Seedy,

Read up on DNA evidence, particularly ERV’s and Human Chromosome 2 Fusion for common ancestry, especially the details on what the data infers for evolution. That coupled with fossils of past hominids and early primitive apes like Australopithecus Afarensis give fairly good credence for human evolution.

Ken Miller on Intelligent Design (whole Video)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg

Ken Miller on Apes and Humans
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs1zeWWIm5M

Evidence of Common Ancestry: ERVs
www.youtube.com/watch?v=De-OkzTUDVA

Evidence of Common Ancestry: Human Chromosome 2
www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-WAHpC0Ah0

NOVA Judgement Day ,Intelligent Design onTrial. part1
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qk3sRqsVrh4

Humans and chimpanzees have at least 7 IDENTICAL inactive retroviral DNA sequences (Endogenous Retrovirus) in IDENTICAL locations in their genomes. Most importantly is the ERV insertion via reverse transcriptase occurs entirely at RANDOM. The ONLY way this could occur is if humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor which also possessed the inactive retroviral sequence. What about the fact that the human chromosome 2 is a fusion of two great ape chromosomes.

With respect to DNA evidence, especially the Fusion and 7 Identical ERV's, the only response AIG and ICR has is well, 'god made it that way'. Logically this is foolish as it's suggesting god intentionally leaves evidence for evolution, all the while it's somehow not true according to AIG and ICR.

i await your reply to this.

“I think that it is correct to presume that in the order of things a Designer necessitates one that at least looks like the Christian God.”

So, now you agree with me that ID = god, where earlier you denied it? Hilarious. Not just god, but of course the Christian god.

“.He actually has stated that ID does not rule out alien spawning”

Really, WHERE?. Cite that one for me please.

“Often enough their work overlaps, but it is distinct in their approach, this story is also similar to the young earth creationists.”

You know it is, and there’s more likeness so it’s quite obvious that ID = god, it’s a no brainer.

AO-“ Moreover, you must admit if there is a god that is behind it all, it’s not an omnibenevolent one, it’s one of indifference. A short glance of the chaos in our Universe and domestically on earth will attest to that.”

Seedy “Hugh Ross has taken a lot of time to explain his results leading to an opposite conclusion.”

Please, do tell. This would be interesting.


(referring to the ‘atheist gene you mentioned) “It apparently is somewhere along the spinal cord, we don’t know exactly. It disables them from being able to humble their self before God. Lol”

A typical creationist failed attempt at making a joke. Hardy har har. It would almost have weight if your god had enough evidence to be believed in to pay homage to in the first place.

Since we have gone off on this morality, ethics, and this entirely different tangent than what my first question posed, allow me to retort. PLEASE finally answer these 2 pieces of evidence as they relate to evolution in the post above.

PEACE.

“You believe that we have been begotten through random acts of blind impersonal materialism, step by step in a world of hostility. Yet guided by Mother Nature it somehow was able to over come the obstacles by sheer determination”

Obviously you don’t understand the 4 universal laws (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces) if you had you wouldn’t have made such a claim. Matter has to exist (refer to 1st law) it can’t NOT exist, and it also must seek a resolute state, and it operates according to those universal forces. Those forces is what ‘guided’ naturally if you will the universe we see before us. No magic man behind the curtain pulling strings required for any of that.



“The fact that it was relatively recent that the scientific community threw out magical spontaneous generation reveals problems with your analogy.”

No it’s not, science strips away ignorance, it lives off of new data that is tested added and used, unlike religion which never uses any new data in it’s scriptures as to alter scripture is heresy!.

The two are totally different in this dept. Religions work best when no new evidence for anything is uncovered and while the masses are ignorant of evidence; while science thrives as new theories are created, edited (relativity) or crushed to explain the evidence of our world. Science is all about progressing knowledge and explain our universe. Religion asserts there is no reason to even research anything as it asserts it has all the answers in their ancient book.

“God is not merely a ‘posit,’ but rather deduced from the evidence. Looking at the technological advancements of science, how could one say that this is a result of years of accumulated random chance processes by which material came together to form complex structures.’

