Does love exist

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Not if you couldn't kill the animal by yourself, or risked getting hurt in the process, and having a friend there lessened that risk. Cost-benefit analysis.

Evolution is a mindless mechanism. How can it do a cost-benefit analysis?

DF

Originally posted by scottishinnz
All that would show would be the physical / psycological state of the individual. I'm sure the person in prayer truely believes it to be good, right and nice - so they'll have good feelings, irrespective of whether god exists or not - the persons belief does exist!

Love is a 2-way street. If it's only one sided then it's desire.
In order for a person to honestly love something, that something has to give something back. We can love other people, or our pets, etc. but we can't truly love our car or ice cream or...
If I love something that doesn't exist, then I'm insane, because I've imagined that something that doesn't exist gave me something back.
So if I'm not insane, and scientists measure love in my brain when I pray, isn't that evidence of God?

DF

Originally posted by DragonFriend
Evolution is a mindless mechanism. How can it do a cost-benefit analysis?

DF

Every heard of reprodtive advantage?

Originally posted by scottishinnz
I agree that an objective, unchanging set of values has, well, value. But at the end of the day, YOU are still doing the judging of yourself (you're just judging yourself against someone elses standards (and presumably saying sorry when you fall short of those)).

I'd agree with that. I'm judging myself by God's yardstick as best I can understand it. Yes.

DF

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Yes, I think Lex was right!

Personally, I don't give a damn what you believe. You want to believe in god, or my divine kumquat and that's fine.

My role as a scientist is to understand and explain the world; when people infringe on that, I get rather testy. For example, IDers trying to force schools to teach ID in science class. ID isn't scienc ...[text shortened]... e it alone, because me, and most contemporary scientists don't really give stuff about it.

But your defense goes beyond what science has proven to be true.
Take the origin of life, for example. You dislike it that ID is taught to our kids, but the Theory of Evolution is exactly that, a THEORY. Yes, evolution happens today, but there is no proof that it created life. TE (is that the abbreviation used for it) is simply science's best guess to date.
Since it's the best answer science has to offer, science offers no other theories on the origin of life, therefore competing ideas have to come from outside science. I see nothing wrong with teaching ID in a science class just as I see nothing wrong with teaching TE in a religious class. They are competing theories from different schools of thought and should be taught at the same time.
I consider it bad science to teach things as science that aren't proven. So by my definition, TE shouldn't even touch on the topic of the origin of life. Science should stick with what we know to be true and end there. But people want to be right, including scientists, and so things get put into categories they shouldn't be. Is it bad science/religion, yes. But it's also very human and will probably continue to happen long after you and I are both dead.

DF

Originally posted by DragonFriend
Evolution is a mindless mechanism. How can it do a cost-benefit analysis?

DF

it doesn't do a cost - benefit analysis. Please, read Dawkin's selfish gene, you'll find it explains alot.

Essentially life is just a big game of numbers, if we're talking populations over enough time. Anything that has a higher net benefit than a net cost will be selected for over time. It doesn't mean that it'll be selected for for each individual, but over time, it will come to predominate.

The mechanism is natural selection, differential birth, survival and death. Anything that promotes more successful repreoduction, and doesn't have too much of a big cost (even if that 'cost' is only a potential risk (remeber large population over long time)) will be selected.

Originally posted by DragonFriend
Love is a 2-way street. If it's only one sided then it's desire.
In order for a person to honestly love something, that something has to give something back. We can love other people, or our pets, etc. but we can't truly love our car or ice cream or...
If I love something that doesn't exist, then I'm insane, because I've imagined that something that d ...[text shortened]... and scientists measure love in my brain when I pray, isn't that evidence of God?

DF

No, it's only proof that you feel that you love what you believe god to be.

Originally posted by DragonFriend
Love is a 2-way street. If it's only one sided then it's desire.
In order for a person to honestly love something, that something has to give something back. We can love other people, or our pets, etc. but we can't truly love our car or ice cream or...
If I love something that doesn't exist, then I'm insane, because I've imagined that something that d and scientists measure love in my brain when I pray, isn't that evidence of God?

DF

love can be one-sided. this what you realised when you first found out Jesus loves you.

Originally posted by DragonFriend
But your defense goes beyond what science has proven to be true.
Take the origin of life, for example. You dislike it that ID is taught to our kids, but the Theory of Evolution is exactly that, a THEORY. Yes, evolution happens today, but there is no proof that it created life. TE (is that the abbreviation used for it) is simply science's best guess to ...[text shortened]... very human and will probably continue to happen long after you and I are both dead.

DF

ID is not a theory - it has no scientific merit.

TE can be shown to have been doing it's stuff for the last 3.5 billion years.

A theory is never "just a theory". A theory is the highest form of scientific explanation. A theory has to take into account every measurement ever made and explain them. A single measurement that cannot be explained by a theory either requires the theory to be scrapped or modified.

TE has been modified substantially over time, but never scrapped. Darwin would still understand and appreciate evolution as his self-same theory today, despite the refinements that have been made. TE has been refined, but never disproven.

ID is not testable, nor provable. It's tennents can be explained by TE, no matter how much ID's proponents would love that not to be the case.

TE is the only scientific explanation for the diversity of life on earth today.

Originally posted by DragonFriend
Evolution is a mindless mechanism. How can it do a cost-benefit analysis?

