Oh they exist.

Just plug Krishna (or any of the other names) into your search engine
and pick and chose what you will read. Or read every one of them if you
have the time.

Or go to a book store (half price books is farily resonable) and
purchase the actual book and read it at your leasure and form you own
opinions.

I would be pleased to hear you opinions on them.

AB wrote:
"I read actual books"

That's the way to do it!

A book in electonic form is still a book.

A book once printed remains as it was printed.

Electronic books can be edited at whim. Security measures
notwithstanding any mediocre hacker can edit any web page at any time
anywhere in the world.

words with out substance.

Unless there were errors in the translation or in the type itself.

evolution, n., 1. Any one process of formation or growth; development.
2., the continuous genetic adaptation of organisms or species to the
environment.


Macquarie dictionary.


Doesn't sound stupid to me..

spider to one with you discerning eye such mistranslations should become
immediately obvious.

They occure all the time when books must be translated because of babel.

AdventureBegins:

The following beliefs cannot ever be verified as true my observing data:

1. The belief that empirical logic leads to true conclusions.
2. The belief that being skeptical leads to true conclusions.
3. The belief that there was a time when no life existed on earth.
4. The belief that there never was a time when life did not exist on
earth.

Since these four beliefs, for example, cannot be verified, then you
cannot use beliefs 1 and 2 to claim true statements about beliefs 3 and
4. This is all I am saying. At some level, however far back you want to
take this, evolution rests on unsubstantiatable claims. Science itself
rests on claims like these. The only reason we deal with it is because
science is useful if it can provide immediate application.

In this sense, evolution clearly is a religious belief. For example,
there are about 12 different philosophies within evolution, many of
which contradict each other. The very famous evolutionary author Stephen
J. Gould believed in punctuated equilibria, which says that mutations
accumulate over thousands of years and then BAM they appear in fossils
all of the sudden. Richard Dawkins, however, another very famous
evolutionist, thinks this ideas is completely silly.

Let me be clear, it is okay within science to have very smart men who
disagree. But when the science they are disagreeing about cannot be
substantiated with observation, and then two very smart people disagree
about a very fundamental detail (like how mutations ultimately provide
speciation) then it is obvious that it cannot be founded in science. If
it were scientific, then there would (at leat in theory) be an
experiment that could theoretically tell the difference between
punctuated equilibria and gradualism. But no such experiment can
possibly exist because we cannot possibly know whether the way in which
point mutations accumulate now relates at all to how it used to
accumulate.

Again, if you wanted to, you could merely accept the philosophy of
uniformitarianism (as Dawkins does) and then assert that mutations take
effect gradually. But there is not way to scientifically or
observationally validate the philosophy of uniformitarianism. This is
what I have been saying all along.

If you take for granted the religious (philosophical) belief that since
things look gradual today, they must have always acted gradually, then
yes you can make sense of evolution. But you cannot use science to
justify that initial religious idea of gradualism... that must simply be
accept or rejected based on some other kind of evidence.

Since evolutionary theory rests on this axiom (uniformitarianism) it is
a religion. The most baffling thing that evolutionists try to do is make
the case that their belief system requires no axioms. However, that is
absurd. Even the belief that your own thoughts are trustworthy requires
axioms to some degree. You have to believe that your sensory information
is not somehow distorted from the time it hits your eyes to the time
your brain processes it. I agree this is an extreme example, but it
illustrates my point that all sets of beliefs, including the
evolutionary set, require axioms. And any et of beliefs that requires
axioms and attempts to explain the origin of the universe is a religion.

I personally beleive that evolution occures not gradually but rather in
spurts as catastrophic changes take place in the environment.

Those species that can, mutate and survive. Thoses species that can
not, wither and become extinct.

Evolutions basis can not be established any more than can that of
religions. Both have a foundation that is shrouded in the fog of
antiquity.

We may yet see striking evidence of evolution at work. Our planet is
ramping up for a global catastropy which will occure in a time table
that can be measure as soon (in cosmic time).

Ely wrote:
"The following beliefs cannot ever be verified as true by observing
data:

