Evolution ruling gets cheers from scientists

[motai]

No. I'm tangible, I can be seen, touched, heard and smelled, just for starters. Last time I checked no one had ever seen, touched, heard or smelled a soul. There is no evidence that a soul exists.

[slight sidetrack]
Perhaps this is all due to perception of what the 'soul' really is. If we follow the traditional Cartesian Dualism that the mind and body are completely seperate, then I see what you are getting at. I myself find it rather farfetched to be 'attached' to my body, but that is besides the point.
[/slight sidetrack]

 

[Curious3141]

That doesn't mean it's wrong. I never said evolution was wrong because we haven't seen the complete fossile record. In fact I never once said evolution is wrong. I do believe in evolution (to a degree), but it is still an unproven theory no matter how much I want it to be other wise. I'm just providing a healthy amount of dought.

You can doubt anything if you put your mind to it. No theory can be 100 % proven, but if the evidence for a theory is very, very strong, it can be accepted as true until some compelling evidence to the contrary comes along. That evidence is not yet here (the bible doesn't count, it's just mythology).

Yes it is a very logical possiblity.

The most logical one in fact.

The cites don't prove species-to-species transitions. The fossiles only prove that there are animals that are similar to each other. There are many animals that are similar to each other today.

This again. Do you understand how an inference arises from an observation ?

If I see a car suddenly appearing around a blind curve in a road on an incline, that is an observation.

From that observation I can draw a number of inferences. Here are two competing theories :

1) The car was traveling on the road before it was in my sight, but the way in which light behaves did not enable me to see the car. Only when it came into my line of sight did I see the car.

2) The car had never existed prior to the moment I saw the car. It materialised instantaenously, traveling at speed at that very point in the road.

One observation, two inferences. Without access to a body of "common sense" built on prior experience, one cannot decide between the two. However, any fool who's lived on Earth for a while will point to 1) as the more likely explanation by far.

Same thing with the fossils. You see these blocks of stone, which can all be quite precisely dated using well founded physical theory, and which show a variety of structures. Using the time data from dating, you classify the fossils into their existence at various time eras. As you dig deeper and find older fossils, you find simpler forms that fit in with the notion of an ancestral progenitor. You've just drawn an evolutionary inference from the fossil data.

Of course, you could draw another inference, like : all those organisms existed contemporaneously and carbon dating is completely flawed. That would negate quite a few closely connected theories in Physics, too. All the scientists who contributed to the techniques used are dismissed as being off their rocker.

But I ask you, is this inference a reasonable one ? Most would say NO.

It's not just limited to QM. You can't know anything with complete certainty, that's my point. I'm trying to get some of you people to understand that it's reasonable to be doughtful of evolution and you should quit fussing so much when some people do dought it.

I don't fuss when people bring up reasonable doubts, but I do fuss when people don't really know what they're talking about. Your trying to tie up QM with the philosophy of skepticism in scientific inquiry fell into that category.

 

[Grace]

What is a soul? Surely, you are not referring to a conscience or being sentient.

I think people throw words like 'soul' and 'spirit' around too much, without even defining what they are. Usually, if you ask someone what a spirit or a soul is they can't give you straight answer, and will usually related it back to some faith tale of their's or relate it with having a conscience and being sentient.

No. I'm tangible, I can be seen, touched, heard and smelled, just for starters. Last time I checked no one had ever seen, touched, heard or smelled a soul. There is no evidence that a soul exists. You're not making any sense.

Evo et al,

You are not your body. Your soul is that which occupies your body. A soul is what is called life. It is your essence. It is that which allows you to think. If one were to be in a coma, yet still being kept alive, by means of medical machinery, simply means that the soul has left the body. Should the body die, and then the soul has decided to no longer continue in that form. It will move to another dimension. Your body is merely a house for your soul, a package, if you will. Evidence of this can easily be obtained by dying, if you must have physical evidence.

There is plenty of literature that covers this particular subject; one only needs to have the will to find it. If one truly seeks an answer, it will be made available. It is ones decision, whether or not to recognize it when it appears.

Too much time is wasted on arguing over issues that are irrelevant to one's existence. Quieting the mind, and listening to the inner voice that flows within all of us, can be quite helpful. It is difficult to do, however. There's too much noise going on around us, which clutters the mind. Thoughts are constantly entering every second of our conscience wake.

Okay, I'm carrying on here, but why does one come here? Is it because of boredom? To get away from the everyday grind? Or argue about the existence of a soul?

