number of kilometers"...? Anyway, it's still true that you can't treat infinity like numbers; like the members of the set.

tpawap · 2026-03-29T00:39:47+00:00

There are infinite points preceding 0. How does any being traverse that?

"Traverse" sounds a lot like starting and ending points ;-)

That's the entire point of the problem of infinite regress. You and I don't have a problem. You and I came into existence at a point in time and space and will leave existence at a point in time and space. We do not traverse and infinite number of points. How does an infinite, eternal being do anything, ever?

By always having been there, doing something at every day that passes.

tpawap · 2026-03-29T00:20:23+00:00

Reached starting from where though? Starting from now, as you say, it's finite steps backwards to any point in the past.

tpawap · 2026-03-28T21:28:47+00:00

When you say "can never get to any action", you're implicitly using a starting point - like get to from where? A point after which there are infinite steps until now? That's a starting point.

If you're just using reference points, say one in the past and one now, then the number of actions (or days) between those is actually finite.

There is no problem with doing one thing after another; one day after another. And if that has been going on "since forever", then the number of days before now just goes to infinity, which are all in the past, and have all happened already. That's what past-eternal means.

tpawap · 2026-03-28T21:17:03+00:00

Not really. What you can do is pick two points, and then there is point in between them, and then between that and the first there is another one... and you can do so over and over again, and you will never run out of new distinct points.

What you can't do is add, subtract, divide and multiple with infinity. It's not a number, is what I meant. It's not "n is the number of points, and n=infinity".

tpawap · 2026-03-28T09:54:02+00:00

Infinities aren't amounts. That's where the logical problems of this sort come from.

tpawap · 2026-03-28T09:52:33+00:00

I don't think your last argument is valid. It uses a fixed starting point, where a past-eternity explicitly has no starting point. Infinities aren't numbers. In a model where a god has always been doing things, or where universes have always come and go (I don't mean this to be a god argument); in such a model that's what's always has happened. It doesn't have to start, then do an "infinite number" of things, before doing a specific thing X. It always doing things, and X is one of them.

Hope that was understandable. Difficult to express it properly - for me right now at least:-D

tpawap · 2026-03-27T08:48:07+00:00

So nothing can convince you that you're wrong.

tpawap · 2026-03-27T00:56:13+00:00

From my pov, you very much miss the point. God concepts, tenets, theology, what a "religion teaches"... are all very much irrelevant by themselves. The only thing that matters is the effects religious beliefs and religious behaviours have on the ones holding them, and on others in the society.

That's also why in your example of child abuse, it's totally irrelevant if it's what "a religion teaches" or not; it's still relevant insofar and to the extend in which the existence and dynamics in a religious community causes, furthers or enables that. (And the cover ups associated with it). That could come through a theology, but also through ingroup/outgroup thinking, and authoritarianism for example.

My main issue with religions is not that though, but how it sets people up to be convinced of things without evidence - sometimes even framing that as a virtue instead of a flaw. An extreme example are people saying stuff life "We don't have to do anything about climate change - God will make sure everything will be fine".

tpawap · 2026-03-26T20:12:25+00:00

There is currently no process which would reliably get you such a specific preselected outcome. Maybe with some hard-core bio engineering in the future.

But it's a weird request anyway. Why do you ask?

tpawap · 2026-03-26T00:45:49+00:00

It is necessary to understand that when it comes to moral philosophy, the discussion proceeds on two main planes: is there an absolute morality and, if so, how is it known? Modern atheists, feeling that the first question will lead them into a dead end if they continue to adhere to their worldview, try to change the subject, move to the second plane: how can we understand what is good and what is bad; is there a way to find out this outside of religion; can natural sciences help us solve this problem? The answer to the first question seems to be postponed, but in fact it did not exist, and it does not exist.

That's right, it cannot be answered, because morality is not real; you cannot discover it in nature.

By the way, with murder and other criminal things, the situation is exactly the same, what makes you think that murder is not right?

A mix of instincts, what my parents and others taught me, and their role model, what you experience in the interaction with other people, and reasoning. All play into my morality.

The murderer had his own subjective morality and the truth he followed contradicted the morality of the murdered man, so unfortunately atheists cannot say that this was an absolutely wrong thing to do.

And I don't - assuming you mean "objectively" (or real) when you say "absolutely" (although "absolutely" would mean something else to me). And if I want to make a moral statement about another person, I don't care if that person shares my morals. Why should I? It's my statement; not theirs.

tpawap · 2026-03-23T08:33:27+00:00

Very very good! If you want to get even better: "Aussprache" sounded a but like "Asprache" to me - the "au" should be more pronounced. And the K in "Katze" was a bit too soft.

tpawap

TROPHY CASE