Richard Dawkins Lecture - Page 3
Blogs > Xenocide_Knight |
IdrA
United States11541 Posts
| ||
Lemonwalrus
United States5465 Posts
| ||
omninmo
2349 Posts
On October 13 2009 14:37 Lemonwalrus wrote: I keep trying to debate with you in threads, and you are such a cock-bag about it. How is 'evolutionarily useful' an absurd term? It is a slightly poorly worded way of saying positively selected...you are so unbelievably dense. Anyone that disagrees with you is 'dogmatic terminology this' and 'failure to grasp that'. I haven't flamed you in the thread once before this post, but whatever, go on believing that your iron-logic can defeat all that challenge you, and that disagreeing with you is an admission of being wrong. sorry bro. didnt mean to be a cock-bag. it's just that, we have not yet established how useful the study of evolution is itself, and yet here we are qualifying things in terms of their evolutionary usefulness. we are putting the cart before the horse as it were. i just find darwin, dawkins, and evolution studies in general to be just as dogmatic to their principles as christians are their god. Both are equally uninspiring to me. I guess i am guilty of the same thing that atheists are: namely, the pathological impulse to "disprove" those I disagree with. | ||
IdrA
United States11541 Posts
| ||
omninmo
2349 Posts
On October 13 2009 14:50 IdrA wrote: no, im talking about romantic love. monogamy is irrelevant. you want to stay together with someone you love right? its better for the kid if both its parents are working together to protect it right? did you even read my post? i said nothing about scarcity or monogamy or polygamy. you are not talking about romantic love. you are talking about monogamous child-rearing which is usually called marriage. marriage is a partnership with a focus towards child rearing. at this stage romantic love (which i define as passionate and selfish) has fizzled because the point now is no longer selfish pleasure and gratification but rather the nurturing of progeny. Someone who has never been married can discuss marriage because it not based in passion but rather logic, e.g. the logical points which you have eloquently listed above in previous posts. Those who have never been involved in a passionate romance cannot discuss romantic love because they lack the experience of this feverish passion (i'm not trying to say you have never been in love but just trying to illustrate the differnce). This distinction is essential to understanding my point about the illogicality of romance. | ||
Lemonwalrus
United States5465 Posts
A really good article that deals with the evolutionary reasons for love. | ||
omninmo
2349 Posts
On October 13 2009 15:05 IdrA wrote: you arent disproving anything. in fact you're ignoring any real debate at all. heavens to betsy, you certainly are pugnacious. I spoke of my impulse to disprove. I should have said my impulse to dissuade someone from holding certain beliefs. disproving something implies that such and such was already "proven" previously. evolution, religion.. none of these things have every been proven because they are not analytical in nature. please bring us back to the REAL debate. | ||
IdrA
United States11541 Posts
people who had the desire to stay together were more likely to reproduce successfully, so natural selection favored individuals who felt love. marriage is a relatively modern institution that is irrelevant to the discussion. | ||
IdrA
United States11541 Posts
On October 13 2009 15:12 omninmo wrote: heavens to betsy, you certainly are pugnacious. I spoke of my impulse to disprove. I should have said my impulse to dissuade someone from holding certain beliefs. disproving something implies that such and such was already "proven" previously. evolution, religion.. none of these things have every been proven because they are not analytical in nature. please bring us back to the REAL debate. no it doesnt. disproving something means proving something isnt true. it doesnt matter if it was previously proven true or not. and evolution has been proven. we can see that offspring are born with genetic mutations that alter their phenotypes. we have observed that over time the frequency of certain traits in a population varies depending on the survival rates of different attached phenotypes. just look at the development of drug resistant bacteria. | ||
Draconizard
628 Posts
Also, omninmo, you have yet to address my point. | ||
omninmo
2349 Posts
On October 13 2009 15:10 Lemonwalrus wrote: http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/Homepage/Group/BussLAB/pdffiles/Human Mating Strategies.pdf A really good article that deals with the evolutionary reasons for love. The article is titled MATING STRATEGIES and little to do with "love" excerpts from the conclusions section (this is what evolutionary science tells us): -"humans have a complex menu of mating strategies" -the desire for youth and beauty is found in all societies with men valuing beauty more than women in selecting a mate. -women value a mate with solid finances more than men do. -"the empirical evidence is strong that men have evolved a more powerful desire for a variety of sex partners. -"The principle of co-evolution predicts that men will have evolved adaptations designed to defend against the diversion of their mate's sexual and reproductive resources. Jealousy as an emotion has been proposed as one such evolved mechanism". --"Much more research needs to be conducted on the complexities of human mating strategies" | ||
Equaoh
Canada427 Posts
Which is a shame because the thread started off quite interesting - I've always thought Dawkins was a bit of an overly-aggressive atheist, though. | ||
