Teachers take a stand against anti-evolution teaching order

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Whaleboy You're missing the point

As are you.

A rock can do tons of things. Accelerated to a high enough speed, it can blow up a planet. Compressed to a small enough size, it can become a black hole. There are an unlimited number of things many objects can do. Purpose is functionality that is intended by someone.

An apple isn't a rock. A rock is just a rock, it has no reason for existsance except, I suppose, to be a rock - to be a hard object and float around in space or clump together, or be kicked around, or whatever the hell. But an apple exists for a very specific reason.

My purpose in using the legs is to walk around. The purpose in legs existing - there is none. That's the point - evolution has no intent, no purpose. There is no purpose to traits that have evolved - there is merely functionality that happens to be conducive towards the reproduction of those traits.

You don't give purpose to your legs :rolleys: you're born with them (and you generally start using them before you reach the point of being "intelligent") and you have no choice in the matter. I supose, if you really wanted to, you could ignore the purpose of them and drag yourself and your fully functional legs around on the floor like a moron, but that doesn't change the reason that you're born with legs.

Like I said in the part you cut out from your quote, there is intent. Legs are intended to be used to walk with - it's why we're born with them. Eyes are intended to see, it's why we have them. And apples are intended to spread seeds, it's how the trees have survived.


Is the purpose of sperm also subjective? You could play around with it if you want maybe mix it in your coffee, but it very obviously has a distinct purpose for it's existance.

[Berzerker]

Oerdin

You may remember from science class.

Of course not, I went to public schools.

You can only prove cause and effect if you control for outside factors. Can you really control for all societial changes between 1964 and today? Of course not especially since so many other things have happened (the creation of the pill, the sexual revolution, the break down of families especially in conservative states, etc).

The cause and effect is obvious, welfare serves to replace fathers just as Social Security breaks generational family bonds in favor of the nuclear family.
I've personally seen it work, my friends were on welfare and the mother and father split up so that she could get welfare. He wasn't a bad man, not at all, he still hung around but he could not legally live with his family.

Your attempts to blame welfare for everything which has gone wrong in the last 100 years is truly sad.

Not as sad as that strawman, I believe I blamed weflare for the skyrocketing out of wedlock birthrates. Now, we can see that the greatest factor in poverty rates are the number of families with single mothers, so out of wedlock birthrates are involved there too.

If welfare only effects a small part of the population but the entire population changes their practices then it is likely other factors are at play.

Of course there are other factors, typically liberal, from no fault divorce to Hollywood and the drug war, but a large percentage of crime in this country is committed by a small population too and it sure has an effect. Fifty years ago out of wedlock births often ended in marriage, even Pat Robertson started his marriage that way. But now the politicians are there with a check so the woman and man dont need to marry. Is it a surprise when they dont marry because the government is there to play the role of breadwinner?

I'm not a social conservative but even I can admit they're right about this.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by General Ludd
As are you.

Did you get quotes

An apple isn't a rock. A rock is just a rock, it has no reason for existsance except, I suppose, to be a rock - to be a hard object and float around in space or clump together, or be kicked around, or whatever the hell. But an apple exists for a very specific reason.

No. They both exist as the result of purely natural processes with no intervention by intelligent actors. There's no reason a tree is fundamentally different from a rock. Any "reasons" for their existance are all explanations of how the interaction of various elements of nature resulted in their formation.

You don't give purpose to your legs :rolleys: you're born with them (and you generally start using them before you reach the point of being "intelligent") and you have no choice in the matter. I supose, if you really wanted to, you could ignore the purpose of them and drag yourself and your fully functional legs around on the floor like a moron, but that doesn't change the reason that you're born with legs.

Like I said in the part you cut out from your quote, there is intent. Legs are intended to be used to walk with - it's why we're born with them. Eyes are intended to see, it's why we have them. And apples are intended to spread seeds, it's how the trees have survived.

Intended by whom? Evolution? Evolution is a natural process like gravity. The entire point is that evolution through natural selection has no intent.

[Whaleboy]

So you're the first ever known example of a conscious mind that doesn't think representatively?

An object needs both relations and properties...symbolic logic and the map-territory relation is at the heart of semantics.

An apple isn't a rock. A rock is just a rock, it has no reason for existsance except, I suppose, to be a rock - to be a hard object and float around in space or clump together, or be kicked around, or whatever the hell. But an apple exists for a very specific reason.

Yes but that reason is contextual... everything can have a purpose in context but you cannot ascribe some absolute purpose to it, because that begs the question of at which point the individual atoms becomes an "apple"... obviously one can't answer that question which again concludes that existence predicates essense.

None of the rest of what you said escapes subjectivism.

And yes, even sperm are contextual .

No. They both exist as the result of purely natural processes with no intervention by intelligent actors. There's no reason a tree is fundamentally different from a rock. Any "reasons" for their existance are all explanations of how the interaction of various elements of nature resulted in their formation.

Intended by whom? Evolution? Evolution is a natural process like gravity. The entire point is that evolution through natural selection has no intent.

