Athiests : How did you loose you're faith?

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote: »

There are loads of gaps in evolution. Only a tiny percentage of dead animals turn to fossils. It is doubtful that one of every species that has existed on Earth turned into a fossil and more doubtful that we will find everyone one that did.

As for no transitional species being observed that is just Creationist nonsense, their "favourite lie" as Donald Prothero puts it (not calling you a creationist, but where ever you got your information they were lying to you).

There have been thousands of transitional species found in the fossil record. An example is the evolution of the whale, which can be clearly charted in the fossil record.

The known fossil record is now very rich. A geologist called Prothero has just published what is, in effect, a big book of transitional fossil sequences called Evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters. Ten examples of such sequences or living intermediates (velvet worms, lancelets, 'fishibians', synapsids, ceratopsians, rhinos, giraffes, icthyosaurs, pinnipeds and manatees) are reviewed in March 1st's New Scientist.

Wicknight wrote: »

To claim the neo-Darwinian evolution is unsupported is to simply demonstrate an ignorance of neo-Darwinian evolution. What annoyes me is when people wrap this up in the guise of healthy scepticism ... when in fact all they are doing is demonstrating ignorance of the subject and swallowing hook line and sinker the nonsense propagated by non-scientific Creationist sources. I couldn't think of a worse example of being non-sceptical.

Yes, there needs to be some sort of reminder slogans like:

1. automatically believing things to be untrue simply because they are widely accepted is not skepticism, but a form of credulity

2. if you have no standard of proof, you cannot be skeptical, only cynical

3. uninformed 'skepticism' is either credulity or cynicism, as above

4. always remember to doubt your own skepticism as much as other people's faith

Suggestions welcome. Does the skeptics' forum have a "guide to skepticism"?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Lockstep

Wicknight wrote: »

I have no idea what you mean by "religion evolution", but the theories of neo-Darwinian biological evolution is falsifiable, as is all scientific theory.

I meant "religion,evolution (as in neither religion or evolution can be falsified)

What tests can be done to show evolution occurs?
It's a bit like Marxism-Why hasn't the revolution happened yet?
"Because the conditions havn't been right yet.

Why hasn't any evolution been observed for this species?
Because the conditions werent right.

Wicknight wrote: »

There are loads of gaps in evolution. Only a tiny percentage of dead animals turn to fossils. It is doubtful that one of every species that has existed on Earth turned into a fossil and more doubtful that we will find everyone one that did.

As for no transitional species being observed that is just Creationist nonsense, their "favourite lie" as Donald Prothero puts it (not calling you a creationist, but where ever you got your information they were lying to you).

Meh, it was all in school in Belgium. Although they were rabidly secular. Instead of doing religion in school we did philosophy. Information I gave about transitional species was in the biology textbook. I'll dig out the title for you when I get home if I still have it knocking around the house.


I am most certainly no a creationist. Just for the record.

Wicknight wrote: »

It is possible to observe evolution, biologists do it all the time.

Go on?

Wicknight wrote: »

There is no "real proof" of anything in science, if you read Popper you would know this. All there are are theories (models) that are tested through observation and prediction to see how accurate they are. You can never prove anything in science because you never know your model is 100% accurate (since you have nothing external to the universe to measure this against)

Neo-Darwinian biological evolution has been tested and tested over and over again countless times. It has been found to match prediction and observation.

It has of course been altered and tweaked countless times since Darwins time to be more and more accurate a model of observation and prediction, hence the "neo" bit at the start.

To claim the neo-Darwinian evolution is unsupported is to simply demonstrate an ignorance of neo-Darwinian evolution. What annoyes me is when people wrap this up in the guise of healthy scepticism ... when in fact all they are doing is demonstrating ignorance of the subject and swallowing hook line and sinker the nonsense propagated by non-scientific Creationist sources. I couldn't think of a worse example of being non-sceptical.

Popper himself was a believer in evolution but not that it was fully capable of being falsified.

- Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection are hard to come by" (Popper, 1978, p.344).


I'm aware nothing can be proved under Popper, but certain things can be tested against others and if they manage to withstand such tests, they can be considered scientific (although it's been a few years since I read Popper)


I honestly fail to see how Evolution can be tested.

In your whale example, what's not to say that God/Allah/Jehovah put all of those fossisl and skeletons in as a joke? There are no witnesses/no ways to fully test this and I'd consider evolution to be unscientific.

