LanDroid wrote:

And the God of the Bible either encouraging or supporting wars is not an example of a God in the bible claiming to be the God of War.

Heh, that Diety instructs armies to kill all soldiers, men, and women - all livestock and animals - and anything left that breathes. You're making a distinction without a difference!

Anyway, you question Dawkins' statement that there is no purposeful driving force in nature while deflecting all requests for evidence for such a force.

This reply is stupid and does not address contradiction and error in reasoning Dawkins has spouted.

More fallacious arguments from ignorance by Dawkins groupies
But please, continue with the fallacies. Its all youve got.

but please, continue with the insults, they're all you've got

geo wrote:

LyndaO wrote:Flatfish flounders taste really good, Geo.

Driving force? Staying alive. Most life wants to stay alive and works toward that end. Is that a driving force? It's the 'keep on stepping' rule.


Here's an interesting article:
http://philosophynow.org/issues/99/Simon_Blackburn
Maybe I'll start a thread on Infidels.

I hope everyone has a great New Year!

What a great interview with Simon Blackburn, thanks for posting. I really like the term "infidel" as well. I've come to realize the word "atheist" is meaningless without first defining "god" or whatever we're calling it these days, and no one wants to even try that.

Anyway, I spent much time on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill over the last couple of years while my wife was working towards her M.A. Had I known about Blackburn, I might have tried to sit in on one of his classes.

This was a great response I thought:

Is it possible to disprove the existence of God? And if not, shouldn’t you be an agnostic?

Being an infidel, that is, just having no faith, I do not have to prove anything. I have no faith in the Loch Ness Monster, but do not go about trying to prove that it does not exist, although there are certainly overwhelming arguments that it does not. And at least there is a fairly determinate meaning attached to the idea that there is one.

Im surprised at your thinking an idiotic reason such as not having faith gives you reason not to having to prove anything.
i mean really? The Loch Ness Monster and questions of creation and purpose are equal in your book?
Thats "great" reasoning?

Are teachers really this stupid these days!
Wow!

The Loch Ness Monster does not exist because there is yet to be any evidence for it.
Therefore purpose in Nature, or driving force within Nature does not exist!

LMAO!!!!



You cant make this stuff up!!

ant wrote:purpose in Nature

what is "purpose in nature" exactly ant?

ant wrote:driving force within Nature

again, what exactly is that?

if you can't clearly define what you mean by these terms we can hardly be blamed for doubting their existence.

is it this sort of thing?

http://www.bu.edu/cas/2012/10/19/even-s ... concludes/

“It is quite surprising what these studies show,” says Kelemen. “Even though advanced scientific training can reduce acceptance of scientifically inaccurate teleological explanations, it cannot erase a tenacious early-emerging human tendency to find purpose in nature. It seems that our minds may be naturally more geared to religion than science.”

ant wrote:The Loch Ness Monster does not exist because there is yet to be any evidence for it.
Therefore purpose in Nature, or driving force within Nature does not exist!

LMAO!!!!



You cant make this stuff up!!

Actually, you're the one making stuff up and you're the only one saying there's "no purpose in nature." No one else has said it, although you keep pretending they do. It's just one more Ant-concocted strawman. I even posted a link earlier to an article that suggests evolution follows a predictable pattern, not random at all.

Somehow you're also connecting something Blackburn said with your own misinterpretation of Dawkins' comment in Slate when the two have no connection at all. I certainly can't follow this twisted logic of yours..

ant wrote: Is it anthropocentric to believe man is the only life with driving force in a developing cosmos that is 14 billions years old in the making?

"There is no such thing as a driving force"
Really?
That's a mega- grand universal claim to make: one that atheists are happy to bandwagon for the sake of supporting a personal worldview that's what, not a product of their psychological makeup?
Seems questionable and leaves me skeptical.

Going back to this original post of Ant's because this is what started the whole conversation on "driving force." If you actually read the Slate article, you will see that Dawkins uses the term as it applies to the idea of natural section on a group level. Dawkins has always taken the position that evolution works on a gene level, not on a group level. As such it makes perfect sense for him to say that there's "no such thing as a driving force" because he's taking about group selection and this is the only consistent position with Dawkins' gene-centered view of evolution which he has advocated for more than 30 years.

