i believe Humans are a reflection of a deep thinking and depressed extra-natural (my term) creator. — christian2017

That's the opposite of what I believe: I believe our gods are actually a reflection of deep thinking and depressed (neurotic) humans. The gods didn't exist and it was necessary that we create them. It was one of our greatest cultural achievements.

the core of depression and suffering is really the ability to feel the need to think deeply. — christian2017

Baloney.

I was reading a book about alienation, and to praise the author (it was a good book) I commented that he must have been really alienated to write so meaningfully about it. A political scientist shot that idea down with "Really alienated people don't write books." Later on in life I discovered that this was true: Really alienated and/or depressed people don't write books. Productivity doesn't come out of misery. More like immobilisation flows out of misery.

Thinking and feeling deeply does not lead to suffering. Actually, I don't know for sure how to get out of the sloughs of despondency, alienation, abandonment, and wretchedness that we get into. I've been in there, and got out, but I can't really say "this is how you get better". I got better. But then, how did I get into that mess? I could tell you about that, but it takes too long.

We are stuck being deep thinking depressed (depressing) creatures. Get used to it.

However i can promise you that Darwin didn't understand evolution the way the modern evolutionist understands it. — christian2017

What has not changed is the realization that evolution is not directed by some external intelligence. That is why it was a revolution in human understanding.

What has not changed is the realization that evolution is not directed by some external intelligence. That is why it was a revolution in human understanding. — Fooloso4

That would be hard to prove. You are essentially saying you've found proof that gods or a God doesn't exist. Not likely that you've found proof of that.

For all we know, the Lord of all Creation may have been micromanaging the affairs of every last bacterium since the beginning. The problem with positing such a position is that we can not show any proof that this is so. Atheists and believers alike are unable to marshal evidence or the non-existence or existence of divine beings.

I have absolutely nothing against people believing in God, or not, as long as both sides retain some modesty about what can be demonstrated.

I believe that there are no divine beings. I used to believe that such beings did exist. In neither case can I show a shred of evidence to support either case. We can legitimately speak at great length about our belief or disbelief in the gods. About the objects of our belief (or disbelief) we must remain silent.

It is not a matter of disproving the existence of or role of an external intelligence, it is a matter of whether such is necessary to explain what happens. Your original claim was that "undirected evolution is an irrational concept". It is not necessary to prove that gods or a God doesn't exist, it is simply necessary to provide a natural explanation without the need to introduce supernatural entities. Evolution has been remarkably capable of doing just that. At one time it was believed that God must play a role in chemistry, but our understanding of chemistry does not include an active role for God. Newton set out to demonstrate the hand of God in the motion of the planets, but it turned out that he was able to explain their motion without introducing God.

It is not that I am "essentially saying [I've] found proof that gods or a God doesn't exist". I have not and do not think it is possible to. What I am saying is that science does not introduce entities into explanations that work without them. This is Occam's razor. In no way does it determine the existence or non-existence of God.

I think the main advantage of a single cell organism over a multi cell organism may be obvious, it cannot develop a tumor?

It is questionable that directed evolution necessarily implies a role of an external intelligence, as a director. I don't think however that existence of intelligence external to living beings on our planet, is entirely irrational idea. It is a matter of belief, or speculation, depending on someone's point of view, but nothing I can exclude for sure.

Later on in life I discovered that this was true: Really alienated and/or depressed people don't write books. — Bitter Crank

I thought everyone wrote books, stories, poetry. That's why it's no longer possible to get published.

I think the main advantage of a single cell organism over a multi cell organism may be obvious, it cannot develop a tumor? — Hrvoje

There are other advantages of single-celled organisms over multi-ones.

1. They never get a cold.
2. They don't have to go to work; in the least they are exempt of punching a time-card.
3. Their debt-to-equity ratio remains stable.
4. They can get into the pants of really beautiful people much easier than you and I put together.
5. Addiction is a strange concept to them. Thus, they can bet on the horses till they are blue in the face, they won't get hooked and cause them to put their families through incredible financial and social hardships.

Later on in life I discovered that this was true: Really alienated and/or depressed people don't write books. — Bitter Crank

Frantisek Kaffka and Gerhardt Oberhauptfuhrer Nietzsche* were two truly alienated people who wrote excellent, long, and many books. And you can't get more alienated than those two blokes. If you do, you must be cheating.

