A debate about debates
POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Wednesday, November 1, 2006 22:13
VIEWED: 12983
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We're not really having this debate, are we?
I mean, someone tell me this is a sick joke. Like the torture debate, about whether or not it is morally wrong to pull off children's eyelids, pull their teeth and cut off their fingers and mutilate their genitals. Recently I was having a debate about genocide with a self-styled 'bleeding-heart liberal' who said 'whether or not it's okay depends on the situation.' No, it doesn't. It's never okay.
Here's another one: Evolution
Seriously. There is no question. 1+1=2 and it's not up to debate. There's two groups, those who have some understanding of the underlying math, how things work, and those who don't. There is no one who "believes in evolution" there are people who "understand evolution" It's not a belief, and it is completely not up to debate. It's not a speculation about what happened, it's a rolling juggernaut of everyday life that we all see all of the time, and to not see it is, sorry, to just not be very bright.
There is no debate about the fact that we are needlessly wasting the planets natural fossil fuel supply, which is more serious than the fact that there is also no debate about global warming. There is no debate about what causes AIDS and no debate about whether marijuana is harmful to a developing brain. There is no debate about whether smoking Marlboroughs causes cancer, and no debate about whether deforestation effects global rainfall and biodiversity.
Whether communism or capitalism produces a higher standard of living, is a debate, albeit it a pretty much settled one, but both sides would be actually able to present a case. No debate is when there are not two sides, there's all of the facts of the issue which support position A, and then a group of people who desparately want B to be true because it benefits them.
Seriously, all of you christians out there who don't support evolution because it conflicts with your belief system, you are in group B on that issue. Here's the solution. Go, read, study, learn. Ultimately you will be in group A. Since Jesus never got up and said "Specied did not evolve, they were all placed on Earth in their present form by Jehovah in 3436 BC," the revelation that in fact, evolution is a guiding principle of existance should not throw major shockwaves through your religion.
In fact, the creationist idea we now have was come up with by some random monk or cardinal at some point in the middle ages. There is no debate here guys. There is the informed and the uninformed. Go inform yourselves, and then join us over at the informed table, where we would gladly welcome you.
This is not a shut up and fall in line argument, it's a go get thee self to a library argument. There is no debate to fall in line to.
Picture this. A kid comes into your class, and he says he won't learn his times tables because he doesn't believe in math. What do you do? Do you sit there and debate with him about the historical proof of math? Then do you ask him to present his case that math is a bunch of squiggles which are written through humans by the hand of Satan? Then do you give both sides equal weight and consider arguments evenly, allow the chance that he can convince you of Satanic Squiggle Theory?
No, you don't, because it's not a debate. There is nothing to debate here. The kid says this because he doesn't know math. Ignorance and laziness are his guiding principles. So, people, wake up, learn. Natural selection. Come back when you get it.
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I don't disagree with any particular point here. Nor do I consider you an "enemy"--as a matter of fact, I usually enjoy your contribution to discussions. I understand that what you're asking for is for people to educate themselves, not to merely "fall in line". But seriously--how can this come off as anything but arrogant to the people who might disagree with you? Oh, I know, you don't care if they think you're arrogant, 'cause you're not: you're just better informed. But that's pretty well the definition of arrogance. DT, I really respect your thinking, because it is deep and it is thorough, and on most issues it is pretty open minded (or at least enough to recognize that one could examine the evidence and come to different conclusions, even if you disagree). But to simply start a thread listing things that are beyond debate--and to therefore advocate for there to be no discussion of them--is just an embarrassment to our board. Freedom of thought and freedom of expression means that people can believe and say any crazy thing they want--but that freedom doesn't entail that they'll be taken seriously. If people want to "debate" an issue that you think is closed, leave the thread. Or lay out your arguments. The worst that could happen is that you're ignored and you wind up leaving. But please, for the sake of the openness and freedom of these boards, don't degrade your fellow FFF'ers by consigning them to the level of base ignorant wretch if they should disagree to some particular point which you hold as settled beyond debate. Again, I don't disagree on any particular point that you raised; I want to make absolutely clear that that is not the reason for my post. I simply believe, whole-heartedly, that to silence opinion, even a foolish one, is to rob mankind of his greatest boon: the freedom to think as he will and express himself as he will. The silencing of expression is a slippery slope; I would not have this forum slide down it.
John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty, expressed it best:
"...the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opnion still more that those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
________________________________________________________________________
Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets
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Casual is right
its not that we're ingnorant and havent seen the 'facts' as you say; it is that we've seen these facts and are not sufficiently swayed by them; while that does not make our(creationist) view any more or less credible, it does make us more openminded for our willingness to contemplate a transcendence of life from this physical plane. i dont belittle people for disagreeing with my personal wordlview, because i realise that i do not encapsulate the sum of universal knowledge, and am willing to consider variables that exist beyond the measurable material world
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But you haven't seen 'the facts'. Until you take a lot of biochemistry and read the research, you're not even close to 'the facts'. A hand-waving gloss is neither honest nor fair.
For example, another poster on another thread keeps maintaining that you can't 'add' new DNA. This after I posted how indeed you can add 'new DNA', not only through repeats and insertions but also by incorporating whole viral genomes - that in fact most of human DNA IS viral DNA. (The current estimate is roughly 80%.) How is that not adding new DNA? Even the process of repeats and insertions of normal DNA causes a genetic change. (One common example - Down's syndrome, which is normal but extra genetic material cascading down through the entire development.)
Until you do the science you can't evaluate its state.
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Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
Casual is right
i dont belittle people for disagreeing with my personal wordlview,
Are the masons not people, 'cause you belittle them often enough. Are Satanists not people, because you also belittle them.
You're welcome on my boat. God ain't.
