Proof that God exists

[Agnosty]

LOL, so, firstly, don't clone old fruit bushes you knob.  Get new ones.  They're more productive.   

Yeah, you're probably right, but I'm sentimental and these old ones are more productive than anyone can handle.  During peak season, it seems I can walk around the bush continuously picking berries almost as if the act of picking them causes others to ripen... and I don't stop picking because I run out of berries, but just get tired of it.

Perhaps I should have pm'd you with this, but it didn't occur to me  

 For apples, ideally no, you don't want green shoots.  You want to pick a dormant tip from last season now, in winter (closer to spring is better, above freezing but still dormant).

Right before bud break?  I'll be on the lookout for that as I'm collecting maple sap since bud break makes the syrup taste like crap.

At least two buds, but no sign of growth.  If you're going to grow on it's own roots obviously you want to hit the end with rooting hormone and shove it into a container full of peat, perlite, and sand.  1/1/2parts.  Tent it, keep it moist. 

 
Why not just peat?  Not arguing, just curious.

But.....if you have the opportunity, use the process above to create scions for grafting.  If you have the right rootstock for your area you can graft two or three varieties onto one tree.  You can even graft apples and pears onto the same tree. 

 
Good idea!  I'll have to try that one day.  I've seen videos on it.

If you select a dwarfing stock you can graft multiple scions in a ring and turn multiple tall habit trees into a single low shrub.

 
Well, these apples are going in the woods to be deer bait so they leave MY apples alone  Another project on the list is to make an espelliar fence since apples seem well-suited for that.

You mentioned that you've air rooted,

  
Yep, the first time (after being armed with youtube videos    ), I drove 600 miles to a friend's house to clone an old pear tree.  I wrapped 9 branches with peat and foil, then came back in fall and found 2 branches still alive.  They're out in the yard right now enduring their second winter independent from the parent.  No clue what variety they are, but everyone says they're the best pears they've had.

Blueberries otoh -are- best cloned with green wood (but still best done in early, early spring when it's still cool).  Pretty much the same process, though.  Pick a good long stem from your best bush, strip it of leaves, cut it into 4 inch lengths, dust pot and tent.

  
Ok, so, no leaves.  That's where I went wrong.  I have better luck with airrooting than cloning.  Cloning has never worked for me.

Heres a pro-tip.  Mark the "top" ends of your cuttings and keep them wrapped in a moist paper towel....in the fridge, until they get hormone and media.  They won't root upside down (geotropism).  It can take up to three months for new clones or grafts to show adequate growth, so..be patient...and you might want to do them a dozen at a time (some will just fail, no way around it). 

Genius!

The liquid hormone is worlds better than the powder, as well.

Really?  Someone else to told me the liquid sucks, so I've been using the powder.  Perhaps I should try the liquid.

The reason for doing this late winter or early spring is that, yes, the roots need all sorts of things to develop...and that -should- have been drawn into the stems at the onset of winter in preparation for spring.

 
Probably the same stuff that ruins the maple sap.

Plus, the temperatures are cooler and that inhibits the kinds of fungus that routinely makes clones and grafts fail.  The cuttings -should- provide the requirements for roots, and the new roots -will- produce new leaves (or the stock roots, when the graft is complete and they come out of winter dormancy).

Thanks a million!  I feel like I have a better understanding now.

Sure, beaver damns are artificial in precisely the same sense as artifical selection is.

 
If beaver dams are artificial, then so are birds nests and bee hives.  What's more natural than the birds and bees?

The trees didn't grow that way nor do they form such structures left to their own devices.  Sure, intelligence is a product of the universe....and artifical things are, in an important sense, natural..but again, artificial is not somehow meant or taken to be the opposite of something natural. 

Seems to me you're saying artificial is an arbitrary construct subjective to how you wish to define it.  If so, then why use the word at all?  Why use an illusion to dispel an illusion?

Here, as with "law" you are attempting to find some way to re-enforce your misapprehension rather than correct it.

  
I can see how you see that.

There is a distinct difference between a beaver damn and a forest, or even a pile of logs in a river.  One set is an artifact of artifice, the other is not. 

