Freethought & Rationalism Archive

DNAunion · 09-13-2002, 04:19 PM

Quote:

pz: Do we need to have you help him set out hooks on other fora than the one he's using?

DNAunion: That spiteful comment is completely skewed.

Simple fact...who drug the debate from that forum to here? Not me.

I try to keep the goings on at board X separate from the goings on at board Y. But everywhere I go, someone - be it seebs, scientiae, Pangloss/Pantrog, Pat, or whoever - starts gossiping about what I have said or done at some other sites, even if it was 5 years ago.

Could we please try to get our facts straight?

[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]

DNAunion · 09-13-2002, 04:30 PM

Quote:

seebs: Finding the post where he claimed that, having studied evolution, he came to believe there was no God, will certainly help when he's arguing how obvious it is that there's a God.

DNAunion: Please hold your breath until that happens, as a favor to me, okay?

Quote:

seebs: It shoots his credibility. (As well it should!)

DNAunion: No, because I don't believe what you insist I believe.

The only credibility being shot down here is yours as we get to see the kind of unscrupulous things you will do to try to "beat down" your opponent.

[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]

DNAunion · 09-13-2002, 04:39 PM

Quote:

bubba: I still can't figure out why evolution could be evil. Why would knowing the truth about something be evil?

DNAunion: Has seebs talked you into believing that I said evolution is evil? I didn't say that, even when making my "Devil's advocate" statements.

Quote:

bubba: I think that he may be lonely and want attention more than involvement in the actual creation/evolution debate.

DNAunion: No, I like to learn. I have learned a lot debating "Creation/Evolution" over the years, and hope to continue to learn. I am not trying to get attention.

PS: Please note that I started my thread in the ETHICS section at that other site, instead of in the SCIENCE area. And even after someone said once (or twice) that it should be moved to the science area I continued it in the ethics section. I was not, and still am not, questioning the scientific validity of evolution. My thread asked a question about foundations for morality.

[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]

DNAunion · 09-13-2002, 05:10 PM

Quote:

seeb: Along the way, he asserts that pagans have no morals…

DNAunion: Another lie.

Nowhere did I claim that pagans have no morals – nowhere. Nor did I imply that in my statements. (I did once get pretty sarcastic with the pagan in question - mid - when he said that pagans, including himself, gather to practice magik with candles and stuff: I challenged him to turn me into a toad!).

What I did was mistake the person – mid – for an atheist because of something he phrased poorly. More on that in a minute, but first…

Here’ s the really ironic part. The only “damning” thing I said about the pagan guy – mid – was that I though he was an atheist. Then seeb claims I said he (and other pagans) have no morality. The only way that seeb could possibly think that is if SEEB thinks that being an atheist means one has no morals!

Now, back to the “atheist” vs. “pagan” thing. Here is mid’s post in its entirety.

Quote:

mid: also, if you are thinking that only the bible and christianity teaches morals, you are totally incorrect. An atheist can have morals. I have morals (I am a pagan).

DNAunion: To which I replied, sincerely, …

Quote:

DNAunion: Great, then you are the person who can explain to me exactly how to have strong morals without their having a religious underpinning. So...?

DNAunion: Note first of all that I am actually saying that mid DOES have morals, not that he doesn’t.

Second, the whole “stink” arose over my inference that Mid was an atheist because of his statements, “An atheist can have morals. I have morals …”. They pointed out that pagans are not atheists and I accepted partial blame for being ignorant of what a pagan is or is not. I have changed my mind.

Let’s look at a neutral reference to see if there is an accepted definition of the term “pagan” that is close to “atheist”.

Quote:

”pagan … 2: one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and material goods : an irreligious or hedonistic person.” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

DNAunion: A pagan can be one who has no religion; a pagan can be an irreligious person.

So mid’s wording was poor and could easily mislead someone into believing he were an atheist even if they knew what a pagan was.

The blame that I had accepted for the “misunderstanding” I now take off myself. More to follow.

Another childish thing someone pulled on me was to challenge the use of the term parenthetical in relation to mid’s statement “(I am a pagan)”. This fails, as I will show.

