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Evidence of the Missing Link Found?
HUADPE writes to tell us CNN is reporting that scientists in northeastern Ethiopia recently discovered a skull that they think may be evidence of the "missing link" between Homo erectus and modern man. From the article: "The hominid cranium -- found in two pieces and believed to be between 500,000 and 250,000 years old -- 'comes from a very significant period and is very close to the appearance of the anatomically modern human,' said Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project in Ethiopia."
the flying spaghetti monster burried it there!
oO
-- ubersonic Kfz Versicherung
Hey, I think I need that and a Ball of Everlasting Golem for war epic 1.0. Oh, wait...
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Really. Who cares. There's no teaching those people. Saw off the coasts and let the middle rot.
We should be interested in what these things discoveries can teach us. We should absolutely not be interested in trying to convince people who are unwilling to be convinced that this is just a link in a longer chain.
Evolution is at work. We leave them to themselves and we'll stick to ourselves, and in another 250,000 years we can eat them as either game or domesticated farm animals. God knows we don't have to selectively breed them for size.
"...between 500,000 and 250,000 years old..."
9 comments and there no "Earth os only 6,000 years old" comments yet. It's a good day.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_cen tos/the missing link
Cue evolution vs. creationism debate in 5... 4... 3... 2...
Seriously, I almost dread stories like this for a couple of reasons:
- Talking about "missing links" puts the idea in creationists' minds that the evolution from apes to man took place in discrete steps, and that the fact that such "missing links" exist is proof that the Theory of Evolution is still just a hunch unsupported by proof. The fact is that the evolution from apes to man is a continuum, and there are a lot of fossils from lots of time periods along that continuum.
- Because this discovery is relatively recent, there's a chance that it still may turn out to be something other than what this article purports it to be. The real research is just starting. If it turns out that it's for real, it will be valuable insight into our species's evolution, though creationists will still refuse to believe it. If it turns out to not be an intermediary between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, the creationists will accuse the scientists of everything from fabricating evidence to trying to pull a hoax as part of some weird conspiracy. The irony is that if it is discovered that this fossil is not the intermediary that it is suspected to be, it is scientists who will determine that, and unlike creationists who have a nasty habit of wanting to dismiss or even repress evidence, those scientists will let us know as soon as they find any inconsistencies, and the data will be there in the open for us to evaulate and form our own opinions.
I still say that this is the true test for whether a creationist can actually be open-minded or not. Ask them this one question:
What piece or pieces of evidence will it take to convince you that the Theory of Evolution is, in fact, true and that creationism is not?
If the answer is "None," as it is with almost every creationist I've ever met, then don't bother wasting your time arguing with them. Nothing you say will ever convince them, as they have deliberately closed themselves off to any kind of rational conclusion based on reality instead of blind faith.
The nice thing about the question is that it's not a double standard. There are several things that would convince me that creationism is true and not evolution. The most obvious would be if God came and spoke to me in a burning bush. I know that sounds facetious, but it's really not; that really would do it. Or, if compelling scientific evidence were to arise that evolution is a crock, such as discovery of a natural chimera skeleton. These are just a couple of examples, I'm sure there are many more.
I'm always amused at creationists who think that scientists are in some kind of dark conspiracy to push "the agenda" of evolution. What they don't realize is that if a scientist could discover some piece of incontrovertible proof that the Theory of Evolution is all just a bunch of hooey, he would undoubtedly be one of the most famous people in the world, winning all sorts of Nobel Prizes and recognition in his field. Proving the Theory of Evolution wrong would be one of the greatest, not notorious, scientific finds ever, on the level of Michaelson-Morley experiment that proved that there is no aether and set the stage for Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and you'd better believe that any decent scientists would kill to disprove the Theory of Evolution.
I mean sure this sounds like an interesting find but let's not break out the party hats and kazoos just yet. Don't anomalies exist in all of this? I mean we have examples of anomalies today, ala MIDGET. Let's say a million years from now a civilization is studying our planet and finds the remains of a midget. The find in this article is like saying "we've found the midget and its the missing link!" Of course we know midgets have nothing in common with the speculated evolutionary path of humans.
You'll have to give the I.D. people a little longer. They're still hung up on Homo Erectus.
Antonio, you want a burning bush? Well here it is. I am God. Yes, the One! No, really. Listen. I'm tired of trying to reach you through indirect means. (Jeez, how many students do I have to be??) Creationism is true. I created the world in 6 days. How? How do you think, peabrain? I spoke the word and it was created. It's like magic, but when you're omnipotent it's not such a big deal. No what I mean? No, of course you don't... No one really does.
So this is it. Believe it or burn in Hell. That's my decree.
..that happens over time. We just happen to dig up random fossils and see dramatic changes from the previous, older species. We forget that there were sometimes 10,000's or 100,000's of years in between the two species.
There isn't one "link" between two species. A situation where one day a parent gives birth to a dramatically different, more advanced offspring that is more evolved then the parents doesn't happen. And even if they was a missing link, the chances of that fossil surviving and us finding itwould be near impossible.
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Nice headline but since the fossil record is an incomplete record, not just because we haven't found all the fossils out there but also because not all animals that have existed became fossils. So when looking at the tree of life it's perfectly fine to call any fossil we dig up a missing link. But then again it's also safe to say the missing link is still yet to be dug up and in fact never will be dug up. So it's a meaningless term. All this talk of the "missing link" is just rhetoric that keeps people studying and enjoying what is actually being discovered.
To a depressingly huge percentage of the US and UK population this will just disprove THE THEORY even more. They'll point out scornfully that you now have TWO missing links where previously you jst had the one. 'Silly scientists' they'll say to themselves, laughing ruefully as they prepare for their next bible meeting.
...or is "the missing link" found every couple of months?
(1) This is only one skull. Weigh in the likelihood that it could be just a deformity of something distinctly not a missing link.
(2) Evolution occurs through generation and elimination of lines. Is there even the slightest evidence that this is not from one of the extinct lines? It's fully possible (and likely) that the species in question doesn't even have modern living descendants.
(3) If it *looks* like a human....
(4) And for good measure, color me suspicious that the estimated age is on the same order of magnitude as the estimated error in that measurement.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Satan put it there to trick us.
said Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project in Ethiopia."
'Sileshi' -> 'His Lies'
See? It's obvious that this man is the devil and is trying to test our faith with false fossils and his lies.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
You can't handle the truth.
I don't know why it took them so long to find it. I mean, you just need to look at me when I drag myself out of bed in the morning.
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
am I the only one who giggles like a school girl when they read "homo erectus"?
Read "Buried Alive" by Cuozzo
Where's the picture of Steve Ballmer?
I'm replying to you because you sound like you might actually get something from this, but just so you know, most people don't care about the creationism vs. evolution debate. The two views are not contradictory. Understanding *how* something functions or was put together doesn't mean it wasn't made. That logic is akin to:
That's a really fallacious argument. I am fully capable of simultanesouly understanding how computers are made and still believing that Dell exists. Now, not to knock your or anybody else's intelligence, but most people are average, by the very definition of average. The problem is most people also think they're smarter than average, which is statistically impossible. So just face facts and realize that if you "get it", most everybody else probably does too. Your're arguing a debate that doesn't really exist.Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. Cheers.
It's Ballmer, right?
