The Creationist minority

[jillery]

For those several poster who assert that the views of Creationists can
be ignored in discussions about religion, since they represent such an
insignificant fraction of the religious population:

<https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/>

<http://tinyurl.com/m48bkcz>

From the article:
*********************************
For 35 years the results have held pretty constant, as the graph shows
below, 40-50% of all Americans have over time been young-Earth
creationists when it comes to human evolution, 30-40% are “theistic
evolutionists” who accept some form of teleological, god-guided
change, and the “natural evolutionists”—those who accept human
evolution as a purely natural and unguided process, as scientists
think it is—have hovered around an abysmal 10%.
***********************************

Only this year have the numbers for the two categories become
statistically identical.

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[Glenn]

"jillery" <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:runbicllngvt9l54c...@4ax.com...

>
> For those several poster who assert that the views of Creationists can
> be ignored in discussions about religion

Huh?

[Alpha Beta]

Any evolutionist on the level of Louis Pasteur or Gregor Mendel? No.

[jillery]

On Wed, 24 May 2017 13:01:19 -0700, "Glenn" <g...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Nobody called your name. Go back to sleep.

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 24 May 2017 15:32:52 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>For those several poster who assert that the views of Creationists can
>be ignored in discussions about religion, since they represent such an
>insignificant fraction of the religious population:
>
><https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/>
>
><http://tinyurl.com/m48bkcz>
>
>From the article:
>*********************************
>For 35 years the results have held pretty constant, as the graph shows
>below, 40-50% of all Americans have over time been young-Earth
>creationists when it comes to human evolution, 30-40% are “theistic
>evolutionists” who accept some form of teleological, god-guided
>change, and the “natural evolutionists”—those who accept human
>evolution as a purely natural and unguided process, as scientists
>think it is—have hovered around an abysmal 10%.
>***********************************
>
>Only this year have the numbers for the two categories become
>statistically identical.

Also from the article:

******************************************************
if it’s construed as applying to all species except humans—in fact,
that’s exactly the position of the Catholic Church.)
******************************************************

It is NOT the position of the Catholic Church; Coyne comes out with
some unadulterated bullshit, this is just one example.

[Martin Harran]

For clarity: "it’s construed as applying to all species except humans
..." = "evolution in general if it’s construed as applying to all
species except humans ..."

[jillery]

On Thu, 25 May 2017 12:44:08 +0100, Martin Harran

In a similar spirit of improving clarity, it would help if you made
clear what you think Coyne thinks is "exactly the position of the
Catholic Church. I won't speculate here what you think, but I can
help illustrate what Coyne thinks:

<https://newrepublic.com/article/120025/pope-francis-quotes-evolution-big-bang-are-nothing-celebrate

<http://tinyurl.com/m3rdeqm>

***************************************************
The Church’s support of evolution, then, has been equivocal: while
allowing that humans had evolved, it also affirmed human
exceptionalism in the form of our unique soul.

[...]

This is simply the Church’s traditional view of non-naturalistic,
theistic evolution, expressed in words that sound good, but that still
reflect a form of creationism.
*****************************************************

and then you made clear what you think is the position of the Catholic
Church wrt biological evolution.

and then made you clear how you think said position shows that what
Coyne posted qualifies as "unadulterated bullshit".

After all, it would be an irony if it turned out that, in the process
of complaining about someone who argued a strawman, you yourself
argued a strawman.

[The Incredibly Lucky JTEM]

Ironically, dating websites are vastly
more "Scientific" than jackasses like
you.

You being so astoundingly idiotic will
never grasp this, but polls are an
excellent indication of exactly what
people believe they are supposed to say.

For the most part, people know what "The
Right" answer is. True what is "Right"
changes from demographic to demographic,
but within a demographic everyone knows
what they're supposed to say.

Dating websites will ask the exact same
question many times, sometimes dozens of
times. Usually they're worded slightly
different, but the same questions keep
getting asked over & over again. This is
precisely because people know what they're
supposed to say. So, the questionnaires
are designed to tire people out, wear them
down to the point where they stop trying
to think of the "Right" answer and simply
tell the truth.

Same with polls. EXACTLY the same with polls.

People know what they're supposed to say and
they say it.





-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/161067460867

[The Incredibly Lucky JTEM]

Martin Harran wrote:

[snip]

The Catholic church has no issues with evolution.
It doesn't teach evolution per se, doesn't try
to sway anyone away from creationism but it has
no problems what so ever with evolution.

When I was in junior high I priest visited one
of my classes (He was invited) and talked about
how he believed in creationism, and that evolution
was the means which God chose to do it.



-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/161067460867

[Martin Harran]

On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:36:12 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

Jillery, I have no interest whatsoever in discussing this - or indeed,
any topic - with you; my post above was simply to correct Gerry
Coyne's blatant misrepresentation of fact in the article you supplied
a link to.

I will however remind you of one of the fundamental rules of research
- check primary sources. If you really want to know what the Catholic
Church's teaching is, the first port of call in of things relating to
Catholic teaching is the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is
available on line.

I suggest you particularly look at Section 2, Chapter One, #283 which
begins:

"The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the
object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our
knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of
life-forms and the appearance of man."
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM

Contrary to what Coyne explicitly says in that article, nowhere in
Catholic teaching will you find anything which states that the
evolutionary process does not apply to humans.

[Jonathan]

On 5/24/2017 3:32 PM, jillery wrote:
> For those several poster who assert that the views of Creationists can
> be ignored in discussions about religion, since they represent such an
> insignificant fraction of the religious population:
>
> <https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/>
>
> <http://tinyurl.com/m48bkcz>
>
> From the article:
> *********************************
> For 35 years the results have held pretty constant, as the graph shows
> below, 40-50% of all Americans have over time been young-Earth
> creationists when it comes to human evolution, 30-40% are “theistic
> evolutionists” who accept some form of teleological, god-guided
> change, and the “natural evolutionists”—those who accept human
> evolution as a purely natural and unguided process, as scientists
> think it is—have hovered around an abysmal 10%.
> ***********************************
>
> Only this year have the numbers for the two categories become
> statistically identical.
>

The poor numbers for evolution are due to notion
that evolution goes from microbes-to-microsoft
via an 'unguided' process doesn't pass a
laugh test.

The terms unguided and natural DO NOT belong
in the same sentence, that is the problem
as it displays an ignorance of the canalizing
or guiding, supervenient and irreducible, creative
top down forces of emergent/collective properties.

The statement 'unguided natural processes' is
a Dark Age statement that should have been
exorcised from science half a century ago.

But the eggheads of the world see all the
randomness in natural selection (their false god)
and assume the output must be similarly random
or unguided.

That's a profoundly incorrect conclusion.

And btw, a top-down, supervenient, irreducible
creative force also describes the concept
of God to the T.

Most thinking people clearly understand
the gist of natural selection, but unlike
the egghead community, they also understand
that is not the entire story.

Natural selection merely fine tunes what
emergence (God) has already created.

Even dear Emily knew this 150 years ago.

She says selection merely fine tunes
three times in this poem below, and she
is not known for repeating herself, quite
the contrary she is Ms. Concise.

Perhaps as concise a writer that has
ever lived.

And btw in this very same poem she
defines all the basic concepts of
modern complexity science wrt
self organization.

Which is a universal internal process following
power law (inverse-square law) behavior, and
converges towards criticality (the ideal) due to
a competition of opposing static and chaotic
attractors.

It's all in this absolutely astonishing
poem. And not only is this poem incredibly
rich in concepts, but it conveys them
in very few words that even sounds
nice rolling off the tongue.

This is a level of writing that stands alone.




Growth of Man -- like Growth of Nature (universal)
Gravitates within (inverse-square behavior)
Atmosphere, and Sun endorse it (selection only fine tunes)
Bit it stir -- alone (creation environ independent)

Each -- its difficult Ideal (evolves to criticality)
Must achieve -- Itself (environ independent)
Through the solitary prowess
Of a Silent Life (irreducible)

Effort -- is the sole condition
Patience of Itself
Patience of opposing forces (static and chaotic opposites)

And intact Belief (following physical laws)

Looking on -- is the Department
Of its Audience
But Transaction -- is assisted
By no Countenance (not past dependent, but dynamic)





And why her poems on nature isn't given
it's scientific due? Ask Emily



They shut me up in Prose
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet
Because they liked me "still"

Still! Could themself have peeped
And seen my Brain -- go round
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason -- in the Pound



All anyone needs to know about how nature works
is here.
http://www.repeatafterus.com/search.php?q=nature&Submit2=Search



Jonathan





s

[Robert Carnegie]

On Friday, 26 May 2017 14:39:54 UTC+1, The Incredibly Lucky JTEM wrote:
> Martin Harran wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> The Catholic church has no issues with evolution.
> It doesn't teach evolution per se, doesn't try
> to sway anyone away from creationism but it has
> no problems what so ever with evolution.
>
> When I was in junior high I priest visited one
> of my classes (He was invited) and talked about
> how he believed in creationism, and that evolution
> was the means which God chose to do it.

The last one is "creation", not "creationism".
"Creationism" specifically means "all creation,
no evolution (except for 'microevolution' which
doesn't count)".

Catholic doctrine includes "Creationism" of souls. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism_%28soul%29>
I think the actual word is obsolete as to Catholic
souls; the word for it is not required because
no contrary belief is permitted.

[Jonathan]

Perhaps you should read the evolution page
at the Vatican if you want to know what
their current views are.


Evolving Concepts of Nature
Proceedings of the Plenary Session
24-28 October 2014
Vatican City, 2015
http://www.pas.va/content/accademia/en/publications/acta/acta23.html



For instance, they are far ahead of this ng when it
comes to the latest ideas on evolution.
For instance....



Evolving Insights into the Laws of Nature for
Biological Evolution
President Werber Arber
Plenary Session on Evolving Concepts of Nature
24-28 October 2014
Casina Pio IV, Vatican City


"In an overall view we can conclude that natural reality
actively takes care of biological evolution by
self-organization."
http://www.pas.va/content/accademia/en/publications/acta/acta23/arber.html




And here is the Vatican's complexity science page.

Complexity and Analogy in Science: Theoretical,
Methodological and Epistemological Aspects
http://www.pas.va/content/accademia/en/publications/acta/complexity.html


Clearly the Vatican is using a complexity approach to
evolution and nature, which this ng has yet to even
comprehend let alone embrace in any numbers.

This paper is especially nice and should be read by
anyone here truly interested in the new view of
reality. Especially take note of the last paragraph
of the conclusion please.



Complexity, Reductionism, and Holism
in Science and Philosophy of Science


As an aside let me remark that holistic approaches of this kind
lead to the concept of emergence insofar as, both in the sense
of the confirmation holism and also in the sense of semantic
holism, it is the system-properties that give us information
about the behaviour of the system.

These properties are in turn emergent. Emergence says again
that it is impossible to use characteristics of elements
and the interrelations between these to describe
characteristics of ensembles or make predictions about them.

The core element of a strong emergence thesis is a non-derivability
or non-explainability hypothesis of the system characteristics
shaped from the characteristics of the system components.
An emergent characteristic is non-derivable; its
occurrence is in this sense unexpected and unpredictable.

Weak emergence is limited to the difference of the characteristics
of systems and system components and is compatible with the
theoretical explainability of the system characteristics.
Weak emergence in turn is essentially a phenomenon of complexity.

Here, too, our considerations return us to the concept of
complexity, which is, from the perspective of philosophy
of science as well, the key concept of the modern development
of science and points to the future, possibly also to the
limits, of scientific progress.


http://www.pas.va/content/dam/accademia/pdf/acta22/acta22-mittelstrass.pdf






The Vatican has joined the modern view, what's
this ng's excuse?



Jonathan



s




"

[jillery]

On Sat, 27 May 2017 10:11:38 +0100, Martin Harran

Thank you for taking the time to let me know you have no interest in
discussing anything with me. Of course, that you think said
information is relevant to me suggests you're too egotistical for your
opinions to be relevant.

Of course, an irony here is that, after taking the time to assert your
complete lack of interest in discussing this with me, you now proceed
to discuss this with me, perhaps as an act of contrition.

>I will however remind you of one of the fundamental rules of research
>- check primary sources. If you really want to know what the Catholic
>Church's teaching is, the first port of call in of things relating to
>Catholic teaching is the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is
>available on line.
>
>I suggest you particularly look at Section 2, Chapter One, #283 which
>begins:
>
>"The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the
>object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our
>knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of
>life-forms and the appearance of man."
>http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM
>
>Contrary to what Coyne explicitly says in that article, nowhere in
>Catholic teaching will you find anything which states that the
>evolutionary process does not apply to humans.

You show that your claim of Coyne's "unadulterated bullshit" is based
on your own unadulterated bullshit misrepresentation of Coyne's words
and opinions. That would make your discussion above imperfect
contrition. Just sayin'.

[jillery]

On Fri, 26 May 2017 06:31:58 -0700 (PDT), The Incredibly Lucky JTEM
<jte...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>Ironically, dating websites are vastly
>more "Scientific" than jackasses like
>you.

Of course, I neither stated nor implied I was being scientific, nor is
my being scientific required in this topic. Right here would have
been a good place for you to have explicated why you think it is. Your
failure to do so suggests you're just making up stuff for more of your
troll bait.

[jillery]

On Sat, 27 May 2017 06:52:36 -0400, Jonathan <Wr...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 5/24/2017 3:32 PM, jillery wrote:
>> For those several poster who assert that the views of Creationists can
>> be ignored in discussions about religion, since they represent such an
>> insignificant fraction of the religious population:
>>
>> <https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/>
>>
>> <http://tinyurl.com/m48bkcz>
>>
>> From the article:
>> *********************************
>> For 35 years the results have held pretty constant, as the graph shows
>> below, 40-50% of all Americans have over time been young-Earth
>> creationists when it comes to human evolution, 30-40% are “theistic
>> evolutionists” who accept some form of teleological, god-guided
>> change, and the “natural evolutionists”—those who accept human
>> evolution as a purely natural and unguided process, as scientists
>> think it is—have hovered around an abysmal 10%.
>> ***********************************
>>
>> Only this year have the numbers for the two categories become
>> statistically identical.
>
>
>
>The poor numbers for evolution are due to notion
>that evolution goes from microbes-to-microsoft
>via an 'unguided' process doesn't pass a
>laugh test.

I smell straw.

>The terms unguided and natural DO NOT belong
>in the same sentence, that is the problem
>as it displays an ignorance of the canalizing
>or guiding, supervenient and irreducible, creative
>top down forces of emergent/collective properties.
>
>The statement 'unguided natural processes' is
>a Dark Age statement that should have been
>exorcised from science half a century ago.
>
>But the eggheads of the world see all the
>randomness in natural selection (their false god)
>and assume the output must be similarly random
>or unguided.

So your objection here is about the wording of the survey questions.
Be sure to let Gallup know of your concerns.

>That's a profoundly incorrect conclusion.
>
>And btw, a top-down, supervenient, irreducible
>creative force also describes the concept
>of God to the T.

Nobody suggested otherwise.

>Most thinking people clearly understand
>the gist of natural selection, but unlike
>the egghead community, they also understand
>that is not the entire story.
>
>Natural selection merely fine tunes what
>emergence (God) has already created.
>
>Even dear Emily knew this 150 years ago.
>
>She says selection merely fine tunes
>three times in this poem below, and she
>is not known for repeating herself, quite
>the contrary she is Ms. Concise.
>
>Perhaps as concise a writer that has
>ever lived.
>
>And btw in this very same poem she
>defines all the basic concepts of
>modern complexity science wrt
>self organization.

The veracity of the cited Gallup surveys, and of Coyne's conclusions
from them, are unaffected by theories of self-organization. Once
again you jump the track. Strawman confirmed.

[Robert Carnegie]

On Saturday, 27 May 2017 12:44:54 UTC+1, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> On Friday, 26 May 2017 14:39:54 UTC+1, The Incredibly Lucky JTEM wrote:
> > Martin Harran wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > The Catholic church has no issues with evolution.
> > It doesn't teach evolution per se, doesn't try
> > to sway anyone away from creationism but it has
> > no problems what so ever with evolution.
> >
> > When I was in junior high I priest visited one
> > of my classes (He was invited) and talked about
> > how he believed in creationism, and that evolution
> > was the means which God chose to do it.
>
> The last one is "creation", not "creationism".
> "Creationism" specifically means "all creation,
> no evolution (except for 'microevolution' which
> doesn't count)".
>
> Catholic doctrine includes "Creationism" of souls. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism_%28soul%29>

...which, to be clear, is pretty much nothing
to do with "biology creationism". Except that -
according to the doctrine - each hand-made soul
is fixed in a biologically evolved human body.