Quote:

”parenthesis … 3: one or both of the curved marks () used in writing and printing to enclose a parenthetic expression or to group a symbolic unit in a logical or mathematical expression.” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

DNAunion: So something written or printed inside parentheses is a parenthetic expression. The dictionary says just that the word parenthetical is the adjective form of the noun, so what mid had in his sentence was a parenthetical expression.

Now let’s check out a college level book for writers to see what else I said about mid’s parenthetical expression – that it de-emphasized that statement - was correct.

Quote:

”Dashes, parentheses, and brackets primarily enclose information, isolating it from the rest of a sentence. But the effect of those three marks of punctuation is somewhat different. Dashes emphasize the elements they enclose. Parentheses de-emphasize interrupters and nonessential elements. Brackets usually enclose clarifications, especially in direct quotations.” (Connie Carter & Craig Skates, The Rinehart Handbook of Writers: Third Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1993, p200)

DNAunion: We see de-emphasis tied to parentheses a few pages later.

Quote:

”Parentheses isolate and de-emphasize elements that interrupt a sentence or passage.” (Connie Carter & Craig Skates, The Rinehart Handbook of Writers: Third Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1993, p203)

DNAunion: And finally…

Quote:

”A parenthetical element in a sentence is set off with commas, dashes, or parentheses to show its loose, interruptive, or nonessential nature.” (Connie Carter & Craig Skates, The Rinehart Handbook of Writers: Third Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1993, p722)

DNAunion: So I repeat: mid de-emphasized the part about his being a pagan by making it a parenthetical expression.

Let’s recap the analysis.

1) Mid de-emphasized the part about his being a pagan by making it a parenthetical expression. His doing so means his being a pagan could be taken to be nonessential to understanding the statements made.

2) Mid’s wording of the two back-to-back sentences was poor in that it could easily lead someone not familiar with what a pagan is into inferring that he is an atheist.

3) The fault is not the reader’s if he/she infers that mid is an atheist from what he said. His wording was poor and could easily mislead someone into believing he was an atheist even if they knew what a pagan was, because a pagan can be someone who has no religion; a pagan can be an irreligious person.

Disclaimer: I assumed mid is male in order to not repeatedly write "he/she", "his/her", etc. My assumption may or may not be wrong.

[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]

DNAunion · 09-13-2002, 05:37 PM

DNAunion: In the face of seeb's unscrupulous accussations, I guess this might be a good time to repost something I said here at Infidels half a year ago.

Quote:

DNAunion: The similarities between organisms is incredible.

I was not always convinced that all animals had evolved from "a common lower life form", but then I started posting on the internet. I found several things out.

1) While trying to show someone wrong when he said that genes for the ATP synthase had to all be arranged together in single physical group (those from ARN, no this is not Wolf - it was someone from a year or two before), I found what was a surprising result, at least to me. I found a site that listed the mitochondrial genome for hundreds of animals, representing all various types. And there were sets of genes - whose proteins serve various cellular functions - that were found in virtually all of those mitochondrial genomes. Furthermore, although the ATP synthase has something like 8 genes in all, the mitochondria of virtually all of the animals had only a subset consisting of 2 or 3, and it was always the same 2 or 3 in all of them.

2) While looking into eye evolution, I found all kinds of references (dating from about 1995 on) that showed many conserved genes/proteins involved in eye development, in organisms as distantly related as humans, mice, squids, fruit flies, nematodes, etc.

3) I just started a post here about eukaryotic cell division. I spent an hour or so doing some quick abstract searches and found several kinds of genes/proteins that are highly conserved from yeasts to humans.

To me, all of this argues strongly for common descent. I can personally no longer doubt that all animals share a common ancestor.

And then there is human evolution. The most impressive genetic evidence I have heard in support of it concerns the fusion of two "chimp" chromosomes into a single human chromosome (humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes while chimpanzees have 24 - and yes, I know that humans did not evolve from chimps!). I remember reading that it was actually determined - and confirmed - which human gene was the result of the fusion.

Of course, there are other reasons to accept that all animals - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor. But I am sure the "Infidels" here already knew that.