Well put.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
No. They both exist as the result of purely natural processes with no intervention by intelligent actors.

This would seem to imply that intelligent actors are non-natural.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Did you get quotes

An apple isn't a rock. A rock is just a rock, it has no reason for existsance except, I suppose, to be a rock - to be a hard object and float around in space or clump together, or be kicked around, or whatever the hell. But an apple exists for a very specific reason.

No. They both exist as the result of purely natural processes with no intervention by intelligent actors. There's no reason a tree is fundamentally different from a rock. Any "reasons" for their existance are all explanations of how the interaction of various elements of nature resulted in their formation.

That is, if you are solely intersted in the history of the object and not it's purpose. When you look at an object to determine it's purpose, you should be looking for explanations not of how it was created through 'the interaction of various elements', but how it it carries on the process and interacts with the environment itself - it's reason, it's purpose, it's intention.

A purpose is not something that has happened, it is something that is to happen.

You don't give purpose to your legs :rolleys: you're born with them (and you generally start using them before you reach the point of being "intelligent") and you have no choice in the matter. I supose, if you really wanted to, you could ignore the purpose of them and drag yourself and your fully functional legs around on the floor like a moron, but that doesn't change the reason that you're born with legs.

Like I said in the part you cut out from your quote, there is intent. Legs are intended to be used to walk with - it's why we're born with them. Eyes are intended to see, it's why we have them. And apples are intended to spread seeds, it's how the trees have survived.

Intended by whom? Evolution? Evolution is a natural process like gravity. The entire point is that evolution through natural selection has no intent.

Intended by it's existance. Evolution hardly even has any relevance to this - evolution is the interaction of life with its environment, it's not something that creates. Life is what creates life itself. Through things like apples, which are grown with the intented purpose of spreading seeds.

Yes but that reason is contextual... everything can have a purpose in context but you cannot ascribe some absolute purpose to it

"absolute purpose"? I thought we where talking about intended purpose. There's nothing absolute about intent. Things can be given a second use, or a new purpose, but that doesn't change their original, intended, purpose. As I said, you can put sperm in your coffee, but there's no denying that the purpose sperm exists for is reproduction... and not for use as a condiment. Or you can, as you suggested, use a knife to play a drum. But the knife's intended purpose will become clear once it pierces the skin.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
So basically you're explaining that we do, in a way, create apples. Which is consistent with my point.

Since apples will grow on apple trees with or without us, so no, that's not what you said.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Straybow

INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT BIOLOGY. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT AN ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC THEORY.

At least they admit that being an "accepted scientific theory" is more important than the facts.

OTOH, accepted scientific theories are based on facts.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
By that logic, an infinite spatial extent of the universe would be proof of God's existance ...

No, where did you get that from?

Originally posted by Last Conformist
Actually, it's highly ironic that you should take an infinite past as implying a God when, in pre-thermodynamics days, it was so often advanced as removing the need for a Creator.

No, that's not what I said either.

ID necessarily points to a god, because even the first life had to be "designed."

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Intended by whom? Evolution? Evolution is a natural process like gravity. The entire point is that evolution through natural selection has no intent.

Intent is not the same as purpose.

The purpose of sexual organs is reproduction. That's what they are for.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


No, where did you get that from?

You appear to believe that an infinite temporal extent of the universe presupposes a God. So why shouldn't an infinite spatial one?

No, that's not what I said either.

ID necessarily points to a god, because even the first life had to be "designed."

Duh! An infinite sequence does not necessarily have a first element.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
So you're the first ever known example of a conscious mind that doesn't think representatively?

An object needs both relations and properties...symbolic logic and the map-territory relation is at the heart of semantics.

I don't see what it has to do with anything, though.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
This would seem to imply that intelligent actors are non-natural.

I made the same mistake I always call people on.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by General Ludd
That is, if you are solely intersted in the history of the object and not it's purpose. When you look at an object to determine it's purpose, you should be looking for explanations not of how it was created through 'the interaction of various elements', but how it it carries on the process and interacts with the environment itself - it's reason, it's purpose, it's intention.

A purpose is not something that has happened, it is something that is to happen.

A purpose is something that cannot be determined from the constitution of the object itself, but the relation between that object and various intelligent actors. One could say, by your logic, that the purpose of rain is to provide water for plants, or that the purpose of gravity is to keep the earth near the sun, but that's absurd.

Intended by it's existance. Evolution hardly even has any relevance to this - evolution is the interaction of life with its environment, it's not something that creates. Life is what creates life itself. Through things like apples, which are grown with the intented purpose of spreading seeds.

Life is no different from any other process. There's no real line between life and non-life. Intelligence is what bestows intention, not life.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Intent is not the same as purpose.

The purpose of sexual organs is reproduction. That's what they are for.

Yes it is. Sexual organs have no purpose - or rather, we bestow on them various purposes, such as reproduction, but also pleasure. Reproduction is the function that contributed most towards natural selection selecting for that trait.