Blogs

The topic "What Caused the Development of Air breathing Animals" seems to me the victim either of misunderstanding of such events or their poor expression in writing.
Certainly the development was the result of specific conditions appearing when some animals were either preadapted in some useable way or a fortuitous mutation appeared.

The topic of atheism on this site has been red hot lately. Folks are arguing intelligently and with nuance about the various ways of conceptualizing the world with or without god(s) and the possibilities for those with different worldviews to get along (or not).

Belatedly... :=)

Last time my Humanist correspondent said: "So, you’re saying God created religion and man “edited” it. And you’re saying God has revealed Himself to us within the last 2000 years. Please explain."

In Roger Penrose's book, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, he uses the following example of something human's can understand that computers cannot:

Find an odd number that is the sum of two even numbers

Do you believe in evolution by natural selection? Then you should be a capitalist! Evolution is to biology as capitalism is to the economy. Evolution has brought us gills, wings, and opposable thumbs, while capitalism has brought us air conditioning, airplanes and web browsers.

In the last segment, I ended with a couple of questions from my humanist and evangelical correspondents. Specifically, the humanists asked what explained the unique position of religion among human institutions and, further, what accounted for its “deterioration."

My evangelical correspondents were more concerned with how I would account for the changes Christ made in Mosaic law and why I, as a Baha'i, thought Christ's laws would change?

This is where the idea of the progressive revelation of spiritual ideals came into the discussion. This is not a new principle, really. It's been embedded in religion since the very beginning, but it wasn't until I had the concept clearly laid out that I looked back at my own scripture--the Bible, in this case--and recognized the pattern. (And here I smote my forehead loudly. How could I have missed this?)

Turing is overrated. Seriously. Have you ever thought what his input to computer science really is? Wikipedia says that he is considered to be the father of modern computer science. Not from my branch of the family, I suppose. Why is he so popular? Because of the Turing machine? Try to write a program for such a machine. It's a disaster! Thank God for the von Neumann computer architecture.

This is Part 2 of a dialogue and commentary between a secular humanist, an evangelical Christian and a Baha'i. It seeks to explore a middle ground between the poles of the highly charged dialogue between faith and reason using an alternative model for understanding religion. The dialogue is divided into parts because of its length, so forgive me if I've divvied it up badly. :)

At the end of the first part of the dialogue between our humanist and evangelical, we reached an odd point of agreement. Odd, because the focus of the agreement was a hinge between opposite views. Both “sides” agree that religious revelation ended thousands of years ago. BUT the secular humanist believes this is because revelation is the accretion of myth to mundane events and therefore cannot be accepted by modern sensibilities, while the evangelical believes that God will not speak again until the very end of the world.

As a Bahá’í, I raised the question: Is revelation ended? Here were the answers I received:

I've found myself engaged in a number of discussions lately with people whose beliefs are so polarized that a rational dialogue might seem impossible. I compiled the ideas that recur in these conversations into a paper/presentation so that I can trace the ideas and respond to them. Having just stumbled across this site as I was researching a steampunk story (searching for "Victorian machines"), I thought perhaps this might be a interesting place to “play” the conversation.

The participants in our conversation are a secular humanist (an atheist, but not militantly so) and a fundamentalist believer (in this case, an evangelical Christian) who serve to voice ideas raised commonly in dialogues I’ve had with persons from these two groups. They are, as it happens, groups with a body of fixed ideas about the role of religion, science, faith and reason in the world we all share.

Is there a robot out their that can move 260+ pounds 4 miles in 30 minutes using the equivilant energy of a big mac? This site references some pretty amazing feats in the field of robotics but not so much on the energy comsumption of these robots. How will we power these things when the oil runs out?

First things first: I am largely a rational person and I believe the evolution of reason, science, and technology, are perfect examples of the the realization of human potential. I do not believe in God.

I'd like to explore with you a little thought-experiment, which hopefully either opens a few minds, or at least gets them off each others' throats for a while. Yes, boys and girls, this is another atheist vs creation argument, but this time I'm going to try and play devil's advocate and let you think for yourself.

I believe that the meek robots will someday inheret the Earth and that only the smartest humans will be able to adapt fast enough to survive in such a rapidly improving technological utopia. Take that dose of reality, religion!

A. Cancer cells ignore signals to stop dividing (contact inhibition)
B. People ignore signs that they should not reproduce so rapidly

A. (Angiogenesis) the formation of new blood vessels to allow the cancer to grow rapidly
B. People channel natural resources to allow for increased population growth

A. Cancer cells metastasize and spread to other parts of the body

Does anyone think that modern humans are following Darwin's "survival of the fittest? (loosely stated)"

From my point of view, it seems like the less intelligent/productive people are reproducing more than the more intelligent/productive people are.

This is a subjective question and I would like to get some other viewpoints.