ABO.......There's not one evolutionary transitions which have ever been observed which can substantiate the claim. Not during human history or in the fossil record of the past.

ABO,

Ignorance, total ignorance, utter ignorance.

How many cases would you need to falsify what you wrote above?

Also, what do you mean by "evolutionary transition?" Everything that happens with any population is evolutionary transition - anything!

What would a species have to transition from and how you can tell species 1 from species 2 that arose from species 1?

Is transition to you when two species cannot reproduce? Or look different? Or does it need to be a mouse giving birth to a monkey?

To the best of my knowledge there are 30 or so fossil species of horses and 15 or so of whales. How many do you need for each species? Kind of like how many Corvettes do you need to see each model that came out every 5 or so years. Do you need 1-5 of each model year or do you need 1-4 of each year of the model year? Or do you need "each car" of millions - each car, of each model year with all add ons - spoilers, soft tops, red, blue, black, yellow, deep thread tires or or not, automatic or not?

At what point this silliness need to stop, ABO?

Speciation has been observed dozens and hundreds of times among plants and animals (bacteria are a different case). In the lab and in nature.

I’m an Ape, and I’m Also a Fish
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/ ... so-a-fish/

So, how many examples of "speciation" (whatever you mean by it) is needed for you to falsify your speculation?

Jack, so far as I can tell that is one of the first times you have so bluntly stated you are an atheist.

But if you really believe that no further inferences can be made from a position of atheism then atheism has nothing to say to modern humankind about ethics, philosophy, science, reason itself, or anything else.

So, it sound pretty irrelevant.

And I am pretty sure most of the New Atheists would disagree.

But you didn't answer this question: what further implications about "ethics, philosophy, science, reason itself, or anything else" do you think atheism entails?

Here's my point, again. Atheism is nothing but the lack of belief in gods. It is a negative, not a positive belief. I have all sorts of beliefs about ethics, philosophy, science, reason itself, etc., and I have all sorts of reasons for my beliefs. None of my reasons involve invoking gods - that's all atheism implies, nothing else. Atheism is not the interesting issue - the interesting issue is what in fact does one believe; what's the support, basis and rationale for those beliefs; and how does one live one's life in conjunction with those beliefs.

So again, what further implications about "ethics, philosophy, science, reason itself, or anything else" do you think atheism entails?

Thats O.K., Jack, many of my questions are never answered either. But I will say that I think it implies Moral Relativism, that it ends up with Atheists thinking they are more intelligent than believers and even morally superior to believers, and that it involves the undemonstrated belief that all exisitence, life, mind and reason itself are...utlimately...the result of mindless forces

But I understand that you think it implies nothing, so what I think it implies is irrelevant to you.

As such, for your purposes, it is also irrelevant in general.

Although I have noticed that you do hedge on the issue, when you state various positions you hold and say they have nothing to do with God. (I am not discussing "gods" as your subtly and perjoratively keep saying.) Therefore, although you claim atheism has no implications, you certainly act as if it does, allowing you promote a form of Moral Relativism and the like.

Mike has offered three "implications of atheism". I'm quite interested in this - at least two of his three implications, as well as the whole idea of being "consistent with atheism."

Let me respond to the easy, and not very interesting, implication first, and turn to the others in subsequent posts.

Mike writes, "it ends up with Atheists thinking they are more intelligent than believers."

This is a complete non-sequitur, and certainly not something I believe. There are many very intelligent theists. Given that theism is a metaphysical belief, not subject to empirical investigation, intelligent and sincere people can come to radically different opinions about it. This may be something some atheists believe (I think they're wrong if they do), but it is certainly not an implication of atheism.

I think there are several things possibly going on.

A lot of atheists have "thought" themselves out of religion in one way or another. In most cases, its not an emotional deconversion, its more cerebral. As a result, many atheists incorrectly assume they must be brighter than the avg bulb.

Also, there are lot of weird things that religions take on faith. To an outsider these things are often so preposterous that its hard to believe that someone actually thinks these things are true. Sometimes the easiest explanation is gullibility, even if that not correct. Religious people are often just as guilty of this when they look at other religions.

And I thinks there's some selection and confirmation bias going on. its possible that this superiority complex Mike sees among some atheists really bugs him, so he spends a lot of time concentrating his angst on them. And in doing so he forgets about (or isn't aware of) all the atheists who simply don't act so smug. On the flip side of the coin is the atheist who spends so much time focusing on religious "nutters" that s/he begins to assume that ALL religious people are nutters and forgets there are a lot "normal" religious people out there.

The second "implication of atheism" that Mike mentioned above is this very common phrase of Mike's: "it involves the undemonstrated belief that all exisitence, life, mind and reason itself are...ultimately...the result of mindless forces."

On the one hand, it is true that if one doesn't believe in God, then one doesn't believe that the mind of God created everything. As I said, the only implication of atheism is that one doesn't invoke God as an explanation. (I'll stick with writing God, as opposed to writing "a god", as meaning an omni-everything divine immaterial being, irrespective of whether that God is also the God of Christian belief, with all the dogma about Jesus, etc.)

On the other hand, both the word "undemonstrated" and the word "mindless" deserve some response and clarification.

First atheism is not the same as materialism. One can be an atheist and still believe in a spiritual aspect to the world, including a non-material creative force. When Mike says atheism he is assuming that means materialism also, but they are not necessarily the same. I am an atheist - it is a fact that I don't believe in any gods, but I am agnostic about materialism. I am open to the possibility that there may be some non-material, diffuse spiritual force, or some underlying creative causality, that manifests itself in the physical world. However, if such things exist, I don't think they are knowable by us: I think our knowledge is limited to what we can empirically experience, so I'm willing to discuss all this from the point of view of a materialist.

