NZAmoeba

and once again in a talk about evolution, some ID'er brings up the creation of the universe... which has nothing to do with evolution at all.... sigh...

ps. the Universe exists because the total sum of its parts = zero, horray for positives and negatives!

Kevbo

NZAmoeba: I've never been a fan of that "matter energy - gravitational energy = 0" concept of universe origin. Shouldn't we see new matter being created at nodes when we move massive objects apart if that were true? The universe also seems to be accelerating, which means that some force opposing gravity is winning out. This throws another wrench into the "matter - gravity = )" concept.

Xeluan

Benefits of being an Evolutionist?

Why the discount card, free entry to night clubs and total lack of morals.

VonEvilstein

We know the answer to "the chicken and the egg". It loses all mystery when you throw a proto-chicken into the mix!

reprise

The thing I like about being an evolutionist is that evolution produces the same outcomes for me irrespective of my level of belief or disbelief in its validity.

Mediancat

Kruger writes,

This would be the Tony Soprano theory of the beginning of the universe?

Rob aka Mediancat

Oolon Colluphid

Quite right. That’ll be a little-known field called ‘cosmology’..
Try looking up ‘quantum vacuum fluctuations’.
Wanna run that one by me again in English?
Erm, it’s hard to tell what’s being strained here: your ability to use English, your grasp of genetics, the definition of ‘creation’, or our credulity. Are you questioning the randomness of mutations? Sure, god may be poking his supernatural finger into genomes and giving them a stir, but the net result looks like random copying errors
What of neutral mutations, and detrimental ones? These are rather well documented phenomena. Are they creations that go wrong?
No it isn’t, necessarily. The relevant phenotype may already be present in the population, and a change in environment may bring it to the fore... or remove it. So, define ‘innovation’. The ‘new innovation’ that gives a bacterium the means to evade an antibiotic is only of benefit to it if the antibiotic is around in its environment. So if the relevant mutation occurs when there’s no antibiotic present, is it an innovation? Where’s the ‘innovation’ in genetic drift?
And also an even longer list of mess-ups, genetic miscopying, death and extinction. Your point?
If you say so. So, are mutations random, or somehow guided? And why guide all the ones that are cock-ups too?
Apparently.

TTFN, Oolon

scombrid

Yummy kittens.

Xixax

Being an "evolutionist" on it's own offers no benefits that have anything to do with theology. It's biggest benefit is that you don't have to plug your ears and scream "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah" when hearing facts and evidenced presented in a biology classroom.

Accepting that evolution occured offers similar benefits to accepting that gravity and physics keeps us planted on the earth and that the world is a sphere.

I think your advantages are more pointed towards atheism and agnosticism, or really any religious view that is different from mainstream xianity.

Will I Am

"What other benefits are there to viewing the world as an evolutionist?"

Well, confining ourselves to Christian dogma/s…

According to most Christian mythologies, "God" is all-knowing. Specifically, God knows the Future, and every single little detail that will happen in it. Even before God said, "Let there be Light", "He" was fully aware of all the suffering, wars, cancers, broken hearts, starvation, earthquakes, and McDonalds branches that would be built as a consequence.

He knew, in advance, that Lucifer would Rebel, Eve would tempt Adam, that Paradise would be Lost. He knew, in advance, that the Dark Ages would happen at length, The Holocausts(s) would flower in oil-soaked beds of mass-destruction, Pol Pot would rule, African famines would sweep like rebounding fly-ridden waves in a sea of suffering defenseless flesh for a hundred miserable years. AIDS, Jerry Springer, call centers, junk mail, ads for computer stores in public school bathrooms… the full horror of All He Hath Wrought, (and he created Free Will, let us not forget, in the full advance knowledge of where it would take most of us).

Most Christian dogma has it that only about 10% of humans will make it to Heaven. 20%, tops. The rest of us, all 6+ billion of us, are headed for Hell. Which we are enthusiastically assured is even more horrible than God's Earth.

One of the advantages of being an Atheist… is that the atheist can rest assured that the universe is not in fact run by a psychotic hate-filled Father-figure who's prime function as far as humanity - is concerned (and I really don't want to know what else He's been up to) seems to be to intentionally, with malice-aforethought, condemn nine-out-of-ten of His creations to an eternity of pointless suffering. (An eternity, mind you!).

The atheist's universe… frequently characterized as a universe of mindless noble gasses, purely automatic physical processes and of inevitable anthropic necessity; a universe of infinitely convoluted expanses of time, space and complexity, is positively warm, fluffy, inclusive and downright homey by comparison.