Took him an awful long time to say natural selection.
An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)
21–30 of 39 posts
Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)
#22The "natural world" we observe is not the world God created. It is a ruined version of it.
Who ruined it? Certainly not humans, who haven't been genetically engineering anything until recently. So who created these predators / parasites / diseases designed to kill and maim?
Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea what you two are talking about. Are you ambiguously trying to argue for creationism? If so, could you point me to those "good arguments"? I've never seen them.
Methinks you haven't looked. I went to seminary briefly before deciding to go back to being a coder, and my favorite courses were apologetics and the courses having to do with creationist theory. They didn't teach creationist theory as the absolute definitive truth, they tought it as a plausible element to many Christian worldviews (in many variants, including Deism, Intelligent Design, Young Earth, and others). If y…
> lead by really deep thinkers in Protestant beliefs.
Thanks, but when we're talking about the defining paradigm of biology, I prefer the views of biologists.
Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Methinks you haven't looked. I went to seminary briefly before deciding to go back to being a coder, and my favorite courses were apologetics and the courses having to do with creationist theory. They didn't teach creationist theory as the absolute definitive truth, they tought it as a plausible element to many Christian worldviews (in many variants, including Deism, Intelligent Design, Young Earth, and others). If y…
> lead by really deep thinkers in Protestant beliefs. Thanks, but when we're talking about the defining paradigm of biology, I prefer the views of biologists.
Presumably you believe these groups to be mutually exclusive?
Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)
#25"Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind?" I suppose the author thinks God must be either pro-rabbit or pro-fox? That seems odd to me. Calvin and Hobbes argue a lot--just think of how self-defeating that is. How short-sighted of Bill Watterson to have overlooked that he could have assigned them milder temperments. Why all…
Did you stop reading after a couple of paragraphs? The author is an atheist, and uses the supernatural as metaphor to introduce his subject. He states quite clearly that he believes that evolution by natural selection is quite sufficient (even necessary) to explain what we can observe and that no god or gods are necessary.
I'm an atheist too, but Dove's point is a fair one. The fact that nature is filled with chaos and conflict doesn't conflict with the idea that it was created by a human-like mind, since humans have an aesthetic preference for stories and art that involve conflict. Presumably, God also saw it artistically pleasing that some children should live their entire lives in intolerable pain and then die before reaching their third birthday, but that's not even especially extreme by the standards of human literature.
Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)
#26Technically you don't need multiple Gods, you need a God that's an economist. If rabbits can't run, the foxes will kill themselves off because there's a near infinite demand but extremely limited supply. I suppose if the 'one true god' was an economist, all religion got it wrong and our ancestors have been worshipping pure evil for the past few millennia.
I want what you're having...
Once, to a long, rambling post that looked like a the product of overexposure to AI and OO combined with schizophrenia, I replied: "I want that algorithm. Not the one described in the post, the one that wrote it!"
Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you stop reading after a couple of paragraphs? The author is an atheist, and uses the supernatural as metaphor to introduce his subject. He states quite clearly that he believes that evolution by natural selection is quite sufficient (even necessary) to explain what we can observe and that no god or gods are necessary.
I'm an atheist too, but Dove's point is a fair one. The fact that nature is filled with chaos and conflict doesn't conflict with the idea that it was created by a human-like mind, since humans have an aesthetic preference for stories and art that involve conflict. Presumably, God also saw it artistically pleasing that some children should live their entire lives in intolerable pain and then die before reaching their…
Presumably, God also saw it artistically pleasing that some children should live their entire lives in intolerable pain and then die before reaching their third birthday, but that's not even especially extreme by the standards of human literature.
Yes, but while it's acceptable to write about horrible things in a literary context, it would be considered extreme to enact them. So presuming that I actually exist, and that those children actually exist, God shouldn't get the literary dispensation. (While on the other hand, Frédéric Mitterrand certainly should.)
Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> lead by really deep thinkers in Protestant beliefs. Thanks, but when we're talking about the defining paradigm of biology, I prefer the views of biologists.
Presumably you believe these groups to be mutually exclusive?
Indeed, I doubt there's much overlap between Protestant theologians and professional biologists.
Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Methinks you haven't looked. I went to seminary briefly before deciding to go back to being a coder, and my favorite courses were apologetics and the courses having to do with creationist theory. They didn't teach creationist theory as the absolute definitive truth, they tought it as a plausible element to many Christian worldviews (in many variants, including Deism, Intelligent Design, Young Earth, and others). If y…
Ok, thanks for clarifying what you were saying.
In case you didn't notice, it's not the same person who replied, so there was no clarification.
Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea what you two are talking about. Are you ambiguously trying to argue for creationism? If so, could you point me to those "good arguments"? I've never seen them.
Methinks you haven't looked. I went to seminary briefly before deciding to go back to being a coder, and my favorite courses were apologetics and the courses having to do with creationist theory. They didn't teach creationist theory as the absolute definitive truth, they tought it as a plausible element to many Christian worldviews (in many variants, including Deism, Intelligent Design, Young Earth, and others). If y…
They didn't teach creationist theory as the absolute definitive truth, they tought it as a plausible element to many Christian worldviews
That's kind of the point, though. Creationism is not a plausible theory. It does not explain the evidence and is contradicted by the world around us. The only way you could allow for creator god that fits the observed evidence is if you posit that he does exactly what nature would do by itself. I.e. the only god that fits the observed evidence is nature... which is exactly the point of Eliezer's article.