House of Eratosthenes

English backpacker Alexander Christian York, 33, was on Friday sentenced to a maximum of five years jail for the manslaughter of Scotsman Rudi Boa in January last year.

Mr Boa, 28, died on January 27 after being stabbed by York at the Blowering Holiday Park, near Tumut.
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The Scottish couple and York, neighbours at the caravan park, were becoming friends and spent the night of January 27 drinking at the Star Hotel in Tumut.

However, towards the end of the night, an argument between York and the pair about creationism versus evolution escalated into a shouting match at the pub.

The couple, both biomedical scientists, had been arguing the case of evolution, while York had taken a more biblical view of history.

The creationist stabbed the evolutionist in a crime of passion.

Now, let’s figure out what this means based on the things we have good reasons to think. Yesterday, remember, we came across a clip by the late Dr. Carl Sagan that gave us occasion to discuss what we are and how we think things out that we want think out…inspired by an ancient experiment to calculate the size of the earth, we think what we have reason to think here. Not what we want to think, or what others want us to think. We evaluate the evidence and give it our best shot in terms of pondering what’s really going on.

So these guys are becoming fast buddies but the “molded from clay or grown from slime” argument put a fast stop to things, with a manslaughter charge. What happened?

Well, I see the Dawkins disciples are coming out of the woodwork, and the consensus among them seems to be “I checked the article to make sure it was the bible-thumper who lost his temper, and I was right. I’m not surprised.” The obvious implication is that the evolutionist guy tried to use reason and common sense, whereupon the fundamentalist zealot lost his cool, raised his voice, flung spittle around the room, and eventually pulled a sharp weapon and made a martyr out of his opposition.

Problem: I don’t have the luxury of being told by others how these things go down, and just believing it. I’ve seen them first-hand too many times.

I’ve yet to see such an exchange in which all the childish desperation, all that voice-raising and all that adrenaline, is reserved for the faithful, while a reasonable, dispassionate evolutionist tries to talk sense into him. Oh, I hear things encapsulated that way for a re-telling quite often. I’ve yet to see it.

What I see in such dialogs, is derision and plain ol’ snottiness. It emerges on the evolutionary side. It seldom fails. The evolutionist, after all, comes to his conclusion by awarding benefit-of-doubt to a certain place. He engages in the dialog not to persuade by means of reason and fact, but by means of an instruction that all others should award benefit-of-doubt the way he does. If others present fail to heed his counsel, sarcasm is about the only place he can go, from there. He can’t go anywhere else.

The problem is that he arrived at the argument with a lack of evidence, rather than with an abundance of it. God is not supported with evidence, therefore I don’t believe in Him and you shouldn’t either.

I’ve grown weary of such exchanges and have participated in, maybe, ten or twenty percent of all the ones I’ve personally seen. Of the ones I’ve seen, I’d say the phrase “sky fairy” has been used in, oh, maybe two-thirds or three-quarters of ’em. In what context — well, just take a guess. In fact, looking back over all of them, it seems to me the evolutionist understands fully at the very outset that this is a dialog in which nothing can be proven or rebuked, indeed, nothing can be logically attacked or substantiated. With the benefit of the knowledge I’ve gained by watching these exchanges, I see them as exercises in aggravation and nothing more. One-sided aggravation. Like poking a dog with a stick. Or “cat fishing” with a ball of yarn, or a laser-pen. Sorry, but to envision it as anything else, would be to forget the things I’ve seen.

And so I see these discussion, taking place in a bar, or a family kitchen, or on the Internet, as nothing more than exercises in kind of a sick game. It’s a rather simple parlor trick. The result is supposed to be that the religious zealot does more yelling and ends up looking wild-eyed and crazy. Confronted with this, some among the faithful can rise above it. Not everyone can. And so we drink a toast to the memory of the late Mister Boa. But we’ll not participate in this charade that things are proven, scrutinized, revealed or debunked in such exchanges. Nobody ever promised such a thing.

Which means — every now and then, arguing evolutionary theory with one of us wild-eyed religious zealots can end up being a deadly thing. The question with which we are left, therefore, is not how such an insane thing might have happened, but why it doesn’t happen a lot more often. After all, they’re English & Scottish. Alcohol was involved. Do the math.

Now at this point we could engage in a debate about who is more homicidal, the creationists or the evolutionists. We could go at it from that point-of-view…hauling out evidence that indicates Christians are here to protect people and anti-Christians are here to inflict harm. But a higher calling beckons so let’s instead proceed from this point according to the evolutionary theory. Because that is the mark of a well-balanced, sane mind. Being able to view things through the lens of your opposition.

Mr. Boa did some arguing about gene pools, and ended up removing himself from one. The implications are profound.

According to what we call “evolution” in 2007, micro- and macro- are necessarily intermixed because the ultimate goal is not to surmise new & interesting things about biology and zoology, but to disprove the existence of God. Therefore, all of evolutionary theory is intertwined with unified common descent. You have the one-celled creatures, and all of us vertebrates and invertebrates, warm-blooded animals and cold-blooded animals, are descended from the amoeba.

This is done by means of, every now and then, a specimen from one species or another will acquire a trait by means of random mutation. If the trait assists is the competition for food and other resources, all of which are limited, and/or with the activity of reproduction, he trait will make this specimen stronger. Presuming the trait can be inherited by the next generation, therefore, we will over time surely see the trait become more commonplace and eventually it will achieve complete saturation within that species.

On the other hand, if the trait interferes with this acquisition of finite resources or with the process of breeding, all specimens among this species sharing this trait will surely die off and the trait will be relegated to the cruel dustbin of evolutionary history.

Well, it seems Rudi Boa had a trait of arguing about evolution with creationist-types. Probably, according to track-record, using choices-of-words, mannerisms and tactics calculated to be infuriating. Mr. Boa ended up demonstrating the weakness of this trait in the process of propagation of the species.

According to evolutionary theory, therefore, we should not be seeing any more of this behavior. But…thanks to the publication of an entire miniature-library of atheist books in a relatively short time, we’re rather up to our armpits in it for the moment.

The poor Scotsman seems to have dealt a blow to modern evolutionary theory.

How to explain it? Well, one would have to conclude the process of evolution is not yet complete. One would have to further conclude that the gene pool is, therefore, still polluted. With weaker genomes, due for an appointment with Darwin’s Ghost, due to be plucked out from the shallow end, having not yet arrived for the meeting.

No, I’m not advocating violence any more than any other evolutionist guy who says the same sort of stuff. Like any good little Darwinist, all I’m calling for is the identification of weaker specimens, those unfortunates whose time in the evolutionary ecosystem is limited. You can spot them taunting the faithful with words deliberately chose to taunt and to aggravate, like the above-mentioned “sky fairy.” They drive around in cars that have Darwin-fishies on the back bumper with little feet growing out from under them.

They don’t belong here, by their own logic. They are the weaker link.

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Man Argues About Evolution and Removes Himself From ItSunday, December 16th, 2007

Man Argues About Evolution and Removes Himself From It
Sunday, December 16th, 2007