905

36Degrees wrote: »

Assumption: something taken for granted; a supposition. It is also the mother of all feckups.

Belief is belief. Its basically your opinion, ie. what you personally believe to be true/untrue.

Buy a damn dictionary.

Am I to conclude then that science is based on feckups and taking things for granted?

Wreck

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Wicknight wrote:

I have no idea what you mean by "religion evolution", but the theories of neo-Darwinian biological evolution is falsifiable, as is all scientific theory.

I meant "religion,evolution (as in neither religion or evolution can be falsified)
What tests can be done to show evolution occurs?

You are misinterpreting the concept of falsifiability. To state that a theory is falsifiable does not mean it can necessarily be tested to show it to be true. What it means is that there is hypothetically some observational evidence that would disprove the theory. In the case of evolution, there are a huge amount of hypothetical observations that would disprove the theory, therefore it is very much falsifiable.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Popper himself was a believer in evolution but not that it was fully capable of being falsified.
- Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection are hard to come by" (Popper, 1978, p.344).

Popper originally claimed that evolution was unfalsifiable, but later came to recant this.

Pompey Magnus

kickoutthejams wrote: »

I honestly fail to see how Evolution can be tested.

The peppered moth up until the 19th century was lightly coloured with a scattering of black spots on its body, this was ideal for camoflage against the light coloured trees and lichen of England. The industrial revolution created massive amounts of pollution and soot to be emitted from the numerous factories that were springing up. The pollution killed off much of the lichen and many of the trees that the peppered moth hid on became covered in soot.

During the 19th century a mutation occurred in one moth which caused it to be born with a completely black body. While the moths with the traditional light colour were being picked off by predators as their light colour now stood out against the dark soot the desendents of the black bodies mutant began to prosper. Within 100 years, a blink of an eye geologically speaking, 90% of the entire population of peppered moths were black bodied.

The are plenty more examples of animals and plants evolving, just look at dogs, a few thousand years ago they were wild wolves, today they are poodles and chihuahuas. Modern docile cattle evolved from wild aurochs and evolved a docile nature and large milk capacity as these were favoured traits in their environment.

It would be quite easy to test evolution, just find something in nature that evolution cannot possible explain and you will falsify it. If a geologist discovers a homo sapien skull inside the ribcage of a tyrannosaurus and evolution will be proven wrong. Fortunately for evolution it explains the natural world amazingly well.

Zombrex

kickoutthejams wrote: »

What tests can be done to show evolution occurs?

There is an entire branch of evolution biology called experimental evolution dedicated to do just that. If you couldn't test evolution with experiment all these people would just be sitting around reading the Sun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolution

And interesting factoid from the wikipedia page that I didn't myself know is that the longest running experiment ever conducted, Richard Lenski's experiment with E.Coli, is in the field of experimental evolution.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Why hasn't any evolution been observed for this species?

If by "this species" you mean humans, evolution has been observed and documented a large number of times in humans. In the Economist magazine (newspaper?) 3 weeks ago they were reporting on a study just published that detailed recent human evolution. They discovered a number of significant changes in areas such as the human immune system.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Information I gave about transitional species was in the biology textbook.

I would he surprised if any scientific text book published after the 1861 (the discovery of Archaeopteryx, one of the first discovered transitional fossils) would claim there were no transitional species fossils.

But if it did it was wrong.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Go on?

Well that is basically it. It is possible to observe neo-Darwinian evolution, biologists do it all the time. Such observations form the basis of experimental evolution.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Popper himself was a believer in evolution but not that it was fully capable of being falsified.
- Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection are hard to come by" (Popper, 1978, p.344).

That isn't true, and if you had quoted the full passage of Popper's 1978 work you would have got to the part where he specifically says evolution is testable and falsifiable.

Karl Popper wrote:

"However, Darwin's own most important contribution to the theory of evolution, his theory of natural selection, is difficult to test. There are some tests, even some experimental tests; and in some cases, such as the famous phenomenon known as 'industrial melanism', we can observe natural selection happening under our very eyes, as it were. The fact that the theory of natural selection is difficult to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and even some great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology. A tautology like 'All tables are tables' is not, of course, testable; nor has it any explanatory power.
...
I mention this problem because I too belong among the culprits. Influenced by what these authorities say, I have in the past described the theory as 'almost tautological', and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest.
...
Nevertheless, I have changed my mind about the testability and the logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. My recantation may, I hope, contribute a little to the understanding of the status of natural selection.

