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How intelligent were the early humans

6/20/2015

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Intelligence  is often equated with education and thereby creates a wrong impression. Intelligence is the ability to perceive and retain knowledge and information, not the amount of education one has received. The other misunderstanding is that the first humans were dumb, meaning their capacity to reason and planning were slowly developing over the ages.  We must realize that we are not talking about intermediate species. When we talk about the first Humans. We mean the creatures with a fully developed human brain who had the same capability as modern humans. Other human species did exist, such as the Neanderthals and others which are now extinct. We are talking about our branch only.

The reason that I bring this up is that I have received so many comments, by believers in the Bible or the Koran that these books contain correct references to the universe hygiene which they could not have known was knowledge imparted to them by God or Allah. They presume that the human brain couldn’t have figured these things all by themselves.

Others have argued that the connecting between moon and tides, the sun and the seasons would not have been possible when they were so uneducated.

Our forefathers were smart and could make logical conclusions on the same level as we do. They didn’t always draw the correct conclusion so they had to change their mind. Since writing was not invented yet, their knowledge obtained by experience and trial and error was often lost or distorted when was passed on to the next generation by Shamans, story telling, songs and dances. Real knowledge increased slowly until written records appeared. The recorded knowledge, some correct and some not quite true, appearing in the ancient text is the result of past experiences and trial and error, not divine knowledge from an imaginary supernatural Deity. If they were it begs the question why the almighty would not have given us all the knowledge we have obtained so far, at the same time and why some it didn’t pan out.

The passages that the believers try to use as proof that the Holy Books are true and written by their Deity are often written in obtuse language that need extensive and often distorted interpretations, the same as many prophesies do, to make the point. They also conveniently leave out the many cases were the wrong conclusions were made because their experience at that time, was not sufficient enough to come up with correct answers. Because writing is a very, very recent development, we can be sure that an enormous amount of previous discoveries, which we could use right now, have been lost. Even many written records have been accidently or deliberately destroyed. We have the capacity know to judge which of the surviving material is useful but also to judge which material has been superseded by more current discoveries. Religions often are detrimental to the acceptance of new knowledge and that can be very dangerous. A small example of that is parents, who rely on prayer to cure their child, when modern medical knowledge is available for a cure.

 

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Intelligent Design vs Probability

6/11/2015

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The Intelligent Design (ID) proponents argue that the complexity of life forms proves that there must be a creator while the Evolutionists claim that random selection was the driving force in the development of life. When a baby is born there is a fifty-fifty chance it is female or male. There is a 3% chance that the baby is normal or has birth defects. Downs syndrome affects one in a thousand babies born each year and is caused by genetic disorder. These defects are randomly distributed throughout the world population. This would logically indicate that life is governed by random chance rather than ID. There are many flaws that indicate that either a Creator doesn’t exist or that this Designer is not perfect. The excuse I have heard from the ID supporters is that we are imperfect because of the original sin committed by our forefather and mother. That begs the following question. Since animals, plans, aquatic life and even micro biology life show the same imperfections and chance mutations, are they also affected by Adam’s sin even if they had nothing to do with it except for the snake perhaps? That doesn’t make sense.

Since pure chance is observed, every day, while we cannot observe a supreme being, the conclusion that chance rules everywhere is not only obvious but also true.

I am anxiously awaiting the rebuttal from my ID friends without such twisted logic as we encountered when some believers tried to prove that the earth is only 8000 years old against  observable evidence, such as stars being farther away than 8000 lightyears.


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Discussions with Believers

6/7/2015

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Believers keep stating principles to Atheism which they dream up. Atheism means that on does not believe in the supernatural, period. Beyond that they have the same variety of opinions as the rest of the population. There is no dogma, there are no rules. Please stop putting up memes which state that: “If you are an atheist , you believe that……. and then follow up with nonsense statements which suit their misconceptions to argue with you. Please stop that nonsense. It convinces nobody except other believers.

Have you noticed that in discussion with believers and you ask a question that they cannot answer logically, their responses are as follows (if they do answer).
1- Respond with a question
2- Change the subject
3- Quote bible verses, mostly out of context or wrongly interpreted.
4- Make a statement that does not make sense
5- Respond with a meme that is not relevant
6- Call you names, such as idiot, uneducated and  illiterate
7- Doom you to hell
anything to avoid a logical well-thought out answer. At that point just stop arguing because it will be useless. Just ignore them at that point.

On the other hand, I wish that some Unbelievers stop using uncivilized language even if it tempting when you read some of the nonsense that, especially fundamentalist believers, write. Just point out what their fallacies are or ignore them.

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    Ben Vande       
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