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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (814)	9/19/1999 11:49:00 AM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 69300

LRR & RRaney.Re:Evolution; Morality;Good & Evil & Dawkins: I will answer both posts. Rather than continuing to rehash evolution let us look at this from a differing perspective. I decided to look at it, " life " , from Dawkin's perspective. world-of-dawkins.com Did some reading. Here is my take on this. In essence my own conclusion is that if there is no God everything is permitted. My questions to you: #1: Prove me wrong. #2: How would the world look under such circumstances, now and in the future. Here is my thinking on #2: The world would look much like Dawkin's " selfish gene: everybody out for himself. And why not? Why should I give a hoot for anybody's well being except my own? Thus I will do what I please and the hell with those that disagree with me. A pox to you. You can start and do everything: use drugs, steal ( feels good not to have to work/ pay for some thing; Float around the world and generate babies that you just dump behind. Cheat in a race to get there first ( as long as you don't get caught, smarty, why not? ) Then you can get into more cosmic solutions. What is wrong with Hitler: Hitler simply made a rational solution ( for him ) that Germans were a superior race. There may have been some evidence to them for that: all their literary and scientific and artistic achievements compared to none in many other populations. Hitler then decided to do the next best Darwinian thing: survival of the best and the fittest. He logically defined himself ( and added in all Germany for good measure ) as the best & fittest. This goes along perfectly with Dawkins: the selfish gene: The gene ( Hitler in this case ), defines what is good or bad and he then proceeds and exterminates all the bad. In fact this occurred in the past also: The ancient Spartans were light years ahead of the Germans in this. Sparta is well known for throwing unwanted children down " Baratros ( a local mountain precipice ). Children that were not perfect: slow learners. Children with deformities, one hand, absence of a foot or something like that. Think of the possibilities for the selfish gene. One day I may decide that I am tired of paying taxes to support senile people in Nursing homes: well just bomb a few homes. Euthanasia would be in vogue. All these old senile people: a drag on society: inject them with cyanide. Why not I ask? Don't give me the old morality theme. There is no morality. Have the gravediggers Sagan, Dawkins & co dug up any fossil records of morality? Where is it? any foot prints? Perhaps a few stands of DNA? The Bonano monkey perhaps has some moral DNA? I do understand how difficult it would be to find morality in animals were the survival of the fittest means exactly that:If you are not fast footed you get eaten. But hec many biologists have and are looking into this. According to Dawkins The watchmaker is blind . So any ideas about morality that any of you may have are just "memes" or " viruses of the mind " as he calls them. I want to know from you exactly: -which morality I should follow? which is the best morality? how you define good and evil? I think should keep you busy over the weekend and unable to read about the market. This perhaps will prevent you Monday from thowing any moneys into what appears now to be a giant bubble too big to be seen by most people and thus avoid that proverbial " pop " that put Hitler's dreams for a better world permanently away at room temperature, cheers TA ======================================================================= To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (804) From: Lather.Rinse.Repeat. Saturday, Sep 18 1999 10:06PM ET Reply # of 838 >Obviously by the fortuitous, random evolutionary arguments, it MUST HAVE BEEN SLIME: We have no scientific evidence that there was anything else around prior to that,< There are two contradictory statements here, Tunica. I accept the latter sentence as "fact". But the former one is pure supposition. If you'd recalled my earlier postings on the subject, you wouldn't belabor this point since I'd already addressed it. What came between the condensation of the solar system and the first unicell? WE DON'T KNOW. Basta. But it'll be fun trying to find out. The mudhole theory is a hypothesis - and it has the advantage of lining up nicely with established scientific fact. The Guiding Hand cluster of theories ... have no scientific support. They are driven by extrascientific motives. You speak of intellectual honesty. I ask you to exercise same and not confuse my postings with those of others here. I have a fair-to-excellent idea of the faultline between fact and supposition. And any "there must have been XXXXX" statements are suppositions topped with a rich, creamy meringue of ideological imperative. In time the truth will out. (Whatever it is.) This thread will fade into e-dust, but the eternal struggle between curiosity and canon seems to be a human constant. Alas. ============================ To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (804) From: RRanney Saturday, Sep 18 1999 6:20PM ET Reply # of 838 <<what is wrong with this picture? Answer is: there is something wrong with it because 90% of Americans don't believe it.>> So you believe that we should measure the truth of an idea by taking a popularity poll? I would venture to say that most Americans wouldn't believe in quantum mechanics either, if it were explained to them. And have you seen the figures on the percentage of Americans who believe in astrology, esp, psychic powers, that aliens are among us, etc? Doesn't make these ideas any more (or less) likely to be true. You should read "The Blind Watchmaker" by R. Dawkins. The entire book covers the issue of why, if we find a watch (or Lamborghini) lying about, we properly infer the existence of a higher intelligence who made it (a watchmaker); but why this same reasoning is demonstrably false when it comes to living things. Even though any living organism today is FAR more intricate and complicated than any watch or car, it is nevertheless true that no "higher intelligence" made that organism, but rather it is the end result of several billions of years of evolution by natural selection. The argument of evolution by natural selection seems utterly convincing and obvious to me. And I am a person who is intensely curious about the world, and how it works. I want to know, more than anything else, what is actually true and what actually happened. Sometimes it even seems strange that such an "obvious" truth as evolution now seems to be, took a person of the genius of Charles Darwin to point out to us. I guess that most people in the US have not yet reached that stage. But I predict that within the next 100 or 200 years, evolution by natural selection will be accepted by 90% or more of the population as not only true, but utterly obvious.