I think it's mainly accurate to say that the
Catholic church accepts evolution as the origin
if all living species on Earth, including humans,
but doesn't require priests or lay members to
give up a belief in "creation science" unless
it's become embarrassing.

But that the church insists that God makes souls; and then puts the souls in sinful human bodies;
and then punishes the souls for being sinful.
So, still confusing. And this is also called
"creationism" - also confusing.

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 27 May 2017 11:09:28 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

My lack of interest in discussion with you does not preclude me
pointing out when you tell deliberate lies about me.

Unless, of course, you would care to point out what part I have
misrepresented of "It’s entirely possible that more Americans would
accept evolution in general if it’s construed as applying to all

species except humans—in fact, that’s exactly the position of the

Catholic Church" - Coyne's verbatim words in the article you linked
to.

[Jonathan]

The question is nonsense since it uses two
terms, unguided and natural, that contradict
each other.

It's as if they asked 'do you believe in
an autocratic democracy'?

A public that believes in democracy would
strongly tend to answer no due to their
objection to the first term.

A question concerning nature that is grossly
inaccurate would not return worthwhile
results.

Do you believe nature is an unguided process?

Can you answer yes or no? Or are you going
to nit-pick away to avoid taking a stand?

[Jonathan]

On 5/27/2017 11:25 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> On Saturday, 27 May 2017 12:44:54 UTC+1, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>> On Friday, 26 May 2017 14:39:54 UTC+1, The Incredibly Lucky JTEM wrote:
>>> Martin Harran wrote:
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> The Catholic church has no issues with evolution.
>>> It doesn't teach evolution per se, doesn't try
>>> to sway anyone away from creationism but it has
>>> no problems what so ever with evolution.
>>>
>>> When I was in junior high I priest visited one
>>> of my classes (He was invited) and talked about
>>> how he believed in creationism, and that evolution
>>> was the means which God chose to do it.
>>
>> The last one is "creation", not "creationism".
>> "Creationism" specifically means "all creation,
>> no evolution (except for 'microevolution' which
>> doesn't count)".
>>
>> Catholic doctrine includes "Creationism" of souls. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism_%28soul%29>
>

> ....which, to be clear, is pretty much nothing

> to do with "biology creationism". Except that -
> according to the doctrine - each hand-made soul
> is fixed in a biologically evolved human body.
>
> I think it's mainly accurate to say that the
> Catholic church accepts evolution as the origin
> if all living species on Earth, including humans,
> but doesn't require priests or lay members to
> give up a belief in "creation science" unless
> it's become embarrassing.
>

The Vatican expressly rejects creation science, the
branch of creationism that attempts to scientifically
prove the Book of Genesis.


“READING GENESIS WE IMAGINE THAT GOD IS ‘A WIZARD
WITH A MAGIC WAND’ CAPABLE OF DOING ALL THINGS,
HE SAID. ‘BUT IT IS NOT SO."

~POPE FRANCIS


'The Pope said the scientific account of the beginning
of the universe and the development of life through
evolution are compatible with the Catholic Church’s
vision of creation. He told a meeting of the
Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Sciences:'

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/pope-francis-says-genesis-account-creation-true/



Bishop Sánchez is the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy
of Sciences.

“If we don't accept science, we don't accept reason,”
says Sánchez, “and reason was created by God."

“The notion of creation is completely different from the
notion of evolution,” said Sánchez. “Creation is a
philosophical notion that comes from The Bible.

It says that God, from nothing, created being.” That is
the central concept, he said, and science has no real
explanation for how that might happen. But evolution
is different. There is a great deal of evidence,
he said, that there is evolution in nature and that
species evolve.

The great confusion comes, according to Sánchez, when
people try to use science to prove or disprove the
existence of God. “This is like saying you can prove
the existence of the soul,” said Sánchez, and about that
he has no doubt.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/22/vatican-science-on-christmas-and-creationism?source=dictionary

[jillery]

I have no need to do either. First, you do the latter so well for
both of us. Second, of course nature is an unguided process, for any
reasonable definitions of those words. They contradict each other
only in in the minds of those who play word games.

And staying on-topic hardly qualifies as a nitpick, your self-serving
claims notwithstanding.

[jillery]

On Sat, 27 May 2017 18:08:11 +0100, Martin Harran

Well then, let me know if you ever post any evidence that I told lies
about you, deliberate or otherwise. Until then, you're very
definitely "discussing", at least in a general sense. Apparently you
think lying is ok as long as you do it.

>Unless, of course, you would care to point out what part I have
>misrepresented of "It’s entirely possible that more Americans would
>accept evolution in general if it’s construed as applying to all
>species except humans—in fact, that’s exactly the position of the
>Catholic Church" - Coyne's verbatim words in the article you linked
>to.

Answered before you even asked, unless the meaning of "unadulterated
bullshit" is way different in your part of the world. Apparently you
deny that the Catholic Church preaches human exceptionalism in the
form of having Created souls, the basis of Coyne's statement to which
you take such great umbrage. If so, you could mention that the next
time you go to Confession, as well as you posting those two lies (so
far) documented above.

You might want to stop "not discussing" right now, before you dig
yourself even deeper into that hole you're standing in.

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 27 May 2017 16:01:57 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

So you can't show what part of it I misrepresented. Coyne said nothing
about ensoulment in the article you linked to; when he said that the
Catholic Church claims that evolution applies to other species but not
to humans, he did not qualify his statement in any way, on the
contrary he emphasised what he was saying by stating that it is
*exactly* the Church's position.

Your attempt to evade what Coyne said in the article by trying to
wriggle out of it by moving the goalposts onto other things Coyne has
written and accusing me of misrepresenting what he said in the article
you linked to are a timely reminder of why I long ago gave up on
trying to have a rational discussion with you.

'Bye.

[Mark Isaak]

On 5/27/17 2:11 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
> [...]

> I will however remind you of one of the fundamental rules of research
> - check primary sources. If you really want to know what the Catholic
> Church's teaching is, the first port of call in of things relating to
> Catholic teaching is the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is
> available on line.

I submit that there is room for disagreement about what, exactly, "the
Catholic Church's teaching" means. It can refer either to the body of
congregants who come together identifying themselves as Catholics, or it
can refer to their leadership, especially the Pope and bishops. The
beliefs of those two groups, I understand, are not always in agreement.

I grant that "the Catholic Church's teaching" or "position" strongly
implies the teachings of the leadership. However, some of the dispute
in this thread has been over the "views", which to my mind more likely
refers to the congregants and their own ideas.

To summarize the pet peeve which rashly motivated me to write this post:
Just keep in mind that churches are made up of multiple people, and no
church, not even one with an absolute leader, can be expected to have a
single unanimous position on anything.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can
have." - James Baldwin

[jillery]

On Sat, 27 May 2017 22:18:42 +0100, Martin Harran

Of course I did, still preserved in the quoted text above. Faking a
lack of reading comprehension won't help you out of the hole you dug
yourself in.

>Coyne said nothing
>about ensoulment in the article you linked to;

Of course, I linked to two articles. It was the second one where he
specifically referred to human souls, which I quoted. Apparently you
were too busy posting your lies to notice.

>when he said that the
>Catholic Church claims that evolution applies to other species but not
>to humans,

IIUC the Catholic Church says that God gives souls only to humans. If
so, then their doctrine doesn't apply to other species, and Coyne is
quite correct and you are quite wrong.

>he did not qualify his statement in any way, on the
>contrary he emphasised what he was saying by stating that it is
>*exactly* the Church's position.

By your own admission above, Coyne didn't qualify his statement in any
way. So you can't say that your assumption is correct. OTOH I quoted
Coyne from his own article.

>Your attempt to evade what Coyne said in the article by trying to
>wriggle out of it by moving the goalposts onto other things Coyne has
>written and accusing me of misrepresenting what he said in the article
>you linked to are a timely reminder of why I long ago gave up on
>trying to have a rational discussion with you.

Your paragraph above adds lies #4, #5, #6 and #7. You better confess
ASAP, for the sake of your immortal soul, assuming you believe you
have one.

Maybe next time you have a compulsion to lie about having no interest
whatsoever in discussing anything with me, you won't lead with
unadulterated bullshit about other people's alleged unadulterated
bullshit.

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 27 May 2017 15:47:06 -0700, Mark Isaak
<eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:

>On 5/27/17 2:11 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>> [...]
>> I will however remind you of one of the fundamental rules of research
>> - check primary sources. If you really want to know what the Catholic
>> Church's teaching is, the first port of call in of things relating to
>> Catholic teaching is the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is
>> available on line.
>
>I submit that there is room for disagreement about what, exactly, "the
>Catholic Church's teaching" means. It can refer either to the body of
>congregants who come together identifying themselves as Catholics, or it
>can refer to their leadership, especially the Pope and bishops. The
>beliefs of those two groups, I understand, are not always in agreement.
>
>I grant that "the Catholic Church's teaching" or "position" strongly
>implies the teachings of the leadership.

I don't think there is any doubt that Coyne was referring to the

leadership.

> However, some of the dispute
>in this thread has been over the "views", which to my mind more likely
>refers to the congregants and their own ideas.

It was Jillery who tried to divert it into "views". I corrected what
Coyne specifically said in the article she had linked to.

>
>To summarize the pet peeve which rashly motivated me to write this post:
>Just keep in mind that churches are made up of multiple people, and no
>church, not even one with an absolute leader, can be expected to have a
>single unanimous position on anything.

Correct to an extent, which is why Coyne was particularly out of order
to give a simplified description of evolution and then state that it
is *exactly* the position of the Catholic Church.

[jillery]

You shouldn't post such stupid lies, especially on a Sunday.

It should go without repeating so soon, but the following is your
reply to my OP:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:49:25 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>Also from the article:
>
>******************************************************
>if it’s construed as applying to all species except humans—in fact,
>that’s exactly the position of the Catholic Church.)
>******************************************************
>
>It is NOT the position of the Catholic Church; Coyne comes out with
>some unadulterated bullshit, this is just one example.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


A few hours later, you attempted to clarify your point:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On Thu, 25 May 2017 12:44:08 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:49:25 +0100, Martin Harran
><martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>For clarity: "it’s construed as applying to all species except humans
>..." = "evolution in general if it’s construed as applying to all
>species except humans ..."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


For further clarity, the following is Coyne's entire and unmangled
parenthetical remark:
******************************************************
(Note: it’s not evolution in general that’s surveyed by the question
below, but human evolution. It’s entirely possible that more
Americans would accept evolution in general if it’s construed as
applying to all species except humans—in fact, that’s exactly the
position of the Catholic Church.)
******************************************************

Based on your posts above, a fair reading is your "It" refers to
Coyne's "that", which a fair reading is he refers to his immediately
preceding phrase:

"...evolution in general if it’s construed as applying to all species
except humans ..."

As Mark Isaak pointed out above, what remains unclear is what Coyne
means by "evolution in general".

As is your style, you assume you know what Coyne means, and
categorically declared your assumed meaning as "unadulterated
bullshit". What remains unstated is what you think Coyne meant.

In reply to your post above, I cited an article where Coyne explicitly
states what he means by that phrase in context with the Catholic
Church:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:36:12 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[...]

><https://newrepublic.com/article/120025/pope-francis-quotes-evolution-big-bang-are-nothing-celebrate
>
><http://tinyurl.com/m3rdeqm>
>
>***************************************************
>The Church’s support of evolution, then, has been equivocal: while
>allowing that humans had evolved, it also affirmed human
>exceptionalism in the form of our unique soul.
>
>[...]
>
>This is simply the Church’s traditional view of non-naturalistic,
>theistic evolution, expressed in words that sound good, but that still
>reflect a form of creationism.
>*****************************************************

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This makes clear what Coyne meant, and what Coyne thinks is the
Catholic Church's position on Evolution, an explicit inclusion of
"ensoulment".

In your following posts, including the one to which I reply, you make
clear that you dismiss the above clarification in lieu of your own
assumptions.

You do not explain what you think Coyne meant.

You do not explain what you mean by 'divert it into "views"'.

You do not explain how you think you corrected Coyne.

As is your style, you run away from the issue with a Parthian shot
about my alleged irrationality and a reaffirmation or your disinterest
in discussing anything with me. That you refuse to accept Coyne's
explicit inclusion of the Church's teaching of ensoulment suggests it
you who is the irrational one here.

Which in turn explains why you wasted so much time not discussing this
with me.

Which in turn explains why I don't care what you do.

[Jonathan]

Hmm, eight whole words, how convincing~

Last time I had such a detailed 'response'
I was standing in a sandbox engaging in a
....'no it isn't - 'yes it is'... debate
with another first grader.

Well then, of course it is guided.

Are you convinced from my seven word rebuttal?
If not why should your equally empty reply
convince me of your opinion?

Emergent or collective properties, such as
the property of wisdom emerging from
collective intelligence, clearly guide
the whole towards the ideal, towards
higher levels of evolved complexity.

Natural processes are guided.

Hence the enduring inability to convince
the public of your 'unguided theory' of
evolution. They know better, someday
the eggheads will too.

> , for any
> reasonable definitions of those words.

A process is not unguided.


Definition of process


2a (1) : a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes
that lead toward a particular result

b : a series of actions or operations conducing to an end;



s

[Robert Carnegie]

I don't see how the process of "rain" is guided
except for falling mostly downwards, and I don't
think you meant that.

[*Hemidactylus*]

The main discrepancy seems to be ensoulment which I think is bullshit but
Martin's issue seems to be that Catholics are OK with evolution up to this
somewhat minor point. Coyne should know this distinction but made a sloppy
point in one post that Martin argues fails to acknowledge this distinction.
Maybe Coyne failed to make a subtle distinction. Given Coyne's crowing over
things that he and PZ Myers have serious differences over I am hesitant to
accept his word at face value.

[jonathan]

Water is an emergent property like everything else
in the universe, which emerge at criticality
or at the entanglement of opposite states.

And such critical behavior produces processes
like gravity and evolution which provide
their own guiding forces towards, or attracted
to, increasing order.

Rain is guided by gravity, an inverse square law, towards
a more organized fate, say, a body of water.

Just as most of the natural world is guided by a related
mathematical law called a power law, towards more a
organized future such as stars, life and intelligence.



Power law


The ubiquity of power-law relations in physics is partly
due to dimensional constraints, while in complex systems,
power laws are often thought to be signatures of hierarchy
or of specific stochastic processes.

Research on the origins of power-law relations, and efforts
to observe and validate them in the real world, is an
active topic of research in many fields of science,
including physics, computer science, linguistics,
geophysics, neuroscience, sociology, economics and more.

Universality[edit]

Diverse systems with the same critical exponents—that is,
which display identical scaling behaviour as they
approach criticality—can be shown, via renormalization
group theory, to share the same fundamental dynamics.

For instance, the behavior of water and CO2 at their
boiling points fall in the same universality class because
they have identical critical exponents.


Examples


More than a hundred power-law distributions have been
identified in physics (e.g. sandpile avalanches), biology
(e.g. species extinction and body mass), and the social
sciences (e.g. city sizes and income).[14]
Among them are:


The inverse-square laws of Newtonian gravity and electrostatics

Self-organized criticality with a critical point as an attractor

Exponential growth and random observation

Fractals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law#Examples



Power laws and Self-Organized Criticality in Theory and Nature

Power laws and distributions with heavy tails are common features
of many experimentally studied complex systems, like the
distribution of the sizes of earthquakes and solar flares,
or the duration of neuronal avalanches in the brain.

Previously, researchers surmised that a single general concept
may act as a unifying underlying generative mechanism, with
the theory of self organized criticality being a weighty
contender.


The complexity of physical and biological scaling phenomena
has been found to transcend the explanatory power of
individual paradigmal concepts.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.5527











s

[jillery]

>>both of us. Second, of course nature is an unguided process, for any
>>reasonable definitions of those words. They contradict each other
>>only in in the minds of those who play word games.
>>
>>And staying on-topic hardly qualifies as a nitpick, your self-serving
>>claims notwithstanding.
>
>

>Hmm, eight whole words, how convincing~

Apparently you can't count past eight. Perhaps you ran out of
fingers. Next time, take off your clothes first. That way you can
count to twenty at least.

