[Phoenix-D]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:
[QB]The two are intermingled; again, my specific example from earlier was just one where it was clearly laid out in documentation of the day - but there are other historical paralells; once racism ceased to be publicly acceptable, evolution cut down on its racist aspects; but at the same time, what was considered immoral before became more acceptable. Most non-evolution froms of origins beliefs also carry ethical content with them that stated much of the behavior that was becoming more commonly accepted was bad; evolution/big bang origins theory does not require any particular code of conduct, and got carried along.

I'd love to see any proof of this. Especially since you can't say anything is superior evolutionarily without considering enviroment. Evolution does not require any specific origin, BTW, just one that allows suficient time between Start and Now.

Well, I don't really expect to change anyone's mind on anything; I'm not really sure why I'm continuing the discussion, really.

Errr..uh-huh.

I've not actually said that one causes the other, although I can see how a person could readily read me that way; evolutionary theory is actually very, very old; it's specific standing in the scientific community corresponds with non-scientific social winds.

Again, do you have anything to back this up? The earliest I've seen for any kind of proto-evolution that even partially resembles the modern Version is Lamarck (SP), which was the same century as Darwin.

When racisim was politiacally (perhaps socially is a better fit) acceptable, evolutionary theory lent itself to supporting racisim; when racism became politically unacceptable, evolutionary theory lent itself to deny racism; something bendable in either direction on an issue of such high ethical charge deserves an amount of skepticism.

What it means is that the people supporting it either way were applying the theory incorrectly. If I remember right, most of the "social darwinists" were not scientists and quite possibly had a distorted view of what the idea was all about. It's pretty easy to do.

You honestly believe Christian obidience to God's Law is fear based? I suppose it might be for some, but historically, anything primarily fear-based is not long-term stable; how long has Christianity been around now?

That is the perspective a lot of non-belivers get, certainly. And how long kind of depends on which sect you're measuring from, hmm?

As to a more direct response to your question, accuracy, for one. With the onset of DNA analysis, a number of people were discovered to have been innocent of crimes they were convicted of - which also means that the person who actually did the crime got away with it. An all-knowing judge fixes that problem.

Which also means that if the all-knowing judge is an *******, you're screwed. At least our legal system has more than one. Certain Christian extremeist positions- or I'd hope they're extremeist- present a picture of a God I'd like to spit in the face of. The Old Testament doesn't do such a nice job either. Wonderful idea, killing off everyone because even a majority pissed you off.

There is some interpertive wiggle room on some of the finer distinctions; but taking the Bible as Truth eliminates wiggle room on most of the top ethical questions. Also, it helps to have something that doesn't change (in theory, anyway).

If you take it as literal Truth you now have some pesky problems. Like, oh, the text directly contradicting itself.

The model changes somewhat, but it's main theses (ancient universe, general trend towards improvement of life-forms, et cetera) don't.

Which makes sense, simply because if you change extremely basic assumptions what you have is a different model. Since we've already agreed that didn't happen, what you do have is details.

And again it doesn't trend toward improvement. It trends towards reproductive success in a given habitat. A species that is superbly adapted to an enviroment can be wiped out easily if the enviroment changes. A species may trend DOWN in intelligence, speed, or other featues because they aren't helping survival and individuals without them do better.

It is often described as improvement because it's simpler and in most cases good enough.

I've mentioned my take on the cutting process before; it's biased.

I suppose this is why you had no response to the "the alternatives are flawed" comment above?

Oh, I am aware, and now after seeing your response to a request for elaboration, I can now tell you how it is a brush off: when I encountered it it was used as a means to avoid dealing with a discrepency between the theory and observations; in that context, it was a faith-statement, as the person saying it did not allow for the possibility of the theory being fundamentally flawed.

If there is a discrepency between theory and observations, the model needs to be adjusted.

Also, Newtonian physics utterly -fails- under certain conditions, that's why relativity was developed. This doesn't make the Newtonian model useless, or inaccurate in the other conditions. More likely to be those, yes. But sometimes a model is useful because it is wrong..

There's a simple model which predicts what will happen if a species is under no evolutionary pressures at all. In the real world, this fails repeatedly. Its still useful to test if the population is undergoing evolution though.

In the case of your foot, that's testable within quite reasonable parameters; and it doesn't follow that you don't have a foot. However, if the debate is on a foot that isn't around, while the four-toe advocate has reasoning indicating that the potential foot in question couldn't possibly have more than four toes, which the five-toe advocate can't refute, while the five-toe advocate has reasoning indicating that the potential foot in question couldn't possibly have less than five toes, which the four-toe advocate can't refute, while there is a document predating both which claims to have seen the alleged foot, who claims it was actually a hoof, then it is a pretty good idea to doubt the foot theory.

Continusing the analogy, if that document also has numerous points that have been proven false, then its a pretty good idea to keep the foot theory until its proven wrong by a better source.

One of the biggest flaws in the Bible being the truth is why didn't God introduce it to all people, at the same time?

The Bible is Truth in its entierety (unproveable this side of Doomsday, true; a belief/assumption/whatever you want to call it), but it doesn't list the specific details everyone is looking for (that wasn't the specific purpose of the Bible) when developing models; as such, the models are all based on flawed humans filling in the gaps. Those gaps can have flaws, and many (many swayed by the evils in evolution) disagree that the Bible is fully Truth; this is where I suspect much of the disagreement you note comes from.

So you're relyng on faith alone, and calling the best-guess model which is based on real-world observation EVIL? Excuse me?

If you're thinking of the racism argument, try again, because your Bible was used to support slavery, and occaisonally genocide. Score, if evolution did in fact support racism (which I kind of doubt), equal. And one is still based in reality, the other not.

Will you be denouncing physics because it can be used to design weapons, next?

[ November 21, 2003, 01:51: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]