I admit I don't know Nietzsche's fist name and middle name. I bet they are even scarier to spell than his last. What I wrote as his first names is the result of unresearched speculative facts which are most likely false facts.

However i can promise you that Darwin didn't understand evolution the way the modern evolutionist understands it — christian2017

Well, you're actually correct. Darwin created the basis of the theory of evolution, but it doesn't do science any good to hold on to Darwin's ideas and to Darwinism, because evolutionism has greatly evolved (sorry for the pun) since Darwin's age. For example, Darwin and neodarwinists usually represent evolution by using the Tree of life, completely ignoring that evolution cannot be only divergent but convergent as well. The tree analogy can be useful to describe eukaryotes, but fails to describe how bacteria evolve, since they can exchange genetic material also by using the horizontal gene transfer, which is the movement of genetic material between organisms other than by the vertical transmission of DNA from parents to their offspring. The fact that a characteristic that has been acquired during an organism's lifetime could be transmitted to the offspring goes against what darwinists think (and might sound a bit "Lamarckian") , but it's happening so we have to accept it.

Also, about not being rational that the unicellulars partner with other unicellulars, Darwin himself stated that those organisms who actively cooperate with one another have a higher chance to survive, because cooperation is as valuable as competition.

They may accept some features of evolution such as common morphology or common ancestors but guided evolution is not Darwinian evolution. — Fooloso4

Darwin was a believer and, after reading his books and notes, one could come to the conclusion that Darwin actually believed there was a God behind the whole evolution process. At the end of the Origin of species he said that "life [...] originally breathed into a few forms or into one". However, before dying, Darwin wrote a letter to the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker saying he regretted having used the biblic word "creation" in many of his writings, and that he would have rather called it "apparition", since he wasn't sure of what or who was behind a mechanism such complex as evolution.

Darwin was a believer and, after reading his books and notes, one could come to the conclusion that Darwin actually believed there was a God behind the whole evolution process. — Patulia

The Origin of Species says nothing about the origin of life. This is an important point that is often overlooked. Whatever his beliefs in God may have been, it is quite clear that he did not describe God as playing any role in speciation. And, as you say, the science of evolution has evolved since Darwin.

I personally don't believe that a God played any role in the apparition of life on earth or in evolution (I am saying this because maybe my post suggested otherwise). However, I respect those who believe that everything happened according to God's plan (or Gods' plan, for that matter) and I don't think they are less logic or rational or that they can't fully understand/appreciate the theory of evolution.

I personally don't believe that a God played any role in the apparition of life on earth or in evolution (I am saying this because maybe my post suggested otherwise). — Patulia

I took your statements to be about Darwin and evolution, not your own beliefs on the matter.

I respect those who believe that everything happened according to God's plan — Patulia

I have always found this claim to be problematic. It may be for some a source of comfort, but since things happen as they do there is no way to know whether they happen according to plan since whatever happens can be said to happen according to plan but just as well can be said to happen without a plan or at least in the case of human actions contrary to God's will.

There are other advantages of single-celled organisms over multi-ones.

1. They never get a cold.
2. They don't have to go to work; in the least they are exempt of punching a time-card.
3. Their debt-to-equity ratio remains stable.
4. They can get into the pants of really beautiful people much easier than you and I put together.
5. Addiction is a strange concept to them. Thus, they can bet on the horses till they are blue in the face, they won't get hooked and cause them to put their families through incredible financial and social hardships. — god must be atheist

The essence of the difference is that multicellular ones are more complex. The relative simplicity of single celled ones is at the same time their limitation, since they cannot differentiate cells and develop some complex functions, such as for example neural networks, so, this is a disadvantage, and on the other hand they are not vulnerable to cancers which seems to be an inherent limitation of multicellular ones, so in that sense this simplicity is an advantage.

I have a clear conscience, as I was merely answering the question the best way I could, without trying to be clever or wit, or to ridicule someone, because such things backfire at you.

What are the advantages of being a multi cell organism? — christian2017

Specialization? Division of labour? The possibility for individual cells to specialize, so that they can carry out specific functions more efficiently ...