>Last time I had such a detailed 'response'
>I was standing in a sandbox engaging in a
>....'no it isn't - 'yes it is'... debate
>with another first grader.
>
>Well then, of course it is guided.
>
>Are you convinced from my seven word rebuttal?
>If not why should your equally empty reply
>convince me of your opinion?
>
>Emergent or collective properties, such as
>the property of wisdom emerging from
>collective intelligence, clearly guide
>the whole towards the ideal, towards
>higher levels of evolved complexity.
>
>Natural processes are guided.
>
>Hence the enduring inability to convince
>the public of your 'unguided theory' of
>evolution. They know better, someday
>the eggheads will too.
>
>
>

>A process is not unguided.
>
>
>Definition of process
>
>
>2a (1) : a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes
>that lead toward a particular result
>
>b : a series of actions or operations conducing to an end;

Nothing there about being guided, or is inconsistent with unguided.
You must enjoy proving yourself a fool, you do it so often.

[jillery]

On Sun, 28 May 2017 19:47:10 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

>jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, 27 May 2017 10:11:38 +0100, Martin Harran
>> <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:36:12 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 25 May 2017 12:44:08 +0100, Martin Harran
>>>> <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:49:25 +0100, Martin Harran
>>>>> <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, 24 May 2017 15:32:52 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> For those several poster who assert that the views of Creationists can
>>>>>>> be ignored in discussions about religion, since they represent such an
>>>>>>> insignificant fraction of the religious population:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> <https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> <http://tinyurl.com/m48bkcz>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> From the article:
>>>>>>> *********************************
>>>>>>> For 35 years the results have held pretty constant, as the graph shows
>>>>>>> below, 40-50% of all Americans have over time been young-Earth

>>>>>>> creationists when it comes to human evolution, 30-40% are ?theistic
>>>>>>> evolutionists? who accept some form of teleological, god-guided
>>>>>>> change, and the ?natural evolutionists??those who accept human

>>>>>>> evolution as a purely natural and unguided process, as scientists

>>>>>>> think it is?have hovered around an abysmal 10%.

>>>>>>> ***********************************
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Only this year have the numbers for the two categories become
>>>>>>> statistically identical.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also from the article:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ******************************************************

>>>>>> if it?s construed as applying to all species except humans?in fact,
>>>>>> that?s exactly the position of the Catholic Church.)

>>>>>> ******************************************************
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It is NOT the position of the Catholic Church; Coyne comes out with
>>>>>> some unadulterated bullshit, this is just one example.
>>>>>

>>>>> For clarity: "it?s construed as applying to all species except humans
>>>>> ..." = "evolution in general if it?s construed as applying to all

>>>>> species except humans ..."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In a similar spirit of improving clarity, it would help if you made
>>>> clear what you think Coyne thinks is "exactly the position of the
>>>> Catholic Church. I won't speculate here what you think, but I can
>>>> help illustrate what Coyne thinks:
>>>>
>>>> <https://newrepublic.com/article/120025/pope-francis-quotes-evolution-big-bang-are-nothing-celebrate
>>>>
>>>> <http://tinyurl.com/m3rdeqm>
>>>>
>>>> ***************************************************

>>>> The Church?s support of evolution, then, has been equivocal: while

>>>> allowing that humans had evolved, it also affirmed human
>>>> exceptionalism in the form of our unique soul.
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>

>>>> This is simply the Church?s traditional view of non-naturalistic,

What is it you hesitate to take Coyne's word about?

That he thinks ensoulment is a relevant impediment to RCC's acceptance
of Evolution? ISTM Coyne is the final authority of his own opinions,
however wrong you think those opinions are.

That RCC doctrine includes ensoulment of humans? Harran's cites
affirm it well enough.

If neither of the above, then be specific.

[*Hemidactylus*]

His characterization of RCC stance on evolution. The statement Martin
highlighted clearly mischaracterized that stance and the reader cannot be
expected to know what Coyne wrote elsewhere, which conflicts with what
Martin quoted.

>
> That he thinks ensoulment is a relevant impediment to RCC's acceptance
> of Evolution? ISTM Coyne is the final authority of his own opinions,
> however wrong you think those opinions are.
>

And one statement where evolution doesn't apply to humans in eyes of RCC
conflicts with the New Republic statements where the RCC allows for human
evolution.

>
> That RCC doctrine includes ensoulment of humans? Harran's cites
> affirm it well enough.
>
> If neither of the above, then be specific.
>

Coyne tends to engage in biased polemic. He made a big deal about the
Boghossian "conceptual penis" hoax as besmirching gender studies:

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/19/a-new-academic-hoax-a-bogus-paper-on-the-conceptual-penis-gets-published-in-a-high-quality-peer-reviewed-social-science-journal/

And his characterization of PZ as the Decider:

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/04/28/free-speech-who-gets-to-decide-who-speaks-but-now-we-have-a-decider/

And the general bee in his bonnet Coyne has for all things "regressive
left".

So how can I expect to take his word on the RCC at face value, especially
when the quotes you and Martin provide conflict.

And if you start engaging in more of your typical jillery bullshit as you
have already above you can kindly GFY in advance. I have had enough of
that. Funny that Martin and I agree about not wanting to discuss anything
with you. Construe that convergence of opinion as you will.

[jillery]

On Mon, 29 May 2017 04:12:00 -0500, *Hemidactylus*

That would depend on how you think Coyne's statement is a
mischaracterization, and how you think it conflicts with what Martin

quoted.


>> That he thinks ensoulment is a relevant impediment to RCC's acceptance
>> of Evolution? ISTM Coyne is the final authority of his own opinions,
>> however wrong you think those opinions are.
>>
>And one statement where evolution doesn't apply to humans in eyes of RCC
>conflicts with the New Republic statements where the RCC allows for human
>evolution.

So the disagreement is between RCC and Coyne over what's included in
Evolution. In that case, to say that Coyne "mischaracterized" RCC's
position is itself a mischaracterization.

>> That RCC doctrine includes ensoulment of humans? Harran's cites
>> affirm it well enough.
>>
>> If neither of the above, then be specific.
>>
>Coyne tends to engage in biased polemic. He made a big deal about the
>Boghossian "conceptual penis" hoax as besmirching gender studies:
>
>https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/19/a-new-academic-hoax-a-bogus-paper-on-the-conceptual-penis-gets-published-in-a-high-quality-peer-reviewed-social-science-journal/
>
>And his characterization of PZ as the Decider:
>
>https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/04/28/free-speech-who-gets-to-decide-who-speaks-but-now-we-have-a-decider/
>
>And the general bee in his bonnet Coyne has for all things "regressive
>left".
>
>So how can I expect to take his word on the RCC at face value, especially
>when the quotes you and Martin provide conflict.

Again, that depends on what quotes you think conflict.

>And if you start engaging in more of your typical jillery bullshit as you
>have already above you can kindly GFY in advance. I have had enough of
>that.

Right here would have been a good place to for you to have identified
what you think is "typical Jillery bullshit" and why you so think.
That you didn't suggests you're just making stuff just to be your
typical turd on a stick.

>Funny that Martin and I agree about not wanting to discuss anything
>with you. Construe that convergence of opinion as you will.

Actually, what's funny is posters who claim to be reasonably
intelligent but go out of their way to discuss with me that they don't
want to discuss anything with me. Perhaps zombies have eaten their
brains.

[Martin Harran]

On Sun, 28 May 2017 19:47:10 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

>jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, 27 May 2017 10:11:38 +0100, Martin Harran
>> <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:36:12 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 25 May 2017 12:44:08 +0100, Martin Harran
>>>> <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:49:25 +0100, Martin Harran
>>>>> <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, 24 May 2017 15:32:52 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> For those several poster who assert that the views of Creationists can
>>>>>>> be ignored in discussions about religion, since they represent such an
>>>>>>> insignificant fraction of the religious population:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> <https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> <http://tinyurl.com/m48bkcz>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> From the article:
>>>>>>> *********************************
>>>>>>> For 35 years the results have held pretty constant, as the graph shows
>>>>>>> below, 40-50% of all Americans have over time been young-Earth

>>>>>>> creationists when it comes to human evolution, 30-40% are ?theistic
>>>>>>> evolutionists? who accept some form of teleological, god-guided
>>>>>>> change, and the ?natural evolutionists??those who accept human

>>>>>>> evolution as a purely natural and unguided process, as scientists

>>>>>>> think it is?have hovered around an abysmal 10%.

>>>>>>> ***********************************
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Only this year have the numbers for the two categories become
>>>>>>> statistically identical.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also from the article:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ******************************************************

>>>>>> if it?s construed as applying to all species except humans?in fact,
>>>>>> that?s exactly the position of the Catholic Church.)

>>>>>> ******************************************************
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It is NOT the position of the Catholic Church; Coyne comes out with
>>>>>> some unadulterated bullshit, this is just one example.
>>>>>

>>>>> For clarity: "it?s construed as applying to all species except humans
>>>>> ..." = "evolution in general if it?s construed as applying to all

>>>>> species except humans ..."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In a similar spirit of improving clarity, it would help if you made
>>>> clear what you think Coyne thinks is "exactly the position of the
>>>> Catholic Church. I won't speculate here what you think, but I can
>>>> help illustrate what Coyne thinks:
>>>>
>>>> <https://newrepublic.com/article/120025/pope-francis-quotes-evolution-big-bang-are-nothing-celebrate
>>>>
>>>> <http://tinyurl.com/m3rdeqm>
>>>>
>>>> ***************************************************

>>>> The Church?s support of evolution, then, has been equivocal: while

>>>> allowing that humans had evolved, it also affirmed human
>>>> exceptionalism in the form of our unique soul.
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>

>>>> This is simply the Church?s traditional view of non-naturalistic,

Coyne is an academic and a professional writer on science - sloppiness
is not a valid excuse. He knows that if he wants to make a subtle
point or in any way qualify his words, that he needs to do so
explicitly or at least give a reference to wherever else he explains
his thinking. The fact that he does neither combined with the emphasis
he adds in saying that evolution not applying to humans is the *exact*
position of the Catholic Church means that his words can only
reasonably be interpreted as the Catholic Church rejecting human
evolution.

Ensoulment, introduced by Jillery, is a red herring. The Catholic
Church's teaching on ensoulment relates to the supernatural and has no
impact on the biological or physiological evolution of Man as is
clearly shown in the entry from the Catechism of the Catholic Church
that I quoted earlier. Multiple posters here have gone to great pains
to explain to people like Ray and AlphaBeta and Steady Eddie that
science does not and cannot deal with the supernatural. It would be a
bit difficult for the Catholic Church to disagree with science in an
area where science has nothing to say.

[*Hemidactylus*]

The quote Martin provided conflicted with the quote you provided. Do keep
up.

>
>>> That he thinks ensoulment is a relevant impediment to RCC's acceptance
>>> of Evolution? ISTM Coyne is the final authority of his own opinions,
>>> however wrong you think those opinions are.
>>>
>> And one statement where evolution doesn't apply to humans in eyes of RCC
>> conflicts with the New Republic statements where the RCC allows for human
>> evolution.
>
>
> So the disagreement is between RCC and Coyne over what's included in
> Evolution. In that case, to say that Coyne "mischaracterized" RCC's
> position is itself a mischaracterization.
>

Your self-centered bias is distorting your judgement. You obviously prefer
continuing a charade than conceding Martin had a legitimate gripe with how
Coyne represented Catholicism in a brief aside:

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/

"(Note: it’s not evolution in general that’s surveyed by the question
below, but human evolution. It’s entirely possible that more Americans

would accept evolution in general if it’s construed as applying to all
species except humans—in fact, that’s exactly the position of the Catholic
Church.)"

Which I would take to mean the Catholic Church entirely rejects human
evolution based on Coyne's words.

And looking at the Gallup graph Coyne provides 56% of Catholics believe
humans evolved compared to 45% Protestant/Other Christian. And 37% of
Catholics in that survey believe in special creation versus 50%
Protestant/Other Christian.

Then we have the other document you provided by Coyne:

https://newrepublic.com/article/120025/pope-francis-quotes-evolution-big-bang-are-nothing-celebrate

In which he characterizes a religious position from his own atheistic POV
in a polemic manner similar to how he characterizes regressive leftists,
gender studies, and PZ Myers. He has an axe to grind.

"The Church’s support of evolution, then, has been equivocal: while

allowing that humans had evolved, it also affirmed human exceptionalism in

the form of our unique soul. And the historical doctrine of Adam and Eve is
profoundly unscientific, for we could not have descended from only two
people, something that itself implies special creation. The Vatican, in
other words, embraces a view of evolution that is partly scientific but
also partly “theistic,” reflecting God’s intervention to produce a species
made in His own image."

So granted Coyne's reservations about Catholic and Pope views on human
evolution, the statements conflict between "applying to all species except
humans" and "while allowing that humans had evolved". That is obvious to
anyone taking an unblinkered approach.

And speaking of blinkers Coyne has a curious error of omission at the end
of the following:

"Let us face facts: evolution that is guided by God or planned by God is
not a scientific view of evolution. Nor is evolution that makes humans
unique by virtue of an indefinable soul, or the possession of only a single
pair of individual ancestors. The Vatican’s view of evolution is in fact a
bastard offspring of Biblical creationism and modern evolutionary theory.
And even many of Francis’s own flock don’t buy it: 27 percent of American
Catholics completely reject evolution in favor of special creation."

He links to
http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/public-opinion-on-religion-and-science-in-the-united-states/

Where the less incurious reader not predisposed to characterize Catholics a
certain way would see that 33% of Catholics believe "Humans and other
living things have...Evolved over time due to natural processes", 25% of
Catholics believed in guided evolution and 7% were unsure of the
evolutionary mode. Taken together this indicates 65% of Catholics surveyed
believed humans have evolved.

In comparison to 27% of Catholics rejecting evolution and believing in
special creation, as Coyne says above, according to the survey he cites 31%
of the general public answered the same. Thus Catholics were less apt to
reject evolution than members of the general public at the time of the
survey (2009).

[jillery]

On Mon, 29 May 2017 12:57:03 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:


>Ensoulment, introduced by Jillery, is a red herring.

If it's a red herring, then it's Coyne's red herring. How you can
call Coyne's expressed reason for disagreeing with RCC's position a
"red herring" is beyond rational comprehension.

[jillery]

On Mon, 29 May 2017 11:50:14 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> continues to show how he has no interest
in discussing anything with me, which implies zombie brain:

Repeating yourself doesn't count. You still haven't said how you

think Coyne's statement is a mischaracterization, and how you think it

conflicts with what Martin quoted. Do keep up.

Do you think you explicated these points below? If so, you disprove
your implication that you had previously explicated them.

>>>> That he thinks ensoulment is a relevant impediment to RCC's acceptance
>>>> of Evolution? ISTM Coyne is the final authority of his own opinions,
>>>> however wrong you think those opinions are.
>>>>
>>> And one statement where evolution doesn't apply to humans in eyes of RCC
>>> conflicts with the New Republic statements where the RCC allows for human
>>> evolution.
>>
>>
>> So the disagreement is between RCC and Coyne over what's included in
>> Evolution. In that case, to say that Coyne "mischaracterized" RCC's
>> position is itself a mischaracterization.
>>
>Your self-centered bias is distorting your judgement.

You sound more like rockhead with every post you reply to me. Right
here would have been a good place for you to have explained what
statement I made that you think qualifies as "self-centered bias", and
how you think it so qualifies. That you didn't suggests you're just
making stuff up because you have nothing intelligent to say.

>You obviously prefer
>continuing a charade than conceding Martin had a legitimate gripe with how
>Coyne represented Catholicism in a brief aside:

Right here would have been a good place for you to have explained what
statement I made that you think qualifies as a "charade", and how you
think it so qualifies. That you didn't suggests you're just making
stuff up because you have nothing intelligent to say.


At least you took the time to say below what you think is Martin's
legitimate gripe.

>https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/
>
>"(Note: it’s not evolution in general that’s surveyed by the question
>below, but human evolution. It’s entirely possible that more Americans
>would accept evolution in general if it’s construed as applying to all
>species except humans—in fact, that’s exactly the position of the Catholic
>Church.)"
>
>Which I would take to mean the Catholic Church entirely rejects human
>evolution based on Coyne's words.

