How to argue?

[Miles]

No really? What do you say to the guy that declares Evolution a sham and the only other solution is Intelligent design?

[J.O.]

No really? What do you say to the guy that declares Evolution a sham and the only other solution is Intelligent design?

I say, "Prove it with science".

[RussD]

No really? What do you say to the guy that declares Evolution a sham and the only other solution is Intelligent design?

Point them towards Dawkins' latest piece 'The Greatest Show on Earth' Dawkins maybe an angry atheist, but his logic and enthusiasm in defending Darwin's 'Theory' makes for a good read. However intelligent design believers will probably perceive even the most convincing argument as a test of their faith and reject any argument on that basis. It is a good read read for your own edification tho.

[Miles]

Point them towards Dawkins' latest piece 'The Greatest Show on Earth' Dawkins maybe an angry atheist, but his logic and enthusiasm in defending Darwin's 'Theory' makes for a good read. However intelligent design believers will probably perceive even the most convincing argument as a test of their faith and reject any argument on that basis. It is a good read read for your own edification tho.

Already tried that, and it is definitely a great book since he directly argues the creationists/ID'ers.

Actually I have hope for him since he's a convert to ID and an ex-evolutionist, maybe I can undo the programming

[AME]

Or you can simply say, good for you, and be secure enough in your own beliefs that you don't feel the need to make him wrong, in order for your beliefs to be right.

[Miles]

AME;

Absolutely; that's probably the finest and most respectful answer that can be given.

Don

Man, where's the fun in that!? Don't worry, it won't come to blows, but it'll pass the time quickly on a long boring flight! When he tells me with absolute certainty that while he concedes that a species can evolve within a species, he says the concept of a species becoming another species is utter BS. Monkeys don't give birth to humans. When I argue that the time span involved is so great that the human mind can't really fathom how many thousands upon thousands of generations it would take for a monkey to become a human as we know it on our particular 'branch' on the 'tree of life' so to speak, his answer is that since a single living cell is more complicated than a jet airliner, how is it possible that something as complicated as a single cell can replicate itself, yet a jet airliner as simple as it is, can't replicate itself proves that evolution is impossible... this is what I'm up against from a guy I consider intelligent!

[Seeker]

Man, where's the fun in that!? Don't worry, it won't come to blows, but it'll pass the time quickly on a long boring flight! When he tells me with absolute certainty that while he concedes that a species can evolve within a species, he says the concept of a species becoming another species is utter BS. Monkeys don't give birth to humans. When I argue that the time span involved is so great that the human mind can't really fathom how many thousands upon thousands of generations it would take for a monkey to become a human as we know it on our particular 'branch' on the 'tree of life' so to speak, his answer is that since a single living cell is more complicated than a jet airliner, how is it possible that something as complicated as a single cell can replicate itself, yet a jet airliner as simple as it is, can't replicate itself proves that evolution is impossible... this is what I'm up against from a guy I consider intelligent!

Ahhhh, there's a rather large error in your thinking here; monkeys do not evolve into humans. Monkeys and humans share a common ancestor, humans followed one evolutionary path and monkeys followed another. This certainly does not imply that you can take a monkey and cause it to evolve into a human (given any amount of time) nor could you take humans and cause them to evolve into monkeys. This is a common misunderstanding and the root of much of the problem, IMO. If you could go back the millions of years and see our common ancestor, which would be quite unlike humans or monkeys, and watch the slow process as one band "chooses" to live in the trees and the other "chooses" to hunt on the savannah you could watch the slow progression toward modern monkeys and modern humans.

Edit; I found this this link on the PBS Evolution page which explains it even better:

PBS Evolution FAQs

[Moon The Loon]

I've "believed" for a very long time that the circumstance that made present day humans evolve the way we have was the discovery of how to make and use fire, together with the consumption of cooked food. One or more enzymes in the cooked food affected our ancient brain and we began to grow away from the other animals into what we are today. Somebody, sometime will probably do a thesis on the subject. A thousand years after it's written, it will be called the new bible!

[RussD]

Miles;

......

You might begin by examining the historical arguments for the existence of God. That is an area of metaphysics, not religion. Formal logic began with Plato and even moreso with Aristotle and has been used ever since to argue the logical case for the existence of a creator.

.......

Robert Wright's 'The Evolution of God' (the title is just so wrong from the fundamentalist's POV ) is an excellent and balanced narrative on the history of faith. As the author said he has managed to piss off friends of faith and atheists all within confines of one book.