Popper initially believed that evolution (well actually just natural selection) was non-falsifiable, yet still very useful. He believed this because he mistakenly believed that "survival of the fittest" was a tautology (only the fittest survive and the fittest are the ones that did survive).

After he made his initial comments evolutionary biologists explained to him that the fitness of an organism can be determined independently to it surviving. This allows biologists to test if the fittest actually do survive. This makes natural selection testable and falsifiable (if the fittest didn't survive, or were no more likely to survive, that would falsify natural selection).

He therefore recanted his previous objection (as all good scientists should do when corrected), while maintain that it is still quite difficult to test (he is right, it is). Something being difficult to test though doesn't mean you can't test it nor does it mean it is not falsifiable.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_5_28/ai_n6194235
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211_1.html

kickoutthejams wrote: »

I honestly fail to see how Evolution can be tested.

Well I would imagine that is because you are not an evolutionary biologist.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

In your whale example, what's not to say that God/Allah/Jehovah put all of those fossisl and skeletons in as a joke? There are no witnesses/no ways to fully test this and I'd consider evolution to be unscientific.

That is a bit silly logic.

Physically seeing something does not demonstrate that something supernatural didn't happen, because if you allow supernatural things into the theory in the first place then the observations themselves could have been altered.

What is to say that God didn't create the universe 2 minutes ago and embed all your memories in your head? This is itself untestable (how can you test your memories aren't 2 minutes old), so proclaim that you have demonstrated that this didn't happen is unscientific. That is the reason "God" or some other all powerful being is never, ever, included in scientific theories because his presence or lack of presence is completely untestable.

Even if you saw the animal die, saw the animal fossilise, that still doesn't demonstrate that God didn't fake it, because God can do anything and could have been messing with your head, your eye sight and your memories.

pH

kickoutthejams wrote: »

I'm aware nothing can be proved under Popper, but certain things can be tested against others and if they manage to withstand such tests, they can be considered scientific (although it's been a few years since I read Popper)

"Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."

"Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists."
Richard Feynman

I honestly fail to see how Evolution can be tested.

In your whale example, what's not to say that God/Allah/Jehovah put all of those fossisl and skeletons in as a joke? There are no witnesses/no ways to fully test this and I'd consider evolution to be unscientific.

Once you allow a trickster God into the equation then pretty much everything becomes meaningless - I mean a God capable of planting fossils as a joke is equally capable of changing memories or interfering with say every experiment that measure the speed of light. Science is pointless, in fact pretty much everything is pointless in that scenario.

robindch

Scofflaw wrote: »

Does the skeptics' forum have a "guide to skepticism"?

Here's a short outline of skepticism that I wrote a while back in the Irish Skeptics forum:

robindch wrote: »

What does it mean to be a skeptic? In short, it’s a way of looking at the claims that people make, by asking the 'how' questions and the 'why' questions, and not accepting the claims as valid until some supporting evidence appears and has been judged. Or, even briefer, when someone makes an extraordinary claim, the skeptic says “That’s interesting – now why should I believe you?” And that’s about it.

Unlike most philosophies, skepticism doesn’t tell you what to think, rather, it helps you with thinking itself. And that’s why a skeptic isn't required to hold any particular position on any controversial topic (though many do, since reliable evidence frequently points in one direction only). Instead, skepticism is a process designed to weed out faulty ideas, so that when it’s properly applied, the skeptic will arrive at a way of looking at the world which is based upon facts and guided by reason, and not by unfounded hopes or beliefs.

Again, unlike most philosophies, because of its evidence-based approach, skepticism doesn’t deal in absolute truths or absolute conclusions, because the evidence which supports the current conclusion might be wrong, and might need to be revised, or thrown away, when some new and conflicting piece of evidence appears. This means that skepticism deals in provisional conclusions, supported by provisionally-agreed facts.

Since skeptics tend to ask questions, they can come across in conversation as picky, or even worse, needlessly argumentative. This is unfortunate, because it leaves many with an impression of skepticism as something negative or disapproving, when it's quite the opposite: a process of learning how to ask the right questions, and how to interpret the answers given (if any), and along the way, probably losing many of the comforting, but faulty, beliefs of childhood.