"The fact is that the evolution from apes to man is a continuum,"
Sure, but you should be careful. Saying it that way is a bit confusing too. It is a *branching* continuum. To say "from apes to man" is as much an oversimplification of the situation as saying a tree looks like a single stick. Life diversifies and spreads out during biological evolution, and extinction prunes the tree along the way. Many branches can exist at the same time, and it is challenging to find fossils from the branch points themselves (if you think of the sum total of wood in a tree with branches all the same diameter, the branch points are only a small fraction, and that's assuming you have all the wood from the tree preserved).
Exactly where this skull fits in is debatable, but the authors are reasonably confident is from a time when there are few remains known, close to the branch between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, so it is bound to be an interesting addition to the puzzle.
Yet, one the basic characteristic that differentiates living matter from dead matter are of a thermodynamic nature. These thermodynamic characteristics cannot be explained if one considers life to be the sum of its parts. But evolutionists will claim that they can explain the thermodynamics of entire ecosystems.
Another basic characteristics of life is the use of symbolic information. Symbolic information is part of the genetic code. There are no mechanisms by which symbolic information can arise through physical processes.
The origin of symbolic information is in the spirit world and it is constantly being channeled into the material realm.
This is the funniest thing in your whole post:
Did you know that the theoy of evolution has been proven to be wrong in a whole bunch of ways? I'll just name two. First, it predicted a lot of transitionary species. Darwin himself was aware that there was a scarcity of transitionary species and he predicted that in the future more and more of those transitionary species would be found. But today, we have even fewer examples of transitionary species than in his time because many examples of that period, such as the evolution of the horse, have been proven wrong.
That this evolutionary prediction was proven wrong did not cause the evolutionists to rethink their position, but rather to try to explain away the evidence by making up the unfalsifiable, unscientific theory of 'punctuated equilibrium.'
Second, evolution predicts that different species will have a common ancestor. This has been disproven as well. Again evolutionists did not admit that their theory is wrong, they simply try to explain it away by making phylogenetic 'bushes' instead of 'trees.'
Anyone care to speculate where this will leave us in 50 years, let alone 250,000?
I clicked the link and all I got was 404 page not found, I guess it really is the missing link :)
The middle of the country feeds you, fuckass.
No what I mean?
So you're an omniscient deity who doesn't "no" how to spell?
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
The middle of the country feeds you
Yes, and if you had a server room temperature IQ, you'd have noticed that I in fact posit that in 250,000 years they will continue to do so.
Antonio, you want a burning bush? Well here it is. I am God. Yes, the One! No, really. Listen. I'm tired of trying to reach you through indirect means. (Jeez, how many students do I have to be??) Creationism is true. I created the world in 6 days. How? How do you think, peabrain? I spoke the word and it was created. It's like magic, but when you're omnipotent it's not such a big deal. No what I mean? No, of course you don't... No one really does.
Huh. I'd think an omnipotent and omniscient being such as yourself would have a better grasp of the English language.
But what do I know? I'm just a mere mortal and you are obviously God.
My blog
My point is any evidence can be rationalized away if you really try. Now, if a group of people saw the same burning bush and heard the same message, perhaps you'd be more willing to buy into it. Or, it could just be a group hallucination.
Finally, what about if the bush told you something you'd have no possible way of knowing? (Dig at these coordinates and you'll find a buried pirate...surprise, you stumble upon Blackbeard's skull or whatever). No, you must have overheard those coordinates at another time on TV or something and they became lodged in your subconscious memory. Then when you started hallucinating, they emerged.
Something to think about, anyway.
Even leading evolutionists no longer claim that evolution was a slow graduate change. Because, if it was a slow gradual change than there would be lots and lots of transitionary species as predicted by Charles Darwin. Darwin knew there was a scarcity of these transitionary species, but he predicted that a lot of them would be found.
Today there are only a few, disputable, examples of transitionary species. What the fossil record appears to show is that species appears suddenly, then they stay unchanged (or with minor changes) for the rest of their existance.
This is why evolutionists have now come up with the concept of punctuated equilibrium. Punctuated equilibrium basically states that when evolution happens, it happens so fast that it can't be observed. The punctuated equilibrium theory is unscientific because it is unfalsifiable.
I decided to pay Epcot a visit last night to kill some time and I went into Ellen's Universe of Energy where they talk about the Big Bang, the creation of the Universe, dinosaurs, petroleum, etc.
On the way out, a lady behind me was talking to her husband and said "what about Intelligent Design? They didn't cover that! You should email them!" and the husband replied "I think I will!"
If the answer is "None," as it is with almost every creationist I've ever met, then don't bother wasting your time arguing with them.
These individuals will go on preaching their nonesense, and convincing those with a less complete understanding as to the nature of the situation to their belief. Which means more people that you can't convince, eventually leading to a critical mass of people that will become the dominant force in society, with the truest believers being the high priests. These people all aspire to positions of power and authority from which they can indulge whatever whims take their fancy, the position of gods-on-earth, beyond question. Thats why you can't convince them, and thats why they should be opposed with every means possible.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Insert bad Zelda joke here.
if so it was a pretty funny parody.. nice one.
No need to insult people who go to church meetings there (no, I'm not one of them). The people who reject that stuff probably read as little scriptural text as they do scientific text. I'm sure there are a number of church-goers involved, but I suspect a lot of them would call you crazy for not believing in ghosts or aliens too, neither of which is a biblical thing.
So this missing link links Steve Ballmer with modern man...?
(http://www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html : lest we forget...)
Find Japanese addresses in English on Google Maps Japan: http://diddlefinger.com/
"The fact is that the evolution from apes to man is a continuum"
It would be a continuum if, if you selected any of the infinite points on the 'path' from ape to man, that point would be embodied in a real creature at some point in history. Since there are a finite number of generations between 'ape' and 'human', the process is necessarily stepped, not continuous.
We understand the situation you're complaining about, but making statements that don't hold up to basic logic isn't going to make creationists any more reasonable about their standards of proof.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
It is imposible to prove (or disprove) the existenec of God. There is no piece of evidence that will do it. But you don't need to prove God to show that evolution is wrong (and proving God will not be enough to show it either), you simply need to get evidence of changes that don't obey evolution's axioms.
That said, disproving evolution would be much more important than disproving aether. The entire biology field is based on this theory, and its axioms are mostly our definition of life. If evolution is wrong, there is something very wrong with math or there is something very different with life. Both discoveries could very well be classified between the most important discoveries of history.
Rethinking email
http error 404, link not found.
So far, I've only skimmed the /. comments, but i'm getting some pretty distinct bad feeling against christians here... I'd just like to make one thing clear; not all of us christians are into bible-thumping and trying to put the 'fun' back into 'funadmentalist'. I've always considered God to be a craftsman. mayber there's just the off chance that this '6000 years' bollocks is because humans can't count in terms of the infinite. sounds weird, i know, but hear me out. we've already managed to establish a decent and pretty reliable form of carbon dating, yes? comparing half-lives of fairly inert materials gives us a good idea of temporal scale, right? maybe the seven days that the bible mentions is God's idea of seven days, and not ours... i think it's fair to say that the first, say, 5 billion years of the planet's existence were the prototyping stages; the whole 'right, i've got the ball of rock, let's make it habitable' period. we're already starting to consider some of the problems that we'd come up against when it involves terraforming, so it's fair to say that if you include planetary formation into that stretch of time, it increases significantly.
i reckon that yes, God made us; there's got to be a motive force behind it all: i believe it's a sapient beneficiary; otherwise we're all gonna go nuts with loneliness, in the existential sense. however, i also think that evolution is a matter of prototyping, and the design process. not all of us religious types are unreasonable; some of us realise that our holy books may have started as the word of God, but they were ultimately recorded by Man.
just my two pence. if you're gonna shoot me down in flames, then please do it in the form of a decent argument. otherwise, you're just as bad as the next fundamentalist...
http://xkcd.com/313/
Doesn't everyone realize that where there had been a single gap in the fossil record now there are two? This fossil did not eliminate a gap at all.
