Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[Dubious]

Thank you, oh superior one, for your succinct exegesis in describing in near biographical terms the prevailing conditions rampant in the brains of an idiot. Is there also an autobiography that goes with it?

Blessing to you, wormish one!

An autograph can be provided. Generally, after appropriate monetary contributions.

One at a time please is all I can handle. I just read "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky. I expect all other offerings to be free.

[Immanuel Can]

alternative

Still no answer.

[Immanuel Can]

Where did I say sexual reproduction is not involved.

You said there was no "first mating pair." Now you have to admit there had to be. It makes me wonder why you said it.

If you insist on a first mating pairthen it would have been the first time one eukaryotic cell transferred its DNA to another.

No, that would be in the very early primordial soup. At some point, sooner or later, it would have to be a sexually binary pair. There's no other possibility -- not in Evolutionism.

Sorry, can't say what their names were since it preceded my existence by a billion years give or take.

I didn't ask for names...just for a return to a plausible story. Have you got one?

[Immanuel Can]

It is funny (actually it is hilarious) that he turns to the Original Mating Pair story.

Oh, goody! There's another person who thinks he has an alternate story. Wonderful. Join the party, Alexis: tell us what story of human origins doesn't involve any original mating pair.

If I grant you an Original Mating Pair...

I suspect you won't. But you also won't have any theory to replace it.

[Immanuel Can]

The Mating Pair is there. Now what?

Are you conceding the point? Feel free to float your opposing narrative, if you can invent one. If not, the Dube's derisive claim that the problem with the Genesis story is the suggestion there was "a first mating pair" turns out to be silly and unscientific. And that's as far as we need to go, for the present point.

[Gary Childress]

You said there was no "first mating pair." Now you have to admit there had to be. It makes me wonder why you said it.

If you insist on a first mating pairthen it would have been the first time one eukaryotic cell transferred its DNA to another.

No, that would be in the very early primordial soup. At some point, sooner or later, it would have to be a sexually binary pair. There's no other possibility -- not in Evolutionism.

Sorry, can't say what their names were since it preceded my existence by a billion years give or take.

I didn't ask for names...just for a return to a plausible story. Have you got one?

Are you saying there is no other possible alternative that you can think of to the origins of human beings than a single mating pair living in a garden as described by the bible? No other scenario is possible?

If evolution is the case, then why could it not be the case that there was a single male hominid who mated with multiple female hominids of less human-like DNA (or vice versa) to create a step towards what we now call Homo-Sapiens (ourselves).

According to genetics, Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam were likely not the only hominids of their kind alive at that time. Human DNA sequences have many contributors, not just two people.

Equally problematic is that evidence seems to suggest that Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam are lived somewhere around a hundred thousand years apart from each other.

From what I understand, if I understand correctly, given what is known about genetics, Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam would have to have existed among other mating pairs (perhaps ever so slightly less "human" than they were) to account for the variation in human DNA. Two people alone could not account for the variety in our DNA. But genetics does suggest that the pre-historic human population may have faced some serious bottlenecks at points such that all humans can be traced back (in part) to a single male and a later single female from which all known humans today share SOME common lineage with. Other humans alive at the same time contributed genes to modern populations, but their specific Y-chromosome or mitochondrial DNA lineages did not survive to the present day.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The Mating Pair is there. Now what?

Are you conceding the point? Feel free to float your opposing narrative, if you can invent one. If not, the Dube's derisive claim that the problem with the Genesis story is the suggestion there was "a first mating pair" turns out to be silly and unscientific. And that's as far as we need to go, for the present point.

Mr dearest Brother. I granted you that Original Mating Pair. Your argument is I think coherent though (I guess) there might have been a pool of individuals.

But now we see that Mating Pair. There they are.

What now?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Are you conceding the point?

The Hyperborean Apollo formally concedes the point!

[Immanuel Can]

If you insist on a first mating pairthen it would have been the first time one eukaryotic cell transferred its DNA to another.

No, that would be in the very early primordial soup. At some point, sooner or later, it would have to be a sexually binary pair. There's no other possibility -- not in Evolutionism.

Sorry, can't say what their names were since it preceded my existence by a billion years give or take.

I didn't ask for names...just for a return to a plausible story. Have you got one?

Are you saying there is no other possible alternative that you can think of to the origins of human beings than a single mating pair...

I'm waiting to hear what the alternative would be. So far, we have nothing from anybody, and nothing from AI, for that matter, though all have tried.

That was the limit of Dube's alleged skeptical "challenge," which didn't turn out even to make sense or to be remotely scientific, or even to allow for something like Evolutionism, let alone be a real challenge. The smugness, it turns out, was worse than unwarranted...it was, in Dube's own terms, "ignorant." Even Dube, if she/he were now honest, would have to admit that there had to have been an original pair of 'modern'-type humans. Logically, there's no other possibility...unless Dube can now propose one...which hasn't happened yet.