I understand that's your assumption. I understand that you and Martin
share said assumption. I don't. My impression is said assumption
overreaches the facts in evidence, at the least. I take Coyne to mean
what he says, that he understands the position of the Catholic Church
to be that evolution applies to all species except humans.

I also don't share your assumption that my assumption makes me a bad
person.

>And looking at the Gallup graph Coyne provides 56% of Catholics believe
>humans evolved compared to 45% Protestant/Other Christian. And 37% of
>Catholics in that survey believe in special creation versus 50%
>Protestant/Other Christian.

Coyne explicitly refers to the expressed position of the Catholic
Church and its authorities, not its individual members, so it's
unclear how you think noting those statistics is relevant here.

>Then we have the other document you provided by Coyne:
>
>https://newrepublic.com/article/120025/pope-francis-quotes-evolution-big-bang-are-nothing-celebrate
>
>In which he characterizes a religious position from his own atheistic POV
>in a polemic manner similar to how he characterizes regressive leftists,
>gender studies, and PZ Myers. He has an axe to grind.
>
>"The Church’s support of evolution, then, has been equivocal: while
>allowing that humans had evolved, it also affirmed human exceptionalism in
>the form of our unique soul. And the historical doctrine of Adam and Eve is
>profoundly unscientific, for we could not have descended from only two
>people, something that itself implies special creation. The Vatican, in
>other words, embraces a view of evolution that is partly scientific but
>also partly “theistic,” reflecting God’s intervention to produce a species
>made in His own image."
>
>So granted Coyne's reservations about Catholic and Pope views on human
>evolution, the statements conflict between "applying to all species except
>humans" and "while allowing that humans had evolved". That is obvious to
>anyone taking an unblinkered approach.

An irony here is your claim to have taken an "unblinkered approach".
But your use of "polemic" and references to other issues and topics
not in evidence, and likely not relevant here, show it is you grinding
an axe, and puts the lie to your implied open-minded POV.

The two phrases you quote above are both from Coyne, and are part of
the very point he makes, that the RCC position conflicts with itself.
Specifically, on the one hand, RCC claims to accept the principles of
Evolution and Universal Common Descent. On the other hand, RCC claims
an exception for humans, ensoulment. That's equivocating, a conflict.

You say the two statements conflict. Since that's Coyne's point, that
means you agree with him. Your allegedly unblinkered approach has you
arguing with yourself.

>And speaking of blinkers Coyne has a curious error of omission at the end
>of the following:
>
>"Let us face facts: evolution that is guided by God or planned by God is
>not a scientific view of evolution. Nor is evolution that makes humans
>unique by virtue of an indefinable soul, or the possession of only a single
>pair of individual ancestors. The Vatican’s view of evolution is in fact a
>bastard offspring of Biblical creationism and modern evolutionary theory.
>And even many of Francis’s own flock don’t buy it: 27 percent of American
>Catholics completely reject evolution in favor of special creation."
>
>He links to
>http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/public-opinion-on-religion-and-science-in-the-united-states/
>
>Where the less incurious reader not predisposed to characterize Catholics a
>certain way would see that 33% of Catholics believe "Humans and other
>living things have...Evolved over time due to natural processes", 25% of
>Catholics believed in guided evolution and 7% were unsure of the
>evolutionary mode. Taken together this indicates 65% of Catholics surveyed
>believed humans have evolved.
>
>In comparison to 27% of Catholics rejecting evolution and believing in
>special creation, as Coyne says above, according to the survey he cites 31%
>of the general public answered the same. Thus Catholics were less apt to
>reject evolution than members of the general public at the time of the
>survey (2009).

Once again you refer to the opinions of Catholic laity, not Catholic
doctrine. Once again, you don't make clear how you think the above
applies to Coyne's argument.

I note that you conveniently deleted from the quoted text your
personal attacks against me. Too bad you indulged in more personal
attacks in the post above.

I hope you're having fun doing something you claimed to have no
interest in doing.

[Burkhard]

Why though? Unless you drink very deeply indeed from Darwin's (or
rather Dennett's) universal acid and think that literally every trait
can be adequately explained by the ToE, I'd say saying that some, but
not all traits are evolutionary isn't a contradiction, and provably not
from a purely logical point of view. Well, Ray might argue that sort of
thing, and Coyne does indeed sound like Ray to me quite often when he
talks outside his core competency, but that is hardly an endorsement.

Most people I'd say are quite happy to say that cultural traits such as
"playing the oboe" or "synchronized swimming" are not best understood as
evolved traits. They are also undoubtedly unique to humans. So any
theory that explains them (and this means, pretty much all of history,
history of ideas, comparative philology etc) is not just non-scientific,
in Coyne's world they are as anti-scientific as the RCC's take on human
souls: not evolutionary, and applying only to humans.

That's why I'd say the charge of a massive red herring is perfectly
appropriate. It states something that is true, but has no recognizable
bearing on the issue at question. It is the mirror image of a
creationist accusing the ToE for not being able to explain the formation
of stars. True but irrelevant.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, May 24, 2017 at 3:34:54 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> For those several poster who assert that the views of Creationists can
> be ignored in discussions about religion, since they represent such an
> insignificant fraction of the religious population:
>
> <https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/>
>
> <http://tinyurl.com/m48bkcz>
>
> From the article:
> *********************************
> For 35 years the results have held pretty constant, as the graph shows
> below, 40-50% of all Americans have over time been young-Earth

> creationists when it comes to human evolution, 30-40% are “theistic
> evolutionists” who accept some form of teleological, god-guided
> change, and the “natural evolutionists”—those who accept human

> evolution as a purely natural and unguided process, as scientists

> think it is—have hovered around an abysmal 10%.
> ***********************************

And then, Coyne goes on to post bullshit, and I decided
to go to the source and beard the lion in his den:

_____________________ repost from Coyne's blog______________
Coyne, your militant atheism causes some real blind spots in you. You wrote:

"One in five Americans now thinks we got here in the way science tells us!"

Actually, it could be better than three in five, because
theistic evolutionists accept what science tells us:
it is that there is a vast "genealogical tree" of species
extending through billions of years, with each species [a]
"daughter species" arising through biological reproduction.

That is all science tells us. Your quasi-religious faith that there was
nothing supernatural to guide the process anywhere is you stepping
outside the bounds of science.

It even had a famous agnostic skeptic, whose one book that I cite below
probably has had more readers than all your books put together:

"Perhaps there also, among rotting fish
heads and blue, night-burning bog lights,
moved the eternal mystery, the careful
finger of God. The increase was not much.
It was two bubbles, two thin-walled little
balloons at the end of the Snout's small
brain. The cerebral hemispheres had appeared.
--Loren Eiseley, <em> The Immense Journey </em>
1957, Random House, p. 52
===========================end of repost from

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

That's if you use the definition of "nature" that makes it
a process, more like a verb than a noun. But if Nature,
the entity that atheists identify with our physical universe
(or, in some cases, a multiverse in which it is an insignificant
part), is the subject of discussion, then it simply begs
the question to say that all processes in it are free of
supernatural guidance.

> They contradict each other
> only in in the minds of those who play word games.

Will you back up Coyne in his begging of the question,
without playing any word games? I've posted my "bearding of
the lion in his den" in reply to your OP just a few minutes
ago. It sailed through without moderation, but now that
Coyne may have gotten wise to me, my reply to a run of
the mill Coyne groupie is undergoing moderation.

If it doesn't show up soon, I'll repost it here.

Do you happen to know whether Coyne has retroactively
deleted all posts by people who do not treat him
with sufficient respect?

> And staying on-topic hardly qualifies as a nitpick, your self-serving
> claims notwithstanding.

You aren't dealing here with the use of "nitpick" that I quoted
from Jonathan up there. Which use of his are you referring to?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[*Hemidactylus*]

jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 29 May 2017 11:50:14 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
> <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> continues to show how he has no interest
> in discussing anything with me, which implies zombie brain:
>

[snip jillery's sophistic Energizer bunny tapdance around acknowledging two
statements by Coyne from different sources that clearly conflict...no point
belaboring an obvious issue with a motivated "reasoner"]

Given Coyne himself brought up survey numbers about Catholic laity beliefs
regarding evolution: "And even many of Francis’s own flock don’t buy it: 27

percent of American Catholics completely reject evolution in favor of

special creation." my counterpoint to Coyne was apt. Your motivated
"reasoning" blinded you to that relevance.

[Glenn]

"Peter Nyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:e724df5e-1cfe-4386...@googlegroups.com...

Do you see "random mutation" as stepping outside the bounds of science?

[jillery]

On Tue, 30 May 2017 09:00:55 -0500, *Hemidactylus*

<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> continues to show how he has no interest
in discussing anything with me, which implies zombie brain:


>[snip jillery's sophistic Energizer bunny tapdance around acknowledging two
>statements by Coyne from different sources that clearly conflict...no point
>belaboring an obvious issue with a motivated "reasoner"]

Apparently you have no idea what two statements you're talking about,
or how said statements conflict. Instead you again baldly assert both
are "obvious" and hypocritically accuse me of doing what you do.

Once again, you show how closely you copy rockhead. Apparently zombie
brains act alike.

[jillery]

On Tue, 30 May 2017 10:58:17 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

[...]

Since you evoke "massive red herring", will you at least agree said
red herring is Coyne's, and not mine, as spammed by Harran?

IIUC I agree with your point that the existence of souls isn't
something science can establish. However, my understanding is that's
part of Coyne's point, that the RCC inappropriately combines
ensoulment and ToE, by incorporating them both into the origins of
humans. And since that's part of his point, you can't reasonably
dismiss it as a red herring.

Let's put aside for the moment that the existence of human souls isn't
a point science can establish, and stipulate for argument's sake that
oboe-playing is an evolutionary spandrel, a feature which arises as an
artifact of one or more features which *are* evolved, ex.
intelligence, motor skills etc.

ToE says those evolved features did not appear de novo, but instead
must have homologous precursors in other species. So even though we
don't observe other animals playing oboes, we do observe homologous
behaviors and features, of hands capable of tool making and
manipulation.

However, that's not the case with souls, according to RCC doctrine,
which asserts only humans have them; they appear without precursor,
given uniquely to humans by God at conception. Souls are not a
cultural feature. Souls are not an evolutionary spandrel. So souls
and oboe playing are not analogous in this context.

By Coyne's reckoning, either ToE is true, or RCC doctrine of
ensoulment is true, or they're both wrong. Apparently you disagree.
which is fine. But to assert his argument invokes a red herring
merely handwaves away an issue which is at least arguable.

An actual red herring invoked in this topic is that Coyne
misrepresented RCC doctrine in the articles I cited. Those who make
that claim substitute Coyne's actual words with their own reflexive
knee-jerk overreactions.

[Martin Harran]

On Tue, 30 May 2017 13:02:59 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Since you evoke "massive red herring", will you at least agree said
>red herring is Coyne's, and not mine, as spammed by Harran?

[Start Correction]

Coyne did not mention ensoulment in the article that you originally
linked to and which I responded to - YOU were the one who introduced
it into this thread in your attempt to argue that Coyne shouldn't be
taken as meaning what he said in that article, that it was necessary
to read something he had posted elsewhere even though he didn't
himself refer to it.

Feel free to carry on but you should be aware that lies and
obfuscation add nothing to your argument.

[End correction]

[Peter Nyikos]

No, only the conclusion that it is adequate to account for the
history of life on earth.

Apropos of this, the censorship on Coyne's blog has commenced. The
following was shown as awaiting moderation, then deleted altogether.
Subsequent attempts by me to post are not even shown as awaiting
moderation.

___________________ attempted reply to a typical groupie____________

Evolutionary theory is still in its infancy. The only part that has been worked out is the theory of changes in alleles in a population - in fact, that is the favorite definition of "evolution" in Sandwalk and also in the talk.origins archive. This despite the fact that this is the standard biological definition of MICROevolution.

So, what you think "evolutionary theory tells us" is actually a distant dream of people working on disorganized bits an pieces of an embryonic theory of macroevolution. The only part worthy of the term "theory" of which I know is the theory of coevolution. But that in itself hardly begins to explain "the complexity and diversity of life on earth."

Far more important than diversity is DISPARITY, which even seasoned paleontologists like Prothero confuse with diversity. Did you know that the definition of "diversity" is the NUMBER of different species? Most of the diversity of earthly biota is in bacteria! Evolutionary theory might be able to account for that, but it is laughably inadequate for
explaining the DISPARITY between you and a beetle and a slime mold and a deciduous tree... [continue at will].

====================== end of reply to a groupie replying to my first
post, a part of which appears above.

Longer things in quotation marks are from his stereotyped prose.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

[Glenn]

"Peter Nyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:1df1671a-fc79-4e82...@googlegroups.com...

I assume you refer to that conclusion as being outside the bounds of science.
And that is what I meant. Evolutionists have two explanations I have seen, that
mutation *appears* random with respect to natural selection, the other that
mutation *is* random with respect to natural selection. "Sufficient to explain"
can be used with either explanation.
If I read you correctly, why do you regard either of these explanations as being beyond the bounds of "science"?

[Burkhard]

Yes, I thought it's Coyne we are discussing, no?

>
> IIUC I agree with your point that the existence of souls isn't
> something science can establish. However, my understanding is that's
> part of Coyne's point, that the RCC inappropriately combines
> ensoulment and ToE, by incorporating them both into the origins of
> humans. And since that's part of his point, you can't reasonably
> dismiss it as a red herring.
>
> Let's put aside for the moment that the existence of human souls isn't
> a point science can establish, and stipulate for argument's sake that
> oboe-playing is an evolutionary spandrel, a feature which arises as an
> artifact of one or more features which *are* evolved, ex.
> intelligence, motor skills etc.
>
> ToE says those evolved features did not appear de novo, but instead
> must have homologous precursors in other species. So even though we
> don't observe other animals playing oboes, we do observe homologous
> behaviors and features, of hands capable of tool making and
> manipulation

>

> However, that's not the case with souls, according to RCC doctrine,
> which asserts only humans have them; they appear without precursor,
> given uniquely to humans by God at conception.

That seems to me to make two steps at one. There aren't precursors to
oboe playing in other animals, let alone precursors distributed along
the evolutionary pathways. There are, on that you are right of course
precursors to the skills and traits that make oboe playing possible, but
that is a different thing.

For the RCC position, that is not a problem. Only humans play oboe, even
though some of the preconditions for this are evolved. Similarly, ex
hypothesis, only humans have a soul though possibly, some of the
preconditions for having a soul are evolved. That doesn't mean we should
expect precursor souls, not any more than we should expect precursor
oboe players.

> Souls are not a
> cultural feature. Souls are not an evolutionary spandrel. So souls
> and oboe playing are not analogous in this context.

True, but for my argument they need not be. For my argument that Coyne
commits a logical and scientific fallacy, it is sufficient to show that
there are some other traits that are unique to humans and not evolved,
in any meaningful sense. Taking the structure of Coyne's argument, he
has to deny that, and his argument as stated by him applies just as well
to any theory in history, cultural studies, comparative philology,
ethics etc etc that is not strictly reducible to a ToE explanation.

>
> By Coyne's reckoning, either ToE is true, or RCC doctrine of
> ensoulment is true, or they're both wrong. Apparently you disagree.
> which is fine. But to assert his argument invokes a red herring
> merely handwaves away an issue which is at least arguable.

I'd say pointing out that it is a red herring is arguing his claim - in
particular, to accuse him of using an unsuitable example to make his point.

>
> An actual red herring invoked in this topic is that Coyne
> misrepresented RCC doctrine in the articles I cited.

I'm afraid I'd disagree with that too. The quote from the first article,
as stated, is plain wrong.

The direct quote is

"It’s entirely possible that more Americans would accept evolution in
general if it’s construed as applying to all species except humans—in
fact, that’s exactly the position of the Catholic Church"

From that it follows unequivocally that according to him, the position
of the RCC is that it does not apply to humans. This is simply wrong,
and doesn't become right by pointing out that the RCC claims that there
are "some" traits humans have that are not evolved - and not jsut
because everybody (apart possible Dennet et al) thinks that. Quite on
the contrary, it's wrong as soon as the RCC acknowledges a single trait
that humans have and that they think is evolved - which they do,and more.