1. The belief that empirical logic leads to true conclusions.
2. The belief that being skeptical leads to true conclusions.
3. The belief that there was a time when no life existed on earth.
4. The belief that there never was a time when life did not exist on
earth."

~~~

I think you meant to say that this is YOUR belief system.

You state these they they are absolute facts that everyone must concur.

Why would you do such a thing?

That, I think, is a much more plausible view than the classical one. I
also believe great changes come out of catastrophes (the greatest
changes coming from Noah's flood).

Suppose that some new catastrophe happens and out of it we do observe
speciation and adaptation. All this can demonstrate is that in this one
instance of a catastrophe, it happened this one time. We have no idea
whether that's how it happened before and we cannot use science to know
that. It just has to be believed (like a religious belief).

Your theory about catastrophes is not the religious part. Your idea that
if a catastrophe happened tomorrow it would tell use something about
catastrophies before... that is the religious part. And while I agree
with empiricism in some cases, I do not think it should be uniformly
believed. But I totally respect the attitude that it should be uniformly
believed, if that is how you feel.

Ely,

I mean sure, you can claim Solipsism if you want to but everyone doesn't
need to agree with your philosophy.

Ely I did not say it would help us understand the past that is as
allways shrouded in its own fog.

I merely stated that we will see evolution occuring before our very eyes
if those conditions exist.

Why shoud anyone worry about why things were as we exist now. Better to
worry about what things will be like as we exist in the future.

Abracadabra:

Case 1, for example, cannot be verified because you cannot use empirical
logic to determine whether or not empirical logic provides you with true
conclusions. That's merely a fact about which I am making an
observation. You would need to undo about 300 years of the philosophy of
science if you want to dispute that caim number 1 is a fact.

I'll grant you that the others are bit more subjective, but I feel I can
make a case for them. And yes you are right to point out that this is my
belief system. But at no point have I said that you should believe what
I believe. I am saying that if you take the particular set of axioms
which I have taken, you get the results I have gotten. And then I made a
case (not a proof, etc) that my choice of axioms is better. If it
doesn't convince, that's fine. I wish I was a better convincer in that
case. But I still feel confident that my reasoning is sound.

AdvetureBegins:

I totally agree!!!! This is why I can't believe religious people fight
about evolution. Especially within the same faith. Christianity, for
example, has nothing to do with evolution, and to let it divide people
of a common faith is ridiculous.

I would drop the matter, except that I have strong feelings about why
the government wants to make sure students never ever get to hear about
the philosophical and scientific case against evolution.

But, I firmly agree. Live life to enjoy it and do not let these matters
occupy too much time.

I need to get some sleep now, but I just wanted to say that I think you
two are totally cool for debating this as you have.

I can tell for sure that you are good opponents because you have not
once resorted to calling me out on my many typos and spelling errors.

I don't buy evolution either. So what if people grow taller. How
friggin long does evolution need to make changes? How long has man been
around looking the same? Even on your precious Discovery Channel, you
can watch about the Neanderthals, and when the cro magnums came into the
picture how different they were. Like a totally different species that
just appeared out of nowhere. Wasn't even built with the bodies for the
ice age, yet the only ones who survived. Scientists were not even sure
if they could cross breed, which shows how different these species were.
If evolution was real, how could it be proven? Are there deformed
creatures in between the stages of man that can show constant changing?
Are all these sub-human like creatures just other species that died out?
Think about it.

So if I am able to ask without being leapt on...

Where there more than one Adam and Eve?

More than one tribe?

Because we have indigenous Australians, we have Europeans, we have
Asians, we have Afrikans, we have many, many races within one species?

How is that explained?

When it comes to typos...

I make so many how could I throw stones.

Would make my own glass house a ready target.

Ely wrote:
“Case 1, for example, cannot be verified because you cannot use
empirical logic to determine whether or not empirical logic provides you
with true conclusions.”

Ok, I think I finally understand where you are coming from Ely.

You are coming from ‘pure philosophy’

From the point of pure philosophy I will agree with you that empirical
logic proves nothing.

However, I also firmly believe that pure philosophy is totally useless
for anything at all. You seem to be going similar lines of Descartes
and others who believe that everything can be known via pure thought
alone.

I claim that nothing can be known via pure though. Especially anything
about the physical universe.

Everything that we know about the physical universe comes to us via our
direct empirical experience with it. Without that empirical experience
we could dream up anything. In other words, why imagine gravity? Why
nothing think about a force that pushes everything outward if we are
going to use nothing more than pure thought? That’ll work in pure
thought.

But it won’t have anything to do with the physical universe that we live
in. If we want to understand the physical universe we live in we are
necessarily tied to our empirical experience of it. That simply can’t be
denied. It is the experience of this physical universe that science is
attempting to explain.

It doesn’t matter to science if all turns out to be a dream. Apparently
the dream is following certain rules and we call those rules the ‘laws
of physics’. Can we prove that the physical universe exists? No we
can’t.

We can’t ‘prove’ anything. And that means precisely that. We can’t
prove anything at all on a purely philosophical level . And that
includes any proofs that you might be attempting to prove on that level.

Nothing can be proven on the level of pure thought. Or, to put that
another way, everything can be proven on a level of pure though. In
other words, anything you can imagine goes, if you aren’t worried about
putting it to any kind of empirical or experiential test.

To say that nothing can be proven with empirical logic is not true if
what you are attempting to prove is your empirical existence. If you
slap yourself on the face and it hurts you have empirical proof of that.
So empirical prove can be very convincing to someone who is interested
in investigating the physical aspect of the universe.

The kind of non-scientific pure philosophy that you are talking about
holds absolutely no interest to me at all. As far as I’m concerned
nothing can be proven via pure philosophy. Nothing.

So if that’s where you are coming from then I agree that nothing can be
proven, but that also includes your conclusions about proving why there
must be a God. You can’t prove or disprove god on some basis concerning
intelligence because you can’t even prove that intelligence exists.
You’re very experience with intelligence in empirical. Your brain is
empirical. You just can’t deny the empirical universe and get anywhere
with pure logic.

I’ve been there many years ago and gave up on that nonsense. It’s like
trying to pull yourself up with your own bootstraps. If you reject
empirical experience you have no basis for anything.

I’m a physicists not a pure philosopher. I’ve dabbled in pure
philosophy before but like I say, it quickly appeared to me that it has
no basis at all. Anything goes. I don’t see how anything could
possible be proven at all using pure philosophy and nothing else.