So unless Ant is actually taking a position on group selection versus gene selection, which I strongly doubt, his entire diatribe against Dawkins here is based on a misreading of the term "driving force." Ant's use of "driving force" is in a completely different context than how Dawkins uses the term.

But this is hardly surprising, the same kind of strawman mentality that we see from Ant all the time. He makes up a position based on his own lack of understanding and then attacks it. Unbelieveable. I certainly feel like a horse's ass for taking the time to respond to this silly nonsense. I think I just came up with a New Year's resolution.

ant wrote:Why would a species develop emotions?

i dunno, why not? have you got any ideas?

ant wrote:And do not emotions act as a "driving force" to increase a species chances of selection?

suppose emotions do act as a "driving force", what would that indicate to you.

i always have a hard time figuring out what the deuce you are "driving at"

i often wish you would help out a little by explaining and elucidating your ideas.

ant, is it that you disagree with and even perhaps resent the idea that certain people might hold that is ...reductionism, materialism ... do you adhere to the idea that there should be allowance made for some sort of "cosmic intelligence" behind the universe and life on earth?

do you resent militant atheists for having what you perceive as a "2D view of a 3D world"?

i'm afraid unless you clearly state what you want to say we will have to keep guessing what you are driving at.

seems inefficient when you could help us out by saying plainly what you think.

are you saying that the existence of emotions is an argument against something Richard Dawkins said?

that the existence of emotions is an argument against materialism, reductionism etc

you want to argue for a "ghost in the machine" ? is that it?

you want to argue that people should not try to assert that they know much at all and nowhere near enough to dismiss some as yet undefinable transcendant mystery behind the physical universe as we meagerly know it?

well good luck to you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_EUVUHJaU0

perhaps all the universe is a manifestation of an as yet transcendant mystery, i often feel that way when i listen to good music.

I can only surmise that the people who seem to be bothered most by hints of intelligence within Nature beyond our ken are subconsciously tortured by their personal Cosmic Daddy issues.

ant, when you say

bothered most by hints of intelligence within Nature beyond our ken

could you give an example of the kind of thing you mean?

ant wrote: "Creative" does imply Mind however.
To say that brains are the only creative force in Nature is anthropocentric and arrogantly presumptuous.
To say ours is the only creative mind universally is to say our intelligence is enough to assert the objective proposition,
"There is NO purposeful driving force in nature"
And that is an Argument from Ignorance.

Perhaps the great hangup is that above all other qualities that we possess, planning may be the most important. We're the animal who plans, having survived apparently solely due to the ability we developed to plan. As we look at the world, we've always had trouble believing that there is not also a plan to all we can see in the present or learn about the history of life. We therefore project planning onto the world, and our instinct that assigns agency also comes into play and makes this agency the Great Planner. It isn't until very recently that we've been able to conceive of things coming about in an emergent fashion, without preconception or intention to arrive at any particular result. Evolution looks like an emergent process; so does the evolution of all aspects of human culture. Stuart Kaufmann says these processes are partly beyond explanation through natural law, and that natural law can't be used to predict the course of evolution. That is what he calls creativity. Creativity for him is real and can't be explained through physics ("particles in motion"). But there is nothing about it that has to include human ideas of purpose or intent.

That idea might seem to clash again with our idea of creativity, but it has similarity in that when people try to describe creative process, they often do so without any reference to purpose and intent. If they have purpose or intent in mind beforehand, they might even fail in their creativity.

Does all this mean that "mind" exists outside of ourselves? Maybe mind is itself an anthropocentric term. We don't know, though we can believe if we're inclined. Although it's not my belief (because of my state of not-knowing), it is certainly a reasonable belief.

If our understanding is limited, and like you, we acknowledged it is, to say nature is endlessly creative but not purposeful in any way we understand completely is saying we can not define nature as "blind" or without a "driving force" (also is pregnant with connotations of Intelligence).

You're right. We can't define.

define state or describe exactly the nature, scope, or meaning of. ORIGIN Late Middle English, to bring to an end; Latin definire, from de- (expressing completion) + finire 'finish' (from finis end).