so you say evolution exists. Darwin said we came from apes. but humans and apes cant mate...so if humans came from apes, how did humans mate with apes. you are arguing nothing. If humans came from apes, why aren't apes evolving into human? humans and apes didnt mate to make humans...are you serious with that statement? I never said "people" stopped evolving. Where did you get that? Prove that successful people don't have kids. You are making rediculous arguements because you don't agree with creationism. and if it takes many generations to make chganges, where are the many generations over thousands of years that have changed? Who changes...not me. people in third world countries have immunities to disease because it is built up, not evolved. so what you are saying is that education and human intelligence to learn how to fight disease is not "evolution" because education and learning are bringing western civilization down...because third world countries have immune systems for third world contry diseases. how about Polio. Did we regress because we came up with a vaccine to almost irradicate it...because by your logic, western civilization has regressed because we dont have immunities. So thrid world undereducated countries are more advanced then us because they dont get sick as often

listen to yourself. Get off your high horse about antireligion and listen to what you are saying. none of what you said makes any sense. educate yourself in a "western" way before you spout off rediculous statements just because you don't believe in the bible. i question my faith everyday. Should I go to a third world country to rid myself of bipolar disease, or should I take the medication that western civilization has developed in order to help me function. Oh wait...thats BIG PHARMA! I suppose you are against them too.

get a clue man. Come up with something that makes sense and maybe i will hear you out

and its funny that your only arguement is that i didnt read. you didnt make any realistic arguement on any of my statements..."you didnt read therfore you are not entitled to an opinion" that is what you basically said. tell me how every living species on this planet came to be by NOTHING and then I will believe you.

 

Popcorn anyone?

 

my fault, I guess I wasn't clear enough, I will elaborate below.





I am aware of this, I was comparing radio carbon dating to my water boiling rate analogy. Just because you can prove a rate at which something happens, doesn't mean you can prove how long something has been happening to something if you were around long enough to observe the beggining. I am not against radio carbon dating, I think it is fact, much like water at a certain temp evaps at a rate of X volume per time? I am saying you can't use that to say a fact about something that you were there for the beggining of the experiment. Much like the guy walking in on the two water jars experiment could theorize how long the half full one has been there, based of of scince and fact and math, but he can't say how long that water has been there for a fact, only theory. This water theory much like evolutionism is supported by observable facts, but you can't call the result a fact as it is a theory. All I am saying there.



WHS



Basically semantics if you want to argue over evolution or call it adaptation. We both agree on fact and what we can see (micro) whether you chose to call it microevolution or adaptation. If someone says evolution isn't fact, they MUST be talking about macro, as no one can argue against observable microevolution. So I didn't think it was necessary to use that, but apparently I was wrong.... When I said evolution isn't fact, I meant macroevolution. IT is fine for you to believe whatever you want, my only beef is when people call a theory a fact, and I think that discredits them or anything else they say.





WHS

I am cerntainly not going to say it is proven that evolution is innacurate, but that is my belief, it certainly is not a fact.





And anyone who says macroecolution is a fact doesn't believe in the very science they preach. Which makes it hard to listen to anything else he said. My intent wasnt' to go off topic and start a debate on the merits of evolution or creationism, I don't really believe that either side is going to ever be convinced through words, though if I wanted to debate that, I would make another topic so as not to step on the OP's foot. I was merely saying that calling it a fact is wrong and that discredits the speaker any anything else he says IMO, then put forth a few of my own thoughts on the OP's topic.







I did add to the debate of this in disagreeance of his theory if what that youtube commentor who summarized was correct in the two reasons freewill is a myth are socialization/causility or randomization. To which I responded to on topic. Which earlier I shared my thoughts on debunking randomization, I think his socialization is flawed too. He is basically saying as a kid, if you are taught to not steal, then later you have a decision to steal and you chose not to, that wasn't free will, you were 'predestined' to chose not to because of your upbringing making you a slave to your socialization. But if you chose to steal, there would also be a reason for this that you had no control over tha forced that descision. To which I say again, you have the free will to chose your own descisions, socialization just makes it more or less likely for you to chose one thing or another, to which again, probability is much more different than randomization.



Sorry OP, I didn't mean to get it that far off topic with that comment.

 

Thank you. even if you disagree with me, evolution is theory. PERIOD

creationism is theory. Period

but the fact that EVERYTHING came from NOTHING doesnt make sense to me

 

This thread omilord.



