Of Hamlet, Monkeys and Infinity

[Hollie]

"...hard core Christian fundementalists,..."

Speak for yourself, dunce.


My arguments are always based on science.....and that area is your weakest......

Actually, no. You further no arguments at all. You simply cherry-pick out of context, edited and parsed "quotes" you mine from Christian fundamentalist websites.

Liar.

The garbage you steal from fundie Christian websites and from Harun Yahya is formula Stupid.

 

[idb]

Being born into a family of hard core Christian fundementalists, I understand PC's point of view and method of arguement very well. And that 'education' has also left me with a profound contempt for those that choose willfull ignorance over knowledge. It damages them, their children, and those around them. A meme that works against their own survival.

PC does not chose ignorance over knowledge

She just enjoys dicking around with liberals

I'll cop to that.

I don't give you that much credit.
I think you're an ill-educated moron with too much access to the internet.

Of course, I have nothing to base that on apart from your OPs and subsequent replies to dissenting posts.
They're invariably lacking in knowledge or critical thinking.
Can anyone be as stupid as you portray...or are you leading is on with every post?

 

[idb]

Darwinism is a useful, but flawed, theory. Unfortunately, its acolytes feel the need to defend even its most incongruous aspects like Peter saving the dyke in order to hold back an ocean of religious repression waiting to drown them. As a result, they have abandoned legitimate scientific inquiry and replaced it with the preposterous proposition that the burden of proof lies with its sceptics.

Some of us endeavor to separate science from religion and politics. Science can offer nothing to religion and little to politics. Religion and politics can offer nothing to science.

Welcome to the thirteenth century.

 

[PoliticalChic]

PC does not chose ignorance over knowledge

She just enjoys dicking around with liberals

I'll cop to that.

I don't give you that much credit.
I think you're an ill-educated moron with too much access to the internet.

Of course, I have nothing to base that on apart from your OPs and subsequent replies to dissenting posts.
They're invariably lacking in knowledge or critical thinking.
Can anyone be as stupid as you portray...or are you leading is on with every post?

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

That must have been coined with you in mind.

 

[Mad Scientist]

Being born into a family of hard core Christian fundementalists, I understand PC's point of view and method of arguement very well. And that 'education' has also left me with a profound contempt for those that choose willfull ignorance over knowledge. It damages them, their children, and those around them. A meme that works against their own survival.

Being born into a family of hard core Liberals, I understand OldRock's point of view and method of arguement very well. And that 'education' has also left me with a profound contempt for those that choose willfull ignorance over knowledge. It damages them, their children, and those around them. A meme that works against their own survival.

 

[idb]

I'll cop to that.

I don't give you that much credit.
I think you're an ill-educated moron with too much access to the internet.

Of course, I have nothing to base that on apart from your OPs and subsequent replies to dissenting posts.
They're invariably lacking in knowledge or critical thinking.
Can anyone be as stupid as you portray...or are you leading is on with every post?

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

That must have been coined with you in mind.

Pretty much as I thought.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I don't give you that much credit.
I think you're an ill-educated moron with too much access to the internet.

Of course, I have nothing to base that on apart from your OPs and subsequent replies to dissenting posts.
They're invariably lacking in knowledge or critical thinking.
Can anyone be as stupid as you portray...or are you leading is on with every post?

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

That must have been coined with you in mind.

Pretty much as I thought.

That last word in your post......your ability to use the term not in evidence.

 

[alang1216]

Darwinism is a useful, but flawed, theory. Unfortunately, its acolytes feel the need to defend even its most incongruous aspects like Peter saving the dyke in order to hold back an ocean of religious repression waiting to drown them. As a result, they have abandoned legitimate scientific inquiry and replaced it with the preposterous proposition that the burden of proof lies with its sceptics.

Some of us endeavor to separate science from religion and politics. Science can offer nothing to religion and little to politics. Religion and politics can offer nothing to science.

Welcome to the thirteenth century.

I don't follow, please explain.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

In the recent past I have posted about Darwin's theory as related to fossils, new species, DNA, molecules, etc. which are thought to serve as proof of evolution.
Upon close inspection, none hold up as "proof" but rather as conjecture, and an appeal to logic.
Philosophy rather than science.