Dube's challenge doesn't require more. After that, people can argue about the particulars of the narrative if they want to, but no longer about the reasonableness of believing in an original mating pair. And that was my point in taking up the argument here. You'll have to ask Dube what his/her point was, in raising a skeptical scoff at something that accords with the only plausible and logical hypothesis scientifically -- namely, that such a pair had to have existed.

[Immanuel Can]

The Mating Pair is there. Now what?

Are you conceding the point? Feel free to float your opposing narrative, if you can invent one. If not, the Dube's derisive claim that the problem with the Genesis story is the suggestion there was "a first mating pair" turns out to be silly and unscientific. And that's as far as we need to go, for the present point.

Mr dearest Brother. I granted you that Original Mating Pair.

I don't need the grant. I just need the honest admission of its obviousness, which you have now provided.

(I guess) there might have been a pool of individuals.

Explain how that story would go. Let's start this way: the world is full of pre-modern hominids -- let's say Neanderthals. How does the human race make the move to the next step, the modern human being?

But now we see that Mating Pair. There they are.

What now?

Nothing more was required by Dube's challenge. I don't have a further point I want to make. I didn't set out to raise the issue: Dube did. And Dube floated, with complete smugness, the conviction that there couldn't possibly have been an original mating pair. Now that objection has been shown to be very silly indeed, and unscientific, to boot. I'm content to rest there. What more needs to be said?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Nothing more was required by Dube's challenge. I don't have a further point I want to make. I didn't set out to raise the issue: Dube did. And Dube floated, with complete smugness, the conviction that there couldn't possibly have been an original mating pair. Now that objection has been shown to be very silly indeed, and unscientific, to boot. I'm content to rest there. What more needs to be said?

::: crestfallen look, dejected tone :::

What more needs to be said?!? What more?!?

How Evil entered our world!

Is there no further point to be made?

[Immanuel Can]

Duplicate

[Alexis Jacobi]

What a great question. What do you think the answer is?

I went over all of that in the Christianity thread.

The conditions of the world — a violent biological system where all life must feed on other lives — establishes a basic condition of existence that is perceived as evil.

Something in us reacts to the basic facts of existence here. Essentially, it involves a reaction against mortality which sums up what is terrible in the biological system.

But psychopathological evil, found in really screwed up men, that seems a unique human feature. The desire to harm, or a lack of sensitivity to harm done — there are children born with that condition.

[Dubious]

You said there was no "first mating pair." Now you have to admit there had to be. It makes me wonder why you said it.

If you insist on a first mating pairthen it would have been the first time one eukaryotic cell transferred its DNA to another.

No, that would be in the very early primordial soup. At some point, sooner or later, it would have to be a sexually binary pair. There's no other possibility -- not in Evolutionism.

Sorry, can't say what their names were since it preceded my existence by a billion years give or take.

I didn't ask for names...just for a return to a plausible story. Have you got one?

If not in evolution, where then?

As a plausible story, I gave you the one science relates; you got the one the bible relates.

The only plausible story you're going to accept is Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as the first mating pair, replete with a talking snake whose function is to screw it all up. What more is there to say! Anyone accepting a story that asinine cannot be argued with, displaying an ignorance desperate to maintain itself. Hardened fanatics of your ilk come across as a separate subspecies of humanity...a separation seemingly impossible to bridge.

Also, the primordial soup, as you call it, existed long before eukaryotic cells first developed. They are separate events a few billion years apart.

Each post you make is further confirmation of your ignorance. Since supposedly nothing ever gets lost on the internet, feel free to keep it coming. No limitations imposed.

[Immanuel Can]

What a great question. What do you think the answer is?

I went over all of that in the Christianity thread.

The conditions of the world — a violent biological system where all life must feed on other lives — establishes a basic condition of existence that is perceived as evil.

Well, wait: objectively evil, or only perceived as evil? It makes a world of difference. If it's only perceived as evil, then the question is only, "Why do people delude themselves in this way?" But if it's objectively evil, then we actually have a real problem to tackle.

Which would you say is right?

Essentially, it involves a reaction against mortality which sums up what is terrible in the biological system.

That just says, "We don't like dying." It doesn't say, "Dying is evil."

But psychopathological evil, found in really screwed up men, that seems a unique human feature. The desire to harm, or a lack of sensitivity to harm done — there are children born with that condition.

All of us, really. When we were babies, nobody needed to teach us how to hit our little brother, or to scream in rage at our mothers when we didn't get our way. We figured that stuff out all on our own. At least, by age 2 we had that all down. "The Terrible Twos" have become legendary for a reason.