Uh, the video was actually not bad, although he does come across as a dick initially. I'm glad I wasn't the only person to think that. I'm going to try and summarise his talk to perhaps give some reference here. I'll do my best to keep it short and coherent...



Our brains are basically rational operators. For a given brain, it will always make the same decision in the same set of circumstances. It was built a certain way, and it has existed through a history of experiences and substances since then. To simplify that idea, if you have a light switch, it might have been built in the on position, if it has a history of being turned off, then on again, it will be on now. So.



He explains the next point with an example. Think of a city in the world. Any city.... okay. You picked a city, for example, I picked Berlin. You thought of a whole bunch of cities, perhaps shortlisted a few, then picked whichever one because it was your favourite. That's a good example of a free decision, because your choice doesn't affect anything.



But this is not a free decision. You can't choose to remember the cities that you don't know, so that's not a free choice. As for the ones that you knew but didn't think of: You know of hundreds of cities! Oslo, Dallas, Sydney, Moscow, Seoul... these are well known cities but you might not have thought of them. You did not ~choose~ to not think of them. So the city you chose, is that free will? Well, why did you choose it? It's a meaningless choice. It was not a rational choice, it was just a point and shoot. Mr Harris points out that although we might have a reason for our choice, it is more likely due to subconcious cues. Hop in at around 19 minutes and it is much better explained.



I'll cut this short because I have to go to work shortly, but it is well worth watching the video regardless of your theological beliefs. It would at least make this argument a little more coherent

 

Well, thanks for explaining, though I am still not impressed, he is basically just stating the obvious and being overly technical and arguing semantics to sound smart.



That is like me saying "Here are the keys to my car, or my plane, you can go anywhere you want." Am I lying? No....but if this guy was asked if I was lying ,he would have said yes. He can't go to space, he can't go inside a mountain of the earth's core, or what about the places you dont' know about. So he can't go anywhere, therefore I lied when I said, you can go anywhere..... Again, he would be making and obvious statement that only a overly egotistical person would bring up just so they sound smart. Just because it wasn't asked doesn't mean it takes a genious to ask it. Had you asked the person if could go to the moon in car, they would have said no, it isn't like this was groundbreaking info, they just didn't feel the need to bring up an obvious statement to a question.



I thikn he just wants to BE right for once in his life. Of course, anyone can really get so technical so that they are right, just for being rights sake. But when the avg person thinks of free will, they think do they have the capcity to chose one or the other (or whatever they chose to chose maybe not of the choices) and the answer is yes, though they are not able to chose choices they don't think of....which again is obvious. This guy loves sematics to make himself sound smart.



That is like asking me ot pick a number between 1-100, and I pick 50, did I do that with free will? No, because I could have picked 23923030. Well, yes then, they had free will, they could have said 23923030, but just because they didn't thinkn to thikn outside the box, doesn't mean they couldn't if they wanted to. It is doing want you want or will that makes it free will, if you mind is 'weak' and you think inside the box, and what you want or will is limited, that doesn't mean that you still can't chose from that. Like I said, our socialization narrows our box more and more as we age, and like I said it would be odd for a pope to go on a shooting spree, but you could chose to do so if he wanted, but since his socialization box is so small, the 'choices' he would consider, that is so far unprobable, that it will probably never happen, but it certainly won't be random if he did, nor would it be forced upon him if he didn't, it was his choice or will to not do it.

 

I see what you mean, but it is taking the argument in the wrong context. The reason the pope (or anyone) is said not to have free will is -because- his socialisation box is shaped just so. And he was born into the right environment with the right genes or soul or whatever. His (or anyone's) concious mind is not actually choosing whether or not to go on a shooting spree. His subconcious has decided that it is stable enough not to kill anyone, and this appears as an absence of murderous thoughts to the mind.



The question this raises with me, is where the concept of 'self' ends. Are the actions of my subconcious able to be controlled by the nagging voice in my head? To take it a step further, although my arm is me, my conciousness does not rest in my arm. It's part of me, it is me, but I could remove it and still consider myself whole. I guess the same concept applies to the brain.



Do ants have free will?

 

I appreciate you staying on topic and understanding my point (whether or not you agree with it) and contributing and not getting bent out of shape . Now it is getting interesting....



You really have to properly define free will before you debate it, since it is obvoiusly such an ambiguos word....