What technological structures? Please do list, I love refuting ID complexity.

“The evidence is not so persuasive for natural evolution; certain aspects of evolution, yes; natural evolution, no.”

Fine what aspects in natural evolution are so confounding to you that the whole notion that it works naturally must be tossed? My guess is you’ll opt for biological systems and not mention any of the paleontology evidence or any other evidence for natural evolution. ID resides in arguing from personal incredulity and attempts to hammer in a designer in place of ignorance. Most disingenuous.

“How could I have guessed that you would have introduced atheism of the gaps? The point here is that if a miracle was staring you in the face, you would not believe it until you discovered some kind of a way to dismiss it, in spite of the evidence affirming it.”

No, I want to explain everything that can be explained in a scientific natural method and not resort to opt to use the ‘god did it’ clause which has been used over and over when attempting to explain confounding things. I asked for the evidence of ‘how dead this guy was’, IE was he brain dead? You didn’t bother to answer so I’ll assume he wasn’t and so he was never really dead to begin with.


(regarding spontaneous generation) “To be quite honest I did not know the scientific establishment had changed its mind.”

It’s been over a decade, read up on it. They don’t think it poofed out of nowhere in a single instance. Refer to the chemically bonding processes that molecules naturally have and why such nucleotides and poly nucleotides would have formed, that is one of the leading ideas leading to primitive RNA that composes DNA. No current scientists think DNA in a single instance was up and formed and nor do they consider ‘magic’ to be involved, rather they’re investigating the natural means to explain it as even according to Occam’s razor it makes more sense for things to occur naturally and without adding more complex factors (god) into the equation, especially as this factor can’t be substantiated.

“To say that imperial evidence is the only plausible evidence only reveals the inability on your part to recognize multi-dimensional realities that do not suite your taste buds’

EVIDENCE is everything. If some other dimension exist and there is credible evidence that is the case that it’s logical to accept it. Religious beliefs such as miracles fly in the face of this reality and they assert credible evidence isn’t required, but just ‘faith alone’ and this is why I reject them. To have ‘faith alone’ in any proposition is delusional.

“Peter Singer”

Consistent with his general ethical theory, Singer holds that the right to life is grounded in a being's personhood; that is, in the sense of a being's rationality and self-consciousness. In his view, the central argument against abortion is equivalent to the following logical syllogism:
It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.
A human fetus is an innocent human being.
Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.
His argument against this is to say that, while a fetus is admittedly a member of the human species, it is not a person, which is defined as a self conscious being that sees itself over time. Species membership is morally irrelevant, but personhood is relevant.

His views on such things stems logically concluding using sciences evidence for what is defined as a human as it relates to conscisouness, sensory of pain and so on. Is a zygote a human, it has no memeory, no sense of conscious being, nor does it feel pain and this can be said further out past when it’s an embryo. Od you consider a zygote human and if so on what grounds? If you ground them on your religious belief in a soul, something that none have even prooved then it’s perhaps time to see what science has to say as to what a human really is.



“Again, without a moral compass, I think that the natural tendancy as noted here prior is one of domination and control.”

Right, no theists have ever tried to assert political control or domination. What are you kidding me?
What religious doctrines HAVEN’T been used in the past to assert domination, control and subjugation over the masses is the real question. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.


‘Naturalism is based on certain beliefs and presumptions that are carried into science.”

Gee, I wonder why?! It’s b/c for something to be included in science an it must be studied in the NATURAL world, that's why naturalism is prefered.

“My point merely is as simple as this, if it is bad to take the Bible literally, how much worse is it to take survival of the fitest literally”

Well, if you read biology you’d realize that in evolution ‘survival of the fittest’ doesn’t strictly mean ‘only the strong survive’. In most organisms they only survive b/c of their altruistic and symbiotic relationships with other species and their own species. Only by ignoring this and other biology information would one conclude that evolution or natural selection some how gives a license to go out on a rampage.

