This very date....TODAY'S DATE....twenty-one years ago.

I blew all their "slow gradual process" bull off the figgin map!

-- Mt. St. Helens (this@REALLY.bugsem), May 18, 2001

Answers

You blew all their weak arguments off the map? I know they don't have much to brag about, but I think it would take more than one person to blow them off the map.

-- Mt. Adams (they@haveNo.clue), May 18, 2001.

So *that's* why we all turned into lizards overnight. Nobody notices but me, but I've been wondering for all this time.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 19, 2001.

funny how the dudes that said "don't believe everything you read at a website" during y2k are SUDDENLY believing everything they read at websites....now that it fits their belief system! LOL!

As for "talkingoutyerass origins"....BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaaaa!!!! those dumbasses make me laugh EXTRA hard!!!!

J

-- Crack A ToeOff (l@ughing.@ss.off), May 21, 2001.

As a trial balloon, how about this---atheists/evolutionists hate the concept of equality. Why? Because there is no evolved equality; we all have different abilities. Even if we reject social Darwinism, biological Darwinism has evolved us all to be uniquely unequal. We can attempt to legislate equality but the only way to truly invoke equality is to invoke the concept of God----we are all equal (in value) in God's eyes.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 21, 2001.

Except, of course, those who are not.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 21, 2001.

Lars:

Are you serious? That's one of the strangest claims I've seen in a while, and completely unnecessary. It sounds like you have scraped right through the bottom of the barrel looking for some support for a foregone conclusion, however risible.

First, the idea of "equality" is not hated in any way by evolutionists. Material things are of course always different, no two can be alike because (at the very least) they are made of different atoms. Beyond that, there is always variation among individuals. Without that variation, evolution would have no raw material on which to operate.

But when we say "all men are created equal", this is not either a religious or an evolutionary statement, this is a statement of *arbitrary legal principle*. It states that our laws must be written and adjudicated with the understanding that they apply equally to everybody.

In other words, we have declared a political principle that double standards will not be tolerated. If YOU can do something legally, then so can everyone else. Conversely, if it's illegal when YOU do something, then it's equally illegal when everyone does it. And this is all part of disallowing any "nobility", who by definition have special legal privileges denied the "commoners."

So being equal in the eyes of the law has nothing to do with being equal in the eyes of any god(s). And indeed, we have been quite rigorous about disallowing "general" laws that apply to "everyone named Joseph Berkewicz, who happens to own 150 acres north of Dallas", and all such people equally! Again, that's just an example of how our legal principles work.

Bottom line: we do not NEED superstitions to make legal systems work. Practical methods based on trial and error work just fine.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 21, 2001.

Lars-

We are far from equal in God's sight; in the vast majority of religions, the diety(ies) give much greater consideration to its/their believers.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 21, 2001.

Flint--

Of course I was not being totally "serious". I said it was a "trial balloon".

But as you know, there is an ideological mind-set called egalitarianism. Egalitarianism goes beyond mere equality before the law. But evolution makes egalitarian ideals impossible. The only way to maintain that type of equality is to invoke a Diety that judges us that way. I am not an egalitarian. Many self-professed atheists are egalitarians. Seems to me they sre being inconsistent.

I used the words "evolutionists hate equality" just to maintain compatibility with the title of this thread.

PS-who is Joseph Berkewicz? Is he a friend of CPRs?

Tarzan--

Well of curse, any Diety worth its pillar of salt would not equate disbelievers to believers. Shazam!

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 21, 2001.

Lars:

I believe (and the dictionary agrees) that egalitarianism is what I was talking about - legal and social equality. NOT physical equality. And the way to achieve this is through our legal policies, which are a codified reflection of our social outlook.

I'm an athiest myself. I can recognize that evolution is as solidly established as the earth going around the sun, and I can see that no two people are alike. Yet I'm also an egalitarian in the sense that I don't believe double standards are proper or workable. I can assure you that no diety is required to act as some kind of Grand Objective Measuring Tape.

