Creation & EvolutionForum for the discussion of this important topic. This forum is open to non-believers. There is a Christians-only forum in the Christians-only section too.
We have seen alot of bluff here. But no answers from the evolutionist camp which address the philosophical impasse.
And we have seen bluff of the kind designed to suck in naive moderators to rule against things like "trolling". (Always assign a label to the opposition's style which is ostensibly in the name of diplomacy - makes you at least look noble when you lack brilliance. If you can't beat them then by your argument, at least you can disqualify them by the rules!)
Here is a typical example of the sort of cart-before-horse thinking we get from their camp, which sums up just nicely the redundancy of their position:
Pleasure is a good incentive to reproduce. If you don't enjoy reproducing, you are less likely to be willing to invest the time and energy to reproduce
Synopsis:
I perceive a need to reproduce (of course I myself am a reproduction, but that doesn't matter here.. I'm don't notice circularity when I am presenting it), and so I have a great incentive to reproduce (afterall, if I dont reproduce, my grand children won't be able to talk about me in years to come.)
But although I have this great incentive, it is not great enough: I need to 'evolve' a pleasure on top of my incentive, which will become my incentive.
So the pleasure which evolves emanates out of my initial incentive to stay alive, but by some special wizardry, is more necessary than my initial incentive to stay alive (otherwise I would not have needed to evolve it).
And although I cannot evolve all of an orgasm in my own life-time, I pass on the part I have evolved (sort of like passing on part-pregnancy) to those whom I am currently reproducing without orgasm, in order that they might be able to reproduce....eh...
Evolutionists like trying to pull themselves off the ground by their own bootstraps.
And then they tell you this occured because their bootstraps needed to be pulled.
I perceive a need to reproduce (of course I myself am a reproduction, but that doesn't matter here.. I'm don't notice circularity when I am presenting it), and so I have a great incentive to reproduce (afterall, if I dont reproduce, my grand children won't be able to talk about me in years to come.)
no no, this is a horrible strawman, we are just talking about instincts. the organism in question may have a mutation whic increases the pleasure it gains from sex, and so it will have sex more... we work from there and look at differential reproductive success.
But although I have this great incentive, it is not great enough: I need to 'evolve' a pleasure on top of my incentive, which will become my incentive.
no no, you weren't paying attention, the pleasure is co-opted from earlier evolutionary steps, which used pleasure for a more simple choice purpose.
So the pleasure which evolves emanates out of my initial incentive to stay alive, but by some special wizardry, is more necessary than my initial incentive to stay alive (otherwise I would not have needed to evolve it).
you aren'T making sense here
And although I cannot evolve all of an orgasm in my own life-time, I pass on the part I have evolved (sort of like passing on part-pregnancy) to those whom I am currently reproducing without orgasm, in order that they might be able to reproduce....eh...
no no, again you aren't paying attention, the orgasm is simply a pleasurable response to sex, nothing that special really. all it requires is for, in the final bit of sex, for the body to fire off nerves and release chemicals that activate the already present sense of pleasure. and this can indeed be a gradient. even if an organism finds sex 1% more pleasurable than another organism, then it is more likely to have more offspring.
Evolutionists like trying to pull themselves off the ground by their own bootstraps.
And then they tell you this occured because their bootstraps needed to be pulled.
lets go through it again for you.
(1) organism eats
(2) organism that has a drive to eat breeds more than one that has less drive.
(3) organism that can select between things that are good (pleasurable) and things that are bad (unpleasant) breed more than those that cannot select. this provides a rudimentary origin for pleasure. we know for a fact that pleasant is a chemical response in the brain, since we can induce pleasurable experiences with drugs, but that aside.
(4) organism that attaches sex to this previously evolved pleasurable experience is more likely to breed than an organism that does not make this attachment.
see, no circularity, though granted I am not getting into the nitty neurochemistry of the matter, but no real need, since these drives and instincts would have evolved in pretty early animals anyway.
__________________ MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.
Last edited by Jet Black; 29th July 2004 at 08:08 AM.
That means organisms on this planet have the power over they anatomy and mutate accordingly to their needs. Then why cant we mutate so that our cells dont get older? Why cant we mutate so that we may never die?
Originally Posted by Intrepid99
That means organisms on this planet have the power over they anatomy and mutate accordingly to their needs. Then why cant we mutate so that our cells dont get older? Why cant we mutate so that we may never die?
Individuals do not evolve, populations evolve, by miniscule increments. To put it a different way - you do not mutate but your children are not carbon copies of you they are very slightly different - their children are different again and their children slightly different again add infanitum. Over the course of millions of generations these small changes have amounted to big differences.
Come on man, this is primary school stuff . 11 year olds in the UK are expected to understand that much about the theory of evolution.
your problem is that you are trying, as many creationists often do, to explain the existance of something de novo, and ignoring the slow build up of all the features that led to the final result. something like an orgasm is the culmination of many different features which have been evolved for a slightly different purpose and then co opted into the final phenomenon which benefits the species concerned.
__________________ MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.
You not only need to quote me, but to read what you have quoted as well. You have not even remotely dealt with your circularity. I think you have a perception problem: you need to study some logic.
But although I have this great incentive, it is not great enough: I need to 'evolve' a pleasure on top of my incentive, which will become my incentive.
So the pleasure which evolves emanates out of my initial incentive to stay alive, but by some special wizardry, is more necessary than my initial incentive to stay alive (otherwise I would not have needed to evolve it).
Not more NECESSARY more EFFECTIVE. To use an analogy, a bow and arrow will kill, but a gun is far more efficient. Survival in the wild is difficult, every advantage is worth grasping. So an urge to reproduce gets us reproducing, but a pleasure stimuli related to the act will cause us to reproduce more often. in the wild the species that reproduces most is the species that is more successful. Its not a difficult concept to grasp.
Not more NECESSARY more EFFECTIVE. To use an analogy, a bow and arrow will kill, but a gun is far more efficient.
You are comparing apples with oranges: evolution has no perception or intelligence. You analogy is moot.
You not only need to quote me, but to read what you have quoted as well. You have not even remotely dealt with your circularity. I think you have a perception problem: you need to study some logic.
sorry I just added a few bits to it. I told you already, the pleasure response is already there. orgasm builds on that (it is a massive firing of the pleasure centre), there is no circularity at all.
__________________ MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.
The evolutionist has convinced himself that no intelligence behaves as one with intelligence would behave.
He reasons that an organism can memorize pleasure, and then change itself so that it will get more of the same in generations to come. So he has organisms with perception, who like joy-trips, and wished they'd evolved more of them in their own life-time.
I can just hear these organisms now: "If only we'd known what pleasure we could have had earlier! Now it's too late! But let's pass on what we have learned to our progeny whom we produce without this pleasure! Yeah! Great idea!"
Once again our evolution friends have our ends producing another's path to it.
In the Republic of Evolutionary, rain falls on people because cows are wearing raincoats.
He reasons that an organism can memorize pleasure, and then change itself so that it will get more of the same in generations to come. So he has organisms with perception, who like joy-trips, and wished they'd evolved more of them in their own life-time.
I can just hear these organisms now: "If only we'd known what pleasure we could have had earlier! Now it's too late! But let's pass on what we have learned to our progeny whom we produce without this pleasure! Yeah! Great idea!"
nobody has said anything like this. stop misrepresenting people, it is intellectually dishonest.
__________________ MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.
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