It was a test. Like the fossils. You failed that one too. Both of you guys.
Anyone else want their name stricken from the Book of Life?
One nineteenth century minister, considering the then brand new evolution debate, had an idea.
When Adam was created, why didn't he immediately collapse from low blood sugar? Because he had the products of digestion already in his veins -- he probably even had the remains of a meal in his belly. This was a meal which he never actually ate , as moments earlier he'd been an inanimate lump. A human adult is the product of a long developmental process; his bones and sinews are knit through a lifetime of activity, which in Adam's case never happened. Adam was conceived as if he were the product of an ongoing process, even if that process never happened. And thus Adam would have had a belly button of course.
If not Adam, why not the world, and all the creatures in it? Clearly the world God conceived, in order to operate, would have to be the product of a similar process of development, and it would show all of the manifestations of that process, even if that process never actually happened. Indeed, evidence for evolution would be the very hallmark of the Creator Himself.
This seemed to the poor fellow a splendid idea. He felt certain the the religious side of the debate would lay down its arms and embrace evolution. Naturally, he was completely wrong. The religious side of the debate was the forerunner of the modern Fundamentalist movement, and much preferred a science whose purpose was to prove religious dogma. Under this naive man's idea, the free inquiry into evolution becomes practically sacred, something that no human authority has any right to tinker with.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I suspect you could find other examples of this in upstate New York and and other northern coastal areas if you wanted to look, but I really don't. I will assume you were going to saw off Georgia and the other southern coastal states.
How god would convince you that he is indeed god the creator of all things? Would he have to performing tricks, like splitting bodies of water or multiplying fish (I would prefer the turn water into wine)? Let's suppose that someone has shown to you and speaked, "I am god, the creator of all things, behold my power" at that time the nearby river splits in two. He then continue, "I must ask you to spread my word, that I and I alone created all things as they are now and you must have faith that this is the only truth there is". Would you turn into a believer?
If this experience have convinced you, to stop your questioning on the natures of things, then you must excuse the other for simply having lower levels of demands to believe in a god. Let me explain, other would be happy with the multiplying of the fish, others like the cure the sick person trick and some simply look out to flower or whatever and think as them as a miracle that proves the existence of god.
You see, different people, different demands. You, for instance, could be fooled by a very advanced technological alien race or maybe some well funded Cristian organization with clever engineers.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Umm no. Bwaaa ha ha ha, though.
It is actually more akin to saying:
I know how PCs are put together, therefore I don't believe that any PCs just
magically became assembled from parts
Or were you just making it sound that way for the sake of those few who don't understand that it's already happening?
When the great Cola plague of 2012 arrives after a bottling plant leak in Atlanta, Georgia, we will all be consumed by gallons and gallons of Coca cola. If it can eat a steak in 4 days, imagine how much YOU it can eat! The ones who survive will be lucky and/or have figured out stairs or stilts. They will live off of elephants, tree nuts, fruit, and giraffe will become a main course. The bones in our coffins will be disintegrated, and there shall be nothing left!
Of course, geeks have nothing to worry about anyway, seeing as how being a missing link means that you were actually a link to something. Too bad socks and pr0n are killing you guys off in record numbers!
Really. Every fossil found is touted by the media as a "missing link" between this and that. The "missing link" hysteria in the media is ridiculous. How many times have we already found the "missing link"? Every fossil that is found is a link between creatures that lived before and after it. Every new fossil can give us a clearer picture of how evolution has worked (and very often they mess up our nice concepts), but they can never give us a complete lineage, and thus the media can always gloat over a new "missing link".
(1) Residual magnetism-- moderately reliable, but a healthy margin of error.
(2) Other isotopes-- there's other airborne materials that can be used in ways similar to c13.
Modelling-- as a species that's been building stuff out of earth for a million years or so, we've developed a decent set of analysis tools for the materials involved.
(4) No, they aren't (dated solely by fossils contained, except by your volunteering park ranger tour guide)
(5) Cyclic distribution patterns -- we have these things called 'seasons' that cause regular yearly variations in deposition of sediment, wear on rocks, etc, and there are various other such cycles (lunar, etc.)
(6) Relative distribution-- we can tell what came before what in an area by fossil distributions, comparing distributions gives us a general idea of the timescales involved.
I know you're just trolling, but in case anyone legitimately wanted to know the answer to your question, I figured I'd post enough info on the subject to at least point them toward topics of interest in the field.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
FYI, here's a better reason why it's silly to argue that Dell doesn't make PCs: because we have evidence that Dell makes PCs. Dell has factories. Dell has designers. You can visit the factories and meet the designers.
I don't know if youre all aware that this so called debate is pretty much limited to the US. I live in France, and when I tell friends about the mere existence of the debate in the US their mouths open in disbelief and they try to make me say that I refer to old debates, say in the 1920s. Doesn't that surprise anyone caught in that debate that they're the only ones in the world to have it? I think that here claiming evolutionism is wrong can only be prompted by the need for promotion for your own personnal sect or a secret desire for public humiliation.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
If fossils cannot generally be carbon dated, how do you tell the age of it? We can also date fossils by geological layers in which the fossils are found. But how are geological layers dated? By the fossils that are found in them! This is circular reasoning!
This is a straw man argument. Nobody is claiming you can use radiocarbon dating on anything but recent fossils. Geological layers are dated by a variety of means, including radiological dating of isotopes much longer-lived than carbon-14. I watched as much of the video you linked to as I could stomach, and I think a few of my brain cells committed suicide in protest. Why are you taking this creationist crackpot seriously?
Really? He taught high-school science for fifteen whole years? Wow, I bet he knows more than the millions of serious scientists that disagree with him! Those high-school teachers are smart.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
At this point being a "creationist" includes disbelief in evolution. I think that is fundamental to the definition. If you are a regular Christian like so many of us that believe the theory of evolution is possible and still believe God created man, you can't be called a creationist. Christian will do nicely though.
"Theory of evolution", not just "Evolution". Evolution itself isn't science, it's the basic data that science starts out with: we see species change over the course of generations, changes accumulating with reproductive cycles. While the "Theory" can be disproved, in that our explanation of the phenomenon can (and probably will, at some point) be shown to be mostly or partly incorrect, "evolution" itself isn't an explanation, it's a thing we see, and is thus "true" in the sense that it's a fact.
So saying "disproving evolution" is just stupid, as the phrase itself is fundamentally incorrect. Say "Disproving the theory of evolution" or "disproving evolutionary theory" instead, because that's what you mean.