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Well said, DT.
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Casual,
You know I don't care about sounding arrogant, true. But you're still not getting it. There is no debate here. I have no points because all of evolution is the point. It's like a flat earth debate. If you had actually travelled around the world, the theoretical elements of the flat earth argument would have no meaning at all. What would you do? Spend all of your time constructing a theoretical argument to shoot down the flat earth argument? Or would you simply say "Sail west, and tell me what you see"
And this is my point. This is NOT a debate. Attempts to make it a debate are just some twisted form of trickery. There is not evidence stacked up on one side and also on the other. I'm trying to shake you and say: wake up, we're not folks who disagree, we're talking about hard cold fact which you didn't bother to study. We don't hold it against you, just study it, and come back to us, knowing that.
Here's the thing. If you knew evolution, and you said, this wasn't natural selection, but there was an engineer here, and I can show you this happening, then, *maybe*, you would have a debate. But to say 'your facts are real' is just a perposterous position. I actually think I can make a better creationist argument than I've seen here, but no amount of creation fact is going to undo the fundamental reality that evolution is an inescapable conclusion of the science of logic and statistics.
I'm not silencing opinion, I'm trying to redirect those who think that they have an opinion toward the correct path, which is that actually, they have a lack of knowledge, and rather than argue it out and essentially ask us to educate them, to go and study the subject.
Antimason
It's as I said, not a debate, not meaning I'm silencing opposition, I mean, a debate has certain characteristics. Intelligent design isn't a science, it's a mass hysteria masquerading as an argument. It's not an argument, it's a failure to accept reality. There's a whole bunch of debate left in evolution, including whether or not there's a hand of God, but reality isn't anywhere near the question of whether or not there is such a thing of evolution every bit as much as it is whether or not there is such a thing as math.
Edit:
Just so you get where I'm coming from: Here's a few other things that this debate would be like if it was a debate:
1. If you drop a nuclear bomb, it will cause life to spread rapidly at ground zero, within minutes of detonation, as opposed to the "firestorm theory."
2. materials which make up organic and inorganic matter are all made of a uniform substance called "god goo" as opposed to the "theory of chemistry."
Evolution is not a theory. Even if people say "theory of evolution." Even natural selection is not a theory. It's possible to say that random mutation is not the guiding principle in the natural selection of evolution, and there are people with that theory, that's a theory, and it opposes the other, and between them can be a debate. But unlike politics and social science, in the hard sciences, or physical sciences, someone is ultimately right, and someone else is wrong. You *can* have a debate about whether it is the radiation or the firestorm which will kill people when you drop a nuke on them, and two sides could present cases, and one could be right. But ultimately, probably one will be right in at least the majority of cases. But you don't have a debate if someone comes in and says "it won't kill people, it will make them healthier." That person just does not yet understand about what we are talking.
So, I re-iterate,
"Sail west, and tell me what you see"
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Rue,
I actually think you have to read a fair amount, but I think that you don't have to get all that far into it before you realize that there is no debate here. Sure, you can do DNA experiments and prove that someone can add DNA to a live host, but you can also see or read about someone else doing the experiments, and with no reason to doubt it other than 'it's all a huge conspiracy' that every 9th grader is in on, you can accept it as possible. I think the intelligent apporoach is to accept the fact that the balance of evidence is learning toward until you have reason to suspect otherwise. This is not whatn the christians are doing. They've fallen into a common logical fallacy of "I want this to be true, so I will find any way on Earth to rationalize it."
This sort of thing fails when anyone tries it. The facts are whatever they are, regardless of what someone wants them to be.
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Quote:
Originally posted by reaverman:
Are the masons not people, 'cause you belittle them often enough. Are Satanists not people, because you also belittle them.
you have a point... but at the same time, no one here admittedly subscribes to occult theology(that being the ancient 'pagan' mysteries of the old world). unless im wrong.. are their any luciferians out there? i dont go out of my way to try and debunk atheists, even if it were possible to prove a transcendant force exists... but because personally its none of my business
but i do object to occultism, because it has at its roots diception and secrecy, and seeks to establish a global government unbeknownst to the masses; that i do find objectionable
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Antimason,
This is a thread jump, but the answer to what guides the creation of organic and inorganic matter out energy is also evolution by natural selection. It's not a biological evolution, but it follows the same principle. In addition, Chaos Theory helps describe that interaction. Chaos theory, like quantum mechanical theory, though speculative, is also not really theoretical. What the specific laws of Chaos and Fractal Geometry are is something we are only beginning to understand, but their existance is not in question.
The evolution 'debate' is not saying it's white not black, it's like say the thing which is either black or white doesn't exist. That's not like saying God doesn't exist, it's like saying religion doesn't exist. It's an absurd position, from any sane perspective.
I am someone who is certain about virtually nothing. I'm not even certain that socialism is unworkable, I just view the balance of evidence and say it's unworkable because it seems to universally fail in its purest form, and fails pretty often in hybrid forms. There are other ideas which fail less often. This doesn't mean more evidence wouldn't change my mind. But evolution is like math, chemistry, language, chaos, and music. I'm aware that they exist. I find it exceedingly unlikely that anything will come up to convince me that they do not exist.
You will have a better chance of convincing me that God exists, and that Jesus is actually his son, and that He has a place for me in heaven than you are of ever convincing me that there is no such thing as evolution. In fact, if you manage to prove #'s 1, 2 and 3, you still will have made little headway on evolution.
If you can put intelligent design into the framework of evolution somehow, you might have a chance, but you cannot deny its existance and expect educated intelligent people to be won over to you position. (But, if you do create some hybrid theory, as always, be wary of what you *want* to be true, because facts don't tend to bend to your wishes)
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