Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Epictetus On Intelligent Design



"And the existence of male and female, and the desire of each for conjunction, and the power of using the parts which are constructed, do not even these declare the workman?" -- Epictetus, philosopher, Discourses, Book I, 1st century

"Who made these things or devised them? 'No one,' you say. Oh, amazing shamelessness and stupidity!" -- Epictetus, philosopher, Discourses, Book I, 1st century

17 comments:

Jeffery Keown said...

So now, the fact that males find females attractive is proof of ID?

Right.

Imagine a critter that didn't find it's opposite gender sexually attractive? It doesn't breed. It's genes aren't passed on. It dies, not having duplicated these genes.

The genes for this asexuality can't fixed in the population.

On the other hand, critters that want to breed, do. They are more fit. They out breed those who have no desire to do so.

Next?

OilIsMastery said...

Jeffery,

"Imagine a critter that didn't find it's opposite gender sexually attractive? It doesn't breed. It's genes aren't passed on. It dies, not having duplicated these genes."

You mean like asexual organisms?

Jeffery Keown said...

Ah. You imagine an omission. How about reading the post again? If a critter has an opposite gender, then sex has already evolved in that species, hasn't it?

I wasn't talking about creatures that reproduce without partners or symbiotes.

It goes something like this, in an arbitrary order of derivation:

.:Fission and asexual reproduction (like most bacteria, some plants)

.:Hermaphroditic reproduction (every creature is both genders, but acts as one or the other depending on competition or environmental factors, some worms are like this)

.:Heterosexual reproduction (two or more fully realized genders, most animals(though that could be argued against)

.:Parthenogenesis (one gender that reproduces based on chronological or environmental cues, with many examples from nature, you've blogged about this before)

In other words, we're attracted to our opposite gender as an element of fitness. There are environmental, genetic and epigenetic factors that can alter this feature, rarely rendering a person or critter incapable of breeding, just less inclined to do so.

Thus, the asexuality genes are less likely to get fixed in a given population.

Note that I'm not talking about homosexuality. I'm discussing asexuality, the inclination to not engage in sexual behavior at all.

It's got nothing to do with design and everything to do with evolution. If you need more sex education, I suggest you check with any of several educational foundations on the East Coast...I hear you have decent schools out that way.

KV said...

OIM,
Read this: Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist, is the author of “Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex.” Ms. Judson has been a reporter for The Economist and has written for a number of other publications, including Nature, The Financial Times, The Atlantic and Natural History. She is a research fellow in biology at Imperial College London. I will not give you a link because I would like you to search for her.


OIM, you are an assman. Remember your post to protect the morals of young Mr. Lewis?

Quantum_Flux said...

You have a lot of imaginary friend OIM.

Jeffery Keown said...

Oils gets his morals from Leedskalnin:

Everything we do should be for some good purpose but as everybody knows there is nothing good that can come to a girl from a fresh boy. When a girl is sixteen or seventeen years old, she is as good as she ever will be, but when a boy is sixteen years old, he is then fresher than in all his stages of development. He is then not big enough to work but he is too big to be kept in a nursery and then to allow such a fresh thing to soil a girl — it could not work on my girl. Now I will tell you about soiling. Anything that is done, if it is done with the right party it is all right, but when it is done with the wrong party, it is soiling, and concerning those fresh boys with the girls, it is wrong every time.

This goes double for Cindy Crawford...

OilIsMastery said...

LOL Jeffery.

KV said...

OIM,

Leedskalnin must be blowing hard everywhere!

KV said...

OIM,

Epictetus did not write down anything. It is all hearsay, just like the stuff about whimps...

OilIsMastery said...

Epictetus's Discourses are reprinted word for word in Arrian.

Quantum_Flux said...

Oil_Is_Mastery, what do you think about geothermal? I want an honest answer, because I think that Al Gore is covering up under the green movement what you've dedicated this whole site about.

Quantum_Flux said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
OilIsMastery said...

Geothermal is serious but Al Gore has no clue what he's talking about when he says the mantle is several million degrees (the mantle is actually cold).

Chevron in Indonesia operates the biggest geothermal plant.

The lithosphere was dated by using uranium dating of zircon crystals in seafloor basalt.

Quantum_Flux said...

right, but apparently NOAA dated the lithosphere at all possible locations within all of the world's oceans, it seems fishy

OilIsMastery said...

You could email our buddy Robert Ballard from the TED Talk and he would know the exact answer and be able to tell you exactly how long it took to do it. The military was involved (Bruce Heezen an expanding earther).

KV said...

OIM,

You wrote: Epictetus's Discourses are reprinted word for word in Arrian.

And, who remembered all the discourses word for word? All the beamfucked assman like you.

Quantum_Flux said...

I might do that.