This lesson in "using the fucking english language properly" brought to you by Jim. Have a nice day.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
The reason that scientists don't attempt to disparage evolution is that the personal cost is quite high. The closest analogy I can think of would be going through a senate confirmation for a Supreme Court appointment; the politics are very high, the opponents are ruthless, and the effects can be career-ending. The major flaw with that analogy is that there is no two-party system in place to support dissent, there is only the one-party, Darwinists. When you go through the univesity system, evolution is taught as fact. If you're not a Darwinist, you most likely won't get published in the scientific journals because they treat evolution as fact.
And yes, there are some scientists who attempt to refute evolution, and they are mostly ostracized from the scientific community for doing so.
There is no way to definitively prove one that either evolution has occured or that God created everything. Both sides rest on circumstantial evidence, and have been mounting a lot of it for a long, long time. The main difference is that, in our current social and political climate, evolution has a voice and creationism does not. Ever notice how when the "evolution vs. creationism" debate comes up in the school system, the media never focuses on the "for vs. against" argument; rather, they always turn it into a First Amendment story. I'm not saying there's a grand conspiracy here; just saying that the current prevailing attitude is to give evolution the benefit of the doubt.
If I could disprove that this fossil was the "missing link," would the theory of evolution then collapse? Hardly. The scientific community would simply fall back to numerous other examples of circumstantial evidence and argue from those.
You say that nothing will sway the creationists; I say that BOTH sides are firmly entrenched on this issue, and it's going to take a lot more than circumstantial evidence to convince either side.
Everyday I see more of them.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Well, no. The problem is that evolution as a theory has many different forms accepted by today's biologists and scientists. Evolution has been molded from its original versions back in the 17th and 18th centuries into what we see today. When certain aspects have either been proven wrong or shown quite improbable, most of the accepted theories of evolution change to account for it. It almost reminds me of the formation of denominations in Christianity.
I'm going to assume that you believe in God, from your post. If not, please by all means disregard what I'm about to say. Trying to score a point for God will never happen at the creation vs. evolution table. Like you said, it's impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God, unless God proves himself. If the theory of evolution is ever completely debunked by man, those who "convert" from evolutionism will likely find some other theory to put force behind that still doesn't affirm God's existence.
And yes, I'm a Christian and I'm not here to get into the creation/evolution debate. I used to be a firm believer in evolution, so I know many of its weaknesses and not once have I been successful in sharing the news of Christ by attempting to disprove evolution. I can vouch that the general concept of macroevolution is fundamentally flawed at most every level. But that's like declaring a problem without offering a fix... it comes down gracelessly and makes it less likely for a person I'm conversing with to actually come to me for answers.
Sharing Christ effectively means putting behind such useless debate. God proves himself without our help, so all we can do is share his word in a loving manner and tell those we care about what He has done in our lives. And if that's hard, we can point them to useful Bible reading. Take for instance the book of Romans, where Paul debunks some of the myths about God which are sadly still believed by very many Christians today and have become the unloving face of Christianity that repels non-believers.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
(1) Residual magnetism---"Magnetism remaining in the core of an electromagnet after the coil current is removed" from Answers.com. Can you explain more? I don't see how this can be applied to dating geological artifects.
(2) Why don't you list the isotopes, the half-lives, and their current dating limits, and we can talk about it more?
(4) The point is the article does not specify how. One should not automatically assume for them their dating is legitimate.
(5) Seasonal growth pattern applies to living things, but other things are not reliable. Can you tell the age of a brownstone building by the layers of dust on it, or by the stone carving that says MCMXXVIII?
(6) Relative distribution requires a priori knowledge of the age of layers and fossils, which you don't have.
I once had a signature.
I take two issues with this comment. The first is that there is a conspiracy to push evolution. You're participating in it by talking down your nose at people who might be just as thoughtful and intelligent as you are. Your assumption is that because they disagree with you that they are unable to think. Instead, you should realize that some of them can't stretch their credulity far enough to include a materialistic explanation of how the world came into being.
The second issue has to do with the claim that all decent scientists would kill in order to disprove the Theory of Evolution. Many of the agnostic or atheistic adherents to scientism would only accept a replacemet that didn't do violence to their faith. In other words, it is hardly surprising that there is such a visceral hatred of intelligent design...it doesn't leave room for agnosticism/atheism. How is that different than claiming that Islam is evil because it calls for the slaying of infidels?
I know you're just trolling
How can I be trolling when I'm presenting only the facts? I'm only saying Wikipedia says so and so, and Kent Hovind says so and so. I'm not even giving out my personal opinion about this matter.
Moderators: if you disagree with me, please just leave me alone. Why are you suppressing a legitimate voice to be heard by modding me overrated? There is no way I can fight with a crowd of fools, and I hope you're not one of them.
I once had a signature.
We will all learn the answer one day. On that die when you die.
Then at least that answer will solved and everyone can get along at least on that point. Either in the afterlife or oblivion.
Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
LEts just hope its not another Pildown man of having a the skull of a chimpanzee and the jaw of a man covered in chemicals
SolarVPS - Quality Windows and Linux Virtual Servers
Animosity against Christians? Oh hogwash, that is just a vast oversimplification of a set of very complex socio-political dynamics which play out here on Slashdot. Christian folks like yourself are quite welsome to join in and partcipate in any capacity.
Anyway, we have some activities planned this afternoon over at the Coliseum. Invite your friends, and don't forget to bring a loincloth. Lunch will be served.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Yeah, nice one. Maybe it's all a form of intellectual masochism. An attempt to make people all over the world laugh at them... I would sleep easier in my bed knowing it was some form of sexual perversion than if they actually were this stupid.
I fear that truth is stranger than fiction; and creationists are stranger than either.
the layman's guide to computer science
*Everyone* knows by now that every time they find another fossil, was also have another gap in the fossil record. As time goes on, the number of gaps just keeps increasing!
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
If your brain cells committed suicide because of the annoying way Kent Hovind talks, I agree with you. I find his accent extremely annoying. But how does it have to do with his actual argument? Does his accent make his argument automatically wrong?
I once had a signature.
Now that's just nitpicking. The change between two consecutive generations is subtle enough to be unnoticeable. That makes it a continuum for all practical purposes.
We understand the situation you're complaining about, but making statements that don't hold up to basic logic isn't going to make creationists any more reasonable about their standards of proof.
Nothing you say will make creationists any more reasonable about their standards of proof. Nothing whatsoever. It is a complete waste of time to try. Blind faith doesn't require evidence and doesn't acknowledge evidence.
Proof here!
http://www.bushorchimp.com/pics.html
Sorry...but someone had to do it!
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Please understand that macroevolution is fact, no "if"s, "and"s, or "but"s about it. If you don't understand it, don't say that its flawed or wrong or unbiblical or whatever; just say that you don't understand it yet.