DNAunion · 09-13-2002, 06:13 PM

DNAunion: Here’s another relevant one. This post is from 5 months ago (April 19, 2002).

Quote:

Morpho: DNAunion, Okay, so you're not a creationist. What are you? I mean, I know the question isn't strictly relevant to this thread - but you've (deliberately or inadvertently) given me the impression that you disagree with evolution on this and other threads. The most I've been able to discover from your posts on II is that you have some sort of belief in Design.

Quote:

DNAunion: I am a skeptic, and as such, I suspend jugdment. I neither fully accept nor fully reject an explanation/hypothesis until I have seen that sufficient evidence has been mounted for or against it.

Over the years, my discussions on the internet (as well as my own search for the truth) have gradually convinced me that evolution is true (when I first started, I didn't even accept that), common descent is true, and that humans did evolve from apes (just for you Oolon!).

Those three are separate things. I could believe that evolution is true because of small changes in a single species: for example, industrial melanism; in which peppered moths changed color (cryptic coloration) due to changes in environmental polution. It is a step from that to common descent, which must involve more than a single species. Besides stuff pointed out to me by others, I found for myself several lines of evidence that convinced me that all animals are related by descent (the "universal" mitochondrial genome of all animals being one of them). But some people accept all of that and still do not accept an evolutionary origin for humans: I have found that even the case for the evolutionary origin of humans is convincing (confused, but still convincing).

But I still have problems with "the average evolutionist" I have encountered. Considering them, and not all evolutionists...

They grossly exaggerate the importance of evolution in biology (their motto is "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution", which they lamely try to insist is literally true). And I think we see a mild example in this thread: pre-med students being required to complete a full course on evolutionary theory (EVEN THOUGH - AS AN "EVOLUTIONIST" HERE STATED - SOME PHYSICIANS DON'T EVEN KNOW THAT ANTIBIOTICS AREN'T HELPFUL AGAINST VIRUSES, OR WHY THAT WOULD BE SO. THEY NEED TO LEARN THAT VERY RELEVANT STUFF!).
<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000623&p=5" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000623&p=5</A>

Cretinist · 09-13-2002, 08:05 PM

There are a lot of problems created by 'basing' your morals on God. In fact, Divine Command Theory is a blatantly absurd idea that seems to entail moral nihilism.

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/rape.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/rape.html</a>

[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: Cretinist ]

Lizard · 09-13-2002, 08:33 PM

DNA posted:
My thread asked a question about foundations for morality.

Me:
<a href="http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/metaphys-of-morals.txt" target="_blank">See Kant.</a>

]<a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5i.htm" target="_blank">Categorical imperative</a>

[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: Lizard ]

RufusAtticus · 09-13-2002, 10:01 PM

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If this thread becomes nothing but a mud-wrestling match, it will be locked.

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seebs · 09-13-2002, 11:23 PM

I think people have the resources to do their own research from here. I merely wanted to call attention to something that might eventually be a good resource to be able to point to in future debates.

09-13-2002, 08:05 PM	#17
Cretinist Banned Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Hell Posts: 399	There are a lot of problems created by 'basing' your morals on God. In fact, Divine Command Theory is a blatantly absurd idea that seems to entail moral nihilism. <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/rape.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/rape.html</a> [ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: Cretinist ]</p>

09-13-2002, 08:33 PM	#18
Lizard Regular Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Kansas Posts: 169	DNA posted: My thread asked a question about foundations for morality. Me: <a href="http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/metaphys-of-morals.txt" target="_blank">See Kant.</a> ]<a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5i.htm" target="_blank">Categorical imperative</a> [ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: Lizard ]</p>

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09-13-2002, 10:01 PM	#19
RufusAtticus Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: NCSU Posts: 5,853	Moderator's Warning If this thread becomes nothing but a mud-wrestling match, it will be locked. RufusAtticus E/C Moderator

09-13-2002, 11:23 PM	#20
seebs Contributor Join Date: May 2002 Location: Saint Paul, MN Posts: 24,524	I think people have the resources to do their own research from here. I merely wanted to call attention to something that might eventually be a good resource to be able to point to in future debates.

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