1. Until I actually spent time studying the Darwinian theory of evolution, I bought it like it was on sale, as many still do. Today, I look back on so many of the false examples and arguments, and see them as fraudulent and/or childish.
And- I wonder why it is so important for Darwinists that everyone believe it....or else!

a. When Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chens criticism of Darwinian predictions about the fossil record was met with dead silence from a group of scientists in the U.S., he quipped that, In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.
Darwinocracy: The evolution question in American politics | Washington Times Communities





2. A quick reminder?
One of the most famous piece of evidence for Darwinism is a study of an English peppered-moth population consisting of both dark- and light-colored moths. When industrial smoke darkened the trees, the percentage of dark moths increased, due to their relative advantage in hiding from predators. When the air pollution was reduced, the trees became lighter and more light moths survived. Both colors were present throughout, and so no new characteristics emerged, but the percentage of dark moths in the population went up and down as changing conditions affected their relative ability to survive and produce offspring.

a. Of course, in order for a theory to account for the vast diversity of life on the planet today, there must be new DNA, which produces new and original structures and body plans. Clearly, the peppered-moth example is the environment making one shade or the other more adaptive. Strike one?

Once I saw how fallacious that 'example' was, ....as the saying goes "The 13th chime of a clock, not only does it make no sense, but it calls into question the validity of the 12 chimes that preceded it."'




3.Next: If all living species descended from common ancestors by an accumulation of tiny steps, then there once must have existed a veritable universe of transitional intermediate forms
Nay, nay.....new forms of life tend to be fully formed at their first appearance as fossils in the rocks. If these new forms actually evolved in gradual steps from pre-existing forms, as Darwinist science insists, the numerous intermediate forms that once must have existed have not been preserved.
Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism. Johnson, Phillip

a. High school and college science classes both claimed that said transitional forms existed all over the place. Not true.
"The complete transmutation of even one animal species into a different species has never been directly observed either in the laboratory or in the field."
Dean H. Kenyon (Professor of Biology, San Francisco State University), affidavit presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, No. 85-1513, Brief of Appellants, prepared under the direction of William J. Guste, Jr., Attorney General of the State of Louisiana, October 1985, p. A-16.


So much for the peppered-moth as evidence, and the dearth of evolutionary dead end, or transitional fossils....and no it has been a century and a half! With more full time scientists extant than ever before!
OK...are we up to date?
Good.





Startin' to feel like you're the butt of the biggest hoax ever?

Monkeys comin' right up.

This deserves a bump. And it serves to highlight a few things about long-termers here at usmb.

 

[alang1216]

This deserves a bump. And it serves to highlight a few things about long-termers here at usmb.

She was blowing smoke then and nothing is different now.

 

[ChemEngineer]

So pretty much you believe a big human looking man did it in the sky?

ScienceRocks pretty much believes that nothing made everything. That's his brand of "science."

Eighty-five percent of Nobel Laureates in... science.... disagree.

 

[Hollie]

ScienceRocks pretty much believes that nothing made everything. That's his brand of "science."

Eighty-five percent of Nobel Laureates in... science.... disagree.

It’s uncomfortable when hyper-religious loons lecture anyone on… science…

 

[konradv]

ScienceRocks pretty much believes that nothing made everything. That's his brand of "science."

Eighty-five percent of Nobel Laureates in... science.... disagree.

Isn’t ‘everything made out of nothing’ what God did? After “Let there be light”, everything else has been evolution.

 

[ChemEngineer]

Christians Have Done The Most To Promote Liberty And Equality In America

BY: PAUL KRAUSE

MAY 30, 2023



Historian Mark David Hall’s new book, Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land, offers a corrective to an inaccurate narrative about Christianity.

The most uneducated but wildly popular critique of Christianity in America — especially on social media — is that Christianity has been a bastion of oppression and intolerance. So much so that the advancements made in liberty and equality over the centuries have come only when America and American leaders have rejected Christianity. In his new book Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land, historian Mark David Hall offers a concise corrective to this inaccurate and often ignorant hot-take and popular narrative.

Hatred of Christianity is one of the pillars of the current anti-American ideology that permeates universities and the governing spirit of our ruling elite. Mockery of Christians, especially evangelicals, is also one of the core tenets of progressive culture. This hostility and mockery are unwarranted. Far from being agents of oppression and anti-intellectualism, Hall highlights how Christians have been the bedrock of social activism advancing liberty and equality, as well as promoting education reform, increasing literacy, and publishing newspapers and magazines.

We are all familiar with the asinine proclamations of America as a secular country, that progress, liberty, and equality are atheist ideals, and that committed Christians are the greatest threat to America’s future. Yet, as Hall forcefully rebuts, “it is simply false to claim that liberty and equality have been advanced primarily when America’s leaders embrace progressive manifestations of religion or reject faith altogether.”

Looking at the Puritans, the American Revolution, evangelical social reform prior to the Civil War, and contemporary debates over religious liberty, Hall reveals what used to be well-known: Christianity has been the heart of true social progress and explosive advancements in human liberty, equality, and democratic government.