No data, no cry
It'd be important to consider that:
- we most likely lack any significant amount of information from that period of time of our ancestors; the amount of data present today amounts to little more than "anecdotical" evidence, and thus the only cogent interpretation is that of "anecdotical" evidence;
- anthropologists are masters in the art of selling their "anecdotical" interpretation as "science", whereas in reality, paleoanthropology is a field where we are very often looking at intrinsically unverifiable claims, which puts the technical aspects of the arguments of these prophets into the same class as the technical aspects of arguments of priests: proof by intimidation, proof by "nice pictures", or proof by reversal of prejudiced assumptions, et cetera;
- we have thus no idea whether the remains found belong to healthy, socially integrated, or unhealthy, maybe not socially integrated individuums; so there's no way of integrating that piece of information with the society at-the-time, with any "evolutionary tree" of any sorts, and certainly not with any wider meaning;
- based on a striking absence of data, it appears to be entirely elusive whether human / primate evolution went straight forward in economical minimal small steps that equal mathematical models (i.e., 'parsimony'), or whether such mathematical expectations that modern anthropologists have were not met by the reality of evolution; in addition, morphology and genetics seem to show a striking mismatch particularly in biological entities that are close to each other: so particularly the differentiation between who was, or was not, genetical ancestor to homo sapiens, is going to be hard even in presence of full morphological (i.e., skeletal) data;
Thus, those guys are probably the wrong ones to cite in any "theory of evolution against creationism" debate. It's "time to take the shovel" and dig out some one to ten thousand more skulls, but most certainly not "time to trumpet around assumptions". Looks like it's fun to do - but why do we have to buy the advertising?
I have no doubt that evolution will prevail over creationism, but THAT RIGHT HERE does NOT seem to be the way to do it. Missing links all over.
Very insightful post, though there is plenty of egotism in science. Sometimes it takes a generation for a new hypothesis to be accepted in science, even if a hypothesis fits the available evidence a bit better than the current prevailing theory. Evidence that contradicts the prevailing idea needs to be found.
The main type of argument for creationism (or ID or what have you) seems to be to plant doubt about the various pieces of evidence about evolution rather than present an equally or more cohesive explaination of all the evidence found so far. They say that it makes more sense that an intelligent designer made all life than for life to evolve, but that leaves out a massive hole in forgetting to ask where that intelligent designer came from, which is more unlikely that an intelligent designer would come to exist out of the chaos than biological life.
Hey now!
Look at any 2004 election returns by county map. See that tiny blue due east of Atlanta? That's me!!!
UGA has very fine biology and life sciences departments. You'd be getting rid of some fine scientists.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
My point is any evidence can be rationalized away if you really try
Actually, what you critise is anecdotal evidence, and here I am with you. However, I do not agree that any evidence can be rationalized away. I would like to argue that anecdotal evidence is in fact no evidence at all. Scientific evidence, at least, is something completely different from a reported sighting.
Let me give a simple example. I propose the following (maybe over-simplified) theory: Anywhere on the surface of the Earth a stone you hold in your hand will fall towards the surface of the Earth once you let it go. Now you can say "This is crazy, I don't believe in this silly idea!". Now we can conduct a series of experiments, traveling around and observing the direction in which the stones we drop are accelerated. I predict the outcome of these experiments will provide strong evidence supporting my theory. Furthermore we can describe the experiments in great detail and everybody sceptical of the results can do their own, independent, experiments.
Now this is evidence you can not seriously rationalize away. (And no, my theory is not trivial -- I claimed that something observed locally is true everywhere on the surface of the Earth.)
What about evidence in court? Isn't this often just anecdotal in the form of the testimony of eye witnesses? Yes, and if this is the only evidence it might actually be aproblem. Independent of that, this is different from reports of burning bushes talking to you. Namely because of the a priori probability of the reported event. If a corpse was found in an empty warehouse, peppered with bullet holes, a report of someone running away wielding a gun is very plausible.
617B3B7F7E7C7D7F00EOF
If your brain cells committed suicide because of the annoying way Kent Hovind talks, I agree with you. I find his accent extremely annoying. But how does it have to do with his actual argument? Does his accent make his argument automatically wrong?
I admit, I find the manner in which he speaks intensely irritating. Not the accent so much as the smug self-righteousness of it. I watched about five minutes of this whackjob, and he never actually made any argument. He repeated -- over and over and over again -- that students are being "lied to", but never said anything of substance. I'm sure he says something more substantial at some point, but I'm not interested in watching an hour of mindless evangelical rhetoric just so I can argue with the few actual points he makes.
If someone would care to summarize his arguments, I would be happy to debunk this crap. Otherwise, I have better things to do on a Sunday morning than listen to him.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Uh, not quite. There is a lot of compelling evidence for evolution. There's not a scrap for God. Its all faith.
Both sides rest on circumstantial evidence, and have been mounting a lot of it for a long, long time.
WTF? What does that sentence even mean?
You say that nothing will sway the creationists; I say that BOTH sides are firmly entrenched on this issue, and it's going to take a lot more than circumstantial evidence to convince either side.
The creationists have faith; this is irrational belief. If they want to go ahead and argue that its irrational, I certainly wouldn't stop them. You are framing this like it is some kind of CNN two-party debate. Listen carefully: there are not two sides. There just aren't. There is empirical evidence for evolution, and a bunch of people who refuse to believe it. That's it.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
It's the OP that is in error, not TFA. There is a big difference between the missing link and a missing link. The former is a 19th century semi-religious concept that has no scientific value. The article however uses the latter phrase, which just means that we had no knowledge of the species that was intermediary between homo erectus and homo sapiens, and now we do, which is scientifically interesting.
Also, see this:
Human - apes, transitional forms
So you tell me what that accomplished?
But that's just the point! People should be and have to be accountable for their own belief, that's certainly not the same as (comfortable?) blind faith.
Only by making up your own mind using your own sources you can become a whole and balanced person.
Lifelong study is the duty of a religious person.
I think the critical teacher has done her a great favour.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
> You, for instance, could be fooled by
Very good choice of words.
>You see, different people, different demands.
Yep different people, different demands but everybody can be fooled.
I mean sure this sounds like an interesting find but let's not break out the party hats and kazoos just yet. Don't anomalies exist in all of this? I mean we have examples of anomalies today, ala MIDGET.
The term is "Truncated-Americans", you insensitive clod!
The missing link? Right in the story synopsis, I found http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/03/25/missing .link.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories -- Now we can use the link to RTFA.
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
The process of evolution is a fact, backed up by mountains of evidence. We can even see it happen over short timescales of a few days or weeks.
The exact details of how mankind evolved are always being rethought and sometimes we discard an old theory when we find contrary evidence. Nothing in our lack of knowledge or the mistakes of the past invalidates anything related to the theory itself.
I think that creationists sometimes have an opposite problem as well. They may well be happy to accept the fact of animal evolution but be unable to apply it to mankind. Their church teaches that Man is "special", made in God's image and so on, and so therefore Man could not have evolved from Apes or lesser species.
It's probably a case of one's religious beliefs causing bias in the evaluation of the independent evidence supporting evolution. www.philosophers.co.uk has some great games related to religion and logic, and they explain the results they get from large numbers of people playing their games.
Here's a relevant analysis from the site:
And here's another relevant quote (this one from the 'Taboo' game)...
The analogy is that refusal to accept the theory of evolution despite the many, many facts in its favour is a consequence of one's deeply held religious beliefs causing an inability to rationally evaluate new (and conflicting) evidence. To accept wholeheartedly the truth of the evolution theory may require abandonment of prior beliefs. The adherent has some investment in those beliefs, and to abandon them is just like selling shares when the market is low.
A burning bush wouldnt convince me, id just think i had schizophrenia.
Unfortunately Christianity has lowered the demand for evidence to believe in God to zero. One must believe with no proof at all, to show that one has an excess of faith (for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing).
Misguided or stupid are (not yet) available.