 

[graphic7]

Evo et al,

You are not your body. Your soul is that which occupies your body. A soul is what is called life. It is your essence. It is that which allows you to think. If one were to be in a coma, yet still being kept alive, by means of medical machinery, simply means that the soul has left the body. Should the body die, and then the soul has decided to no longer continue in that form. It will move to another dimension. Your body is merely a house for your soul, a package, if you will. Evidence of this can easily be obtained by dying, if you must have physical evidence.

There is plenty of literature that covers this particular subject; one only needs to have the will to find it. If one truly seeks an answer, it will be made available. It is ones decision, whether or not to recognize it when it appears.

Too much time is wasted on arguing over issues that are irrelevant to one's existence. Quieting the mind, and listening to the inner voice that flows within all of us, can be quite helpful. It is difficult to do, however. There's too much noise going on around us, which clutters the mind. Thoughts are constantly entering every second of our conscience wake.

Okay, I'm carrying on here, but why does one come here? Is it because of boredom? To get away from the everyday grind? Or argue about the existence of a soul?

That is not a soul. The examples you stated are examples of a conscience and being sentient. There's plenty of documentation on that, as well. Stray away from this metaphysical garbage, and take a look at Artifical Intelligence (specifically, cellular automata). I just recognized that I'm actually referring to things that do have a scentific basis, whereas a soul does not.

Please recognize that you still have not defined what a soul is. Defining is not stating examples.

You should look into being a poet.

 

[Gokul43201]

The soul is what the aether was.

In the 19th century, people could not conceive of a mechanism for the propagation of light that did not involve some kind of medium. So the aether was conjured up. Later, as people better understood the complex thing that is 'light', they were able to shed the idea of an aether, and gladly too. But at least the aether was well defined.

The soul is the giant turtle (tortoise?) that held up the earth.

The soul is the demon that inhabited (past tense ?) the body of the diseased.

The soul is the sea monster, whose breathing caused the tides.


In truth, unless you can make available a simple scientific explanation for things like death, thought and memory, that is accessible to the masses, people will fall back upon something like a 'soul' to explain the unexplained. That there are some basic things which are very hard to understand, and that research in such areas is still pretty young, is not something that will satisfy the masses.

Unless the soul is vanquished, it will live on.

 

[Grace]

Soul -- difficult to define, but unmistakable when present. Look into a person's eyes, and you can see their
soul. Look into a dead person's eyes, or any dead animal's eyes for that matter, and you can see its lack of
soul, or life. Your soul IS your life.

 

[Gokul43201]

When a person dies, (s)he usually stops blinking. That's not what you're talking about, is it ?

On a more serious note, blood stops traveling to the eyes once the heart stops beating. The loss of blood makes the eyes look just a little different. There are also other second order effects like the death of the cone photoreceptors or the loss of oxygen, that may play a role in this effect.

 

[Moonbear]

When a person dies, he usually stops blinking. That's not what you're talking about, is it ?

LOL! And the pupils dilate, and the eyes dry out and look dull, and long enough after death, the eyes get cloudy too.

Seriously though, I can't tell the difference between dead and alive just by looking into eyes, not right at the time of death.

Grace, if you can't define what a soul is, how can you be so certain it exists? You seem to be using it synonymously with life.

 

[Grace]

No, Gokul43201 & Moonbear. Watch someone die someday, and you will actually see the life in them leave their eyes. If you haven't ever witnessed that phenomenon, you'll never know what I mean. It's eerie, but at the same time, extremely fascinating. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who fears death, though; it'll scar them, and haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Now you have it! Look it up in your dictionary, and that's exactly how it's defined (one of many definitions, however).

 

[Moonbear]

No, Gokul43201 & Moonbear. Watch someone die someday, and you will actually see the life in them leave their eyes. If you haven't ever witnessed that phenomenon, you'll never know what I mean. It's eerie, but at the same time, extremely fascinating. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who fears death, though; it'll scar them, and haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Grace, I have seen people die, and I have seen many animals die too. There is nothing in the eyes that indicates that death has actually occurred (however you define death). The fixed stare is the same as you'd see under anesthesia. I'm not going to debate with you whether or not there is a soul. I'm only debating that there is nothing in the way the eyes look that conveys death. I can't debate with you the soul argument because I don't believe in any such thing and unless you can provide a good working definition, we have no common ground to start from there.

 

[franznietzsche]

That settles it, then. None of us exists, including the Boards, according to your statement above. We're just a figment of someone's imagination. Correct?

Funny, that cast iron frying pan (that doesn't exist) sure hurt like hell, when I dropped it on my toes this morning… must have been my imagination.

