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Ready, Steady, Evolve
Stront writes "New Scientist is reporting that plants and animals can 'bottle up' evolution until they need it. A certain protein 'hides away' mutated genes acting like a genetic valet, however in extreme environments, such as high temperature or noxious chemicals, the cleaning process breaks down and the mutations are released all at once. This goes some way to explaining examples that are considered to defy standard evolutionary theory, such as the Bombardier Beetle."
This is ludicrous. Bottle up? This goes nowhere toward explaining troublesome spots for evolution. The bombardier beetle clearly had an excellent designer.
I read the article about the bombardier beetle and it made me wonder:
...and to the ecosystem in which it lived? If so, why design a defense against predators when one could just as easily design predators that would not want to sup on our poor beetle?
If this little fellow was the product of intelligent design, would not that same intelligent design extend to the other creatures around it?
Or did the "designer" just want to sit back and guffaw at the pain and suffering inflicted on one of his creations by another?
-Eldurbarn
As to how long it takes, well if it takes 3 million years to go from an ape of low intelligence to get to you, then... on second thoughts, never mind, bad example.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I would question the statistics that lead you to this conclusion.
OK, how often is there a world changing discovery?
Once every 10 years is a very generous guess.
How often is there a murder or a robbery? Or to make it even more honest, throw out multiple offenses and just look at the number of people who have committed these acts. Narrowing it even more, just look at murderers.
I think you will find that the latter number blows away the first one. Now, I'm not claiming that a decision to not have an abortion causes all of these murders. In fact, I'm not even pointing out one single case where this has been determined to be true. This is totally irrelevant to my point though. The original assertion that I was addressing was that banning abortion provides the most good to the most people. In order to prove that point, you would need to demonstrate that it is false.
What I believe likely is that you exist in an evironment that is essentially un-Christian in nature and thus your opinions have been formed
I live in America. I have seen some people who are Christians who are very nice people. I have also seen the worst scum around hiding behind a claim of Christianity which seems to blind other Christians to their atrocities.
However, I have seen Christianity work,
Have you seen the times where it doesn't? I suspect you don't really see these. Or rather, that you thank god for the good things that come about from it, yet absolutely forget to mention him when it fucks up lives, cultures, and the world. Of course, that's just free will.
such a negativistic approach to life is prejudiced in unlikely realities.
Not at all. Disliking Christianity isn't negative. It's self preservation based on the history of your religion. Your approach seems much more based in "unlikely realities". If you really can't see the dichotomy between thanking god for the good and ignoring his contributions to the bad, then that is living in unreality.
There is not much point in arging about what the effects of a life may or may not be.
That's kind of my point. The original poster argued that every potential life will have a net positive affect. My point is that this isn't true.
Even if one could make statisticly accurate predictions regarding the probable outcome, such discussion is based only upon a utilitarian approach to the value of life.
Not really. It is letting people make their own decisions about the evolution of their own life.
Essentially, we would be taking upon ourselves judgement that is better left to God. Abortion is an extremely prejudicial act.
Again, not true. It is the mature, rational decision that this is not the time and place to bring a child into the world. ("this" being the person in questions place in the world at the time). You are saying that it is universally better to pop out kids whenever it happens rather than making a mature decision about when and even if you should bring a child into the world. Please don't bother with the old tired abstinence approach to this. Sex has many benefits for mental and physical health and well being completely seperate from reproductive purposes.
I think it is better to decide when you are emotionally and financially prepared to have a child.
You seem to think it is better for an emotionally and financially unprepared person to have that kid right now rather than waitinguntil they are ready.
Christianity and the Church are given to serve humanity.
Christianity itself might have the potential of doing good for humanity, but so many who claim to be christians are so much worse than non-religious people at walking the walk. The overwhelming prevalence of this is, of course, based solely on my own observations, so feel free to discount this point.
The church though. You have got to be kidding me. The church exists for the sole purpose of expanding its own power structure. The church has nothing to do with christianity. Please point me to where Jesus said,
"Build unto me a power structure that acquires immense wealth and power. Let it torture and murder those who go against this power structure even if they are acting in accordance to my teachings. Destroy all knowledge of older times since we can't have people being exposed to any knowledge contrary to those of my words which you choose to let people see. (The bible in it's present form is just a collection of stories. Many relevant stories were edited out hundreds of years after the fact since they went against the power of the church) Let my people go out and smite the heathen...or if they can't be bothered to get all the way there let them murder and rob any major Christian cities along the way. Yeah, I say let them go forth across the world and enslave torture and murder anybody they want to for just by claiming belief in me they are holy and all others are scum."
This *is* the history of the church.
The Christian concept of justice demands that blessing be withheld from those who tolerate wickedness. Those who practice evil are destroyed. God has manifest himself troughout history in such deterministic fashion.
In fact god has manifest himself throughout history by destroying the good and the evil completely blindly. In fact, if you actually look around you today and look at history, if you believe in any sort of manifestation of god, he is quite squarely in favor of evil since evil is way ahead in the game in this world. Sure, it'll all be squared in the next. Whether this is true or not, I defy you to come up with a better system to keep oppressors in power.