Kent Hovind is possibly misguided or simply plain stupid.
You put his shame on your head by following him.
Just his diatribe about the Grand Canyon should wake up a self-thinking person, it's so irrelevant to the issue!
At best the man is "Willingly Ignorant".
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Did they fing this so-called arc, too?
Just ask Lucy.. maybe she knew him.
Try substituting the word "faith" with "rediculous, unsubstantiated ideas which cause arm to others through political and social ignorance" and you might have just answered your own question. Although I admit, you probably didn't see it at the time of writing.
Dude, it's god. Apparently we've been spelling the shit wrong.
What's evident to be me is neither side can prove what they are trying to prove, not yet. Both sides have are incesant in a religious way about their beliefs and not enough proof is in existence for any side to win or stand down. Good arguments and rebuttals from both sides. I expect to pop into another such conversation thread a decade from now and see the exact same stuff, even 50 years from now. And then shortly thereafter I will be dead.
...just delayed, or at least the people at Nintendo say so.
What if "God" planted humans on the Earth as miniature monkeys in the "beginning" and thought that they uncover their own past through their own ingenuity rather than baby-like reliance on a bigger "fatherly figure"? If we are all "God's Children", maybe "He" is doing all the steps to ensure we grow up.
and for the f'bait remark: Well, we all know who are still sitting and waiting for miracles, salvation, and reading human-tampered books; still breast-feeding, in a way.
"Developers, developers, developers"
Also has a tendancy for thowing chairs.....
Once again, the only either/or is between LITERAL creation and evolution.
Creationists who aren't strict literal creationists will always be able to argue that evolution is the mechanism that God uses for creation.
Scientific atheists will continue to be annoyed, literal creationists will continue to be outraged, and life will go on evolving...
But the Babelfish is kind of a dead giveaway, isn't it?
Rhapsody in Numbers
Here are some of his points, not necessarily in this order.
I once had a signature.
What, brownstone buildings are a sedimentation product? Amazing!
The GP talks about seasons having an effect on the rate at which sediments collect (which makes sense as most rivers have seasonal changes in the amount of water carried) etc. Your analogy is deliberately flawed (because I can't believe that someone who's even considering real discussion would make such an unfitting analogy). It is possible to date something by looking at how much dust there is on it, comparing that to how much dust can be expected to collect per day, whether the air is undisturbed or not and so on. Yes, you can just look at the carving in some buildings and get something that might be an accurate age (the carving could be lying). Earth, however, seems to lack such a carving - so we have to look at what we have and analyze the data until we can guess the age of what we see.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
If all the trends contnue, in 50 years you'll be working as a serf for some global corporation and speaking spanglish. Your quality of life will be much les than it is now from the 21st century resource depletion and resource wars. You'll be lucky to even have a constant supply of drinkable water, let alone 24/7 electricity. Society will more resemble the utter dismal existence of like north korea today, due to the masssive increase of global rulers power over individuals and continual additions to the "big brother" aspects of soul-less society.
You are in the "good old days" now. Tech in and of itself will do more harm than good because the "civilization" part of human-ness is not keeping pace, it is de-evolving back to barbarism and severe autocracy.
>This is a straw man argument. Nobody is claiming you can use radiocarbon dating on anything but recent fossils. Geological layers are dated by a variety of means, including radiological dating of isotopes much longer-lived than carbon-14.
Can you (or anyone) provide a couple of examples of a fossil that was dated by any other means than its position in a geological layers? The creation web sites state a couple of quotes from secular sources stating that other dating methods are not generally used creationscience.
Evolution sites claim they are talkorgins but no examples are presented.
The change between two consecutive generations is subtle enough to be unnoticeable.
Tiger Woods' parents look nothing like him.
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool
So, both sides are wrong, you claim.
One side says that there was a supernatural being who did it all.
The other side says that no supernatural being did it.
So, your "middle ground" is that a supernatural being did it. But the way it did it was by a means that looks like it wasn't involved.
So, where did the supernatural being in the "middle ground" come from? Was it also "intelligently designed"? If so, by what? The cycle continues on to infinity.
If the supernatural being was not "intelligently designed", then why are there two processes (one for supernatural beings and one for every speck of life we can study)?
How did this ever make it to +4 Insightful? It's more like "inciteful". Is there some sarcasm or cultural reference I'm missing?
I happen to be from "the middle", and I've never believed in or been taught creationism. And besides, we middle dwellers know what would happen if the coasts were isolated from the rest. California's economy would collapse because it produces nothing but bad movies and even worse wine, and the East would become one big ghetto (but the rent would still be $1000/ft^2).
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
Existence exists (if it didn't you wouldn't even have a mind to read /., let alone have /. itself exist), and everything exists as something. Because everything exists as something (at a minimum with a spatial/temporal relationship to the rest of reality) it can produce affirmative evidence of itself. Things which do not exist cannot produce evidence of themselves, because if they could, they would exist. Therefore, if there is no evidence regarding an argument, the null-hypothesis of non-existence must be held. In the case of God, absent direct affirmative proof, I assume God.
The burden of proof falls upon whoever makes an affirmative statement, because negative statements cannot be proven (there would be no evidence if the negative statement were correct.) This argument is also useful in explaining why we should not think we are in a matrix/under control of aliens/etc.
This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
It could only be categorized as a "conspiracy to push evolution" in the same way that scientists conspire to push gravity. Got a better idea than evolution that fits the facts better?
ID? Pahlease!
What predictions does it make?
How can it be tested repeatedly?
How can it be falsified?
No predictions + no repeatability + no falsifiability = no science.
-----
I'll tell you what, let's make a deal. If you are willing to boycott any discovery made with evolution as one of its fundamental tenets, you will gain my respect. This is because you are putting your money where your mouth is, so to speak.
In other words, do you have the faith to tell a doctor that you want the treatment that presupposes that evolution is an utter falsehood? Is your faith that strong, or will you be just another hypocrite that denegrates a fundamental pillar of modern biology while taking advantage of discoveries made through it?
hehe! that takes me back.
I really hate all these statements about spectrum vs steps of evolution. YES. evolution (if its true) occurs as a continuous spectrum. BUT. there is no way for us to ever perceive this spectrum as one. we can only see specific samples of it, and thus must classify these samples as descrete steps. for example, take random samples of the COLOR SPECTRUM. pick red, greed, orange, and blue. lets say that is all we know of the spectrum. if we believe the "spectrum" exists, then there must also be a "missing link" called yellow between orange and green. it is a continuous transition, but we classify it as a descrete steps to differentiate it from the others. so please, stop this nonsense about continuity or discrete steps you're all talking about the SAME THING!
well, i'm noticing this thread spiralling off-topic, but i'm not all that bothered. either way, my point is this; if you constantly question and challenge your faith, and then find that it's still there - doesn't that tell you something?
http://xkcd.com/313/
Now that's funny. You're still an ass... but a funny one.
Right. But I think that "theory" is implicit when I talk abouth math. Otherwise it makes no sense at all.
Anyway, your comment help clarifying it. Thanks.
Rethinking email
So what? The Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster tells me we were all created by his noodly appendage. The only thing the bible has over http://www.venganza.org/ is that it's been around a bit longer. Length of tradition of course proves nothing. Hinduism has been around considerably longer than Judaism yet you are choosing to believe the newcomer.
