182 replies to this topic

[Balloon guy]

This is a bit early, as it is likely that the 'debate' will be at least a week away from the first of 5+ installments, but I thought it would be an interesting thing to watch:The PZ Meyer Challenge:

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...to contest the assertion that there is not only substantial evidence for the existence of gods, but that the logic and the evidence in support of the existence of gods is superior to the logic and the evidence for the nonexistence of them.This will be a written debate. Each party will simultaneously submit an initial statement of no more than 1,500 words for the other party to critique, and both parties will have one week to respond to the other's initial statement with a critique of no more than 2,000 words. Whoever the judges determine to have won the first round will have the choice between writing the next post or replying to the first-round loser's next post. There will be five rounds, after which one side or the other may concede or simply withdraw, or continue if both parties wish. The second to fifth rounds will be limited to 3,000 words.

On Sept 1 an open challenge for atheist to debate Vox Day was issued.Today the opponent was identified along with the judges.

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However, since Dominic Saltarelli did not hesitate to step up to the plate, and because he is known and respected as an intelligent commenter who originally hails from richarddawkins.net, I have decided to accept his challenge as the atheist champion. Just to make it interesting, Dominic and I have decided that the first round will be in English, the second round in Italian, and the third round in Latin.

The Italian Latin comments were a joke.Looking forward to the results.

[CaneBrain]

Seems like religion/atheism debate would be a more accurate thread title. I don't see anything about evolution in there.

[Balloon guy]

CaneBrain, on Wednesday, September 7th, 2011, 2:15 PM, said:

Seems like religion/atheism debate would be a more accurate thread title. I don't see anything about evolution in there.

Yea, I was reading a long commented post when I wrote this and slightly mislabeled it.Of course, the end result of 'proving' the possibility of God being the Creator of the universe being a more viable answer to our existence does go a long way towards showing evolution as the poor science that it is.

[speedz99]

I don't feel like reading the article...who are the judges?

Balloon guy, on Wednesday, September 7th, 2011, 3:58 PM, said:

showing evolution as the poor science that it is.

Heh, BG still doesn't understand what science is.

[Dread Aidan]

speedz99, on Thursday, September 8th, 2011, 10:22 AM, said:

I don't feel like reading the article...who are the judges?

Christian: cl aka The Warfare is MentalAgnostic: Alex AmenosAtheist: Scott ScheuleI don't know who any of those people are.

[timwakefield]

Who and/or what is Vox Day? Googling only confused me more. Vox Day translates to "Voice of God." But apparently this is also a person? Is it Theodore Beale (who I've also never heard of)?EDIT: I still have no idea what is going on, but in the latest article on the website you linked the author cryptically references "science fetishists," and writes, "Scientists had better pray that the coming years don't..." both without any apparent sense of irony or awareness of how silly he sounds.

[brvheart]

It's just a random guy on a random forum, as are all the judges.

[timwakefield]

Oh wait, he gets better. http://voxday.blogsp...lutionists.html

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It is my contention that evolution is, from a scientific perspective, an almost totally irrelevant sideshow. The number of scientists who have actually used evolution for anything over the last 150 years is dwarfed by the number of scientists who are still desperately trying to provide a scientific foundation for TENS.

Apparently this guy has never heard of modern medicine, and he will really look like a fool in a couple decades when we start regularly growing replacement organs for people (along with other, as-yet-unforeseen advances).He also entirely overlooked the fallacy that, if scientists have been "using evolution," even just on a very limited basis (as he asserts without evidence), then isn't it a definitively correct theory? One cannot "use" a false theory and get anywhere with it. Our esteemed author does not list any of the failed attempts by scientists to "use evolution," rather his wording strongly implies that they have used it successfully. I assume that TENS stands for the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. It's a stupid acronym that makes me angry, although this is unrelated to anything.

[Dread Aidan]

timwakefield, on Friday, September 9th, 2011, 12:58 PM, said:

Apparently this guy has never heard of modern medicine, and he will really look like a fool in a couple decades when we start regularly growing replacement organs for people (along with other, as-yet-unforeseen advances).

Do you mean like naturally growing replacement organs in our own bodies? Like we'll have spare hearts and stuff? Or do you mean some sort of modern medical technique that allows scientists/doctors/robots to create replacement organs? I'm not sure I understand how evolution is a part of that.p.s. win your fucking 200th already.

[timwakefield]

Dread Aidan, on Friday, September 9th, 2011, 4:02 PM, said:

Do you mean like naturally growing replacement organs in our own bodies? Like we'll have spare hearts and stuff? Or do you mean some sort of modern medical technique that allows scientists/doctors/robots to create replacement organs? I'm not sure I understand how evolution is a part of that.

It's unclear exactly what will happen, how it will work, or which scenarios will work best. But here's an article/video that gives you an idea of one direction we could be going.http://www.cbsnews.c...in3960219.shtmlThat article does not specifically discuss how an understanding of evolution is related. Here's a more recent article, which also doesn't explicitly discuss evolution, but I think one can see that it is an implicit part of the work they're doing.

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By building the new scaffold from the protein up, Parker's team can program direction cues into the architecture of the scaffold, and thus direct the growth of cells in the desired direction. Using natural proteins rather than synthetic polymers or decellularized organs reduces the likelihood that the new tissue will be rejected once it's implanted.

Everything we understand about the human body and how it grows and re-grows and falls apart and dies is directly associated with our understanding of how animal bodies in general grow and re-grow and fall apart and die, and it is impossible to accurately understand the basic properties and specific intricacies of those processes without an in-depth understanding of how life works - i.e. evolution.

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p.s. win your fucking 200th already.

Tell that to the damn bullpen.