[Peter Nyikos]

I got a bit careless in my reply to you. Where Coyne was stepping
outside the bounds of science was the flat-out claim that
supernatural influences were shown not to have occurred, by science.


I can't be sure that science cannot confirm, in the very
distant future, that it is not NECESSARY to invoke supernatural
influence to account for the history of life on earth.

But at the rate evolutionary science is progressing, it would be
a sucker's bet that this will happen less than a thousand years
in the future.

But the groupie I quoted below is under the delusion that the
future is here, now.

And so is Coyne, and that's what I really meant: that Coyne is
indulging in a quasi-religious faith that is not backed by
the present state of science.

> And that is what I meant.

Good.

> Evolutionists have two explanations I have seen, that
> mutation *appears* random with respect to natural selection, the other that
> mutation *is* random with respect to natural selection. "Sufficient to explain"
> can be used with either explanation.
> If I read you correctly, why do you regard either of
> these explanations as being beyond the bounds of "science"?

See my correction and explanation above. Does that help?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS My experience with Prothero's private blog on the misnamed "Skepticblog"
leads me to suspect that, sooner or later, Coyne will delete the two
posts of mine that he permitted to slip through. See below for the steps
he has already taken.

Prothero not only deleted everything I had posted -- over twenty posts
by then, some with valuable scientific observations -- but also all but two
that Harshman had posted, one of which was highly critical
of me. [Some of the others were mildly critical of me, but those got
the ax too.]

Prothero behaved like "The Godfather on Steroids", axing the other
posts of Harshman because he hadn't shown Prothero enough respect.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, May 26, 2017 at 9:34:53 AM UTC-4, The Incredibly Lucky JTEM wrote:
> Ironically, dating websites are vastly
> more "Scientific" than jackasses like
> you.

Take a look at what I wrote about Coyne in the four posts I
have done on this thread before this one. Your taunt may well
apply to him.

It may also apply to jillery, but I don't know enough about
dating websites to be sure of that. She likes to "disqualify" people
from making comments like the one you just made, by making
irrelevant comments like "Of course, I neither stated nor
implied I was being scientific, nor is my being scientific
required in this topic."

> You being so astoundingly idiotic will
> never grasp this, but polls are an
> excellent indication of exactly what
> people believe they are supposed to say.

This may well be true of Coyne, and if that is who
you are really addressing here, then jillery
may be interested in that.


> For the most part, people know what "The
> Right" answer is. True what is "Right"
> changes from demographic to demographic,
> but within a demographic everyone knows
> what they're supposed to say.
>
> Dating websites will ask the exact same
> question many times, sometimes dozens of
> times. Usually they're worded slightly
> different, but the same questions keep
> getting asked over & over again. This is
> precisely because people know what they're
> supposed to say. So, the questionnaires
> are designed to tire people out, wear them
> down to the point where they stop trying
> to think of the "Right" answer and simply
> tell the truth.
>
> Same with polls. EXACTLY the same with polls.
>
> People know what they're supposed to say and
> they say it.

Well, I'd say enough people do that to account for the
fact that the polls were so far off in predicting an
easy Clinton victory over Trump.

Peter Nyikos

[jonathan]

On 5/30/2017 2:08 AM, jillery wrote:


> I take Coyne to mean
> what he says, that he understands the position of the Catholic Church
> to be that evolution applies to all species except humans.
>

No they don't

[Glenn]

"Peter Nyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:4941c8ba-3331-4a54...@googlegroups.com...

That answers the question, thanks. I doubt science will ever be able to eliminate the supernatural.
Of course this depends on the meaning of "science", which does now appear to have a consensus
of evolutionists that believe RM+NS is sufficient to explain everything.

[jonathan]

On 5/28/2017 9:38 AM, jillery wrote:
> On Sun, 28 May 2017 07:48:26 +0100, Martin Harran
> <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 27 May 2017 15:47:06 -0700, Mark Isaak
>> <eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 5/27/17 2:11 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>> [...]

>>>> I will however remind you of one of the fundamental rules of research
>>>> - check primary sources. If you really want to know what the Catholic
>>>> Church's teaching is, the first port of call in of things relating to
>>>> Catholic teaching is the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is
>>>> available on line.
>>>

>>> I submit that there is room for disagreement about what, exactly, "the
>>> Catholic Church's teaching" means. It can refer either to the body of
>>> congregants who come together identifying themselves as Catholics, or it
>>> can refer to their leadership, especially the Pope and bishops. The
>>> beliefs of those two groups, I understand, are not always in agreement.
>>>
>>> I grant that "the Catholic Church's teaching" or "position" strongly
>>> implies the teachings of the leadership.
>>
>> I don't think there is any doubt that Coyne was referring to the
>> leadership.
>>
>>> However, some of the dispute
>>> in this thread has been over the "views", which to my mind more likely
>>> refers to the congregants and their own ideas.
>>
>> It was Jillery who tried to divert it into "views". I corrected what
>> Coyne specifically said in the article she had linked to.
>
>
> You shouldn't post such stupid lies, especially on a Sunday.
>
> It should go without repeating so soon, but the following is your
> reply to my OP:
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

> On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:49:25 +0100, Martin Harran
> <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> [...]

>
>> Also from the article:
>>
>> ******************************************************

>> if it’s construed as applying to all species except humans—in fact,

>> that’s exactly the position of the Catholic Church.)

>> ******************************************************
>>
>> It is NOT the position of the Catholic Church; Coyne comes out with
>> some unadulterated bullshit, this is just one example.

> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>
> A few hours later, you attempted to clarify your point:
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

> On Thu, 25 May 2017 12:44:08 +0100, Martin Harran
> <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:49:25 +0100, Martin Harran
>> <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> [...]
>
>> For clarity: "it’s construed as applying to all species except humans
>> ..." = "evolution in general if it’s construed as applying to all
>> species except humans ..."
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>
> For further clarity, the following is Coyne's entire and unmangled
> parenthetical remark:
> ******************************************************

> (Note: it’s not evolution in general that’s surveyed by the question

> below, but human evolution. It’s entirely possible that more

> Americans would accept evolution in general if it’s construed as

> applying to all species except humans—in fact, that’s exactly the
> position of the Catholic Church.)
> ******************************************************
>
> Based on your posts above, a fair reading is your "It" refers to
> Coyne's "that", which a fair reading is he refers to his immediately
> preceding phrase:
>
> "...evolution in general if it’s construed as applying to all species
> except humans ..."
>
> As Mark Isaak pointed out above, what remains unclear is what Coyne
> means by "evolution in general".
>




Of all the pointless debates....the quote doesn't make
if clear that Coyne is stating the position of the
church is that evolution applies except to humans.

Or that the position of the church is that more
people would accept evolution if the church
would take that position.

It appears to me that latter would be the case.

But who cares what he thinks, he can't even form
a sentence.

What do you think about the relationship between
the body, mind and soul?

Ohmygosh I think I've crossed a red line with
that, how can you parse, evade, dip, dance or
step around such a question as 'what do you
think'?

There's no way to claim your post was
misrepresented and then walk away, when
the reply is your own opinion. No way to
claim some meaningless word means something
else and claim victory.

God forbid you should 'own anything' at all.

What do you think about the relationship between
the body, mind and soul?

And let us pick you apart for a change, see
how you like it, coward.






> As is your style, you assume you know what Coyne means, and
> categorically declared your assumed meaning as "unadulterated
> bullshit". What remains unstated is what you think Coyne meant.
>
> In reply to your post above, I cited an article where Coyne explicitly
> states what he means by that phrase in context with the Catholic
> Church:
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

> On Thu, 25 May 2017 08:36:12 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>

> [...]

>
>> <https://newrepublic.com/article/120025/pope-francis-quotes-evolution-big-bang-are-nothing-celebrate
>>
>> <http://tinyurl.com/m3rdeqm>
>>
>> ***************************************************

>> The Church’s support of evolution, then, has been equivocal: while

>> allowing that humans had evolved, it also affirmed human
>> exceptionalism in the form of our unique soul.
>>
>> [...]
>>

>> This is simply the Church’s traditional view of non-naturalistic,

>> theistic evolution, expressed in words that sound good, but that still
>> reflect a form of creationism.
>> *****************************************************

> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> This makes clear what Coyne meant, and what Coyne thinks is the
> Catholic Church's position on Evolution, an explicit inclusion of
> "ensoulment".
>
> In your following posts, including the one to which I reply, you make
> clear that you dismiss the above clarification in lieu of your own
> assumptions.
>
> You do not explain what you think Coyne meant.
>
> You do not explain what you mean by 'divert it into "views"'.
>
> You do not explain how you think you corrected Coyne.
>
> As is your style, you run away from the issue with a Parthian shot
> about my alleged irrationality and a reaffirmation or your disinterest
> in discussing anything with me. That you refuse to accept Coyne's
> explicit inclusion of the Church's teaching of ensoulment suggests it
> you who is the irrational one here.
>
> Which in turn explains why you wasted so much time not discussing this
> with me.
>
> Which in turn explains why I don't care what you do.

[*Hemidactylus*]

jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 30 May 2017 09:00:55 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
> <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> continues to show how he has no interest
> in discussing anything with me, which implies zombie brain:
>
>
>> [snip jillery's sophistic Energizer bunny tapdance around acknowledging two
>> statements by Coyne from different sources that clearly conflict...no point
>> belaboring an obvious issue with a motivated "reasoner"]
>
>
> Apparently you have no idea what two statements you're talking about,
> or how said statements conflict. Instead you again baldly assert both
> are "obvious" and hypocritically accuse me of doing what you do.
>

You apparently need to get a brain scan to assess the functioning of your
language comprehension faculty because it is futile to ask you to parse
language. Coyne clearly contradicts himself in comparing two separate
pieces. In the blog piece
(https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/)
he said: "It’s entirely possible that more Americans would accept evolution

in general if it’s construed as applying to all species except humans—in

fact, that’s exactly the position of the Catholic Church.)".

Coyne makes it seem as though the position of the Catholic Church is that
evolution does not apply to humans whatsoever. In other words humans are
completely removed from the evolutionary landscape.

But wait a second there's a Coyne communique coming in from New Republic
published in 2014
(https://newrepublic.com/article/120025/pope-francis-quotes-evolution-big-bang-are-nothing-celebrate):

"The Church’s support of evolution, then, has been equivocal: while
allowing that humans had evolved, it also affirmed human exceptionalism in
the form of our unique soul."

So this version of Coyne several years ago knew that the Catholic Church
allowed for human evolution excepting perhaps the "soul" whatever that
means. But the Coyne writing his blog last week totally ignored this
Catholic acceptance of human evolution.

And you replied to me with this subterfuge:

"The two phrases you quote above are both from Coyne, and are part of the
very point he makes, that the RCC position conflicts with itself.
Specifically, on the one hand, RCC claims to accept the principles of
Evolution and Universal Common Descent. On the other hand, RCC claims an
exception for humans, ensoulment. That's equivocating, a conflict.

You say the two statements conflict. Since that's Coyne's point, that means
you agree with him. Your allegedly unblinkered approach has you arguing
with yourself."

You take the contradiction in Coyne's words several years apart and try to
wrap it up in a coherent whole and then project it as me agreeing with
Coyne.

What length involving bending the truth will you go to in your avoiding
admission there is a discrepancy in Coyne's two stances? I think he was
sloppy in the recent blog post, which isn't a big deal. But your inability
to recognize contradiction and your shenanigans in trying to sell this
bullshit makes you look bad.

[*Hemidactylus*]

[deafening sound of cricket chirps]

So why did *Coyne* bring in the 27% of Catholics rejecting evolution and
ignore the 65% OK with human evolution?

[jillery]

You made no correction here. The issue is not about what was stated
in the article I originally linked to, which is the basis of your
complaint above. It should go without saying that the issue is about
what Coyne meant. You haven't even tried to deal with the actual
issues raised in Coyne's article, which had nothing whatever to do
with the Catholic Church. The lies and obfuscations here are entirely
yours.

[jillery]

On Tue, 30 May 2017 19:01:25 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

It depends on who you mean by "we". Based on Harran's and
Hemidactylus' petty personal insults against me, discussing Coyne is a
distant second, at best.

>> IIUC I agree with your point that the existence of souls isn't
>> something science can establish. However, my understanding is that's
>> part of Coyne's point, that the RCC inappropriately combines
>> ensoulment and ToE, by incorporating them both into the origins of
>> humans. And since that's part of his point, you can't reasonably
>> dismiss it as a red herring.
>>
>> Let's put aside for the moment that the existence of human souls isn't
>> a point science can establish, and stipulate for argument's sake that
>> oboe-playing is an evolutionary spandrel, a feature which arises as an
>> artifact of one or more features which *are* evolved, ex.
>> intelligence, motor skills etc.
>>
>> ToE says those evolved features did not appear de novo, but instead
>> must have homologous precursors in other species. So even though we
>> don't observe other animals playing oboes, we do observe homologous
>> behaviors and features, of hands capable of tool making and
>> manipulation
>
>>
>> However, that's not the case with souls, according to RCC doctrine,
>> which asserts only humans have them; they appear without precursor,
>> given uniquely to humans by God at conception.
>
>
>That seems to me to make two steps at one. There aren't precursors to
>oboe playing in other animals, let alone precursors distributed along
>the evolutionary pathways. There are, on that you are right of course
>precursors to the skills and traits that make oboe playing possible, but
>that is a different thing.

So far you agreed with what I said. So I missed how I have made "two
steps at on[c]e".

>For the RCC position, that is not a problem. Only humans play oboe, even
>though some of the preconditions for this are evolved. Similarly, ex
>hypothesis, only humans have a soul though possibly, some of the
>preconditions for having a soul are evolved. That doesn't mean we should
>expect precursor souls, not any more than we should expect precursor
>oboe players.

No, I don't presume there would be precursor souls, or evolved
preconditions to souls, and neither does the RCC. On that point, I'm
almost certain RCC says all and only humans get souls, at conception.
Of course, that depends on how one defines "human", but my impression
is RCC doesn't equivocate on that point.

Do you have a different understanding of RCC's position?

>> Souls are not a
>> cultural feature. Souls are not an evolutionary spandrel. So souls
>> and oboe playing are not analogous in this context.
>
>True, but for my argument they need not be. For my argument that Coyne
>commits a logical and scientific fallacy, it is sufficient to show that
>there are some other traits that are unique to humans and not evolved,
>in any meaningful sense. Taking the structure of Coyne's argument, he
>has to deny that, and his argument as stated by him applies just as well
>to any theory in history, cultural studies, comparative philology,
>ethics etc etc that is not strictly reducible to a ToE explanation.

I missed the part where you showed that "any theory in history,
cultural studies, comparative philology, ethics, etc" are analogous
with souls in this context. Please elaborate.

I know of no actual traits unique to humans which don't have
evolutionary precursors evident in other species. Please elaborate
which traits you're thinking of.

>> By Coyne's reckoning, either ToE is true, or RCC doctrine of
>> ensoulment is true, or they're both wrong. Apparently you disagree.
>> which is fine. But to assert his argument invokes a red herring
>> merely handwaves away an issue which is at least arguable.
>
>I'd say pointing out that it is a red herring is arguing his claim - in
>particular, to accuse him of using an unsuitable example to make his point.

To assert that Coyne's argument is a red herring is a first step, but
it's hardly sufficient to qualify as a coherent and cogent argument.
That would require some explication as to why you think it's an
unsuitable example. You attempt to do so above, but fall short, as I
pointed out.

>> An actual red herring invoked in this topic is that Coyne
>> misrepresented RCC doctrine in the articles I cited.
>
>I'm afraid I'd disagree with that too. The quote from the first article,
>as stated, is plain wrong.
>
>The direct quote is
>
>"It’s entirely possible that more Americans would accept evolution in
>general if it’s construed as applying to all species except humans—in
>fact, that’s exactly the position of the Catholic Church"
>
> From that it follows unequivocally that according to him, the position
>of the RCC is that it does not apply to humans. This is simply wrong,
>and doesn't become right by pointing out that the RCC claims that there
>are "some" traits humans have that are not evolved - and not jsut
>because everybody (apart possible Dennet et al) thinks that. Quite on
>the contrary, it's wrong as soon as the RCC acknowledges a single trait
>that humans have and that they think is evolved - which they do,and more.