We don’t see too many scientists and biologists going on rampages (at all literally) and they’d never blame it on some processes the excuse their actions. We don’t see scientists doing such rampage acts as they fully understand evolution and natural selection and that ‘survival of the fittest’ is a misnomer. It’s not always the most fit, but many times the most cooperative, the most ethical, and most moral species that win out, but of course you’d have to read a biology book and not sound bites to know this.

“This does not mean that all atheists and naturalists are in fact nihilists, but they are in the same religious category”

Fine, how are atheists, agnostics religious at all? We have no sacred holidays, no doctrines, no places of worship, we don’t worship anyone, etc.

“If you presuppose religion should be eliminated because people take it too literally,”

This isn’t my only reason, but it’s among them. Taking anything too literally and not acting rationally and logically is most absurd, theistic or not.

“If you really want to work on some type of social harmony it is counter-productive to come into a Christian sight posting anti-theistic messages.”

No it’s not, my goal is to strip away at unchallenged dogmas that most theists never question. My goal is to inform theists, Christians in particular on what evolution and other sciences REALLY suggests and so they’re no mislead. I have been doing this, but as it seems some Christians here don’t want to even hear of the evidence and so I am censored. If they are still religious in the end then fine, if they move toward Deism fine, if they choose non religious views fine. Perhaps more importantly is to show my Christian brethren that as un believer I have many of the same aspirations in life and can offer a view that they otherwise can’t or wont’ see. I am here to demystify the stigmas attached to non believers as being less ethical or someone un able to know morality without the notion of god.

“I am sure that you are including atheists [in your diagnosis] as well, such as the Columbine High [massacre], Jeffrey Dahmer…”

Well of course I am, any dogmatic literalist approach, theistic or atheistic isn’t rationale or wise.


“Nevertheless, atheism as a whole is proven to be the most destructive ideology’

No it’s not, only those that are NIHILISTS view the world in such ‘meaningless’ terms.

“Even though non-religious affiliated people only make up around 80% of the world’s population, this small percentage is responsible for the vilest acts of human depravity ever perpetrated on mankind.”

Non religious people globally make up 80% of the worlds population huh? What nonsense, the majority of people are theists! I guess you meant 8%? As if theist organizations haven’t done anything wrong then, is that what you’re saying? Both sides have done wrong and both have done right.

“Meanwhile you are complaining about the extremely few churches that practice snake handling because they don’t know how to properly exegete Scripture and institute hermeneutics.”

Oh those hics are hardly the only ones that don’t interpret the bible as it should be and you know this. Part of the problem is religious doctrines give otherwise san people a license to do stupid things.

“ Meanwhile, what violence have they committed to others?”

Say this about the Muslims who took their holy book literally and flew planes into our world trade center. Taking anything to such a degree of certainty is retarded, and mixing 21st century nuclear weapons with 1st century or 6th century beliefs is like mixing drinking with driving.

“but again I do not see them as raging atheists who are plotting the next coup.”

Where do you even see this? WHAT coup?

And now that were getting more polite and tolerant:

“I however do not see how anything short of the miraculous, whether it be theism or pantheism, could account for the complexity and fine tuning of creation”

AO: “I do agree with this in the most broadest sense, and this would only suffice for a Deistic or Pantheistic view of god. However, give science some time to determine how if at all the universe could be tuned before assuming it was. There is the anthropic principle afterall.”

Interesting.

Moreover, you must admit if there is a god that is behind it all, it’s not an omnibenevolent one, it’s one of indifference. A short glance of the chaos in our Universe and domestically on earth will attest to that.”

Hugh Ross has taken a lot of time to explain his results leading to an opposite conclusion.

Final note:

“The atheist gene has been discovered”

AO: “It has, where’s it located? I have heard of science studies regarding the ‘god gene’ though.’

It apparently is somewhere along the spinal cord, we don’t know exactly. It disables them from being able to humble their self before God. lol

AO: “ID most certainly implies god, Dembski even says ‘ID = God’. You’ll never hear ID proponents inferring that ‘ID means an alien that crafted these irreducible complex biological systems’, that would kill their whole neo-creationist focus.”