I'd even go the other way, in agreement with Tarzan. Every diety I've seen rung into these discussions is there at least partially as a means of separating the true believers from the heathen -- a means of creating an INequality in favor of one side. Just adopt MY beliefs and YOU can be equal too!

And the way to maintain an egalitarian society is by divvying up the political power among everyone, and giving everyone equal access to redress through the courts. Dieties have nothing to do with this, and have a bad track record elsewhere. It's leaving dieties OUT that makes egalitarianism work.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 22, 2001.

deity and atheist

"I before E, except after C"

Why isn't it spelled diety and athiest?

-- (bygrace@thru.faith), May 22, 2001.

Flint--

If that is what egalitarians are, I agree with you.

IMO egalitarians desperately want to believe that there is absolutely no inequality in performance or inate behavior between groups and they dispute any scientific evidence to the contrary.

Their beliefs can lead not only to legal remedies for discrimination against certain groups but to legal remedies for discrimination in favor of certain groups.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 22, 2001.

Lars:

OK, now I understand what you're referring to. I don't know if it has any particular name, but egalitarianism it ain't.

There has been considerable debate along those lines, with reference to the distinction between "within group" and "between group" differences. I have never heard of any rational person claiming that differences don't exist within groups. Indeed, there's an element of competition in all we do which wouldn't make sense if it were otherwise, since in that case everyone would come out tied. But we compete against what there is to be learned in school and get measured in grades, we compete against other candidates for jobs and mates, etc. We even have platitudes about it taking all kinds, and different strokes.

So we're obviously different from one another along a fairly broad range within groups. But are there systematic differences *between* groups? Now, here is were the fireworks start.

First, what's a "group"? For example, if we consider tall people as a group, they are systematically different from short people with respect to height, yes? Indeed, if we separate our "groups" according to any factor(s) at all, then clearly the very act of defining such a group arbitrarily creates a between-group distinction according to the factor(s) chosen. In this sense, you can't have any groupings at all wihtout the very distinction that creates those groupings in the first place.

Where this becomes politically sensitive is when we define groups according to some obvious factor (sex or skin color or religion or national origin) which is in itself neutral, and THEN look for OTHER correlations which might justify differential *economic* performance. Clearly there are some physical differences -- the best basketball players are nearly all black, and orientals tend to be shorter.

But the search for systematic differences between these groups in terms of mental capacity or ability is the proverbial third rail. And IMAO, cultural and social influences ("nurture") are significant enough to cast real doubt on such searches, *especially* because of the political ramifications. The tendency to "find" what you expected when you started has, according to my (fairly comprehensive) knowledge of the literature, never been overcome. The bias is built in, always.

So what has been most politically expedient is to *define* groups as having the same basic economic capability. But we don't just want a definition here, we want *actual equality* of economic performance. So we have set up a system that arbitrarily places people in positions of responsibility they are not competent to perform. This is NOT to say that they are "inherently" or "innately" incompetent, simply that they lack the required skills right now.

Personally, I'm far from convinced that pretending people can do what they clearly cannot is the right answer. Especially when that pretense denies opportunities to those who really ARE competent. This tactic hurts everyone involved. But I also believe that relatively little of these between-group differences is physiological. People are amazingly malleable, and we've seen every time I'm aware of that infants taken from one social stratum and raised in another become normal, capable people at the level of the stratum in which they were raised.

But none of this has anything to do with dieties or religion, and a whole lot to do with statistics, politics, culture, history, tradition.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 23, 2001.

TO ALL CHRISTIANS ON THIS THREAD:

Why are you wasting time debating belief structures with people who won't learn? Do fall for the tired arguments of the so called "science" of the evolutionists; stick to what matters---

Where did the universe come from? All these things that supposedly evolved out of something else had to start somewhere.

Where, bigbrains... where?

-- (speak@up.boys!), May 25, 2001.