omninmo
2349 Posts
On October 13 2009 15:30 Equaoh wrote: In this thread omninmo tries to discuss things he doesn't understand. Which is a shame because the thread started off quite interesting - I've always thought Dawkins was a bit of an overly-aggressive atheist, though. Actually, I did try to discuss a lot. I made several arguments which were neither refuted nor countered. This was because the participants couldn't agree on the definitions of the terms being discussed. Since you are now here perhaps you can illustrate what I failed to understand? | ||
Jibba
United States22883 Posts
On October 13 2009 13:09 FragKrag wrote: Richard Dawkins is one of the best voices of science out there I admire him ! When was the last time Dawkins actually conducted science? He's mostly just a loud voice now. Hardline atheism causes problems because it fails to address the issues that make religion appealing for many people, choosing instead to further alienate them for the sake of being right. Try that tactic with your girlfriend and you can appreciate your rightness all by yourself on the couch. The difference is we're talking about people (on all sides) who will go a lot further and cause serious damage. | ||
Lemonwalrus
United States5465 Posts
On October 13 2009 15:29 omninmo wrote: The article is titled MATING STRATEGIES and little to do with "love" If I thought all of the information was available in the title I would have just copy pasted the title. It deals with love, I know, I actually read it before I formed my opinion on it. | ||
omninmo
2349 Posts
On October 13 2009 14:22 Draconizard wrote: + Show Spoiler + On October 13 2009 14:11 omninmo wrote: For Kierkegaard, faith and religion only have value insofar as they are subjective and personal. He would not say that his morality is TRUE for everyone but only for those who have made the qualitative leap. Likewise, he would ridicule the so-called tom, dick, and harry christians who claim an authentic relation to god can be found by attending church every sunday and reading a few verses of the bible before bed everynight, for instance. I did not intend to post some danish philosophy from the 19th century and make god-fearers of you all. i merely wanted to show that there are relevant christian counter-arguments to Athiests. Basically, it is like this. Any christian who will "debate" you for any other purpose than to humor you... does not have authentic faith. Atheists have a real hang up with believers. It is almost pathological the way they have to disprove them. Don't you get it!? Religious types are not to be reasoned with... This is exactly the problem. True believers, as your philosopher seems to define them, know they are being illogical; indeed, it is a necessary part of their faith. Unfortunately, our world is not one illogical leaps; even if it is not entirely deterministic, it is most certainly probabilistic. Viewing such a world through the teachings of religions (Christianity in this case) is like purposely wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. sorry for not commenting. I was busy responding to the Evolutionary Terran. Is this the quote you wanted me to respond to Draconizard? As I mentioned before, I am not religious and I do not have an active faith in any supernatural phenomena. I cannot defend a religious person from being called "illogical". My point was, those with honest faith, care not for such classifications. So Dawkins, and all other aggresive athiests are merely masturbating when they try to PROVE THE NONEXISTENCE OF GOD for the betterment of society. I need to withdraw from the the shitstorm now. I will leave the group with this: I find it interesting that whether "real" or not mysticism, religion, god and many other illogical notions all played a significant part in the development of our species. now that we are post-post-modern the trend is to cast away all that is unverifiable and embrace the new dogma of science? | ||
IdrA
United States11541 Posts
| ||
omninmo
2349 Posts
On October 13 2009 16:03 IdrA wrote: you actually havent responded to me because your only responses consist of ignoring what i said, and that seems to be getting old. everything you said about cavemen is probably right, but how would we know? you did confuse the two relation-modes i was trying to distinguish between though: -one is romantic, passionate, emotionally gratifying love for a selfish end (cuz it feelz good). -the other is the love between two who mate, produce, and raise a child together. this type is not for oneself but rather it is aimed at ensuring the furthering of one's genetic self- a task for which two are better suited than one. | ||
prOxi.swAMi
Australia3091 Posts
| ||
50bani
Romania480 Posts
The simplest definition of god that I can come up with is "the laws of nature personified". In my humble opinion, no such thing exists. It is just that people naturally have what we call empathy, which makes them able to see the world from someone else's perspective, including when that someone is actually something. Humans naturally look for patterns. Humans want to interact with the environment, and influence it, so having the delusion that you can have a relationship with the forces of nature makes humans comfortable. Humans also need a motivation to be "good" and by being good, as empathy dictates most of the time, there should be some reward. Humans cannot conceptualize a world where they(I mean from the perspective of the individual) do not exist, so there has to be life after death. These are my thoughts on the origins of religion in a few words. | ||
| ||