Science, and evolution, rest on proof in the fossil and genetic records. The bible has no such proof behind it and so for the purposes of this discussion should be thrown on the junk heap along with all other 'sacred' texts.
You are really missing the point. This seems to be a common problem, but let me explain - the parent of my comment discussed creationism. Discussing creationism without reference to its underlying beliefs is asinine. The point is not that the Bible is proven correct - the point is that a belief system based in the Bible is not fundamentally inconsistent with the scientific theory of evolution.
I do, however, have to thank you for not disproving my hypothesis that the people who understand that this is a false dichotomy form a tiny minority of the people who speak out loudly about it on one side or the other.
I belive in God, but it is irrelevant to the discussion. My point is that God has no means of proving itself. No one, not moving mountais (literaly), not converting people, not sending messages, not even appearing to all people and telling us something. No one of those would prove the existence of God.
And there is no known flaw at the theory of evolution. And macroevolution is a fact. My point was exactly that the GP underestimated how much the scientists want to find a flaw at the theory (his estimate was: "everybody want to win a Nobel price", mine was: "everybody wants to make a revolution on all sciences"), and tell that to all the world. And until now, no one was able to do that.
Rethinking email
I'm pretty sure my food, nowadays, comes mostly from factory farms owned by large corporations. Inbred rednecks don't control the food supply anymore.
Now we need to find two missing links. Arrrgh! It's getting worse!
They fail miserably even when explaining their own theory... what prevent God from creating life trough evolution?
I think you're forgetting the growing muslim population.
"Only by making up your own mind using your own sources you can become a whole and balanced person.
Lifelong study is the duty of a religious person."
So how does that work. You sit down, think about it and say "YES, there is a God, and by golly, He's Almighty!"
I think, therefore I am...I think.
let me check the Bible to see if it's true or not.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I was waiting for someone to point out that creationism and the theory of evolution aren't completely incompatible. :)
The problem is some people aren't willing to see that the Bible is not a historical document, it's a religious document. It's an instruction manual on how to build a relationship with God. Unfortunately, I wasn't taught that creationism and evolutionism might be compatible until college. All through my earlier years I had thought of them as completely incompatible, until I learned more about evolution and I, without having heard of Intelligent Design, came up with the idea independantly.
The early church made critical errors when it took the Bible literally, which has referred to the earth as flat and the earth at the center of the universe, and the sun as moving through the skies (as opposed to the earth moving around the sun). The church backed up the latter two as far as I know, and any scientists who claimed otherwise were in danger of being called heretics. Which would have been bad.
Eventually the church was forced to admit (only last century, I think) that the Bible is not to be taken literally word-for-word all the time.
Now, the question is, is the church making the EXACT SAME MISTAKE again by assuming the Genesis creation story is 100% factual? I'm not going to try and argue for Intelligent Design, but I do want to make it clear that I believe the church needs to be more open-minded, otherwise we very well may end up looking silly again.
I say Intelligent Design paints an even more beautiful picture of creation than what I originally learned in sunday school. What more magnificent way to create the world! In sunday school I learned that God was with His creation and molded it for the entire period He created it. But the idea of him simply setting it all in motion with a single creation of the matter that would then go on to form the Big Bang... and then would form our solar system, and eventually all life on our planet. God set everything in motion and watched as His creation assembled itself. That shows me a more powerful God than the sunday school stories.
That is a very rational way of looking at the situation. Lets face it, until we have overwhelming evidence for one or the other, either theory could be "right" and/or both could be "Right". Your approach leaves room for everyone to be "right" until we learn more and discover more.
I will point out one flaw that I see. To make your analogy more accurate, I would suggest replacing dell with an entity that is not universally accepted to exist or universally accepted to manufacture the product. (just like god) For instance, this statement...
That statement does not really make much sense because most people (some would disagree), but most rational people do not assume that aliens make PC's. And some percentage of rational people do not believe that aliens exist at all. (again, some would disagree)
So, I think a more meaningful analogy might be...
That statement does not really say much about the existence, or non-existence of god, but it says you may be able to build a really bitchin gaming rig. :)
On the other side, there are those who say that there is no Easter Bunny. The eggs and candies are delivered/hidden by other humans.Damn those Easter Bunny deniers and their closed minds! Damn those secular "Human Deliverers".
You say that "Intelligent Delivery" is the "middle ground". The existance of the Holy Hopper is not questioned. But he delivers the eggs and candies through his influencing human minds.
The Written Rabbit tells us only that He does deliver the eggs. It does not say HOW he delivers them. Intelligent Delivery is the answer.
Again, your comment was mod'ed up?
Egotism in science? How about the egotism in religion?
*cough* Pat Robertson *cough*
*cough* Jerry Falwell *cough*
Pot, meet kettle. Hey! You're black!
Dude, you're going extinct!
You don't have the proper survival traits, do you? I know people who think birth control is a sin. (don't even mention abortion) Their descendants will rule the Earth.
Explaining evolution to a fundamentalist bible literalist is like trying to convert an Afghani Muslim to Christianity, it'll never happen.
-Abdul Rahman
Oh You POS
These scientists are incredible! Has anyone ever read Forbidden Archeology by Michael Cremo. Apparently, we may be even older than that..... http://www.forbiddenarcheology.com/
I can definitely imagine forms of "Intelligent Design" that occupy the middle ground. That's not what we are being offered. We are being offered sewage, and told that it's "good for you".
... evil is too strong a word, because you don't intend harm. Nevertheless you are committing evil actions by arguing in this way to those who may not recognize the fallacy. To hold a fallacious belief is error, not evil. To attempt to induce others to hold it may not have an evil motive, but it *IS* an evil action.
Pan Spermia is a plausible scenario, and there's nothing that says that those original seed carrying meteors couldn't have been intelligently built. THAT'S a middle ground hypothesis. There's still no way to prove it, but it's middle ground.
What you are asking is that people first accept the conclusion that you wish to reach, and then shape their evidence to fit that conclusion. This is
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There's a good (fiction) book called "Link" by Walt Becker that deals with the discovery of evidence of a new species. Summary from Amazon: Paleoanthropologist Samantha Colby and her team have discovered a skeleton of humanoid but not human origin in West Africa. In addition, they found an artifact composed of metal not found on Earth. Samantha asks her former lover, renegade scientist Jack Austin, to assist her in solving the mystery. Austin has long proposed the interaction of extraterrestrials with early man, but he has been the laughing stock of the scientific community. As they unravel the mystery, their journey takes them from Central Africa to the Andes and what they discover might kill the laughter in the throats of Jack's detractors. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380731614/qid=11 43397139/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-1883774-52033 25?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
California feeds itself. The east coast might have to chop down all its re-grown forests and turn them back into farmland, but the west coast will do just fine.
The two views are not contradictory. Understanding *how* something functions or was put together doesn't mean it wasn't made. That logic is akin to:
I know how a PC works, and how it is put together, therefore Dell does not make PCs.
No, it isn't akin to that at all. It is akin to:
I know how a PC is assembled automatically, therefore I don't believe they are hand-made.
We have a vast amount of evidence that life evolves complexity, and we know an awful lot about how it can do this unaided. To assume that there is a designer when no designer is needed is irrational.
That's a really fallacious argument. I am fully capable of simultanesouly understanding how computers are made and still believing that Dell exists.