I think that it is correct to presume that in the order of things a Designer necessitates one that at least looks like the Christian God. You are wrong however about ID automatically referencing God. I have heard Dembski himself state that this is not the case. Now you can call him a liar, or say that he has changed his stance, but nevertheless this is the case. He actually has stated that ID does not rule out alien spawning. This is exactly why Hugh Ross and other scientists have not hopped on the ID community. Often enough their work overlaps, but it is distinct in their approach, this story is also similar to the young earth creationists. While I do recognize that deism, pantheism could be argued, I personally have distinguished my argument around the nature of your obsession with eliminating religion. All of these other things are merely to answer your criticisms and presumptions, which you have been largely either wrong, misinformed, uninformed or just difficult to follow on these posts; to speak more politely.

AO: “Religion and its claims (what happens after we die for instance) particularly deal with items that are void of credible evidence and in this sense are mere hearsay. This is why evidence is everything.”

It is interesting that you brought this up. I just heard a lecture from a doctor who became an outspoken believer after dealing with people going in and out of death. Of course I should automatically presume that you have a natural explanation. But of course it does not necessarily warrant the occasion, since faith was not the centrality of the issue.

AO: “Sure you can site you doctrine, but anything in our Universe that doesn’t conform to its claims will instantly negate its defacto authority that normally would have sway over ignorant masses.”

That is an ironic twist. It does not take into account the problems that science itself has had over even the last century. The fact that it was relatively recent that the scientific community threw out magical spontaneous generation reveals problems with your analogy. It is not Christians alone who have had problems interpreting science and the way it relates to reality, naturalists have also had this problem. Thus your defacto argument works on both Christians and naturalists, exposing spurious thinking on both parts.

AO: “If you posit god and that he poofed us here instantly, you have some explaining to do and why all the evidence for evolution exists at all, namely Human Chromosome 2 Fusion and the 7 Identical ERV’s we and Chimps share in the exact same genetic locations.”

God is not merely a ‘posit,’ but rather deduced from the evidence. Looking at the technological advancements of science, how could one say that this is a result of years of accumulated random chance processes by which material came together to form complex structures. Thus non-life begets life; non-personality begets personality; non-complexity begets complexity; material structures beget immaterial structures; seems a little odd doesn’t it?

“You see in the end it all comes down to faith doesn’t it?”

AO: “Well, no it doesn’t. For something to fall under the realm of Science it must be falsifiable and show evidence to give it credence, so there is no faith that when I drop my remote it will fall from Gravity, or that HIV viruses evolve via reverse transcriptase. These are observable, falsifiable evidence based knowledge.”

Well now, not so fast, your scientific theory cannot be out under the microscope. To say that imperial evidence is the only plausible evidence only reveals the inability on your part to recognize multi-dimensional realities that do not suite your taste buds. The reason why you adhere to the scientific theory is because you find it to be a reliable method of understanding the real world as you understand it. This also coincides with the numerous other ways that you feel most comfortable in the real world, with moral judgments, moral prescriptions, justice, purpose and meaning. These are all facets of the life that we not only take for granted, but it would seem awkward and foreign to live life without. Yet they all testify to a much higher purpose than scientific naturalism. Although I think that this faith is without warrant, it is nonetheless faith. You believe that we have been begotten through random acts of blind impersonal materialism, step by step in a world of hostility. Yet guided by Mother Nature it somehow was able to over come the obstacles by sheer determination. Where the determination came from one cannot say, but it was there and so we have to take it for science that that is that. Woweeee!

AO: “…evolution and other theories of science don’t require ‘faith’, they persist on evidence alone.”

Naturalism is based on certain beliefs and presumptions that are carried into science. The evidence is not so persuasive for natural evolution; certain aspects of evolution, yes; natural evolution, no.

“He was dead for a number of hours and miraculously came back to life”

AO: “In cases like this I wouldn’t recommend to apt for ‘miracle’ as a knee jerk reaction, rather many times these are things in which we are ignorant of and have yet to fully explain naturally.”

How could I have guessed that you would have introduced atheism of the gaps? The point here is that if a miracle was staring you in the face, you would not believe it until you discovered some kind of a way to dismiss it, in spite of the evidence affirming it.

AO: “Spontaneous generation was proven impossible not too long ago.”

