The Competition of Memes (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, July 23, 2010, 22:48 (5045 days ago) @ George Jelliss

xeno wrote: "George (Though I have rather limited experience with him here) seems to argue very much like Dawkins. (Religions are debunked purely by the fact that nearly all their claims on the material world have been proven false; so why bother?)" 
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> That's close enough.
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> xeno: "The problem, is that thus far it appears that the only avenue for raw materialism is spontaneous generation."
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> The correct term is abiogenesis, which is seen as a gradual process. Spontaneous generation means the sudden appearance of already complex life forms from inanimate matter.
> -The only problem here is that the current state of abiogenesis is between paradigms; the book by Shapiro that David has mentioned a couple of times demonstrates pretty visibly that abiogenesis is currently at a very infantile stage when compared with more established fields of study. At present, we have no evidence whatsoever that will convince me that we're anywhere close to where we need to be. -In terms of the current state of the research; if one asserts that abiogenesis is without doubt what happened, then your only resort according to current evidence is some kind of spontaneous generation. Shapiro (in the book) proposes a protein-first view that sounds valid, but there's no evidence to separate protein first, vs. enzyme first, vs. RNA first. These are all competing philosophies and none are in a state to match the current state of the problem. -> xeno: "We're just not close enough for anyone to be satisfied. It is more truthful to the actual state to say "I don't know" than to assert (and it is only assertion) atheism or theism."
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> The actual state of knowledge is (a) that from the big bang to the appearance of life the universe is satisfactorily described in purely materialistic terms, (b) life then appears in some form and evolves according to the processes of natural selection. Abiogenesis is the problem of the transition between (a) and (b).
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> Theists ADD to this situation MANY further hypotheses: that there was some kind of preexisting life form that could somehow exist either inside or outside the universe and that had somehow acquired the capacity of intelligence and the technological or magic capability to intervene in the physical processes of the universe to bring about the origin of life, similar in some way to its own life-nature but brought about by complex chemical processes. The exact details of how this occurred, and the precise nature of the designer differ from one theist to another, and no consensus has ever been reached.
> -You're very generous in calling them hypotheses. Something untestable doesn't qualify. -> The Atheist position is simply the default position that makes no such outlandish hypotheses. Furthermore the Theist hypotheses appear to assume what they are trying to prove, namely that life already existed before life could be created, which simply creates another problem of where this hypothetical life- force came from in the first place.-The theist position starts from belief and tries to find data to accommodate its belief. It's more semantics, but I view agnostic as the "default" position. If you're claiming atheism you're declaring assertively that gods do not exist. I suspect that this is true, but I view it unnecessary to make a claim without positive evidence. No evidence of god(s) is just that, no evidence of god(s). -If you saw a glass of water in the desert, would you assert "half-full, half-empty," or simply "There's water in the glass." Only one of these statements is certain.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"