That doesn't make sense. If any human feature were provably
unevolvable, that would falsify humans as being from a Universal
Common Origin. The only way humans could get for example wings made
of gold, they would have to be intelligently designed. IIUC Evolution
doesn't allow created kinds.

As for Coyne's direct quote, which I also quoted, you make the same
mistake I pointed out that Harran did, in that you assume you know

what Coyne means by "evolution in general".

Based on Coyne's articles, my understanding is Coyne objects to RCC's
equivocation, where they say they accept Evolution, and then invoke
human exceptionalism, which impeaches said acceptance. I understand
you object to his objection, but his quoted statement is consistent
with Coyne's meaning of "evolution in general".

[jillery]

On Tue, 30 May 2017 18:59:06 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Thanks for sharing.

[jillery]

On Tue, 30 May 2017 15:10:24 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> continued to ejaculate his repetitive
irrelevant spew from his puckered sphincter:

Is anybody surprised?

>On Friday, May 26, 2017 at 9:34:53 AM UTC-4, The Incredibly Lucky JTEM wrote:
>> Ironically, dating websites are vastly
>> more "Scientific" than jackasses like
>> you.
>
>Take a look at what I wrote about Coyne in the four posts I
>have done on this thread before this one. Your taunt may well
>apply to him.
>
>It may also apply to jillery, but I don't know enough about
>dating websites to be sure of that. She likes to "disqualify" people
>from making comments like the one you just made, by making
>irrelevant comments like "Of course, I neither stated nor
>implied I was being scientific, nor is my being scientific
>required in this topic."

Do you deny the veracity of my statement?
Do you deny my being scientific isn't required in this thread?
Do you deny jtem made an explicit reference about my scientificness?
If not, on what basis do you baldly assert my comment above is
irrelevant?

Yes, I explicitly challenge you to back up your asinine assertion.
Don't be insulted that I don't wait for you to do so.

[jillery]

On Tue, 30 May 2017 19:45:01 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Yes, I already pointed out all that.

>It appears to me that latter would be the case.
>
>But who cares what he thinks, he can't even form
>a sentence.
>
>What do you think about the relationship between
>the body, mind and soul?
>
>Ohmygosh I think I've crossed a red line with
>that, how can you parse, evade, dip, dance or
>step around such a question as 'what do you
>think'?
>
>There's no way to claim your post was
>misrepresented and then walk away, when
>the reply is your own opinion. No way to
>claim some meaningless word means something
>else and claim victory.
>
>God forbid you should 'own anything' at all.
>
>What do you think about the relationship between
>the body, mind and soul?
>
>And let us pick you apart for a change, see
>how you like it, coward.

Even if everything you say about me were true, it still wouldn't have
a thing to do with this topic.

Come back when you know how to post a coherent thought, and without
the petty personal insults. Don't be insulted that I don't wait for
you to do so.

[jillery]

On Tue, 30 May 2017 20:33:56 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

>jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 30 May 2017 09:00:55 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
>> <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> continues to show how he has no interest
>> in discussing anything with me, which implies zombie brain:
>>
>>
>>> [snip jillery's sophistic Energizer bunny tapdance around acknowledging two
>>> statements by Coyne from different sources that clearly conflict...no point
>>> belaboring an obvious issue with a motivated "reasoner"]
>>
>>
>> Apparently you have no idea what two statements you're talking about,
>> or how said statements conflict. Instead you again baldly assert both
>> are "obvious" and hypocritically accuse me of doing what you do.
>>
>You apparently need to get a brain scan to assess the functioning of your
>language comprehension faculty because it is futile to ask you to parse
>language.

Even if everything you say about me were true, that still wouldn't say
anything about what you're talking about. Only a turd on a stick
would demand that I parse what you didn't post.

>Coyne clearly contradicts himself in comparing two separate
>pieces. In the blog piece

>(https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/)
>he said: "It’s entirely possible that more Americans would accept evolution
>in general if it’s construed as applying to all species except humans—in
>fact, that’s exactly the position of the Catholic Church.)".
>
>Coyne makes it seem as though the position of the Catholic Church is that
>evolution does not apply to humans whatsoever. In other words humans are
>completely removed from the evolutionary landscape.

That's one interpretation of one statement. Your "whatsoever" and
"completely" are your inferences, not Coyne's words.

>But wait a second there's a Coyne communique coming in from New Republic
>published in 2014
>(https://newrepublic.com/article/120025/pope-francis-quotes-evolution-big-bang-are-nothing-celebrate):
>"The Church’s support of evolution, then, has been equivocal: while
>allowing that humans had evolved, it also affirmed human exceptionalism in
>the form of our unique soul."
>
>So this version of Coyne several years ago knew that the Catholic Church
>allowed for human evolution excepting perhaps the "soul" whatever that
>means. But the Coyne writing his blog last week totally ignored this
>Catholic acceptance of human evolution.

Your quote above is the same one I quote in reply to Harran.
Your interpretation totally disregards Coyne's explicit point. He
describes how the RCC's position is equivocal. The entire article you
cite makes it clear that Coyne rejects RCC's claim of accepting
evolution of humans. That makes your interpretation above a
quotemine. No wonder I didn't recognize your alleged "obvious
contradiction".

>And you replied to me with this subterfuge:

Subterfuge??? You would be more coherent if you reigned in your
hyperbole.

>"The two phrases you quote above are both from Coyne, and are part of the
>very point he makes, that the RCC position conflicts with itself.
>Specifically, on the one hand, RCC claims to accept the principles of
>Evolution and Universal Common Descent. On the other hand, RCC claims an
>exception for humans, ensoulment. That's equivocating, a conflict.
>
>You say the two statements conflict. Since that's Coyne's point, that means
>you agree with him. Your allegedly unblinkered approach has you arguing
>with yourself."
>
>You take the contradiction in Coyne's words several years apart and try to
>wrap it up in a coherent whole and then project it as me agreeing with
>Coyne.

That's exactly what you did.

>What length involving bending the truth will you go to in your avoiding
>admission there is a discrepancy in Coyne's two stances?

Coyne expressed only one stance in both articles. There is no
conflict in his words. As I show above, the conflict lies in your
misinterpretation. His claim is that RCC's claims conflict. It's
really not that hard, even you should be able to understand.

>I think he was
>sloppy in the recent blog post, which isn't a big deal. But your inability
>to recognize contradiction and your shenanigans in trying to sell this
>bullshit makes you look bad.

Of course, posting bullshit and shenanigans is what you do. You sound
more like rockhead every time you reply to me.

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 31 May 2017 05:23:59 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

wrote:

>On Tue, 30 May 2017 18:24:40 +0100, Martin Harran
><martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 30 May 2017 13:02:59 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Since you evoke "massive red herring", will you at least agree said
>>>red herring is Coyne's, and not mine, as spammed by Harran?
>>
>>[Start Correction]
>>
>>Coyne did not mention ensoulment in the article that you originally
>>linked to and which I responded to - YOU were the one who introduced
>>it into this thread in your attempt to argue that Coyne shouldn't be
>>taken as meaning what he said in that article, that it was necessary
>>to read something he had posted elsewhere even though he didn't
>>himself refer to it.
>>
>>Feel free to carry on but you should be aware that lies and
>>obfuscation add nothing to your argument.
>>
>>[End correction]
>
>
>You made no correction here. The issue is not about what was stated
>in the article I originally linked to, which is the basis of your
>complaint above.

[Correction #2]

The lies and obfuscation are about your claim that I *spammed* about
*your* red herring - I did no such thing. I simply pointed out -
correctrly - that you introduced it into the discussion.

[End correction]

>It should go without saying that the issue is about
>what Coyne meant. You haven't even tried to deal with the actual
>issues raised in Coyne's article, which had nothing whatever to do
>with the Catholic Church. The lies and obfuscations here are entirely
>yours.

You seem to be arguing that me pointing out that he misrepresented
the position of the Catholic Church in a specific part of his article
is negated by the fact that I didn't comment on the parts of the
article that had nothing to do with the Catholic Church. I'm sorry but
I don't quite grasp the logic of that.

[jillery]

On Tue, 30 May 2017 20:40:15 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

>*Hemidactylus* <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
>> jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, 29 May 2017 11:50:14 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
>>> <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> continues to show how he has no interest
>>> in discussing anything with me, which implies zombie brain:
>>>
>> [snip jillery's sophistic Energizer bunny tapdance around acknowledging two
>> statements by Coyne from different sources that clearly conflict...no point
>> belaboring an obvious issue with a motivated "reasoner"]
>>>
>>>
>>>> And speaking of blinkers Coyne has a curious error of omission at the end
>>>> of the following:
>>>>
>>>> "Let us face facts: evolution that is guided by God or planned by God is
>>>> not a scientific view of evolution. Nor is evolution that makes humans
>>>> unique by virtue of an indefinable soul, or the possession of only a single

>>>> pair of individual ancestors. The Vatican?s view of evolution is in fact a

>>>> bastard offspring of Biblical creationism and modern evolutionary theory.

>>>> And even many of Francis?s own flock don?t buy it: 27 percent of American

You still haven't explained how you think these statistics apply to
your claim that Coyne contradicted himself. So I have no problem
ignoring questions about things you don't answer yourself.

But since you asked so nicely, based on the entire article, my
impression is Coyne is pointing out there is a significant discrepancy
between RCC doctrine an laity, which is a different point from what
you were yammering about. HTH

[jillery]

On Wed, 31 May 2017 10:40:53 +0100, Martin Harran

You still made no correction here. You may have "simply pointed out"
X, but you conveniently ignore that you also said A,B, and C:

*******************************************
On Mon, 29 May 2017 12:57:03 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Ensoulment, introduced by Jillery, is a red herring.
*******************************************
*****************************************

On Sun, 28 May 2017 07:48:26 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

>It was Jillery who tried to divert it into "views".

****************************************

For someone who claims to have no interest in discussing anything with
me, you sure spend a lot of time coming up with silly things to
discuss with me.

>>It should go without saying that the issue is about
>>what Coyne meant. You haven't even tried to deal with the actual
>>issues raised in Coyne's article, which had nothing whatever to do
>>with the Catholic Church. The lies and obfuscations here are entirely
>>yours.
>
>You seem to be arguing that me pointing out that he misrepresented
>the position of the Catholic Church in a specific part of his article
>is negated by the fact that I didn't comment on the parts of the
>article that had nothing to do with the Catholic Church. I'm sorry but
>I don't quite grasp the logic of that.

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 31 May 2017 06:03:45 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

Which is actually what I corrected above - you introduced ensoulment
into the discussion - so A is actually an alias of X.

>*****************************************
>On Sun, 28 May 2017 07:48:26 +0100, Martin Harran
><martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>It was Jillery who tried to divert it into "views".
>****************************************

You can wriggle all you like here but I simply pointed out a bald
misrepresentation in Coyne's article, YOU were the one who insisted
that his words could not be read as they stood, that it was necessary
to bring in other claims by Coyne - specifically ensoulment - to
understood what he actually meant. I rather think most people would
regard that as being relevant as and accurate in response to Mark's
comment about "views"

So that's A = X, B now dealt with, where's C - oh, there is no C, you
just can't count.

BTW, notwithstanding your counting limitations, perhaps you might
explain how two comments made inside replies to specific points raised
by other posters qualify as *spam*?

>
>For someone who claims to have no interest in discussing anything with
>me, you sure spend a lot of time coming up with silly things to
>discuss with me.

I always reserved the right to and make no apology for correcting lies
you tell about me.

>
>
>>>It should go without saying that the issue is about
>>>what Coyne meant. You haven't even tried to deal with the actual
>>>issues raised in Coyne's article, which had nothing whatever to do
>>>with the Catholic Church. The lies and obfuscations here are entirely
>>>yours.
>>
>>You seem to be arguing that me pointing out that he misrepresented
>>the position of the Catholic Church in a specific part of his article
>>is negated by the fact that I didn't comment on the parts of the
>>article that had nothing to do with the Catholic Church. I'm sorry but
>>I don't quite grasp the logic of that.

I still don't grasp the logic of that; for some reason you seem
disinclined to explain it..

[*Hemidactylus*]

I think the selective manner in which Coyne wields the stats shows he is
framing the issue in a manner unfairly derogatory to his targets, the Pope
and Vatican. This framing carries over to the rest of the essay. But even
as an aside it is significant, however discomforting it is for you.

>
> But since you asked so nicely, based on the entire article, my
> impression is Coyne is pointing out there is a significant discrepancy
> between RCC doctrine an laity, which is a different point from what
> you were yammering about. HTH
>

No it doesn't help. Right here would be a great place for you to lay out
what you mean by significant discrepancy. Digging into the survey Coyne
used to bash the Pope I have shown a majority (65%) of those surveyed
Catholics are fine with human evolution. Do they not exist? Can we sweep
them under the rug as a minor inconvenience?

[Glenn]

"jillery" <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1n3ticpajni53slbp...@4ax.com...

> On Tue, 30 May 2017 20:33:56 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
> <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
>
>>jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Tue, 30 May 2017 09:00:55 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
>>> <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> continues to show how he has no interest
>>> in discussing anything with me, which implies zombie brain:
>>>
>>>
>>>> [snip jillery's sophistic Energizer bunny tapdance around acknowledging two
>>>> statements by Coyne from different sources that clearly conflict...no point
>>>> belaboring an obvious issue with a motivated "reasoner"]
>>>
>>>
>>> Apparently you have no idea what two statements you're talking about,
>>> or how said statements conflict. Instead you again baldly assert both
>>> are "obvious" and hypocritically accuse me of doing what you do.
>>>
>>You apparently need to get a brain scan to assess the functioning of your
>>language comprehension faculty because it is futile to ask you to parse
>>language.
>
>
> Even if everything you say about me were true, that still wouldn't say
> anything about what you're talking about. Only a turd on a stick
> would demand that I parse what you didn't post.
>
>
>>Coyne clearly contradicts himself in comparing two separate
>>pieces. In the blog piece
>
>>(https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/)
>>he said: "It's entirely possible that more Americans would accept evolution

>>in general if it's construed as applying to all species except humans-in

>>fact, that's exactly the position of the Catholic Church.)".
>>
>>Coyne makes it seem as though the position of the Catholic Church is that
>>evolution does not apply to humans whatsoever. In other words humans are
>>completely removed from the evolutionary landscape.
>
>
> That's one interpretation of one statement. Your "whatsoever" and
> "completely" are your inferences, not Coyne's words.
>

My interpretation is that Coyne is lying.

[Glenn]

"*Hemidactylus*" <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote in message news:D4SdnXUUFcYZgLPE...@giganews.com...

> jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 30 May 2017 09:00:55 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
>> <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> continues to show how he has no interest
>> in discussing anything with me, which implies zombie brain:
>>
>>
>>> [snip jillery's sophistic Energizer bunny tapdance around acknowledging two
>>> statements by Coyne from different sources that clearly conflict...no point
>>> belaboring an obvious issue with a motivated "reasoner"]
>>
>>
>> Apparently you have no idea what two statements you're talking about,
>> or how said statements conflict. Instead you again baldly assert both
>> are "obvious" and hypocritically accuse me of doing what you do.
>>
> You apparently need to get a brain scan to assess the functioning of your
> language comprehension faculty because it is futile to ask you to parse
> language. Coyne clearly contradicts himself in comparing two separate
> pieces. In the blog piece
> (https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/is-creationism-on-the-wane-in-america/)
> he said: "It’s entirely possible that more Americans would accept evolution
> in general if it’s construed as applying to all species except humans—in
> fact, that’s exactly the position of the Catholic Church.)".
>
> Coyne makes it seem as though the position of the Catholic Church is that
> evolution does not apply to humans whatsoever. In other words humans are
> completely removed from the evolutionary landscape.

Actually, taken literally, Coyne is saying that the Church's "position" is a belief that more Americans would accept evolution in general if it's construed as not applying to humans. He claims that "position" or belief, is a fact.

[zencycle]

On Saturday, May 27, 2017 at 6:54:54 AM UTC-4, Jonathan wrote:
>
> But the eggheads of the world see all the
> randomness in natural selection (their false god)
> and assume the output must be similarly random
> or unguided.

Horseshit.

Evolutionists see absolutely no randomness in natural selection. By definition, the process of natural selection is one that is deterministic - exclusively. While it's possible to define the genetic mutations that lead to natural selection as random, the fact that a mutation may or may not give a competitive advantage is based purely on the ability of that organism to take advantage of the mutation in their environment - nothing random about it.