I don't see the distinction between a dam and a forest... or maybe even the pile of logs in the river (whether it happened by random chance or as part of the process that is the universe.  Is it part of what's going on or is it external to what's going on?)

That's an absurd claim.  Interdependance of organisms should not be taken to mean that disparate organisms are the same organism.  I can tell you where a flower ends and a bee begins, and I assume that you're similarly capable of recognizing the distinction between them. 

This is the meat of the matter.  Is my blood part of me or part of my environment?  For that matter, is my body me or my environment?  If I can't say for sure, then is the air in the room part of me or is it my environment?  There isn't much difference since I need the air from which to extract O2 and I need the blood to transport it, where the blood is a medium for transport that is little different than the air.  Any boundaries I put on ME in order to contain ME and define ME as distinct from the universe are completely arbitrary.  Why stop at my skin?  I am just as dependent on what we call "the environment" as I am on what we call "my body".

Furthermore, I am a process like a flame on a candle which isn't a thing, but a stream of gas and the flame is constantly being renewed.  In some number of years I will exchange all the cells in my body for new ones and perhaps I have some atoms floating around that were once in Socrates' body.  So the idea that I have something distinct from the universe that I possess that I can call mine that defines me is silly.

The distinction between flowers and bees is an illusion we create for ourselves because, in reality, they are necessary parts of the same process.  We can't have flowers without bees nor bees without flowers.  Everything in the outside world that we call reality is just a bunch of particles bumping into one another and the collection of particles that we call a bee is just an arbitrary distinction which gives the illusion that bees are separate from the universe.  How did you put it... reinforcing misapprehensions?

You like the sopranos?  I was reminded of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY_D_9WKSQ4

You will be engaging in artificial selection on every conceivable level..which is distinctly different from natural selection, and you are a distinctly different organism than the apple tree. 

 
You familiar with William Albrecht?  He noticed that plants grow in soils particularly suited for that specie of plant and the soil is a product of climate and weathering.  So if you leave a patch of ground unattended, the plants best-suited for that ground will begin to dominate.  What determines the ground is the type of rock and type/length of weathering that just happens to favor a specific type of plant.  So now, I come along with my chainsaw, tiller, bag of fertilizer, and information from the internet and then cut all the dominant plants down and force a plant from a far-corner of the world to grow in what could be considered "an unnatural location."  In my view, the dominant plants weren't so dominant after all because they found themselves ill-equipped to cope with the natural force that was me.  How am I any different than a weather pattern?  If I truck-in glacial till from Iowa, how am I different from the glacier?

Aren't the bees selective breeders? Don't they pick the most appealing flowers?  I mean, that's why we have flowers, right, to attract the bees?  So the best flowers get the most pollination (aka selection).  If i select one plant for breeding because I like it, then how am I different from the bee making a selection that it likes?  The only way I could be different is if I were from another universe.. or perhaps made by a god who is distinct from the universe.  The concept of artificial must be regarded as theistic because the only thing that could be artificial to this universe is a deity.

As gratifying as it would be, I'm no god, lol.  

If you were god, what would you do?  And after a million years of getting your way, knowing everything in the future... the end of every game, the end of every movie... you'd get bored and ultimately find yourself right where you are now.  And that's the point.

What does free will have to do with replacing god with evolution or vv, or atheism and theism?  Freewill is yet another subject that stands or falls on it's own.  Do I believe in it?  Well, I can't help but believe in it...even if I understand both that and -why- those beliefs are wrong.  Free will is, at least, a compelling fiction.  There is no atheist position on free will.  You'll find just about every possible opinion on the subject represented here in our atheist members. 

 
Freewill is of utmost importance because if it doesn't exist, then everything is determined and if everything is determined such that you have no choice whatsoever, then you don't exist.  How could you say you exist when your existence makes no difference?  Isn't that the argument put forth concerning god (what difference would it make)?

Suppose you have freewill, then how is a determined process going to engender that?  In order to have freewill, there would have to be a you that is independent from the universe such that it isn't determined by the universe and is yet able to influence the universe through its choices.

