"What beliefs do we hold that seem irrational, but are nevertheless accepted as fact?"

I can't think of any offhand. Love is irrational, but we know it's true in a subjective sense.

geo wrote:"What beliefs do we hold that seem irrational, but are nevertheless accepted as fact?"

I can't think of any offhand. Love is irrational, but we know it's true in a subjective sense.

Have you read "Sex at Dawn"?

http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/artic ... h-and-more

Here is an example of a study (with evidence to back it, apparently) that claims monogamy, marriage, the nuclear family, are religious, Judaeo Christian values in origin, and that the evidence indicates sexual interaction was a shared resource, much like food, child care, group defense, etc.

If this is part of our NATURE, would you support polygamous sectors of society? Or do you in this particular instance support religious values that do not support this?

Mormons are just living closer to a state of true NATURE, if you accept this view, right?
Is there in fact a moral base here that nature does not support?

ant wrote:

geo wrote:"What beliefs do we hold that seem irrational, but are nevertheless accepted as fact?"

I can't think of any offhand. Love is irrational, but we know it's true in a subjective sense.

Have you read "Sex at Dawn"?

http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/artic ... h-and-more

Here is an example of a study (with evidence to back it, apparently) that claims monogamy, marriage, the nuclear family, are religious, Judaeo Christian values in origin, and that the evidence indicates sexual interaction was a shared resource, much like food, child care, group defense, etc.

If this is part of our NATURE, would you support polygamous sectors of society? Or do you in this particular instance support religious values that do not support this?

Mormons are just living closer to a state of true NATURE, if you accept this view, right?
Is there in fact a moral base here that nature does not support?

Haven't read Sex At Dawn, but I have no doubt that some cultural values run counter to biological inclinations. I have heard that men in particular are not monogamous by nature. I think there's a biological instinct to spread the seed, as it were, while women are more likely to want to engage in monogamous relationships so as to ensure the survivability of offspring. Perhaps it made more sense at one time, during certain conditions, where a patriarchal and polygamous structure made sense in terms of a clan's survivability.

I think there was also a time when the nuclear family structure became culturally desirable, possibly as a result of the neolithic revolution when we gained more control of our food supply and established more sedentary societies. Under those evolving conditions we began to prize the stability of the nuclear family unit and it would have naturally become embedded in our religious beliefs. I'm not sure if you're suggesting that these beliefs are anything other than culture-based (influenced by conditions on the ground as Robert Wright puts it).

A materialistic view of changing cultural values seems to suggest a sort of moral relativism that I know is difficult to accept. But I'm not sure I would assign a moral value to polygamy, although I do find the idea to be repugnant. Infidelity is a rather destructive behavior and, yet, a large percentage of both males and females are unfaithful to their spouses. As a result, we have a high divorce rate and many children come from broken homes. I think there are many reasons why religion is becoming less relevant in our culture, but it would be difficult to argue that religion has NOT been a positive force especially in terms of social bonding and family cohesion.

I have heard about Inuit families who don't name their babies for the first year of life because there's a chance that during a harsh winter when resources are scarce that the parents may have to kill the baby. Likewise, the Inuits will kill elderly and unproductive people. I've never been able to verify these stories, but you can see how "moral" values could be seen as somewhat relativistic. I think it would be immoral to kill children and elderly if resources were plentiful. But in times of great distress, humans must do what they must to survive. Slavery is wrong today, but I also don't think we can judge our ancestors who lived under very different circumstances.

Would I support polygamous sectors of society? I'd be inclined to say no because usually it means the subjugation of women. And polygamy just doesn't make sense in modern America. When we do see it, it's usually some extremely patriarchal religious cult in Texas that uses the Bible to justify sexual discrimination. However, there are some cultures like Chechnya, where there is a shortage of young men and so it might actually be beneficial to the women to allow polygamy. Likewise, the reverse might be true, a great shortage of women might lead to matriarchal polygamous families (if that's the correct term). Offhand, I don't know why Mormon culture favors polygamy, but I can't imagine there's a good justification for it.

It seems that E. O. Wilson's latest book, The Social Conquest of Earth, might be relevant to the discussion. He argues for a different mechanism to explain altruistic behavior. There is a strong genetic component in a handful of eusocial species that makes group selection at least as important as the individual and kin selection that Dawkins and others have insisted is the only explanation needed for altruistic behavior. This is what the press for the book says, anyway. I haven't read it.

Amazon
Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going? In a generational work of clarity and passion, one of our greatest living scientists directly addresses these three fundamental questions of religion, philosophy, and science while “overturning the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover magazine). Refashioning the story of human evolution in a work that is certain to generate headlines, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to show that group selection, not kin selection, is the primary driving force of human evolution. He proves that history makes no sense without prehistory, and prehistory makes no sense without biology. Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, Wilson presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.

Perhaps our next nonfiction selection.

I was just reading a description on Amazon which uses the title of one of Gauguin's famous paintings as a setup for the book .

Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going?