This is one of the common misconceptions of most opponents to the Theory of Evolution, and especialy the proponents of ID. If by mindless mechanism you mean it is incapable of doing calculations you are wrong. I would call a computer a mindless mechanism but it can still do a cost-benefit analysis and so can evolution. A mechanism does not need a mind to compute a result. I have had this discusison many times in this forum, sorting for example is one of the most common computations going on around us every day in the natural world without anthing more than basic physics as the mechanism.

But your defense goes beyond what science has proven to be true.
Take the origin of life, for example. You dislike it that ID is taught to our kids, but the Theory of Evolution is exactly that, a THEORY. Yes, evolution happens today, but there is no proof that it created life. TE (is that the abbreviation used for it) is simply science's best guess to date.
Since it's the best answer science has to offer, science offers no other theories on the origin of life, therefore competing ideas have to come from outside science. I see nothing wrong with teaching ID in a science class just as I see nothing wrong with teaching TE in a religious class. They are competing theories from different schools of thought and should be taught at the same time.

This whole post makes it clear that you do not understand science at all. Science is not a collection of proven facts. It is mostly a collection of Theories which fit the facts to such and extent that they are considered accurate models of the real world. As such The Theory of Evolution is science and should be taught in a science class. You even state yourself that it is the best answer science has to offer. That statement in itself makes it worthy of a science class. ID is not a scientific theory so what would it be doing in a science class?

I consider it bad science to teach things as science that aren't proven. So by my definition, TE shouldn't even touch on the topic of the origin of life. Science should stick with what we know to be true and end there. But people want to be right, including scientists, and so things get put into categories they shouldn't be. Is it bad science/religion, yes. But it's also very human and will probably continue to happen long after you and I are both dead.
Nothing can really be proven and there is nothing that we know to be true, so you think science should not exist. At the same time you support ID which claims to be science but is not.

Originally posted by twhitehead
This is one of the common misconceptions of most opponents to the Theory of Evolution, and especialy the proponents of ID. If by mindless mechanism you mean it is incapable of doing calculations you are wrong. I would call a computer a mindless mechanism but it can still do a cost-benefit analysis and so can evolution. ...

As such The Theory of Evolut ...[text shortened]... of a science class. ID is not a scientific theory so what would it be doing in a science class?

I think you're making a case for ID. A computer can do a cost-benefit analysis because an intelligence first taught it how. That's the whole case for ID, as I understand it.

ID belongs in a science class solely because it's the only other competing theory. Even if you don't classify ID as science, the students deserve to see alternate views since TE hasn't been proven to be the source of life.

DF

Originally posted by DragonFriend
I think you're making a case for ID. A computer can do a cost-benefit analysis because an intelligence first taught it how. That's the whole case for ID, as I understand it.

ID belongs in a science class solely because it's the only other competing theory. Even if you don't classify ID as science, the students deserve to see alternate views since TE hasn't been proven to be the source of life.

DF

But it's NOT SCIENCE!!! Should we teach cooking in an English class? How about chemistry in a french class?? Why not basketball in maths class??

Then no ID in science. ID is belief, not science.


twhitehead's point is that an inanimte system can differentiate between different things i.e. 1s and 0s. Sure in the case of a computer it;s a designed thing, but computers have evolved too.

I never understood this about creationists; they say if you find a watch on the ground it couldn't have happened by chance, all the parts just couldn't have fallen together randomly. It's evidence of a creator (of the watch). When I see a new born baby, I know that's evidence of parents. It's the same thing. In the past, watches didn't rely on quartz crystals, they relied on springs and cogs. Before watches there were clocks, and before them the pendulum, the simplest of time keepers. Before that, we burned candles, or used hourglasses, or sundials, but the concept of time has been around for a long time. Gradually, over many hundreds of years, the time pieces have got better, they have evolved but eac one has had a creator - it's parents if you will.

Watches evolve, computers evolve. Sure this evolution is directed by humans, by intelligence, but really all we need for this evolution is a selection pressure and variation.

Look at a beach. We have a huge variation of sand grain sizes, we have an energy input, and granvity as a selection agent. What happens? The sand grains on beaches get sorted, without any intelligent interjection, based on their size. In biology, the selection pressure is competition. That's all the differences there are.

Please, DF, go out and read Dawkin's selfish gene. Even if you disagree (although it's hard to see how any reasonable person could), at least you'll have a better appreciation of the arguments of evolutionary theory. You can buy SG on amazon for a surprisingly small amount of money. In fact, if you agree to read it, I'll pay for it.

Originally posted by LemonJello
"Love is a battlefield" -- Pat Benatar.

Old school.

Wow.

Originally posted by DragonFriend
I think you're making a case for ID. A computer can do a cost-benefit analysis because an intelligence first taught it how. That's the whole case for ID, as I understand it.

ID belongs in a science class solely because it's the only other competing theory. Even if you don't classify ID as science, the students deserve to see alternate views since TE hasn't been proven to be the source of life.

DF

Science deals with the natural. Religion deals with the supernatural. God being supernatural makes him undetectable by science. In no way should God EVER be mentioned in a science class.

There's one thing i would go down as a martyr for!

Originally posted by Kaboooomba
love can be one-sided. this what you realised when you first found out Jesus loves you.

God created us to share His love with us. If love could be one-sided, God wouldn't need us to love Him back. He wouldn't care how we lived our lives. Heck, He wouldn't need us at all, He could just love the animals and be done with it.
Love is complete when it is shared. One-sided love doesn't actually exist.

DF