I was wondering how long it would take for natural evolutionists to catch on to this reality. To be quite honest I did not know the scientific establishment had changed its mind.

AO: “As far as the dictators, the regimes they used were highly dogmatic, non rationale, removed dissention and skepticism of divinity of rulers, all of which mirror religion in their approach. And they replaced their leaders in place of idolizing god.”

Again, without a moral compass, I think that the natural tendancy as noted here prior is one of domination and control. You really have no basis for critiqing Christianity on the social level or even the survival level. Christianity wins out in both categories well over and beyond atheism. This tendency towards domination is reflected in the fact of your presence here arguing for the elimination of theism. I think that your spite for Christianity and your power grab if only given the opportunity would reach the height of dictatorship. You may think yourself better to handle such dictatorialships, but I think democracy is not a given. You have revealed no such dignity that I have seen. I think your animosity betrays what is hidden beneath your rheteric.

AO: “These regimes mirrored religion in how they prevented dissenting people to speak openly and critique the power structure.”

Sounds like methodological naturalism to me, science community barring inquiry, not to mention humanistic secularism of the Dawkins ilk.

My point merely is as simple as this, if it is bad to take the Bible literally, how much worse is it to take survival of the fitest literally. Eric Harris and Jeffrey Dahmer was the perfect example of this. This does not mean that all atheists and naturalists are in fact nihilists, but they are in the same religious category. My main contention has been with your seemingly blurred references to eliminating religion and that without warrant. If you presuppose religion should be eliminated because people take it too literally, then you have the same thing with atheism and naturalism. If you really want to work on some type of social harmony it is counter-productive to come into a Christian sight posting anti-theistic messages. This I think reveals less than honest intentions on your part. If you really wish to harmonize people, I would think that it would be more productive to promote tolerance and brotherly love, especially since your arguments against religious belief seem to infer more of a pragmatic tone, albeit hostile in nature.

AO: “…so it’s a non argument to reason that we should kill off those that are handicapped, diseased and so on.”

I disagree with your conclusion. You should take into account the work of humanist Peter Singer who argues in favor of Abortion, euthanasia and infanticide on the foundation of naturalism applying his own brand of ethics known as moral naturalism (after all there are is no standard prescription).

AgentOrnery,

"and the atheist dictators who have taken Darwinian evolution to its logical conclusion; no morals, no purpose, no God, no dignity'

AO: “I am sure you realize Atheism doesn't imply Nihilism and only a morbid teenager would assume natural selection would somehow be viewed as a license to kill others.

Lets put what I said back in context;

I was responding to your self-refuting diagnosis that it is bad for people to take their religious beliefs literally. AgentO: “…some people take it literally and interpret that if they follow it accordingly they can defy poison and snakes. This is another reason why religion, or more exactly, a literalist stance to it is harmful and something humanity would be better off without.”

I am sure that you are including atheists [in your diagnosis] as well, such as the Columbine High [massacre], Jeffrey Dahmer, and the atheist dictators who have taken Darwinian evolution to its logical conclusion; no morals, no purpose, no God, no dignity. The last century has seen more bloodshed in the name of the new progressive science than all the religious wars in the history of the world.

Of course not all atheists take their worldview literally as Marx did; not all atheists are anti-theists as say Kim Jong-il. Nevertheless, atheism as a whole is proven to be the most destructive ideology in the world. Even though non-religious affiliated people only make up around 80% of the world’s population, this small percentage is responsible for the vilest acts of human depravity ever perpetrated on mankind. Meanwhile you are complaining about the extremely few churches that practice snake handling because they don’t know how to properly exegete Scripture and institute hermeneutics. Meanwhile, what violence have they committed to others? Of course they have attempted to propogate their peculiar irregularities amongst themselves, but again I do not see them as raging atheists who are plotting the next coup.

“You believe natural evolution exists and has the power to spontaneously generate complexity and even life itself”

I believe in the proposition of evolution, not b/c of ‘faith’, but b/c of the evidence for it that gives it credence. Well, if you realized how complex non-organics are you’d realize that even for non living things to come about naturally aren’t that far off from organics from organizing themselves.