Your characterization is quite simply another example of a deluded creationist blatantly lying in order to create a strawman and impress your equally deluded (and more than likely, quite stupid) friends.

Even the idea of randomness in genetic mutations is a misnomer for the fact that the deterministic factors that cause mutations are largely unknown outside of a laboratory environment. It's sort of like using the term 'nothingness' to describe a point of singularity - then the quasi-intellectuals such as yourself screech 'HOW CAN EVERYTHING HAVE COME FROM NOTHING? THERE MUST BE GOD!!!'.

Evolution is purely deterministic - chemical reactions bound by the laws of physics lead to genetic mutations which give competitive advantages in the environment, which also evolves deterministic bound by the same laws. No gods, no omnipotent sentience, no greater guiding spiritual force.

[Jonathan]

On 5/31/2017 5:36 AM, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 30 May 2017 18:59:06 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 5/30/2017 2:08 AM, jillery wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I take Coyne to mean
>>> what he says, that he understands the position of the Catholic Church
>>> to be that evolution applies to all species except humans.
>>>
>>
>>
>> No they don't
>
>
> Thanks for sharing.
>

When in Rome...

[Jonathan]

So you're invoking your 'off topic rule' in order to dodge
the question I asked? How unexpected.

> Come back when you know how to post a coherent thought,

It was a question, please notice the question mark
at the end of the sentence.

What do you think about the relationship between
the body, mind and soul?

Let's see which 'bag of tricks' will you employ
to dodge the question this time? A question
that goes to the heart of religious philosophy
and scientific limitations.

[jillery]

On Wed, 31 May 2017 20:54:03 -0400, Jonathan <Wr...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 5/31/2017 5:37 AM, jillery wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 30 May 2017 19:45:01 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>
>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> And let us pick you apart for a change, see
>>> how you like it, coward.
>>
>>
>> Even if everything you say about me were true, it still wouldn't have
>> a thing to do with this topic.
>>
>
>
>
>So you're invoking your 'off topic rule' in order to dodge
>the question I asked? How unexpected.

I'm not surprised. You almost never post anything on-topic.

>> Come back when you know how to post a coherent thought,
>
>
>
>It was a question, please notice the question mark
>at the end of the sentence.
>
>What do you think about the relationship between
>the body, mind and soul?

I hope they stay happy together. Feel better now?

[jillery]

On Wed, 31 May 2017 12:19:17 +0100, Martin Harran

Since your pointless point is a pedantic one, it's reasonable for me
to point out that I did not introduce ensoulment into the discussion.
Coyne's vaguely worded comment was an implicit reference to
ensoulment. Your hysterical umbrage about his comment required that
his comment be clarified, which my second cited article did. It was
the second cite which explicitly mentioned ensoulment. So you're as
much responsible for "introducing" ensoulment into this discussion as
I am.

>>*****************************************
>>On Sun, 28 May 2017 07:48:26 +0100, Martin Harran
>><martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>It was Jillery who tried to divert it into "views".
>>****************************************
>
>You can wriggle all you like here but I simply pointed out a bald
>misrepresentation in Coyne's article,

Correction: you pointed out what you infer to be a bald
misrepresentation. There's a difference.

And your actual words were the somewhat less genteel "unadulterated
bullshit".

>YOU were the one who insisted
>that his words could not be read as they stood, that it was necessary
>to bring in other claims by Coyne - specifically ensoulment - to
>understood what he actually meant. I rather think most people would
>regard that as being relevant as and accurate in response to Mark's
>comment about "views"

You can "rather think" anything you want, that doesn't make it so. And
even if you could prove such a thing, that still wouldn't make your
inference correct.

>So that's A = X, B now dealt with, where's C - oh, there is no C, you
>just can't count.

That's not it. It's that you're so desperate to feign a disinterest
in discussing anything with me, you will argue about anything with me,
no matter how irrelevant or trivial.

>BTW, notwithstanding your counting limitations, perhaps you might
>explain how two comments made inside replies to specific points raised
>by other posters qualify as *spam*?

Thank you for proving my point for me.

>>For someone who claims to have no interest in discussing anything with
>>me, you sure spend a lot of time coming up with silly things to
>>discuss with me.
>
>I always reserved the right to and make no apology for correcting lies
>you tell about me.

Perhaps it works differently where you come from, but in this
universe, you don't get to baldly escalate corrections to lies. Where
I come from, there's a difference between opinions and facts. So let
me know if you ever actually identify a lie about you from me. Until
then, you're just blowing smoke out of your ass, a habit you share
with your strange bedfellows.

>>>>It should go without saying that the issue is about
>>>>what Coyne meant. You haven't even tried to deal with the actual
>>>>issues raised in Coyne's article, which had nothing whatever to do
>>>>with the Catholic Church. The lies and obfuscations here are entirely
>>>>yours.
>>>
>>>You seem to be arguing that me pointing out that he misrepresented
>>>the position of the Catholic Church in a specific part of his article
>>>is negated by the fact that I didn't comment on the parts of the
>>>article that had nothing to do with the Catholic Church. I'm sorry but
>>>I don't quite grasp the logic of that.
>
>I still don't grasp the logic of that; for some reason you seem
>disinclined to explain it..

Apparently you think it makes you look clever to admit that you're
entire contribution to this topic is completely irrelevant to it. If
so, think again. In either case, I'm neither obliged nor qualified to
explain your compulsions. You can resolve those problems by hiring a
shrink.

[jillery]

On Wed, 31 May 2017 07:50:19 -0500, *Hemidactylus*

>>>> regarding evolution: "And even many of Francis?s own flock don?t buy it: 27

>>>> percent of American Catholics completely reject evolution in favor of

>>>> special creation." my counterpoint to Coyne was apt. Your motivated
>>>> "reasoning" blinded you to that relevance.
>>>
>>> [deafening sound of cricket chirps]
>>>
>>> So why did *Coyne* bring in the 27% of Catholics rejecting evolution and
>>> ignore the 65% OK with human evolution?
>>
>>
>> You still haven't explained how you think these statistics apply to
>> your claim that Coyne contradicted himself. So I have no problem
>> ignoring questions about things you don't answer yourself.
>>
>I think the selective manner in which Coyne wields the stats shows he is
>framing the issue in a manner unfairly derogatory to his targets, the Pope
>and Vatican. This framing carries over to the rest of the essay. But even
>as an aside it is significant, however discomforting it is for you.

And how does any of the above apply to your claim that Coyne
contradicted himself, you know, the one you said was so "obvious" from
his first article I cited? The quotes you refer to above are from his
second article I cited.

>> But since you asked so nicely, based on the entire article, my
>> impression is Coyne is pointing out there is a significant discrepancy

>> between RCC doctrine and laity, which is a different point from what

>> you were yammering about. HTH
>>
>No it doesn't help. Right here would be a great place for you to lay out
>what you mean by significant discrepancy.

I had thought that even you would be able to comprehend that I refer
to the 27% of Catholics who reject evolution altogether. How stupid
of me for giving you that much credit.

>Digging into the survey Coyne
>used to bash the Pope I have shown a majority (65%) of those surveyed
>Catholics are fine with human evolution. Do they not exist? Can we sweep
>them under the rug as a minor inconvenience?

You asked for my opinion of what I thought Coyne meant. Fool that I
am, I answered your question as if you were sincere. Apparently you
agree with my opinion, but you say my reply didn't help. So stop
playing games and just say what answer you want.

An irony is that you address here for the very first time the point I
raised in my OP. Apparently you include yourself among those who
believe the minority aren't worth considering simply because they're
the minority. Unlike you, I acknowledge the existence of all
identified categories.

[Robert Carnegie]

"Deterministic" seems to be a wrong term when
genetics operates on the scale of atoms, where
quantum mechanics applies, and under influence
of background radioactivity, even more so.

And to the extent that evolution is a matter of
biology - events like the asteroid that hit Earth
around 65 million years ago, causing an ecological
crisis and mass species extinction, don't quite
belong in biology.

[zencycle]

On Thursday, June 1, 2017 at 8:14:58 AM UTC-4, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>
> "Deterministic" seems to be a wrong term when
> genetics operates on the scale of atoms, where
> quantum mechanics applies, and under influence
> of background radioactivity, even more so.

The term 'random' is defined here as 'undefined control parameters'. Even on a quantum scale, controlling input parameters produces verifiable and repeatable results - that's how they found Higgs Boson. Einstein and Bohr famously debated the subject. Genetic mutations are considered 'random' because the chemical reaction variant was precipitated by an unknown event. This is why I wrote that genetic variations can be considered as random, but on a more discrete level it is anything _but_ random.

> And to the extent that evolution is a matter of
> biology - events like the asteroid that hit Earth
> around 65 million years ago, causing an ecological
> crisis and mass species extinction, don't quite
> belong in biology.

Environmental effects most certainly do belong in the discussion of biology, and especially in discussions of evolutionary biology. Changes in environment, from the subtle to catastrophic, give different opportunities for certain genetic mutations to create successful populations. Cock roaches were able to survive the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, Dinosaurs weren't. Wikipedia dumbs it down nicely...."

"the devastation caused by the extinction also provided evolutionary opportunities. In the wake of the extinction, many groups underwent remarkable adaptive radiations—a sudden and prolific divergence into new forms and species within the disrupted and emptied ecological niches resulting from the event. Mammals in particular diversified in the Paleogene,"

It's a classic creationist fallacy to state that mutations spontaneously result in new species. Advantageous mutations are only revealed when conducive environmental conditions. Evolution would not occur if the environmental conditions did not change.

[Peter Nyikos]

Perhaps a majority defer to the militant ones in believing it,
but I doubt that one in ten knows how inadequate the evidence is
for it "explaining everything".

More importantly, the militant ones who do know how inadequate it is have
a blind faith that RM+NS does, indeed, account for it. I believe
Coyne is one of them, and I believe that is why my pointed comments
in that direction were censored, and why I am now barred from
Coyne's blog. Coyne's reputation rests on suppressing this
inconvenient truth.

I've left in my repost of what it was that Coyne -- or one of his
minions -- censored, snipping intermediate text on which you
had no comment.

> >> > ___________________ attempted reply to a typical groupie____________

But here I add what that groupie wrote:

Evolutionary theory tells us that natural process
are sufficient to account for the complexity and
diversity of life on Earth. When theists argue for
a supernatural component they most often claim
evolution could not have done it all. Introducing
God as a necessary component is illogical.

And now comes my censored reply:

> >> > Evolutionary theory is still in its infancy. The only part that has been worked out is the theory of changes in alleles in a population - in fact, that is the favorite definition of "evolution" in Sandwalk and also in the talk.origins archive. This despite the fact that this is the standard biological definition of MICROevolution.
> >> >

> >> > So, what you think "evolutionary theory tells us" is actually a distant dream of people working on disorganized bits and pieces of an embryonic theory of macroevolution. The only part worthy of the term "theory" of which I know is the theory of coevolution. But that in itself hardly begins to explain "the complexity and diversity of life on earth."

[Jonathan]

On 6/1/2017 1:48 AM, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 31 May 2017 20:54:03 -0400, Jonathan <Wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 5/31/2017 5:37 AM, jillery wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 30 May 2017 19:45:01 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> And let us pick you apart for a change, see
>>>> how you like it, coward.
>>>
>>>
>>> Even if everything you say about me were true, it still wouldn't have
>>> a thing to do with this topic.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> So you're invoking your 'off topic rule' in order to dodge
>> the question I asked? How unexpected.
>
>
> I'm not surprised. You almost never post anything on-topic.
>
>
>>> Come back when you know how to post a coherent thought,
>>
>>
>>
>> It was a question, please notice the question mark
>> at the end of the sentence.
>>
>> What do you think about the relationship between
>> the body, mind and soul?
>
>
>
> I hope they stay happy together. Feel better now?
>

Your original post claims the creationist minority
shouldn't be ignored due to their large numbers.

That's fine, but then you immediately refuse to take
their beliefs seriously, you ignore them at
the same time you urge others to take them
more seriously.

Of course that implies your opinions on creationists
are already set in stone no doubt at the strawman
level of lowest common denominator. Making their
beliefs easy to dismiss out of hand.

It's the simplistic and dogmatic beliefs in science
by people like you that are the crackpot minority
and for good reason.

Which is you criticize and fear that which you do not
understand, religious beliefs and the inherent
limitations on objective science.

[Glenn]

"Peter Nyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:4ee67cd1-9166-4ce1...@googlegroups.com...

Coyne must be fine with that. I'm not surprised.
I remember back a ways where he got Ted to remove a Utube video of Sheldrake, Coyne complaining about something Sheldrake said about the speed of light. Something tells me it wasn't what Sheldrake said about the speed of light that got Coyne (a "biologist") to try to censor him.

https://www.google.com/#q=coyne+sheldrake+speed+of+light

[*Hemidactylus*]

TED is owned by the nonprofit Sapling Foundation:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapling_Foundation

Is it private or governmental? If the former I doubt the term "censor"
applies. Regardless it seems to be an upholding standards thing. Sheldrake
can put up his own videos on Youtube, but the TED channel might be trying
to promote a certain understanding of "ideas worth spreading". Does
Sheldrake provide anything that increases understanding of how the world
works? I might be more sympathetic to Sheldrake than Coyne is in that I
found his early books interesting to get a feel for various unconventional
views on memory and development, but only as a pet curiosity and not
something to take seriously. Sheldrake helped me demarcate my own views
which were critical of Jung and him. His early books were more interesting
to me than the psychic pets tangent he went on.

Coyne OTOH has published a pretty good book on evolution that in many ways
makes a great companion to Shubin's _Your Inner Fish_.

Coyne's synopsis of the TED/Sheldrake thing is here:

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/a-victory-for-real-science-over-woo-tedx-removes-sheldrake-and-hancock-talks-from-youtube-channel/

And apparently Sheldrake's stuff was still made available elsewhere with a
cordon sanitaire keeping it separate from more serious sciency stuff. Well
it seems to be something you need to have a Vimeo account for:

http://blog.ted.com/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/

Coyne discusses Sheldrake:

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/rupert-sheldrakes-new-book-dogs-know-when-their-owners-are-coming-home-ergo-jesus/

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/the-guardian-touts-sheldrake-again-pigeons-find-their-way-home-ergo-jesus/

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/rubert-sheldrake-peddles-his-woo-to-americans/

And Sheldrake has a channel of his own on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz8XNwQXIAejAaDmEaPNmIA

[jillery]

On Thu, 1 Jun 2017 12:32:17 -0400, Jonathan <Wr...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 6/1/2017 1:48 AM, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 31 May 2017 20:54:03 -0400, Jonathan <Wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 5/31/2017 5:37 AM, jillery wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 30 May 2017 19:45:01 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> And let us pick you apart for a change, see
>>>>> how you like it, coward.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Even if everything you say about me were true, it still wouldn't have
>>>> a thing to do with this topic.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So you're invoking your 'off topic rule' in order to dodge
>>> the question I asked? How unexpected.
>>
>>
>> I'm not surprised. You almost never post anything on-topic.
>>
>>
>>>> Come back when you know how to post a coherent thought,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It was a question, please notice the question mark
>>> at the end of the sentence.
>>>
>>> What do you think about the relationship between
>>> the body, mind and soul?
>>
>>
>>
>> I hope they stay happy together. Feel better now?

Apparently not. And so your rant continues...

>Your original post claims the creationist minority
>shouldn't be ignored due to their large numbers.

Actually my OP says nothing of the kind. Instead, it notes that some
posters claim the creationist minority can be ignored because of their
small numbers. As you are among those posters who so claim, you
should at least know what you're talking about.

>That's fine, but then you immediately refuse to take
>their beliefs seriously, you ignore them at
>the same time you urge others to take them
>more seriously.

I have no idea how you think anything I posted in this topic can be
construed as refusing to take their beliefs seriously. Right here
would have been a good place for you to have documented your basis for
said bald assertion. That you didn't suggests you have no idea what
you're talking about.

>Of course that implies your opinions on creationists
>are already set in stone no doubt at the strawman
>level of lowest common denominator. Making their
>beliefs easy to dismiss out of hand.
>
>It's the simplistic and dogmatic beliefs in science
>by people like you that are the crackpot minority
>and for good reason.
>
>Which is you criticize and fear that which you do not
>understand, religious beliefs and the inherent
>limitations on objective science.