Puritans and Foundations of Liberty

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, Daniel Webster, one of the most important senators the United States ever had, lauded the Pilgrims and Puritans as champions of the liberty that our “civil and religious liberty” grew from. Today, however, it is common to imagine Puritans as petty tyrants, intolerant theocrats, and bah humbug killjoys.

When I was a student at Yale taking classes on American Puritanism, our professor went to great lengths to de-indoctrinate us of the popular stereotypes of the Puritans. The Puritans were among the most educated people at the time, established our most venerable institutions of higher education, promoted the advancement and discoveries of Enlightenment science, vigorously advocated for public literacy, and enjoyed a good laugh, beer, and sex.

The real history of the Puritans that I learned at Yale is covered again by Hall in his opening chapter deconstructing the lies of secularists and anti-Christian writers and hacktivists portraying the Puritans in a dark and inaccurate light. The Puritans, our author reminds us, “valued natural rights, government by the consent of the governed, and limited government; they were convinced that citizens have a right, and perhaps even a duty, to resist tyrannical government.” When traveling through the lands the Puritans helped to build in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville remarked, “Puritanism was not merely a religious doctrine, but corresponded in many points with the most absolute democratic and republican theories.”

As historians and scholars of Puritanism have long asserted, the democratic ethos of congregationalist church politics helped develop the local customs of self-government in New England that would form the basis for “Democracy in America,” as Tocqueville famously put it. But what about the banishment of certain Baptist dissenters and the Salem witch trials, the critic asks? These events did happen, but they are drastically overblown by contemporary critics.

The banishment of a handful of religious dissenters in Massachusetts was only after these rabble-rousing individuals repeatedly, and deliberately, returned to cause trouble and disturb the peace. Also, Hall reminds us, when compared to Europe, where more than 100,000 men and women were prosecuted as witches and half sentenced to death, only 272 individuals in America were ever charged with witchcraft. The Salem witch trials, which happened in 1692, marked the last execution of a witch in North America. In Europe, witches were still executed as late as 1782.

Completing his overview of the Puritans, Hall writes that the Puritans “created political institutions that were more democratic than any the world had ever seen, and they strictly limited civil leaders by law.”


Rebellion to Tyrants Is Obedience to God

Another one of the popular putdowns of Christianity by its critics (and even some Christians) is that Christianity doesn’t permit rebellion to tyrannical government but supports tyrannical government. In a gross and deeply literalist reading of the Apostle Paul in Romans (somewhat ironic all things considered), these critics assert that because a single passage in the New Testament supposedly teaches obedience to government, which is ordained by God, the American revolutionary patriots rejected Christian teachings and had to utilize secular and Enlightenment arguments to advance the cause of liberty during the American Revolution.

Again, this is patently false, as any decently educated person knows. Kody Cooper and Justin Dyer recently published a superb book, The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics, addressing this myth in detail. Hall, too, quickly covers the problems of this critique. Highlighting Calvinist theological history (something that these critics have no knowledge of, despite their claims of educated intelligence), covering important names known to students of theology, such as John Ponet, John Knox, George Buchanan, Samuel Rutherford, and even John Cotton (grandfather of Cotton Mather), Hall shows that Christian theological history had come to see rebellion to tyrants as obedience to God and Scripture.

Moreover, most of the popular and patriotic arguments for revolution were not conversant with theorists such as John Locke but with Scripture. The Old Testament, especially, was appealed to by the patriotic clergy in favor of revolution. Christians, far from submitting to tyranny, offered complex theological arguments against tyranny and, therefore, helped formulate a political theology of liberty and equality in the process.


Evangelicals Against Oppression

Perhaps the most common trope that our contemporary anti-Christian elite culture pushes is the tyrannical and ignorant evangelical Christian. This, too, is a stereotype with little basis in history. In fact, many of our best institutions of higher learning were founded by evangelical Christians even if they have since departed from that faith that gave birth to them (Harvard, Yale, and Oberlin, to name a few). The first opponents of slavery and proponents of abolition were the heirs of the Puritans, such as the Rev. Samuel Sewall, who published the first anti-slavery writing in 1700.

Motivated by a vigorous religious faith, the Second Great Awakening was the fire that fueled anti-slavery and abolitionist politics in antebellum America. Men and women of Methodist, Baptist, and congregationalist (Puritan) backgrounds were oftentimes the leading champions of liberty and equality for African-Americans and indigenous Americans. As Hall writes, it was American evangelicals, and especially evangelical women, who most actively “oppos[ed] the evils of slavery and Indian removal.”