[GDR]

Actually the answer to this whole question is really pretty simple. If you look at the fossil record they find have found that single celled creatures existed very early on in our planet's history. Given the complexity of a single living cell, the odds against a single cell forming by random chance in that period of time is beyond comprehension. It remained that way for about 3.5 billion years and then along came the cambrian period about 530 million years ago when the evolutionary process went on a rampage producing a plethora of new species in a comparitively short period of time. Once again the odds against this happening by random chance and natural selection alone are staggering.

The answer to the original question then becomes obvious.

Evolution was intelligently designed. Simple eh?

Greg

[sustainable]

Try the Blind Watchmaker Greg, It handled your simple explanation 20 years ago.

[Don Hudson]

RussD, thanks for the recommendation. In the excerpts I read, there are hints of Joseph Campbell's approach to gods, religion and those stories which have wide commonality among many religions such as virgin births, resurrection after death and other memes.

Miles, I seem to have missed the mark again by perhaps over-complicating things. I was hoping to both moderate and broaden the question you asked which is an important one and isn't responded to easily. The two responses were intended to convey the difficulties faced when trying to convince another about ideas they do not see as viable or even possible.

Nevertheless there are other, more material ways in which the creationists' account of life on earth may be approached. Showing that an argument cannot be contradictory and still true is a standard approach. Finding inconsistency in arguments intended to persuade is even something that children learn very early in adults' arguments regarding controlling behaviour. "Yeah, but..." is the oldest rebuttal, providing it can point to a logical contradiction.

You might approach your friend's arguments for creationism in the following way, which is not a "technique" or merely facile argument but a true philosophical argument.

Dawkins demonstrates in many places where creationist argument is not sustainable, therefore requiring an accounting of the inconistency. Metaphysical arguments about reality work the same way.

The argument focusses on the creationist fascination with the fossil record, especially the gaps in the fossil record; creationists argue that gaps in the fossil record weaken the argument for evolution. The discussion is on pages 147 - 150 of The Greatest Show on Earth and goes something like this:

Creationists believe that all creatures, including a species of flatworms, were created in a week. ("Progressive" Creationists do not insist on a 24hr/7day week, but that is immaterial even if all was created in six-thousand years). Dawkins continues:

If all creatures were created in a week, each species had exactly the same time to fossilize.

Flatworms were living alongside all those creatures who were depositing their skeletal remains to be fossilized.

Flatworms who were without skeletal structures left no trace of their existence.

Creatures with skeletons left some fossilized remains, thereby leaving a record.

There are gaps in the fossilized record of most creatures.

Such gaps are used by creationists to deny evolution.

There is a large gap in the record of the flatworm's existence simply because they did not fossilize.

Creationists' account of life insist that all life was created at once, in a week.

The gap in the flatworm's record which can be accounted for cannot then be used without contradiction to discount evolution due to gaps in the fossilized record.

Sometimes formal logic has more than an academic use.

Don

[GDR]

Try the Blind Watchmaker Greg, It handled your simple explanation 20 years ago

I've read a fair bit of Dawkins and I find his arguments for evolution that is completely based on random chance and natural selection uncompelling. What he writes in that regard is an explanation of how he sees it could have happened. The Blind Watchmaker was written to refute Paley's argument that the eye required all of its constituent parts to be able to function. Dawkins and others were able to outline an evolutionary process for the development of the eye. It's all theory and from my perspective it doesn't make any difference to my point whether or not the theory is corect. The eye is still extremely complex and even if their theory is correct I still maintain that it is much more likely that there was an intelligence that designed the process just as they described it.

Neither his atheism nor my theism can be proven scientifically. They are both positions that are held by faith. It is my contention that our lives and the world we live in is better explained by the idea of an intelligent designer than it is to accept that there is something instead of nothing -that particles came together to form atoms - atome came together to form molecules - that molecules came together to form an incredibly complex cell - that cells mutated in such a way to form not only life but also consciousness, and all by random chance.

I admire Dawkins for his ability to have that much faith. I can't muster up that amount myself.

Just so I'm clear I have no problem with evolution. I don't pretend to have the knowledge to comment on it one way or the other. I only have a problem with evolution that happened without design whether the design was in place at the outset or whether it was adjusted as time marched along.

[Specs]

I recall a topical argument from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy -

If it was God's intention that the path to God and spirituality was only to be achieved through faith and belief, then why would on earth would God create a creature that simply could not have evolved on it's own to where it was without divine intervention, and thereby negate the need for faith and belief.

[boestar]

This may be an oversimplification but I am a simple guy.

The Lotto 649 is a Random drawing 0f 6 numbers out of a possible 49 resulting in a 1 in 14,000,000 (approx) chance of winning the jackpot. By RANDOM chance people win.