[Dread Aidan]

timwakefield, on Friday, September 9th, 2011, 1:32 PM, said:

Everything we understand about the human body and how it grows and re-grows and falls apart and dies is directly associated with our understanding of how animal bodies in general grow and re-grow and fall apart and die, and it is impossible to accurately understand the basic properties and specific intricacies of those processes without an in-depth understanding of how life works - i.e. evolution.

Speedz, confirm?

[vbnautilus]

Dread Aidan, on Friday, September 9th, 2011, 1:39 PM, said:

Speedz, confirm?

It's much broader than even what tim is saying. Virtually every arm of biological science from medicine to neuroscience to social science and psychology heavily relies on evolutionary theory. The quote by vox day is beyond ludicrous.

[Balloon guy]

vbnautilus, on Friday, September 9th, 2011, 5:04 PM, said:

It's much broader than even what tim is saying. Virtually every arm of biological science from medicine to neuroscience to social science and psychology heavily relies on evolutionary theory. The quote by vox day is beyond ludicrous.

I'm sure the first guy to transplant an organ was thinking during the entire procedure: "I wonder how time and random mutation would repair this"Heh, BG still doesn't understand what science is.

[Balloon guy]

timwakefield, on Friday, September 9th, 2011, 12:34 PM, said:

Who and/or what is Vox Day? Googling only confused me more. Vox Day translates to "Voice of God." But apparently this is also a person? Is it Theodore Beale (who I've also never heard of)?

Yes, Theodore Beale.

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EDIT: I still have no idea what is going on, but in the latest article on the website you linked the author cryptically references "science fetishists," and writes, "Scientists had better pray that the coming years don't..." both without any apparent sense of irony or awareness of how silly he sounds.

I'm sure jumping into the discussion midstream has in no way affected your understanding of the discussion. Feel free to continue.

[timwakefield]

Balloon guy, on Friday, September 9th, 2011, 8:27 PM, said:

I'm sure jumping into the discussion midstream has in no way affected your understanding of the discussion. Feel free to continue.

What discussion? The one on the website (you're suggesting I should go back and read the site from day 1? and that the author's posts can't be understood on an individual basis but need to be understood in the context of all his other posts?), or the one in this thread thread where nobody was saying much? You can't possibly mean the latter, but I explained in the parentheses why I'm confused by the former.

[Tactical Bear]

timwakefield, on Friday, September 9th, 2011, 3:34 PM, said:

Who and/or what is Vox Day? Googling only confused me more. Vox Day translates to "Voice of God." But apparently this is also a person? Is it Theodore Beale (who I've also never heard of)?EDIT: I still have no idea what is going on, but in the latest article on the website you linked the author cryptically references "science fetishists," and writes, "Scientists had better pray that the coming years don't..." both without any apparent sense of irony or awareness of how silly he sounds.

I don't post anywhere ever anymore ever (rarely). I am on record in a few places as hating -- hating as much and as furiously as one can hate another random anonymous internet poster (besides MrDannyG, whom I have, somehow, always hated significantly more) -- timwakefield. But, Oh My God, holy crap timwakefield holy crap, is this Voice of God character for real?Tim, you and I have had some run-ins with respect to logic and semantics and nit-picking and whatever. In one thread (perhaps about: Real Estate?), I hated every single word you wrote, and I hated with such an intensity that I seethed, and I hated with such a passion that I thought to myself: "Fuuuuuck this motherfucker to death" and meant it. But now I apologize. For I have never known contempt -- contempt real and true and honest -- until now. Henceforth, you and I are brothers. Hatred is relative. Imagine a continuum, with Love on the left and Hate on the right. Before today, the graph looked like this:Family --- Best Friend -- Girlfriend ---- Steve Martin -- Random Whores ---- Friends -- (collection of people I don't mind) ---- (collection of people I never think about) ---- (collection of people I mind) ---- (collection of people I actively dislike) -------------- (collection of people whom the mere thought of which leads to an involuntary sneer) ----- tim wakefield ----- Nazis --- Jews ----------------- MrDannyGYou get the picture. After reading the article timwakefield linked above, and the entire list of comments, here's the new continuum:(Everyone mentioned above, with one exception) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MrDannyG --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Vox Day Basically, I had to recalibrate my entire emotional spectrum in such a way that my previous "hatred" of timwakefield is now, compared to my feelings for Vox Day, indistinguishable from love.EDIT: I've read a few thousand more words from that website since I originally posted. It's clear to me now: I am embarrassingly slow to recognize obvious satire.

[brvheart]

TB, your post broke the internet.

[CaneBrain]

Balloon guy, on Wednesday, September 7th, 2011, 7:58 PM, said:

Yea, I was reading a long commented post when I wrote this and slightly mislabeled it.Of course, the end result of 'proving' the possibility of God being the Creator of the universe being a more viable answer to our existence does go a long way towards showing evolution as the poor science that it is.

Don't really agree with this. Evolution and the existence of god are not mutually exclusive IMO.

[BaseJester]

CaneBrain, on Saturday, September 10th, 2011, 10:53 AM, said:

Don't really agree with this. Evolution and the existence of god are not mutually exclusive IMO.

Agreed. Only a literal view of Genesis and evolution are mutually exclusive.It's telling with respect to the evidence how few atheists don't believe in evolution.

[brvheart]

BaseJester, on Saturday, September 10th, 2011, 10:19 AM, said:

Agreed. Only a literal view of Genesis and evolution are mutually exclusive.

I disagree. I think you can have a literal view of Genesis and still believe in evolution.My proof is this:

Genesis said:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. 6 Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. 8 God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. 9 Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. 13 There was evening and there was morning, a third day. 14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. 17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. 19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

If God didn't make the Sun to "govern the day and night" until the 4th "day".... how long were the "days" prior to the sun's creation?