What about holding a gun to someones head and saying do this action, yes you live, no you die. Though there might be consequences, you still have the freedom to choose technically, but many would say in that circumstance you don't. Like freedom of speech, we have it.... but not technically, since you can be thrown in jail for threatening someone, but technically you can still choose to say a threat, so you do have freedom of speech, in which case any country has that.... So we see how ambiguos of a term "Free" is.



I haven't really studies ants, but I would venture to guess anyone with an organic brain has free will. Ants are much like the military, they have structure and order, and tit behoovs you to follow orders, so many do, but you could chose not to. Their would just be consequences to your choice.



So if he meant free will in that sense, no we don't, but I will explain why I don't agree in that sense either.



A robot has no free will, they have ot do what they are programed to do. Though lately as technology gets better, robots are given processors (almost like a brain). They are (like humans) able to learn. If you stick a robot in a room and they are programed to get from point A to point B as safely as they can, they might first smack a few walls, and then slow down next time so they don't. They are making many 'choices' and 'descisions' based off of their past, to accomplish their programming. I use the term choices/descisions losely with robots, as you need free will to make a choice, if you are given A or B, that isn't really a choice, it is a process that is picked based off of programing.



Now a robot can make processes, but their processing are based off of reaching their programing goal. They will process (almost like a choice) what is condusive to their programing, they have to, they don't have free will.



Humans are very similar, but also opposite. Humans are socialized, which is similar to being programed, but not really.... Most humans are programed to want to survive, or live, the survial of the fittest or natural selection. So we make out descisions/choices based on our saftey and survival. But our socialization changes this programing. If you are reaised in a religions place, they might be able to convince you that your God or famliy is more important than survival. So though we were programed to make descisions based on survival, we now get into our socialization box and chance those descisions. We process stuff based off our socialization, but at the end of the day, we CAN make a choice contrary to that what our brains processed to be the best descision or not. A robot HAS to chose that best choice, so it isn't really a choice, they have to chose the best course of action based on what it processed.



Take a person who is raised for love of country, and then they get captured. Their small box tells them to not say a word, but every man has a breaking point. For some it is pain, pain is very powerful, and it might cause someone to go outside their box and give away secrets against their country. Though pain isn't really a useful form of torture, as most will say anything you want to hear (true or not) to get the pain to stop. But this person could chose based off of their box, or they could go outside thier box.



See where humans are socialized not programed and have brains and free will, where robots are programed, and have processors and no free will. I think any scientist will agree that humans are origionally programed to want to survie and make choices off of that survival. But many many times humans don't chose against our survivability. All dare devils or adrenaline junkies, they are living for a good feeling, or money, surivial isn't their #1 priority, though they were programed to origionally. This again is their socialiation that changes this. But you could find a daredevil who is socialized to love jumping off of high places, and decide not to. Now they are going against their socialization, but they have to free will not to, or to do it if they want.



I think Dr. Harris knew this, and that is why he added to 'random' clause to again, make him right. It isn't radom for the junky to say no, it isn't highly unprobably for him to say no, but it isn't random. So socialization really narrows down probablitly, and you could probably guess what someones answer was and you would probably be right as much as people lose the lottery, BUT you could be wrong, just like some people will the big jackpot. And the lottery winner isn't random, it is a highly impobable, but not random.





So as I explained, we DO have free will, and randomization is no excuse when someone doesn't choose the'pre-destned' path.

 

Apes mated with apes some time between an estimated 5-7 million years ago. Some of the ape offspring were slightly better at passing on their genes because of certain advantageous characteristics. Over many generations enough of these minor changes had been made to make it obvious that the new apes were a different species than the original apes. This happened very gradually, leaving several dead end branches due to various natural causes, but leaving several branches still in existence. One of those branches is the hominid branch, with the current only surviving member being us. Other branches include those leading to gorillas and leading to chimpanzees.



Humans never mated with apes and created offspring.



Humans didn't come from any of the current ape lineages, we split off from apes millions of years ago. Chimps and gorillas are as different from our common ancestor as we are.





Your phrasing made it sound like you were talking about evolution of humans stopping. It hasn't. If you're broadening it to evolution in general, that is even easier to prove that it hasn't stopped. It has been observed directly in many locations. One of the most notable being the many changes seen due to constantly changing pressures on the finch populations in the Galapagos islands. Most recently, the severe reduction of beak size due to increased pressure from larger invasive finches allowing the native finches to more easily feed on smaller seeds.