Now let's talk about "mindless forces." The only minds I know of are human (although I'm pretty sure other animals have experiences somewhat like ours in ways), and I believe that minds are things that arise "inside of", so to speak, living biological organisms, so it is true that I don't think existence and life were created by from a mindful force, since I don't believe that humans created existence and life. I don't believe that disembodied minds exist.

So Mike says that an materialist believes that "exisitence, life, mind and reason" are the result of "mindless forces". I don't know why existence is - we a universe exists with the properties has. But given that universe, I do believe that life, mind and reason have emerged from the interplay of the elements of nature - particles and forces.

Has then been "demonstrated", in the sense of being proven? No.

Is there lots of evidence that these natural processes are what the world is made up of, and that huge amounts of previously un-understood phenomena can be explained by natural processes? Yes

Has any investigation turned up some disembodied mind as a viable explanation of some natural phenomena. No? Supernatural explanations have steadily fallen by the wayside as we examine things that people used to think were caused by God.

So instead of saying what Mike says, ("demonstrated belief ... in mindless forces"), I would say that given my experience and the evidence, it seems vastly more likely that life, mind, and our reasoning powers arose though natural processes rather than being created by some disembodied and yet physically empowered mind that I see no evidence for.

My beliefs are conclusions drawn from experience. Not believing in a God frees me from some of the historically grounded preconceptions of my culture. And, given that we are reminded all the time of people who do believe in God, and include him in their explanations, (Mike and ABO being two here in this little forum), it is natural to compare a non-theistic belief system to a theistic belief system. But my beliefs are not what they are because I don't believe in God: they are what they are because the sum total of my life experience and learning has led me to these conclusions.

Yes, and from that often comes the thinking that they are best able to judge the scientific merit of theory they are not even interested in studying or experimenting with. Variation of the scientific method that is taught creates such things as an imaginary science journal tribunal one must present a hypothesis to that somehow turns into a theory after that, which is another great method to maintain an upper authority that does everyone's thinking for them.

MikeH says, “it ends up with Atheists thinking they are more intelligent than believers”

I don’t know whether an Atheist would necessarily assume they are more intelligent than someone else. Although I think we are all guilty of concluding our own intelligence is higher than another’s at times. I would likely infer my own intelligence to be higher than that of self-proclaimed racist, even though unfortunately I could be wrong.

Now intelligence is a difficult thing to define and to measure but might Atheists, as a group, have at least some level of justification for holding such beliefs about their own intelligence? Lynn et al 2009, Larsen 1998, Kanazawa 2011, Zuckerman 2007, Bell 2002 and many others research groups (over 43 studies) have shown a clear negative correlation between intelligence and religious beliefs.

I hope in the future I can continue to refrain from making assumptions about anyone’s intelligence in comparison to my own. However, give me a random sample of 50 atheist and 50 theists and I’ll put my money on the atheist scoring on average higher on some standardized IQ test. That’s not an assumption, that’s just a logical inference based on empirical observations.

I'm not BEST able to judge, but I am certainly able. Your tricycle isn't a sports car, Gary. I don't need to be a mechanic or in need of a ride to make that call.

Genome.... Although I think we are all guilty of concluding our own intelligence is higher than another’s at times.

Over reporting of positive personal attributes like self esteem, own abilities, level of knowledge by and even religious services attendance how many times a month they go to church is common and well documented. Underestimating other people's abilities and accomplishments is also a well known phenomenon. Normally, under-reporting of perceived undesirable by the reportee attributes is rather rare and is a statistical aberration, while over-reporting of desirable attributes is a norm.

Empirical studies in psychology, economy, neurobiology, sociology, etc have confirmed this many times over. This allows for rather complex and much more accurate statistical modeling in economics, taxation policies, and even bus service scheduling.

It appears when confronted with a question to quantify anything people seem to go on a higher side when it comes to their personal life. We all want to look better and think we are smarter than anyone else.

Lots of studies on over reporting are here at Google Scholar

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ove ... CBsQgQMwAA

I was also thinking more along the lines of Guenter Albrecht-Buehler, David Heiserman, and others who regularly get trash-talked because of commonly shared belief that cells and other things cannot have "intelligence".

Oh, and welcome to forum Genome!

Thanks for the example of how Atheists end up thinking they are more intelligent than believers.

Jack disagreed, of course, but I knew all I had to do was sit back and wait for the posters to provide confirmation of my suggestion of an inference from atheism.

Damned atheists - having research to back up their beliefs like that!

MikeH writes “Thanks for the example of how Atheists end up thinking they are more intelligent than believers.

Jack disagreed, of course, but I knew all I had to do was sit back and wait for the posters to provide confirmation of my suggestion of an inference from atheism.”

Mike you missed a very important point. You really should reread my post in order to make an important distinction. I did not given an example of “how Atheists end up thinking they are more intelligent than believers”. I gave an example of how numerous studies tell us that on average, Atheists simply are more intelligent than their religious peers. I also mentioned, if some Atheists do make an assumption about their intelligence compared to a believer, that they might have justification. All that has been confirmed is that Atheists are on average more intellignet, but nothing about their beliefs has been confirmed.

Remember your original inference was that “ends up with Atheists thinking they are more intelligent than”

Please reread my post and let me know if you still think my post supports your original inference.