This is why it is said that when we tired of the monarchical model of the universe, where god created us, and instead we adopted the automatic model of the universe, which got rid of god, we also got rid of ourselves.  It would seem there is no way to win.  But there is a way and it comes about by realizing there are no things or events.  If there are no things, then how can one thing cause another thing?  So there is no causality and therefore no determinism.  There is just the one big indivisible continuum of a process and we ARE that process.  We aren't fatalists being pushed around because there is no one distinct from the universe to be pushed around... because we are the whole thing.  That's what I mean by "you are god (the universe) playing the part of the one who doesn't believe in god (deities)."

Ish, it's not a product of any specific organism or any specific representative of any specific organism.  Evolution occurs to all life that we know of and happens at the population level.  

How could evolution start if there is no life to start it?

I'm limiting myself to describing evolutionary biology to you when we discuss evolution...to keep us from drifting into analogies to other things (like cars learning to drive) that may or may not be fruitful.  Evolutionary biology is not a description of how cars learn to drive.  

Natural selection is.  You should watch this short but fascinating video about machine learning based on evolutionary biology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44

That's my point... there is no selective pressure for consciousness, so how did it get here?

It's an interesting question...but are you sure that's really true?  It seems as if conscious animals are -highly- successful. 

 
Well, like god, consciousness is unneeded, so what difference would it make?  If it makes no difference, then how could it have been selected for?  If it wasn't selected for, then why is it here?

What's more important to you, understanding evolutionary biology or reasserting yourself? 

  
I'm just testing my understanding like hardening clay pots in an oven.  You are the fire

In any case, neither natural or artificial selection is about "having control", so why is that a problem for natural or artificial selection?  A great deal will be out of your control when you artificially select your fruit bushes (much of which you probably aren't aware of to control in the first place, even if you could).  

I was just saying that intelligence isn't something that can be quantified as in "extracted from the universe" as a distinct process exclusive to humans.  You're saying that intelligence is the root of artificiality and I'm pointing out that intelligence isn't independent of the natural.  What you choose to define as intelligence is just arbitrary.  Ants can be intelligent and although a few may stray off course on the way to the food, that's the intelligence of the variety that's in the species.

That Mandalay Bay shooting... I saw some people running for their lives and some standing around and even one guy giving the shooter the finger and I realized that it's the variety that guarantees survival in the face of unknown dangers... and that's intelligent.  Is giving the shooter the finger stupid?  Is running stupid?  There is no way to know.  What survives, survives because variety is inherent to the system and that is intelligent.

Most of this isn't directly related to our discussion..but, I have to ask.  Why and how -could- you have "the point of view of a goose"?  You are not a goose.  I can't comment on how entertained geese (or gods) are, relative to yourself, so I'll leave that alone.  There are at least two reasons you're "in the skin you're in", and you know them as mommy and daddy.

  
Sure, this body would exist because of mommy and daddy, but why am I inside it?  Why am I not inside your body instead?  Why not a goose?

The thing about dumb animals is that they are easily entertained.  Why, after 400 million years of evolution, is a shark still stupid?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hL1qkEQYgI  FWD to 49:00.  Obviously, any animal that exists is of optimal intelligence because if it were any smarter, it wouldn't compete as well.  To speculate: maybe if a shark were smarter, it would be too curious and get into trouble.  Maybe it would become bored.  Maybe it would overthink a situation.  In the case of sauropods, their brain actually got smaller as evolution progressed because it takes less energy to feed a smaller brain and being smart isn't required to stand around swinging a long neck.  Pumping blood up a long neck is difficult and the long neck was more beneficial to the species than intelligence.  Intelligent humans often don't compete as well either (See Satoshi Kanazawa's abundance of research on the matter).  Tangential to the topic, but interesting.

Evolution doesn't "grow".  You say alot of things about it..but thusfar those things have rarely been accurate.

Define accurate

I suspect what you mean is that what I say isn't consistent with what you believe.  If it were, then what would we talk about?  We need each other because if you didn't disagree, I wouldn't know what I think lol.