“I believe the Designer was a person, namely God.”

I don’t know if you’re a biblical literalist, but if you posit god did it all you’ll need some evidence to back your claims, otherwise it's hearsay/whitenoise. Sure you can site you doctrine, but anything in our Universe that doesn’t conform to its claims will instantly negate its defacto authority that normally would have sway over ignorant masses. Thu why many in Science aren't very religious.

If you posit god and that he poofed us here instantly, you have some explaining to do and why all the evidence for evolution exists at all, namely Human Chromosome 2 Fusion and the 7 Identical ERV’s we and Chimps share in the exact same genetic locations.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=De-OkzTUDVA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-WAHpC0Ah0

“As I told Bob, strictly philosophically speaking ID does not necessarily infer the supernatural”

ID most certainly implies god, Dembski even says ‘ID = God’. You’ll never hear ID proponents inferring that ‘ID means an alien that crafted these irreducible complex biological systems’, that would kill their whole neo-creationist focus. What else besides aliens could ‘ID’ infer? Well, if not aliens, obviously its god and god is obviously a supernatural agent A simple dedcution in logic, it’s a no brainer!

“I however do not see how anything short of the miraculous, whether it be theism or pantheism, could account for the complexity and fine tuning of creation”

I do agree with this in the most broadest sense, and this would only suffice for a Deistic or Pantheistic view of god. However, give science some time to determine how if at all the universe could be tuned before assuming it was. There is the anthropic principle afterall. Moreover, you must admit if there is a god that is behind it all, it’s not an omnibenevolent one, it’s one of indifference. A short glance of the chaos in our Universe and domestically on earth will attest to that.

He picks and chooses what he wants to believe, all the while pretending to theorize a premise that is based on science…”

Well, I don’t think Science is the sole reason people are Atheists, but I do concur that greater knowledge in science, western philosophy and such does cause one to doubt the religious depictions of god and see them for what they really are. My Atheistic stance isn’t premised off of science alone, I can thank all the horrid acts of all religions over the millennia’s to gauge how sensible and rationale theism really is.

“Natural evolution is truly a weak and dying theory when its propagators have lost their faith”
Riiiiight, evolution and other theories of science don’t require ‘faith’, they persist on evidence alone.

“The atheist gene has been discovered”

It has, where’s it located? I have heard of science studies regarding the ‘god gene’ though.

“He was dead for a number of hours and miraculously came back to life”

Define ‘dead’ in this context. Was he ‘brain dead’? Brain death is technically when you’re considered dead. Can you link this one? In cases like this I wouldn’t recommend to apt for ‘miracle’ as a knee jerk reaction, rather many times these are things in which we are ignorant of and have yet to fully explain naturally. Prior to medicines those that overcame sickness were also coined as ‘miracles’ as they considered them the result demons. Give science some decades on neurochemistry and we’ll know why.

“In my experiences I have not seen spontaneous generation of any kind”

Spontaneous generation was proven impossible not too long ago. Evolution ONLY deals with life changing AFTER IT ALREADY EXISTS; it doesn’t deal with how life arose at all. How life got here on earth is a different realm of science, Abiogenesis.

This is why Darwin’s book was Origin of Species and NOT Origin of Life. Whether life arose here naturally, or via aliens, or if magic man *poofed* it here is a non factor to life evolving. Once it’s here, it adapts and evolves. Theists continually think evolution somehow negates god, in the most-broadest sense, but it doesn’t.

“You see in the end it all comes down to faith doesn’t it?”

Well, no it doesn’t. For something to fall under the realm of Science it must be falsifiable and show evidence to give it credence, so there is no faith that when I drop my remote it will fall from Gravity, or that HIV viruses evolve via reverse transcriptase. These are observable, falsifiable evidence based knowledge.

Religion and its claims (what happens after we die for instance) particularly deal with items that are void of credible evidence and in this sense are mere hearsay. This is why evidence is everything.