If there are 100,000,000,000 stars in the galaxy and lets say 1,000,000 contain solar systems (these are round numbers for demonstration purposes Mitch probably know the "real" numbers) then if there were a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of life existing elsewhere in some form (complex organism) then the chances are pretty good that random selection has come together elsewhere in the universe.

That is to say if we were to discover "complex Organisnms" on another planet, would we uphold the creationist theory or random selection?

[boestar]

One other observation Re evolution.

We have solid evidence that the genome takes on characteristics of both parents. If we look at Dogs for example we can interbreed 2 different breeds of dog to come up with another breed that has characteristics of both parents. This is evolution in and of itself. The 2 breeds have "evolved" into a 3rd breed. This goes on every day. Today we have hundreds ofnew breeds of dog that we did not have 20 years ago let alone 1000 years ago. Dogs are bread to have specific characterists that are required by the breeder. Hunters, retrievers, ratters etc. These breeds were "Created" by UNnatural selection of course but the same thing could happen by random chance in the wild as dogs in the wild will breed with other breeds of dog.

So I would think that Evolution should not be in dispute at all. We as a species are evolving as is every other species on the planet (although some would say the human race in DE-evolving). The question is and always was where did the first cell that divided into 2 cells that divided into 4 cells etc. come from. It all begins there with 1 cell.

Now myself am unsure what to believe as I watched a program that described the mapping of the human genome and the functions it performs over our life time from the first cell and on through life. The DNA molecule is SO COMPLEX it is hard to comprehend that something thought it up and "Designed" it. Even the best genetic scientists in the world don't fully understand its complexities.

So while I believe in natural selection and random chance AFTER THE FACT. I still wonder if the DNA Molecule was "DEPOSITIED" on this little blue marble because the conditions were right for it to flourish.

[chockalicious]

I am all for a good arguement but is this an arguement worth having?

You are basically trying argue someone out of their faith which I think is impossible. I have gone down this road with extended family and logic takes a back seat when it comes to what a person believes.

Maybe talk about the weather or sports

[GDR]

By coincidence this morning I received an e-mail from Amazon promoting a new book. This scientist gives us an entirely different take on evolution. (It actually belongs in the thread that Mitch started on the book Quantum Enigma a few months back.) The folllowing is a review of the book from that site.

Occasionally a person can read a book that parallels his/her most recent thoughts on a given subject matter. This was such a book for me. The author, in a clear and convincing manner, shows that evolution did not in time create consciousness. Instead, consciousness has always been in existence and was present during the 'big bang'. Being so, this phenomenon leaves us with a series of interesting questions. What was the original level of consciousness? Was it primitive or advanced? Did this consciousness guide the process of evolution itself? Is there an end point that it is aiming towards, or have we already reached it? Other intriguing factors include the anomaly that reality itself is solely created by the presence of an observer, space and time are nothing more than meaningless human guidelines and are simply tools of the mind, the universe, without an observer, would merely exist in an undetermined state of wave probability, the universe is fine-tuned for life because consciousness and life created it that way, and that there is no absolute reality that exists independent of life.

If you want a mind opening text that is easy to read and challenges your 'rock solid' view of particle physics this is the book for you. The answers of the questions of 'why and how' are out there and this book is a step towards finding the final answers to our age old queries.

Here is the link to the Amazon page.

Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

I thought I'd point out the following. This view is from a secular scientist and his view is exactly the opposite of what Dawkins believes. Dawkins believes that the physical world brought consciousness into existence whereas, this writers point is that consciousness preceded the physical and is actually responsible for its existence.

[boestar]

Really and fundamentally what is being discussed int he meaning of life. Everyone will come to a different conclusion based on faith and NO it really isnt an "argument" worth having but opens up a pretty good discussion. We all have opinions and thoughts and they are very individual things.

Is there an "endgame"? Are we headed in a predetermined direction? Is it all random Chance? All very good questions that no 2 people will give the same answer to. We, as humans, have to have some level of faith in order to answer the unanswerable questions.

For me the answer to the meaning of Life the Universe and Everything will always be 42.

I just have to spend my life figuring out the question.

[Miles]

GDR's arguments are quite similiar to my cojo's. The complexity of the eye as an example and the origin of life itself, for instance that it's exceedingly impossible mathematically for life to spawn from inert materials.

[Seeker]

GDR's arguments are quite similiar to my cojo's. The complexity of the eye as an example and the origin of life itself, for instance that it's exceedingly impossible mathematically for life to spawn from inert materials.

Explained much better than I can:

Teleological argument