In Ireland, as elsewhere, skeptics are a small, but growing and increasingly-coordinated, movement which hopes to counterbalance the spread of untenable, or anti-social, beliefs, many of which can harm, or take advantage of, the unwary or the trusting. These stretch from the mostly benign absurdity of astrology and the lucrative, tax-free and politically dominant, fundamentalist religious industries currently rampant in the USA, to the potentially life-threatening decisions made by untrained people in the alternative medicine business. Skepticism offers a way to see through these artful fantasies and view the world as it really is, not as it we'd like it to be, or other people would like us to think that it is.

Carl Sagan wrote a longer and more specific baloney detection kit which is on the internet here and here.

Ickle Magoo

I didn't loose my faith. I don't remember a time when I ever had any. My Mum says I started question my parents religious beliefs when I was a pre-schooler - something didn't add up then & the whole concept has become less convincing the older I got.

Simon.d

Depeche_Mode wrote: »

During the 19th century a mutation occurred in one moth which caused it to be born with a completely black body.

Just to be pedantic.. the mutation didn't occur in the 19th century, it was a trait within the species a lot longer than that..
The dark pigment genotype just began to dominate the population as the resting place of these animals was discoloured..

It's a good example, but a better one me thinks, that can be observed in very short time frames is HIV.. It has such an unstable & clumsy method of rewriting DNA so that mutations are extremely frequent within a viral population, which unfortunately for the HIV sufferer means the organism adapts quite quickly to various drug therapies..

Another example is MRSA.. This bacterial strain evolved in the last few years as a genotype that could evade it's predator (i.e. antibiotics)..

robindch

Simon.d wrote: »

Another example is MRSA.. This bacterial strain evolved in the last few years as a genotype that could evade it's predator (i.e. antibiotics)..

I was thinking of this when I saw an ad this morning on the telly for some silicon-based sealant with anti-bacterial additives. At the bottom of the screen, it said that the anti-bacterial additives had been tested in the lab for less one week only(*)

(*) Yes, I know it's a slightly different issue, but what the hell

Rabidlamb

I dislike the term "Lose your faith" as it implies that you've given away something of value. A better quote would be "When did you gain your sanity ?".

Anyway, I was full of Jesus when I was young, altar server & all that.
Around 16 I learned about that Roman emperor in 300 AD, think it was Constadine, who embraced the Catholic Church for his own political gain. Then I began to see all religions for what they really are, a means to control the masses.

Long live secular Europe, God Bless America.

stereoroid

905 wrote: »

But Stalin was an atheist.

Yes, and he was also a megalomaniac, who eventually thought he had god-like authority. Have a read of Khruschev's Secret Speech (1956) before you try to hold up Stalin as an exemplar of an atheist, please. He

practiced brutal violence, not only toward everything which opposed him, but also toward that which seemed, to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts.

He attacked the Orthodox Church in Russia, which allows theists to create the "violent atheism" myth - but they should be reminded that the Church was suppressed because it was an authority among the people of Russia, in opposition to the Party. You might compare Stalin with Mussolini, who was faced with an even more powerful Vatican, knew he couldn't defeat it (even if he wanted to), and managed to co-opt them in the creation of his Fascist regime. They applauded his actions, cementing their power base in Rome, and during WW2 they had a free hand to plunder Europe's resources...

905

stereoroid wrote: »

Yes, and he was also a megalomaniac, who eventually thought he had god-like authority. Have a read of Khruschev's Secret Speech (1956) before you try to hold up Stalin as an exemplar of an atheist, please. He

I'll never attempt an in-joke again. I wasn't being serious.

Anyway, how did being brutal and despotic diminish his atheism?

Dades

Urk! We don't need another off-topic Stalin debate...
905 was clarifying his understanding of a running joke, stereoroid.

New thread or original topic please!

Dades

Dades wrote: »

New thread or original topic please!

Last chance...

Don't make me pick someones post to start a new thread...
A bit off topic is fine but this a de-railing.

robindch

Dades wrote: »

Don't make me pick someones post to start a new thread...

Oh, go on -- I think it's time that we put that arrant Stalin nonsense to bed once and for all

Dades

Done and done. :pac:

Taters

Simple really, I was about eight or seven, I was being taught something for the Holy Communion, and I suddenly realised that it was very silly to believe in it.
Then I went home and asked my brothers (who were much older) for their views, and then I lost all faith.
It didn't help that in sixth class, I had a creepy teacher who was obsessed with religion, he made us read one of them mini-gospels in one day!

I guess I was a smart kid...

death1234567

I lost my faith down the back of the sofa.