Thanks for sharing.

[Jonathan]

You don't even know what their beliefs are, or
of religious philosophy. How can you dismiss
or take seriously that of which you're ignorant?

Which is why I'm trying to get you to answer
a core question concerning their beliefs.

But as usual you dodge and weave and refuse
to discuss anything other than semantics
and usenet etiquette.

The question concerning the relationship between
body, mind and soul involves the highest levels
of philosophy and abstract mathematics in order
to form a rational conclusion.

For instance, the first task is to learn how
to relate entirely different forms of existence.
Such as finding a mathematical relationship between
part, whole and it's emergent properties.

OR

Body, mind and soul...


This deeply philosophical question that has
burned across the ages, keeping science
and religion in conflict for centuries NOW
has a mathematical solution.

There is a book on it now, and all it takes
is enough curiosity and some homework to
discover how the complexity sciences has
created a sea-change as large as any other
in the history of science or religion.

As the new way has related science and religion
with a single mathematics common to both.

But the objective mindset is like a baby enamored
with all the shiny toys objective science dangles
above the crib, and are satisfied to continue
crawling, too lazy or biased to learn the new way
and how to walk through all the ancient unanswered
mysteries.



s

[jillery]

How do you know what I don't even know?

And you *still* haven't said what you think I said that makes you
think I refuse to take their beliefs seriously.

>Which is why I'm trying to get you to answer
>a core question concerning their beliefs.

You asked about my opinion, not theirs, which is a strange way of
getting to their core beliefs.

>But as usual you dodge and weave and refuse
>to discuss anything other than semantics
>and usenet etiquette.

As usual you still have no idea what you/re talking about. And so
your rant continues...

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 31 May 2017 12:19:17 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 31 May 2017 06:03:45 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
>wrote:

[...]

>BTW, notwithstanding your counting limitations, perhaps you might
>explain how two comments made inside replies to specific points raised
>by other posters qualify as *spam*?
>

[...]

>>
>>>>It should go without saying that the issue is about
>>>>what Coyne meant. You haven't even tried to deal with the actual
>>>>issues raised in Coyne's article, which had nothing whatever to do
>>>>with the Catholic Church. The lies and obfuscations here are entirely
>>>>yours.
>>>
>>>You seem to be arguing that me pointing out that he misrepresented
>>>the position of the Catholic Church in a specific part of his article
>>>is negated by the fact that I didn't comment on the parts of the
>>>article that had nothing to do with the Catholic Church. I'm sorry but
>>>I don't quite grasp the logic of that.
>
>I still don't grasp the logic of that; for some reason you seem
>disinclined to explain it..

As someone - ahem - said in another post not that long ago - "The
silence of the crickets grows ever more loud"

[jillery]

On Sat, 03 Jun 2017 11:54:56 +0100, Martin Harran

For someone who goes out of his way to say that he has no interest in
discussing anything with me, you sure go out of your way to
manufacture arguments to discuss with me.

Typical of trolling liars, you assert a false equivalence. To refresh
your convenient amnesia:

***************************************
On Thu, 01 Jun 2017 01:53:02 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Apparently you think it makes you look clever to admit that you're
>entire contribution to this topic is completely irrelevant to it. If
>so, think again. In either case, I'm neither obliged nor qualified to
>explain your compulsions. You can resolve those problems by hiring a
>shrink.

*****************************************

Apparently you don't like my answer. If so, then at least ask a
relevant question, if not an intelligent one. Apparently you're
incapable of recognizing either attribute.

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 31 May 2017 12:19:17 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 31 May 2017 06:03:45 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
>wrote:

[...]

>BTW, notwithstanding your counting limitations, perhaps you might
>explain how two comments made inside replies to specific points raised
>by other posters qualify as *spam*?
>

[...]

>>
>>>>It should go without saying that the issue is about
>>>>what Coyne meant. You haven't even tried to deal with the actual
>>>>issues raised in Coyne's article, which had nothing whatever to do
>>>>with the Catholic Church. The lies and obfuscations here are entirely
>>>>yours.
>>>
>>>You seem to be arguing that me pointing out that he misrepresented
>>>the position of the Catholic Church in a specific part of his article
>>>is negated by the fact that I didn't comment on the parts of the
>>>article that had nothing to do with the Catholic Church. I'm sorry but
>>>I don't quite grasp the logic of that.
>
>I still don't grasp the logic of that; for some reason you seem
>disinclined to explain it..

[Martin Harran]

On Thu, 01 Jun 2017 18:05:24 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

>Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

[...]

>> Coyne must be fine with that. I'm not surprised.
>> I remember back a ways where he got Ted to remove a Utube video of
>> Sheldrake, Coyne complaining about something Sheldrake said about the
>> speed of light. Something tells me it wasn't what Sheldrake said about
>> the speed of light that got Coyne (a "biologist") to try to censor him.
>>
>TED is owned by the nonprofit Sapling Foundation:
>
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapling_Foundation
>
>Is it private or governmental? If the former I doubt the term "censor"
>applies. Regardless it seems to be an upholding standards thing. Sheldrake
>can put up his own videos on Youtube, but the TED channel might be trying
>to promote a certain understanding of "ideas worth spreading". Does
>Sheldrake provide anything that increases understanding of how the world
>works? I might be more sympathetic to Sheldrake than Coyne is in that I
>found his early books interesting to get a feel for various unconventional
>views on memory and development, but only as a pet curiosity and not
>something to take seriously. Sheldrake helped me demarcate my own views
>which were critical of Jung and him. His early books were more interesting
>to me than the psychic pets tangent he went on.
>
>Coyne OTOH has published a pretty good book on evolution that in many ways
>makes a great companion to Shubin's _Your Inner Fish_.
>
>Coyne's synopsis of the TED/Sheldrake thing is here:
>
>https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/a-victory-for-real-science-over-woo-tedx-removes-sheldrake-and-hancock-talks-from-youtube-channel/
>
>And apparently Sheldrake's stuff was still made available elsewhere with a
>cordon sanitaire keeping it separate from more serious sciency stuff.

I don't follow Coyne or Myers but does Coyne's position on this not
sit at odds with him having a go at Myers about censorship?

[*Hemidactylus*]

I would have to review everything both have said regarding such stuff so
I'm not sure on any nuances. Speaking for myself the kerfuffle over Ann
Coulter speaking at Berkeley involves a public institution so definitely
has potential censorship implications but if memory serves that one kinda
got into a gray area due to a dispute over venue and timing. If it was a
private university there would be more leeway for the institution to refuse
or pull the rug IMO. Coyne was in disagreement over Berkeley's handling of
Coulter AND PZ's portrayal of that controversy. But I wonder if Coyne has
the same views for private colleges.

The TED thing was apparently a private institution shifting the digital
venue for Sheldrake's talk. So prima facie I would hazard Coyne is being
consistent on his views in the manner Coulter was handled versus Sheldrake.
Coyne even thanked PZ on the Sheldrake matter. Times have changed.

I would hazard Coyne's opinion on Sheldrake per TEDx has some overlap to
how people on this group agreed to ignore AlphaBeta (thus we weren't
"regressive leftists"). But I am not familiar with Coyne's actual influence
on the Sheldrake decision. Did he play a major role in the shift from the
TED Youtube channel?

I am going on memory sans review of Myers and Coyne so could be wrong in my
admittedly superficial interpretation.

[Glenn]

"*Hemidactylus*" <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote in message news:BvGdnT8J8dOn1q7E...@giganews.com...

"After I kvetched about it here, I sent an email complaint to Emily McManus, an editor at TED.com"

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/tedx-has-second-thoughts-about-rupert-sheldrakes-talk-asks-viewers-to-weigh-in/

TED:"we truly welcome your input. And we're grateful to those who've written about this talk in other forums, including but not limited to Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, Kylie Sturgess and some thoughtful Redditors"

COYNE:"having him as a "science" speaker is really damaging public science education"

https://www.ted.com/conversations/16894/rupert_sheldrake_s_tedx_talk.html

You can decide whether Coyne's involvement was "major", but it is rather clear he tried to influence TED.

[*Hemidactylus*]

And Stockwell tried to influence us with his voluntary moratorium on
AlphaBeta. Yet AB's posts are still available here. The only "venue" shift
would be that my brainspace isn't hosting his posts if I'm not reading him
or my newsreader isn't providing him a platform if I am not replying to
him.

As for the venue shift for Sheldrake, Coyne said:

"There are those who will cry “censorship” about this (they’re already
mewling and puking on the TEDx comments page), but I don’t see it that way,
especially because the talks are, after all, still up. They’re just not
allowed to rub elbows with the talks about real science."

As Coyne said Sheldrake's talk was at that time "still up". AB's posts
haven't been moved anywhere.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/a-victory-for-real-science-over-woo-tedx-removes-sheldrake-and-hancock-talks-from-youtube-channel/

Amusingly jillery cited a Coyne blog post to belittle the regressive
leftists ignoring AB. Yet Coyne may have influenced the TEDx decision.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/m2rCWyd0M8o/AzDXj1LXBQAJ

"<https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/latest-news-about-college-shenanigans-by-the-regressive-left-censorship-at-pomona-and-ucla-wellesley-student-paper-writes-we-need-free-speech-but-article/>


<http://tinyurl.com/mpzzqpp>


Jerry Coyne has posted a number of articles about his favorite
bugbear, of people who self-identify as "progressives" and "liberals",
but actively advocate censorship of people whose opinions annoy them.
The above is only his most recent example. IMO the recent call to
collectively stop replying to AB is T.O's contribution to that
phenomenon."

I wonder if jillery would consider this a contradiction by Coyne.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/coultergate-gets-more-confusing/

"Ann Coulter was invited to speak at the University of California by the
College Republicans. The College canceled her talk because of fears of
violence, and offered an alternative date–a date when no students would be
in class. That’s unacceptable, and an attempt to stifle her, even if it is
to avoid violence. If we cave to those who demand censorship because they
fear violence not incited directly by a speaker, then we are allowing the
“heckler’s veto”, and every opponent of a speaker’s views will learn to
threaten violence."

Here Coyne bemoans the venue switch for Coulter, but not Sheldrake above.
On the face that appears contradictory, but to me the TED decision (and the
local Stockwell moratorium on AB) differs from that made by a public
university Berkeley. So apples and oranges anyone? Jillery's mileage may
vary.

[jillery]

On Sat, 03 Jun 2017 22:24:43 -0500, *Hemidactylus*

Whether my mileage varies or not, there's no reason for me to answer
such a convoluted question from someone who only recently went out of
his way to explicitly declare he has no interest in discussing
anything with me.

[jillery]

On Sat, 03 Jun 2017 22:54:27 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> posted spam repeat #3:

For someone who goes out of his way to say that he has no interest in
discussing anything with me, you sure go out of your way to
manufacture arguments to discuss with me.

Typical of trolling liars, you assert a false equivalence. To refresh
your convenient amnesia:

***************************************
On Thu, 01 Jun 2017 01:53:02 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Apparently you think it makes you look clever to admit that you're
>entire contribution to this topic is completely irrelevant to it. If
>so, think again. In either case, I'm neither obliged nor qualified to
>explain your compulsions. You can resolve those problems by hiring a
>shrink.
*****************************************

Apparently you don't like my answer. If so, then at least ask a
relevant question, if not an intelligent one. Apparently you're
incapable of recognizing either attribute.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Oh snap this must be embarrassing for you. I have effectively set you up in
an airtight checkmate using your stance on the AB moratorium against you
vis a vis what Coyne said about Sheldrake being removed from the TEDx
Youtube Channel. So your only recourse is to retreat into hiding.
Priceless.

And to think Sean Dillion stopped posting here after the way you treated
him on the AB moratorium = regressive left BS. Now you choose total evasion
to save face.

[jonathan]

Good grief, I gotta give you credit for coming
up with novel ways of dodging answering
a question. A+

But if you'd rather relate your understanding
of their opinion, I suppose that would do.
But somehow I feel you'll dodge that to.

I can't wait for you next excuse.

>
>> But as usual you dodge and weave and refuse
>> to discuss anything other than semantics
>> and usenet etiquette.
>
>
> As usual you still have no idea what you/re talking about. And so
> your rant continues...
>

This is the fourth time I've asked for your opinion
on a philosophical topic, and the fourth time
you've refused to answer.

The only possible conclusion is you have no
opinion worth uttering and are embarrassed
to show your ignorance on this topic.

Don't even respond if your going to just
keep avoiding talking about anything
other that your usual bullshit excuses
that are as vaporous as a ten year old
child whining about being scolded.
unfairly.

[jonathan]

On 5/27/2017 11:14 AM, jillery wrote:



> Of course, I neither stated nor implied I was being scientific, nor is
> my being scientific required in this topic.

> --
> I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
>
> Evelyn Beatrice Hall
> Attributed to Voltaire
>

Even in your sig you fail to grasp the meaning and
the lesson of those words when you obsessively
refuse to reveal what you believe, opting
instead to argue only over what others have said.

Think for yourself, instead of deferring to others
when it comes to the unanswered questions of
nature and spirit.



Ch. 7 : Helvetius : The Contradiction, p. 199; because of quote
marks around the original publication of these words, they are
often attributed to Voltaire, though Hall was not actually
quoting him but summarizing his attitude with the expression.

The statement was widely popularized when misattributed to
Voltaire as a "Quotable Quote" in Reader's Digest (June 1934),
but in response to the misattribution, Hall had been quoted
in Saturday Review (11 May 1935), p. 13, as stating:

I did not mean to imply that Voltaire used these words
verbatim and should be surprised if they are found in
any of his works.

They are rather a paraphrase of Voltaire's words in
the Essay on Tolerance —

"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege
to do so too."


https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall


s

[jillery]

On Sun, 04 Jun 2017 02:20:47 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

>Oh snap this must be embarrassing for you. I have effectively set you up in
>an airtight checkmate using your stance on the AB moratorium against you
>vis a vis what Coyne said about Sheldrake being removed from the TEDx
>Youtube Channel. So your only recourse is to retreat into hiding.
>Priceless.
>
>And to think Sean Dillion stopped posting here after the way you treated
>him on the AB moratorium = regressive left BS. Now you choose total evasion
>to save face.

Typical of rockhead's strange bedfellows, you open mouth, insert foot,
shoot it off. Once again, you ape the party line just to troll me.

[jillery]

On Sun, 4 Jun 2017 07:53:44 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On 5/27/2017 11:14 AM, jillery wrote:
>
>
>
> > Of course, I neither stated nor implied I was being scientific, nor is
> > my being scientific required in this topic.
>
>
>> --
>> I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
>>
>> Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>> Attributed to Voltaire
>>
>
>
>Even in your sig you fail to grasp the meaning and
>the lesson of those words when you obsessively
>refuse to reveal what you believe, opting
>instead to argue only over what others have said.
>
>Think for yourself, instead of deferring to others
>when it comes to the unanswered questions of
>nature and spirit.

Your posts do nothing but show you have no idea what you're talking
about and are proud of it.

[jillery]

On Sun, 4 Jun 2017 06:02:35 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
continues to rant incoherently:

At least you tacitly admit that you have no idea what you're talking

about and are proud of it.

>But if you'd rather relate your understanding
>of their opinion, I suppose that would do.
>But somehow I feel you'll dodge that to.
>
>I can't wait for you next excuse.

Don't be insulted that I don't wait for your next excuse of a reply.

>>> But as usual you dodge and weave and refuse
>>> to discuss anything other than semantics
>>> and usenet etiquette.
>>
>>
>> As usual you still have no idea what you/re talking about. And so
>> your rant continues...
>>
>
>
>This is the fourth time

You sound desperate to be running out of fingers again. Let's see if
you remember to take off your shoes this time.

>I've asked for your opinion on a philosophical topic, and the fourth time
>you've refused to answer.

To be accurate, this is the fourth time you used that excuse to hijack
this topic. Your trolls are too stupid for words.

>The only possible conclusion is you have no
>opinion worth uttering and are embarrassed
>to show your ignorance on this topic.
>
>Don't even respond if your going to just
>keep avoiding talking about anything
>other that your usual bullshit excuses
>that are as vaporous as a ten year old
>child whining about being scolded.
>unfairly.

Thanks for sharing, but don't give up your day job, assuming you have
one.