The interesting thing is that Ronald Wright used Gaughin's three questions to frame his famous Massey lectures which led to his book, A Short History of Progress. Well, maybe not that interesting. Wright's book is great by the way, but it has always been overshadowed by Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsPMaGdg_38

A TED talk about the boundary of life and non-life.

http://www.wimp.com/linelife/

From :

http://www.booktalk.org/post106279.html#p106279

Mr Erickson65
I am merely pointing out that evolutionary theory is pseudoscience it cannot be falsified.

Lets start with this.

How do you falsify evolution?

Evolutoon sets out a very definite set of expectations which if shown to be incorrect would demonstrate that evolution is wrong in those instances and would be in need of correction.

For instance. The common assertion made by misunderstanding critics of evolution that we would predict the pairing of two completely different lineages in some strange hybrid.



But if we ever found this then it would be proof that organisms can and do generate from some other process because evolution specifically sets out how it would be impossible for a crocodile and a duck to produce any offspring.

On the other hand, the real basal species which predates the duck and is evidence of avian emergence is archeopteryx lithographica.



Which is exactly the kind of transitional species predicted by evolution.



This also is not part of evolution. It destroys the phylogeny of both species and suggests that chromosomes do not play the part in reproduction evidence has suggested they play.
Alternatively, you could find what Haldane mentioned.

Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.

In short, to disprove evolution, show that animals from widely diverged lineages may produce viable offspring.

Show that the fossil record has animals widely displaced from where they should be according to the record of fossil ancestry established over the last two hundred years.

Show that reproduction has nothing to do with genetic material.

show that descent with modification does not take place.

show that environmental pressures do NOT select organisms for fitness.

Show that the traits which make organisms fit for their environment are not benefitial, and are not passed to their offspring.

etc...

Mr. Erickson:
To sum it all up you cant defend it because its all just projection. We know that life is complex and that this dogma you hold to violates the second law of thermodynamics. You don't get increasing complexity when things go wrong. You like your god of blind chance are being led by the nose.

The second law of thermodynamics relates to closed systems.

As in a steam engine. The amount of useable energy available in a closed system continually decreases. This is also another way of discussing entropy.

Steam engines need continual input of energy to function, and so does life. Life gets its energy from the sun which is generating energy on a ludicrous scale compared to what is actually captured by the whole of the earth. Approximately 3.846 × 1026 watts of energy a second is generated by the sun.

The earth captures approximately 174 petawatts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_energy_budget

of that only a tiny miniscule amount of energy is captured by photosynthetic life on the planet.

So the answer is, ‘Don’t worry, the second law of thermodynamics is winning.’

The sun is responsible for the useable energy on earth which life uses to do its thing. The extremely vast proportion of energy generated by the sun is lost to space, and that which is captured by life is eventually lost through our wasteful biochemistry. That’s why your body generates heat, and why you need to continually ingest other organisms to survive.

As for “you don’t get increasing complexity when things go wrong”, and that thing about blind chance.

Blind chance is NOT how evolution is successful. Natural Selection is how evolution is successful. For every blind random mutation is tested against the environment. Those mutations which are disadvantageous don’t get to survive. Those which are advantageous survive in greater number than organisms with either defects, or without the advantage. This is all a deterministic set of selection pressures applied by the environment which alter an animal’s morphology through the generations.

Evolution is so successful because it retains advantages and eliminates disadvantages. Not through any conscious effort, but through the mechanistic interactions of organisms and their environments.

Both of these problems are common misunderstandings. First is the thermodynamics complaint which is really a misapplied critique favored by creationists, latching onto a concept they don’t understand which seems to validate their opposition of another thing they don’t understand, and the second about mutation is a real misunderstanding that I have encountered before from common people, rather than opponents.

A characteristic of proteins is their convoluted shapes.

These shapes seem to be as important as their actual chemical makeup. For instance, the sugar produced by sugar beets has a characteristic which you could think of as “right handed”

This characteristic results in interesting interactions with light. For instance, polarized light will be rotated by these molecules is suspended in water always to the right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Past ... _asymmetry

We can make these sugar molecules ourselves but when we pass light through dissolved synthetic sugar water, the polarized light doesn’t rotate. That’s because the sugar we produce has equal amounts of “right handed” and “left handed” molecules. They are chemically identical in every way except that their structures are mirrored.

Biology only makes use of “right handed” sugar. If you let bacteria that eats sugar loose in the solution they will only eat half the sugar and leave the left handed sugar behind. It’s as though you are building a car and you find a box full of the screws you need, but half of them the screw teeth spin the wrong way. You can’t make use of those screws.

After the bacteria have consumed all the useable sugar, polarized light passing through gets turned left, instead of right, as only the “left handed” sugar remains.

This pattern persists throughout biology. Proteins, sugars etc… are all biased in favor of "right handedness" and it is consistent throughout the tree of life. By accident one flavor of “handedness” was more successful than the other in reproduction of pre-biotic life, and as a result that is the type of “screw” we’ve been using ever since.

This is an example of evolutionary heritage that traces all the way back to the molecular level.

I first heard of this through a talk by Dr. Richard Feynman. Everyone should get some more Feynman in their lives.