A Conversation for Ask h2g2
Creationism vs Evolution
trig (teacher of maths, ex-slayer of dragons) Posted Jan 9, 2001
there seem to be at least 3 threads on this subject. its taken me ages to read all this thread, but it was worth it.
i had never really thought about evolution, because we're just taught its true. but some of the postings are very though-provoking.
i guess to believe in creationism i'd have to be convinced theres a creator. i'm keeping an open mind there. not seen any proof one way or the other, but plenty of rational and irrational arguments on both sides.
this does seem to be an issue which attracts fierce loyalties. and can lead to strong words. like the personal attacks on kiara (?). what she said about probability and infinity was sound mathematically. the rest i dont know.
i wonder if it matters that much anyway. interesting stuff.
Creationism vs Evolution
Muqtadee Posted Jan 9, 2001
I think you mean 'Kaeori'. She told us off a bit -- perhaps a bit too strongly -- about the way we were arguing, but left after receiving some personal insults for her efforts.
One person's irrational is another person's rational (contrast me and my Mum). When you say "not seen any proof", I guess it depends what you are setting as your standard of proof. Not mathematical proof, I hope!
BTW, I think it does matter.
Creationism vs Evolution
Proper Ganda (Keeper of torn maps) Posted Jan 9, 2001
Hey Muqtadee
Good to see you, I have brought my dueling pistols with me. I have to say that the standard of comments has dropped a little since I left but having returned from a New Year holiday (note the politically correct ref with no mention of any tedious two thousand year old birthday celebrations.)
Armed and ready to defend the metric week, Swatch 1000 beat day, microwave food and the ISS. Too bad about Kaeori not been back since? (Crocodile tears)
(What matters?)
Creationism vs Evolution
trig (teacher of maths, ex-slayer of dragons) Posted Jan 9, 2001
sorry, whats btw?
i dont think i could demand mathematical standards of proof for anything outside mathematics. youve probably hit the nail on the head there.
one of the great things about maths is the certainty of proof. perhaps a spin-off is a certain clarity in what mathematicians regard as rational or established. we can, if we try hard, approach a subject with a degree of dispassion and objectivity. but it doesn't make us any more likely of finding 'the truth', if indeed there is such a thing.
take creation. it could be true without being provable. just because you cant prove its true doesn't mean its not. i guess that the best line of 'attack' would be to try to prove it false by finding an incontrovertible contradiction. i suspect that hasnt yet been found, or the matter would be closed.
evolution as a theory seems to have lots of evidence for and against it. too much for me to weigh up, thats for sure. in maths, evidence for a theory is encouraging, but no more than that.
so, i'm still open-minded about this one.
Creationism vs Evolution
Virus I Posted Jan 9, 2001
Re reincarnation. I'm not sure what to think about it. However one thing's for certain - whatever the truth is about creation, death, the Universe etc. it certainly is not going to appear very likely. Otherwise we would have found it some time ago. Whatever the answer is it's going to be weird - and only to be found by getting rid of a whole lot of preconceptions. After all, those preconceptions haven't taken us anywhere deep so far.
Creationism vs Evolution
Virus I Posted Jan 9, 2001
Oh - and by the way - re. maths. It has been shown quite conclusively that proofs can never be certain in any mathematical system. It is too often held up as the ideal medium for creating unassailable logic. It may be very good but it can not be shown to be certain. It has been shown (by Godel I think)that you can never be certain that any system of mathematics does not contain inconsistencies, contradictions. Don't rely on it too much!
Creationism vs Evolution
Proper Ganda (Keeper of torn maps) Posted Jan 9, 2001
Good call. Reincarnation. Well Clearly if it did happpen (unlikely) you loose almost all of your link to the past. Otherwise a hellavu lot more people would say "Yes I have been here before and I can prove it by knowing something that I could not possible have known" like finding your way round Paris or quoting the Cosine rules before you have been taught it, or some random Maori fella speaking fluent Ancient Latin.
If it does happen then there is no memory so is it worth it? I think it is considerably more likely that once your brain has it's blood/oxygen supply switched off for too long, all the short term memory erodes and even if you switch it on again most of it has been lost forever. Out of body experiences "My Arse!". Proof is what you need and there isn't any. The spirit was a way of making people do things in life promising to pay them afterwards.
Creationism vs Evolution
Muqtadee Posted Jan 9, 2001
BTW = By The Way
Incontrovertible evidence is hard to come by. That's why there's lots of talk about probabilities.