Birth rate 3x higher for women receiving welfare



Some statistics of note from that US Census study:



Births per 1000 women in the past 12 months (page 7):

Receiving Public Assistance - 154.5

Not Receiving Public Assistance - 52.6



Lifetime reproductive rate by education level per 1000 women (page 5):

Not a high school graduate - 2,477

High School 4 years - 1,947

College, no degree - 1,822

Associate - 1,820

Bachelor's - 1,632

Graduate/professional - 1,596



It is pretty definitive.



You are making ridiculous (not to mention poorly spelled and grammatically horrendous) arguments based on your misunderstanding of science fostered by an upbringing which told you that you have the answer, now find data that supports this answer and ignore and discredit anything that appears to contradict the answer they have given you. The changes are all around you. I truly don't think you understand that core concept.



Every living thing present on the Earth is here because of changes that made it what it is today, including you. The changes aren't mutations which happen within the organism during its lifetime, but rather the changes that happen because more organisms pass on their favorable traits because they die less than other organisms without these traits and therefore reproduce more.



Immunities vary from population to population. "immunities to disease" is not the way it works. Populations have immunities to certain diseases. Your ability to fight off diseases that you are not immune to is built up to higher than average levels if you live in unfavorable conditions, but they are not the same thing. European immigrants to the Americas were immune to smallpox. Meaning, small amounts of the virus were present in most of them but there was no ill effects because the Europeans were immune to smallpox. Native Americans had no genetic immunity to smallpox, so despite them living in conditions which would tend to foster a stronger immune system overall than the Europeans they were susceptible to smallpox and a large amount of the native population died from contracting the foreign disease.

 

We have a lot of immunities. The polio vaccine for example mimics the body's natural immunities towards a disease. The polio vaccine is a good advancement, but it is not evolution because it isn't integrated into our genetic code. The same thing could have been accomplished by selective breeding, much like is done with livestock. If you have an animal or plant which is not effected by a disease, you allow them to reproduce much more than others which were not naturally resistant to that disease. It is similar to making the body pre-vaccinated naturally. That is part of the process of domestication, which is a lot like evolution but not driven by natural selection but rather the desires of mankind. The process is exactly the same, only people choose the traits to pass on, not survivability in nature.



Just because you can't understand what I'm saying doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense.



I don't care about your faith. It only irritates me when people spend more time thinking about their faith than learning about the world around them, then spout off their uneducated mouth about how they know the one true answer to everything and everyone else is stupid.



You do not understand the core concept. At all. In any way. And I doubt you ever will.



I'm sorry, but I don't think I can explain this to you. You don't understand the definition of the word evolution. You don't understand the theory behind it. Look it up and maybe the things I've said will make some sense.



I gave direct responses to several of your statements. You can choose to scream rhetoric at me from behind a bible with your eyes closed while shouting "LALALALALALA!!! I can't hear you!!!" all you want to.



News flash! If there is a creator, everything on the planet STILL came to be by NOTHING. Because at some point, the creator would have needed to come into being from nothing. It is no less logical, it just adds an extra step.





And here's the thing. I'm not even an atheist. I just go by what I see. I can't say there is no creator. I do think it's HIGHLY unlikely to be anything like what is said in the Bible, but that's my opinion. I think it's more likely to be passing aliens that interfered in the development of Earth and mankind, or some type of self contained simulation for which there is no actual physical reality. I'm not even completely sold on the theory of macroevolution being the answer to how the variety of species came to be present on Earth. I think there is more to it than that, but I don't think it requires the intervention of a creator. But there could be some form of a creator. I don't have the answer to the question of how we got here and I don't claim to. Evolution definitely happens, it is likely responsible for sweeping changes to the biodiversity on Earth, and it is possibly responsible for all of the biodiversity on Earth. But that cannot and never will be proven.



Regardless of the origin of life, evolution happens, and given enough time could certainly change one species into another species. That doesn't mean that the original species came to be based on evolution from a precursor species, but regardless of the origins of creatures on Earth they are currently evolving and changing. I don't understand the general resistance to that concept from so many religious people. If it is happening, and if it was created, there is no reason why the creator couldn't have programmed in that feature to increase adaptability to the ever changing conditions.