In "The wealth of nations", Adam Smith argued this thesis extensively for the economy of human societies. Well, Xenophon seems to be the first one to have pointed out these advantages:

Just as the various trades are most highly developed in large cities, in the same way, food at the palace is prepared in a far superior manner. In small towns, the same man makes couches, doors, ploughs and tables, and often he even builds houses, and still, he is thankful if only he can find enough work to support himself. And it is impossible for a man of many trades to do all of them well. In large cities, however, because many make demands on each trade, one alone is enough to support a man, and often less than one: for instance one man makes shoes for men, another for women, there are places even where one man earns a living just by mending shoes, another by cutting them out, another just by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but assembles the parts. Of necessity, he who pursues a very specialized task will do it best.

Maybe it spares each cell from digesting individually by themselves the coffee I have just had? While they also would have to take care of breathing, responding to differences in light and colour, checking the smell of things it should not try to eat, as well as tasting, and so on.

What are the advantages of a single cell organism? — christian2017

Less fragile. More robust. Less overhead. No need for an entire bureaucracy to protect with a thick skull; a bureaucracy undoubtedly worse than the European Union's commission in Brussels, which incessantly sends memos and other emails to lots of unwilling other cells about what the new rules for food labelling are all about. That narcissistic thing may even end up consuming most of the available resources and starve the other cells for its own benefit. That is easy to do for that cerebral bureaucrat, because it is in charge of everything anyway.

Exactly, nice analogy. I was just emphasizing cancers as the main example of fragility and underminer of robustness, because for multicellular organisms subordination of all cells to the well being of organism is critical.

I have a clear conscience, as I was merely answering the question the best way I could, without trying to be clever or wit, or to ridicule someone, because such things backfire at you. — Hrvoje

Dear Hrvoje, I have a clear conscience, too. I like to make jokes; humour is like music appreciation, which enriches life without any biological benefit. Those who don't enjoy humour are a bit impoverished in their enjoyment of life.

I have met many people on social sites who have no sense of humour, and they harshly criticized me for cracking jokes. I don't agree with them, but I also appreciate that they don't agree with me. It's a given, a sense of humour is; either you have it, and you enjoy then jokes, or else you don't have it, and then jokes seem incredibly repulsive to you. I am sure I'm in the first pile; you must be in the second pile.

There is nothing we can do to bridge this difference. You will think of me as a fool, who makes light of serious stuff unnecessarily; you will think of me as a person who is irresponsible, and does stupid things, whereas you likely think of yourself as serious, smart, and not frivolous. I, on the other hand, think of my jokes as the salt of life, as the icing on the cake; and think of those who don't have a sense of humour as borons.

This is just how things are. I'm resigned to share the universe with borons. They bug me, but hey, I am not the ruler of the universe, they have just as much right to their boring existence as I have to mine, and I only hope that the borons gain enough insight to realize that there is something out in this world which they don't understand, which irritates them at best, and which enriches the life of those who understand it.

Yeah, well, if people don’t laugh at your jokes there are two possible explanations, either they don’t have a sense of humour, or you don’t. And it seems that you love humour, you are just unable to produce it. Insulting people also doesn’t help.

Dear Hrvoje: I know of 1 person who did not laugh at my joke. That person is not "people". Two or more persons are people.

You assume that all humanity share YOUR sense of humour, and insist that my sense of humour is worthless. Hence I assert that you're employing the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

Also, you know of only one person who thinks my sense of humour is not funny. You can't extrapolate from there that people (more than one person) don't like my sense of humour.

And even if you can get a consensus of X number of people, where x is a positive integer greater than 1, who positively assert they don't like my sense of humour, you can't from that alone prove that there are no more than the author person of the joke himself who enjoy the joke.

Therefore I say unto you, that your reasoning to prove that my sense of humour is crap, is false.

Therefore I have the right to call you a boron, since it was YOU who first insulted ME, by calling me a humourless person. If you assume that you have the knack to decide what is humorous and what is not, then you automatically assign ME the right to judge over your sense of humour.

Trust me, you are not helping your case with these posts, neither in proving your great sense of humour, nor politeness. Shouting around that you have it, and delivering it, are two very different things. And yeah, you managed to fool me, when you said that people harshly criticized you for telling jokes, I didn’t know they were laughing at them at the same time, I thought it was because of their poor quality, sorry about that. Although, I wouldn’t call my conclusions insults, it is a given, either you have it, or you don’t, sense of humour I mean, nothing to be offended about.