Creationism vs Evolution
Proper Ganda (Keeper of torn maps) Posted Jan 9, 2001
The only of coming close to living forever is to have children and teach them everything about yourself.
(or for the short term solution try putting crap messages on chat rooms that people will complain about forever.)
The Ocean waves the Universe peoples....
Creationism vs Evolution
Wonko Posted Jan 9, 2001
The crap messages are part of the Evolution of Humanism.
Makes me kind of proud.
Creationism vs Evolution
Andy Posted Jan 10, 2001
You can teach children all you like, they'll never become you, and then they might not have children themselves, or their descriptions of you would be coloured by your insistance that they sit down with you every night for eighty years while you tell them in painful detail every single experience you've had that day. I think the easiest way of achieving a 'sort' of immortality is to do something that will resonate with people's lives hundreds – or even thousands – of years into the future.
Mozart, Shakespeare, DaVinci, Lennon/McCartney are all people whose acheivements still seem to mean something to many people. That is immortality.
With regards the 'soul leaving the body' thing, I thought that was an urban myth. How many people did these 'scientists' weigh at the point of death? If the soul leaving did actually result in a little weight loss, the soul would have to be a physical thing, constructed of atoms which have a mass and a presence. But where is it? And why has it never been found? And, sorry to go on, it would be seen as it leaves through one of the body's orifices.
I prefer the idea that my 'soul' is the sum of all my experiences and the genes past on from my mum and dad. I am a product of both nature and nurture. The result of thousands of generations of evolution by natural selection. I am me.
Creationism vs Evolution
Proper Ganda (Keeper of torn maps) Posted Jan 10, 2001
What a coincidence because I am me as well !
Nature / Nuture? Now there is another thread no doubt.
(It's much easier to have babies than to have original ideas)
Creationism vs Evolution
Virus I Posted Jan 10, 2001
Struggling to make any connection between reincarnation and short term memory. We know so little about anything important but somehow get so entrenched in our views.
'Proof' in most contexts is a red herring or a cop out. If two concepts contradict each other then one is wrong, or both partially wrong. But real proof of anything external is damn hard to come by. Of course we have to use our common sense and make the most of what we know and what we can find out. And of course nobody's proved reincarnation yet. But neither have they disproved it.
This forum is a great one for making salient points for and against such things but we should all back it up with some reasoning. Then we all learn, and that's what I'm here for.
Quite agree with the 'weight of the soul' thing. Such ideas can be disproved because they are fundamentally illogical, as suggested, and thus impossible.
An interesting question which raises the issue of what we can prove or disprove is - can we disprove anything which we consider to be possible? Or another way - if it is possible for something to exist can we prove that it doesn't?
Surprisingly such questions reveal a lot about the Universe because by definition what it is for us will always be what we believe it to be. If we think something to be possible then by our own definition we can not prove it not to exist. Possibility or impossibility is the crucial issue, and this is detirmined entirely by logic, albeit based on observation.
To return to the main topic of evolution/creation - it is not possible to disprove either until one can be shown to be impossible. Not unlikely, or unproven, or unsupported by the facts, or whatever - but impossible. If something is possible then the door is always open to it. If you can not prove something to be impossible then there is not much point in being dogmatic about its non-existence, it remains a matter of opinion or probabilities, or simply of which view produces the best strategy for living.
Finally, for P-G, just felt I had to say that the 'crocodile tears' comment was unnecessary and I'm sorry that you felt that it was OK, presumably because the rest of us would agree. I didn't.
Creationism vs Evolution
trig (teacher of maths, ex-slayer of dragons) Posted Jan 10, 2001
hey, virus 1, i think you've confused proof with completeness. godel brilliantly demonstrated that certain systems, such as the mathematics we mainly use, will always have 'truths' that are unprovable (because of 'statements' such a 'for all' and 'there exists'). mathematical proofs, i can assure you, are robust.
where it is most interesting is in the (unknown) limits this puts on human knowledge and, as a corollary, understanding.
i've invited myself to biological sciences this evening to discuss some of the issues raised in this thread. i'll let you know if it turns up anything interesting.
can i pose a question: as an 'armchair' agnostic, i am sometimes looked down on by atheists for 'not making my mind up'. someone who believes in god usually says its faith (though they might cite evidence). what is the rational basis for being absolutely convinced there is no god? (or is it just a hunch?)