HUh? What are you talking about? No one said we don't exist, they said souls don't exist.

 

[franznietzsche]

Evo et al,

You are not your body. Your soul is that which occupies your body. A soul is what is called life. It is your essence. It is that which allows you to think. If one were to be in a coma, yet still being kept alive, by means of medical machinery, simply means that the soul has left the body. Should the body die, and then the soul has decided to no longer continue in that form. It will move to another dimension. Your body is merely a house for your soul, a package, if you will. Evidence of this can easily be obtained by dying, if you must have physical evidence.

There is plenty of literature that covers this particular subject; one only needs to have the will to find it. If one truly seeks an answer, it will be made available. It is ones decision, whether or not to recognize it when it appears.

Too much time is wasted on arguing over issues that are irrelevant to one's existence. Quieting the mind, and listening to the inner voice that flows within all of us, can be quite helpful. It is difficult to do, however. There's too much noise going on around us, which clutters the mind. Thoughts are constantly entering every second of our conscience wake.

Okay, I'm carrying on here, but why does one come here? Is it because of boredom? To get away from the everyday grind? Or argue about the existence of a soul?

I'd like to take this time to rant about the failure of the education system to produce people with anything resembling the ability for scientific thought.

A good scientist is someone who is not afraid to doubt. Someone who accepts nothing simply because he was told to, even if god himself came down and said it.

A scientist is someone who is always looking to understand what he sees around him, never accepting a handwaving argument, or some rhetoritician's metaphysical spiel, regardless of how "logical" it may seem without evidence.

Science is: "the result of discovery that is worthwhile rechecking by direct experience and not trusting the race experience of the past"

Which is to say that we do not accept what those who went before us tell us simply because they tell us. No we go out and see it for ourselves.

Then consider the religious mindset, which so thoroughly permeates our culture, and i don't just mean christianity, i mean all brands of superstition. That mind, is an obedient mind it does what it is told by its master, be it god, nature, or whatever. It is a slave mind, herd animal mentality.

Just look at all the people, even here, who butcher science for their own purposes. IN politics too. Its ridiculous. The average person is unable to think scientifically. To think in the pattern that everything is false until reasonably shown to be true, not by hand waving arguments, but by concrete evidence, and proof derived from that evidence. By one's own experience. You don't assume something is true until that something is necessary to explain the phenomenon you see.

A soul is not necessary. There is no way to prove that a soul is necessary for us to live. Therefore, the scientific conclusion is that unless evidence of its existence is presented, it does not exist, because there is no need for it too. We don't need a soul to explain anything. WE don't need god to explain anything. Does that mean they don't exist, no. But there is no need for them(psychological insecurity of unscientific minds aside), no evidence for them, no reason for them.

In this country at least, public educations are basically mandatory to a certain age. And in my experience i have met, a few good professors aside (all with science degrees) i ahve not met a single person who was capable of scientific thought. This is the most important thing for the education system to instill, because a scientific mind insists upon learning. Learning and analysis are hard-wired into the most basic thought processes. They bemoan the failure of the schools on test scores, they need to stop teaching test material and start showing students how to think scientifically. UNfortunately most teachers are poorly qualified at best, and i feel there is little hope.



This message brought to you by an angry jaded misanthrope. Thank you for reading.

 

[Artman]

Calling evolution a theory is an attempt to discredit it (a means that has been used since Darwin's time). The fact is evolution is not a theory but an observable natural phenomenon like gravity or any such thing. The neo-Darwinian synthesis is the scientific theory that best describes the natural, observable, and phenomenon evolution. If data were to show, tomorrow for instance, that the neo-Darwinian synthesis is incorrect (something that will not happen... the synthesis is probably the most tested and most confirmed scientific explanation we have), evolution would not stop (just as gravity did not cease when Newtonian gravitational theory gave way to Einsteinian theory). Evolution, unbeknownst to most Americans... including our President, is not at issue; the issue is how evolution takes place (via: natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, chance, and meiotic drive with natural selection being the only creative force of the five). By banning the teaching of evolution in schools, we might as well ban the teaching of sciences in general. Finally, does evolution have anything to say about the possible existence of God or gods? The answer is of course not. It does indicate, however, that those who take religious texts literally are incorrect.

This is well stated.

Grace said in a later post that she has seen a change in the eyes during death in humans and animals. I have never seen a human die, but I had a dog put to sleep, he had bone cancer and could not move. I will never forget the look change in his eyes as he died. I could tell the instant of death, weather or not this was soul, I can't say, but I distinctly saw it.