During the antebellum years, American evangelicals sought to “work together to help end social evils” and established “thousands of organizations aimed at alleviating suffering and reforming society.” Evangelicals were on the front lines of creating new educational institutions, promoting education reforms to advance public literacy, and establishing newspapers as a means of confronting social evils. Furthermore, Evangelicalism, originally a religious minority grouping, was deeply indebted to religious liberty as the means for its social growth and prominence.

This spirit of religious social reform for liberty led to the contemporary defense of religious liberty as the bedrock on which all liberty and equality before the law stands: “Christian legal organizations have been among the best advocates for religious liberty for all, including citizens who embrace non-Christian faiths,” Hall writes.

Why Christianity Matters to America

In Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land, Hall gives us yet another triumphant and important book to correct the polemical, inaccurate, and deeply misleading public presentation of the relationship between Christianity and American politics. Far from the evil bogeyman and religion of oppression that ungrateful critics claim, Christianity has been a positive force for good and the growth of liberty and equality. In fact, America has been best when it has reached into the heart of Christianity for its social reforms and advancement of liberty and equality rather than rejecting Christianity.


Paul Krause is the editor-in-chief of Voegel in View. He is the author of "Finding Arcadia: Wisdom, Truth, and Love in the Classics" (Academica Press, 2023), "The Odyssey of Love: A Christian Guide to the Great Books" (Wipf and Stock, 2021), and contributed to "The College Lecture Today" (Lexington, 2019) and "Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters" (Routledge, 2022).

 

[ChemEngineer]

Where do monkeys fit into this?
Right along with 'infinity.'


4. What really convince me was the appeal to 'infinity.' I mean, on the math team and all, once math was part of the 'proof'...I bought it lock, stock and barrel!

That was then....this is now.

This was the argument:
"The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare."
Infinite monkey theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Therefore, by extension, with enough time, random events would certainly result in all of the permutations and combinations of life we see today....QED,...evolution!

And upon first hearing that argument.....it seems to make sense.
First hearing......seems to....





But- any person who accepts that argument has no real understanding of mathematics, molecular biology, evolution, or the real world.
And it seems that there are quite a lot of same.




5. There are arguments that seem to make sense, until they are examined in the light of reality. Take "infinity."
Given an infinite number of trials, any outcome that has a non-zero probability, will occur. No matter how unlikely....it will happen.

This is where one should review the definition of a paradox.



The monkey is sitting in front of a typewriter, randomly hitting keys forever, will, after an unbelievably long time, will type Hamlet and all of Shakespeare's works. That means all the letters, the correct sequence, and every other factor necessary....about 30,000 words, average 5-6 letters each word, or about 150,000 characters the monkey needs to get right....and in the right order.
Now add spaces and punctuation.



On the first try, the probability is one divided by 26 to the 150,000th power. That makes it very, very close to zero.




6. What is exposed is the aspect of pure mathematics that makes it, at the very least, disingenuous to use 'infinity' as proof of evolution: it is not reality-based.
It has no connection to the real world.


a. " Now, before one attempts to explain away the obvious problem by inserting the term ‘infinity,’ let’s agree that infinity does not exist in the real world. So, without ‘infinity,’ it follows that everything in the universe is finite, therefore had a beginning….and, an end."
Andrew Parker, "The Genesis Enigma," chapter nine.



I said earlier, 'Upon close inspection, none hold up as "proof" but rather as conjecture, and an appeal to logic.
Philosophy rather than science.'




Meaning that there is no 'infinity explanation' to account for evolution.

You've been snookered again!

Dawkins' monkey business is much, much more impossible than PoliticalChic shows.

First, a typewriter has 44 keys which double to 88 when you factor in upper case.
Eighty-eight is a far bigger number than 26 when you raise it to large powers.


Eminent statistician, Emile Borel, stated years ago that "impossible" may be defined as 1 chance in 10 to the 50, or less.
Ten to the 50 marbles one cm in diameter would fill 928,400 billion billion spheres the size of earth. Try picking one unique marble out of that massive group on your first and only try. That is "one chance in 10 to the 50."

Now we come to the insuperable statistics of original protein synthesis, absent intelligent design.

Titin is the largest protein in your body. It is in your muscles and is 38,138 amino acid residues in precise sequence. So one of the 20 possible amino acids, to the 38,138th power times 1/2 to the 38,138th power to compute the probability of an L amino acid rather than a D amino acid, times 1/2 to the 38,138th power to compensate for the peptide bonds rather than equally probable non-peptide bonds, yields an overall probability of 1 in 10 to the 72,578th power.

That is just for ONE protein and humans have over 20,000 different proteins in our bodies.