Creationism vs Evolution
Wonko Posted Jan 10, 2001
Human spirit tends to take mere possibilities for real, only to find that reality sorts them out.
Creationism vs Evolution
Proper Ganda (Keeper of torn maps) Posted Jan 10, 2001
Ahh... Group Hug ?
If the soul has history then it remembers, because if it doesn't remember then what is it? Just a bunch of morals? If it does remember then how come we cannot find examples of this in real life?
Hense reincarnation is an idea made up by some people who want to build temples & churches & pyramids using slave labour. Or perhaps it's just an idea that the living use to cheer up the nearly not living.
Go Team
(it's a learning experience)
Creationism vs Evolution
Wonko Posted Jan 10, 2001
Group Hug can be a good experience. Group sex is not so easy as it sounds.
There is no such thing as software only, humans are hard wired and weighted, that's what sleep is for.
Reminds me of how tired I am. Oaaahhh
Creationism vs Evolution
Blatherskite the Mugwump - Bandwidth Bandit Posted Jan 11, 2001
This will be almost a repost for those of you, like Wonko, who will have already seen this at the Freedom From Faith Foundation...
Trig: I recently read an article that said that the origin of the word "agnostic" was actually because the term "atheist" had become so vilified, and carried such a strong negative connotation. In the beginning, it argued, the words "atheist" and "agnostic" meant the same thing. This is because, contrary to most people's beliefs, the atheist has not completely and irrationally rejected the idea of god. We still maintain an open mind, and if new evidence or arguments were offered, they would be considered with an open mind, and the god question would be opened anew. So the atheist says that, for the moment, the answer to the god question is "no." The agnostic says that the possibility of god, however remote, cannot be discounted entirely. The atheist says the same thing. Nothing can be entirely discounted, just as nothing can be entirely proven. Therefore, still today, atheism and agnosticism mean pretty much the same thing.
Of course, there has been an evolvement in agnosticism since its origin, and there are those who sit directly on the fence... the ones who say "you cannot prove god, nor can you disprove him." Those who sit directly in the middle are most likely atheists in training, who just haven't learned enough of the case against god. The more you learn, the more overwhelming it becomes.
Creationism vs Evolution
Virus I Posted Jan 13, 2001
I think Godel proved something more profound than that we couldn't trust our axioms. He proved that no mathematical system could be proved to be internally coherent, proved to contain no contradictions. This has far greater implications, many of which seem to be ignored still.
As to God - he ain't been disproved yet.
Reincarnation works better if you think of conciousness rather than the soul, whatever that is supposed to be. Whether memories survive or not has no real bearing on the truth or untruth of re-incarnation. Although proof of the survival of memories would clinch it.
The possibility thing is really just a truism, We do not beleive in things that we consider to be impossible, by definition. So even if the Universe does contain impossible things we will never believe in them. That's the price of rationality. However strange a thing appears we will only believe our senses if we come to believe the thing is possible. For us the Universe will never contain impossible things, because we will always have to make them possible before believing in them.
Key: Complain about this post
Creationism vs Evolution
- 281: trig (teacher of maths, ex-slayer of dragons) (Jan 9, 2001)
- 282: Muqtadee (Jan 9, 2001)
- 283: Proper Ganda (Keeper of torn maps) (Jan 9, 2001)
- 284: trig (teacher of maths, ex-slayer of dragons) (Jan 9, 2001)
- 285: Virus I (Jan 9, 2001)
- 286: Virus I (Jan 9, 2001)
- 287: Proper Ganda (Keeper of torn maps) (Jan 9, 2001)
- 288: Muqtadee (Jan 9, 2001)
- 289: Proper Ganda (Keeper of torn maps) (Jan 9, 2001)
- 290: Wonko (Jan 9, 2001)
- 291: Andy (Jan 10, 2001)
- 292: Proper Ganda (Keeper of torn maps) (Jan 10, 2001)
- 293: Wonko (Jan 10, 2001)
- 294: Virus I (Jan 10, 2001)
- 295: trig (teacher of maths, ex-slayer of dragons) (Jan 10, 2001)
- 296: Wonko (Jan 10, 2001)
- 297: Proper Ganda (Keeper of torn maps) (Jan 10, 2001)
- 298: Wonko (Jan 10, 2001)
- 299: Blatherskite the Mugwump - Bandwidth Bandit (Jan 11, 2001)
- 300: Virus I (Jan 13, 2001)
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