There are plenty of miracles that occur medically and otherwise that cannot be explained by science. Doctors are baffled by a patients' recoveries everyday. That of course does not prove the existence of God, but then again even the power of the human mind to cure the body is not fully understood.

The benefits of a belief in God should not be discounted simply because some misguided persons choose to extend this belief to disbelief of science. These two subjects should not be mixed, as this forum attempts to separate them and as the point this post intended that the school board ws wrong to place those stickers in those books. It does nothing to raise belief in God it merely stirs up the age old fight between science and God.

 

[Gokul43201]

The benefits of a belief in God should not be discounted simply because some misguided persons choose to extend this belief to disbelief of science.

Not a big God-person, but I agree with this.

But as long as the belief system is based entirely upon an ancient text, taught to be the "word of God" (and hence the absolute truth), this conflict between science and faith will not die.

 

[Artman]

Not a big God-person, but I agree with this.

But as long as the belief system is based entirely upon an ancient text, taught to be the "word of God" (and hence the absolute truth), this conflict between science and faith will not die.

Sad, but true. Personally, I have an inquizative mind and I have no problem believing scientific explanations and a belief in God gives me peace and hope. The two live very happily in me, but I do understand this is not the case in many.

 

[Entropy]

You can doubt anything if you put your mind to it. No theory can be 100 % proven, but if the evidence for a theory is very, very strong

Okay, I'll just sum up my thoughts and we can put this to rest. The way I see it the fossile record only shows that there are some species that are similar, just like there are modern species with similarities. It doesn't show that they evoluted from one another. Some people may just conclude that God created lots of species, and some he created similar to others. The problems with this argument of course is the mechanics behind the genesis of the organisms (how can you explain it scientifically) and the delima of having all the species that ever existed all existing at one point in time. If some people want to believe that, just let them, that doesn't mean you can call them stupid or insane. Thats all I was agruing.

I can't debate with you the soul argument because I don't believe in any such thing and unless you can provide a good working definition, we have no common ground to start from there.

A soul is just a person. His body and mind. A being. It's not a glowing aura that floats up to heaven and give you life. In Biblical beliefs "life force" is what gives people and animals life, but it isn't their consious selves. When you die that life force returns to God, when one is resurected that life force returns to the person. Life force is like the will of God that animates you. According to the Bible the mind and body are one, that sum is a soul. You can't have one without the other. This is the Biblical concept of a soul.

But as long as the belief system is based entirely upon an ancient text, taught to be the "word of God" (and hence the absolute truth), this conflict between science and faith will not die.

Well you could just follow the old philosphy: "God is truth, so to seek the truth is to seek God." Just something to think about.

 

[Evo]

The benefits of a belief in God should not be discounted simply because some misguided persons choose to extend this belief to disbelief of science. These two subjects should not be mixed, as this forum attempts to separate them and as the point this post intended that the school board ws wrong to place those stickers in those books. It does nothing to raise belief in God it merely stirs up the age old fight between science and God.

Excellent points and back to what the thread topic is about.

Religion should not be taught in public schools and religious groups should not be allowed to determine what is taught in these schools based on their personal religious beliefs.

 

[brewnog]

Setting aside the issue of religious education, I'm all for reading such books in English Langauge lessons.

Let's face it, the Old Testament has some fegging good stories in it.

 

[Grace]

Originally posted by Moonbear
Grace, I have seen people die, and I have seen many animals die too. There is nothing in the eyes that indicates that death has actually occurred (however you define death). The fixed stare is the same as you'd see under anesthesia. I'm not going to debate with you whether or not there is a soul. I'm only debating that there is nothing in the way the eyes look that conveys death. I can't debate with you the soul argument because I don't believe in any such thing and unless you can provide a good working definition, we have no common ground to start from there.

Then this discussion is over because we'll never agree on what a soul is, but the fact that we do disagree, and can continue to disagree, proves, without a doubt that we have souls.

http://www.photoshopforums.com/images/avatars/83730987641cdc86783d71.jpg

 

[Moonbear]

Then this discussion is over because we'll never agree on what a soul is, but the fact that we do disagree, and can continue to disagree, proves, without a doubt that we have souls.

http://www.photoshopforums.com/images/avatars/83730987641cdc86783d71.jpg

That's purely an opinion and not based on any scientific evidence. The fact that we disagree in our opinion of whether or not something exists does not in any way prove its existence. You might do well to spend some time visiting the logic forum to learn a bit more about drawing valid conclusions from the premises of an argument.

 

[Evo]

I think we've beaten this to death.

 

[chroot]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I just saw the life pass from the eyes of this thread.

- Warren