1. Well, belief in itself isn’t bad; it’s the actions of such beliefs that really matter. But I agree, no single instances should matter in the abstract.
2. It can, but having the belief that god/big brother is always watching you and that you’ll end up in eternal hell isn’t healthy. Having Catholics priests’ sexually abusing young kids b/c of their sexual repression isn’t healthy either.
3. So does some medicines, but yes inner strength and will are important and some people need a crutch it seems.
4. We can still find meaning and purpose outside of the belief in god. God or not our actions have meaning and consequences and if one can’t find purpose outside of god then they’re pretty shallow.
5. True, but so do any sort of group community functions.
6. False justice if you ask me. Theism extends justice beyond the grave, so those that we wished we could have got our hands on (Hitler) will (hopefully) have their justice and vice versa. No proof of this, so its wish full thinking.
7.Tell that to the Buddhists and other mystics that are highly spiritual and yet have no god in their lives.
8. See #5.
9.You mean it resorts to fear mongering and scare tactics to compel people to behave. Sorry, we don’t need a ‘carrot and a stick’ to understand philosophically reasoning why behaving ethically is better for humanity.
10.Music , art, and many other things can be and already ARE inspiring. Never mind how much theism and its dogmatic views have retarded scientific progress.
11.How is it an incentive? You mean non genuine acts of ‘sucking up’ for sake of heaven, that non theists do anyway? You shouldn’t have to have an incentive to act just to others. Many times theists cause more harm, case in point AIDS in Africa and Catholics.
12.The hell it does, the core theist belief is that this life is only temporary and many evangelicals would no doubt see a silver lining in a nuclear cloud over NY and to an extent don’t see global warming as a real threat either.
13.Doctrines do cover love, however this isn’t a universal as gays and members of other religions aren’t generally loved, usually they’re persecuted.
15.Inner peace huh, tell that to the closet gay Christians, or wahabbi Muslims

"and the atheist dictators who have taken Darwinian evolution to its logical conclusion; no morals, no purpose, no God, no dignity'

I am sure you realize Atheism doesn't imply Nihilism and only a morbid teenager would assume natural selection would somehow be viewed as a license to kill others. In the abstract of all of Darwinism and how organisms survive, killing off the weak amongst your own is rarely ever done. As mentioned earlier, most organisms survive out of symbiotic nature alone and killing off more than is needed is essentially unheard of. Usually only the weak are picked off by predators who seek the old, sick, weak and this in turn ensures a more robust and healthy community. In essence, it's for the greater good. However, with humans we have no natural predators and our intelligence will allow us to modify our genes to rid ourselves of the most debilitating diseases, so it’s a non argument to reason that we should kill off those that are handicapped, diseased and so on.

As far as the dictators, the regimes they used were highly dogmatic, non rationale, removed dissention and skepticism of divinity of rulers, all of which mirror religion in their approach. And they replaced their leaders in place of idolizing god. None of these places were run under a Democratic consensus either and so the people had no political power. These regimes mirrored religion in how they prevented dissenting people to speak openly and critique the power structure. In essence, anything in such a dogmatic form, theistic based or not is never for the best intentions for those involved.

“As you stated, this altruistic gene theoretically explains how animals in fact behave, but it doesn’t explain ‘why’ we should behave a certain way, nor does it show me how I ‘ought’ to behave.”

The answer to ‘Why’, is b/c to do otherwise is counterproductive to the group community or at the very least to either parties involved. In groups, organisms are more successful than if alone and their ability to respond to each other, especially in pain, would be important in knowing how to act accordingly. Organisms that can identify pain, empathize and relate are more apt to go out of their way and offer reciprocal and altruistic aid, even without asking for it. This type of behavior would no doubt be favorable as a single organism could be viewed as not solely taking care of just its immediate offspring, but also those related to it.
For humanity, it has a lesser implied meaning as we devised our own laws and ethics regarding morality. We as a society, via Democratic consensus will decide what is moral and ethical.

BobCoup d'état,

It is humorous how you both assert humility of mind and at the same time arrogance in your presumptions.

"Nothing good can come if the will is wrong and to give evidence to him who loves not the truth is only to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation."
-Richard Weaver, University professor and author of, Ideas Have Consequences