Trouble is, PCs aren't like organisms.
So just face facts and realize that if you "get it", most everybody else probably does too. Your're arguing a debate that doesn't really exist.
The debate exists, and is important.
Only produces bad movies and even worse wine? Surely you jest. California has huge amounts of farm land, a large tech industry and other various industries. In fact, without CA, the rest of the US economy would likely collapse rather quickly.
We don't need all you guys, you need us.
A blog about stuff.
Great, now we have two missing links.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
A writer promotes the isolation and eventual hunting and eating of a huge fraction of a country's population, based solely on their beliefs, which he sees as evidence of hopeless intellectual inferiority. His statements receive overwhelming agreement from the forum in which he is published.
How is this viewpoint is morally superior to those which wrought genocides in Biafra, Croatia, Nigeria, Rwanda, East Timor and dozens of other places in our lifetimes? Are we really so willfully ignorant that we believe all these atrocities didn't start this way? So filled with hubris that we believe America (or our intelligencia, which has itself been targeted in other times and places) incapable of such virulent hatred?
If you still aren't taking me seriously, consider this: Orthodox Judaism posits a literal six-day Creation. If the writer had singled out this group instead of attacking all Genesis believers and the geographic region which he believes contains them, would any of us have called his diatribe anything but hate speech of the most vitriolic and unconscionable sort?
Please read the parent post again, examine its +5 Insightful score, and tell me how far removed we are from that mindset. And please be intellectually honest; if you plan to claim that BadAnalogyGuy was only trying to be funny, or that the moderators were only moderating ironically, please provide supporting evidence.
Sorry. You are making lots of assumptions about the facts. The facts are that objects with certain characteristics have been observed (are reported to have been observed) in certain backgrounds.
These become fossils when you assume that these objects are the remains of previously existing animals. Detecting patterns of changes requires presuming dates. (Yes, there is evidence, and I find it convincing, but the dates aren't facts, they are deductions.)
Etc.
Evolution doesn't show up until you are quite distant from the original raw facts.
OTOH, Evolution isn't only biological. One can observe evolution, as "the survival of the most stable" in everything from sub-atomic particles to topography to galactic structures to mathematical proofs. Biological Evolution is the most complex, and thus the one with more unexplained nooks and crannies. (Others are hard to observe, and this can generate it's own unexplained nooks and crannies.)
People have the strongest emotional response to biological evolution, particularly when it touches on their own ancestry. This doesn't make it the only form of evolution, but it tends to be the only place where evolution is ever disputed.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Here we go again...
...really?
I wish more christians were like you and actually, you know, followed the teachings of Christ. I have known a few of these sorts of christians in my life, people who quietly lived their faith and were happy to share it if asked, but who never used their faith as a pedastal to put themselves above others.
If Christ's teachings really have value, you don't need to preach. Live your life well and people will ask you "How is it that you are so happy and fulfilled? How did you come to be such a good person?" Then you can tell them.
If you aren't happy and fulfilled, if you are mean, bitter or judgemental, I could care less what religion or philosophy you follow. It obviously isn't doing you any good, why would I want to know about it?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It depends on whether he was espousing rationality or not. Evangelical atheists are a pretty close-minded spiteful faith unto themselves. At least you can appreciate agnosticism for being logical, but agnostics usually live and let live and don't set out to tear other people down. Evangelical atheists actively work to share their faith. And I say faith, because what they claim cannot be proven, it can only be disproven. Evangelical atheists don't encourage people to make up their own minds; they have made up their own with no scientific data to prove their claims and hate those who disagree-- the same thing fundies of any religion do. I wouldn't be so proud of the guy from the OP's description. Evangelical atheists are no better than those they hate.
You're the third person to respond to my comment, and the third to do so without completely wrapping your mind around my actual point. Evidently, I have once again succeeded in hiding my point underneath my words. I apologize for this shortcoming.
You are, however, the first response with anything intelligent to say that's even remotely on topic. I am not asking anyone to accept any conclusions - I am only asking them to stop bowing to the false dichotomy of Evolution vs. Creationism. You seem to have focused in on my invocation of Intelligent Design as an example of middle ground. Anything other than "evolution is right and creation is absolute bunk because it is fundamentally inconsistent with evolution" and "creation is right and evolution is absolute bunk because it is fundamentally inconsistent with evolution" qualifies as middle ground in this debate. I only used ID as an example because it is well-known, and then I went on and stated that because of how it has been (misre)presented it is not all that popular of an example.
Focus on my point, not on my invocation of a controversial term that I freely say is controversial and poorly-received because of its poorer presentation in recent years. The point is simply that it is possible to reconcile the scientific theory of creation with the religious belief in creation. Anyone who thinks that scientific theory and religious beliefs are fundamentally mutually exclusive is in most cases (but not all) making the grave error of mistaking science for religion or, equally bad, religion for science.
I never asked anyone to accept creationism, evolution, or intelligent design in any form. For at least the fourth time today, I will restate my point: This is not a situation of "A if and only if not B." A and B are independent facts, the truth of either of which has no bearing on the truth of the other. It is possible that evolution and creation are both right, that only one is right, or that both are wrong.
I do not push my beliefs on this matter on anyone. I just want them to terminate their stubborn insistence that A <---> !B for independent A and B.
But you are also missing the point. If you take an 'Anglican' compromise such that Creatanism is compatible with evolution then evolution could also be said to be compatible with Confuscism, Hinduism and Buddism too, or more particularly is is compatible with none. Evolution doesn't need a Christian context to provide the universe with meaning, in point of fact what it shows is that it, together with modern cosmology, can offer a pretty good framework to explain how we got here with absolutly no need for any gods whatsoever.
Which is why the fundies have the problems they do and why they end up ID or 6-day Creationism. If you go for the compromise approach then the requirement for god shrinks as knowledge advances, to the point of no requirement whatsoever. At which point were back to the 'I believe because I'd like to believe' state and the question of why the Judaochristian tradition over Hinduism applies.
You're high, right? California is responsible for about 15% of the rest of the US's GDP. If we were our own Soverign Nation, we'd be in the Top-10 Strongest Economies in the world (between France and Italy).
We produce the majority of the food you eat everyday. Take this example: Florida makes Oranges, but the oranges there are watery, overly-tart, and have terrible texture. That's why they go into juice. 99% of the Oranges you eat (table oranges) come from California (although Austrialia has some tasty naval varieties too), because they have superior flavor, and texture.
More Software companies call Silicon Valley home than anywhere else in the country, including Google.
And our Wine is better than the rest of the countrie, even the cheap stuff. Go down to Trader Joe's and pick up a bottle of Charles Shaw, aka 2-Buck-Chuck. Best $2 you'll ever spend on wine. I work in a restaurant that deals almost exclusivly with California wine, and most stuff I try is on par with anything you'd find from, say, France or Italy...
If we cut ourselves off from the rest of the nation, it'd be you guys who'd be hurting. We could jack up Ag tarrifs and laugh all the way to the bank.
"All warfare is based on deception."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
We should absolutely not be interested in trying to convince people who are unwilling to be convinced that this is just a link in a longer chain.
That is the same as saying you should not question this yourself, but aim to see how you can make it fit.
Yes it is. Science is such a noble proposition.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Easy, Vlad the Impaler.
You, sir, are an idiot. Please cite for me the exact language I used to say that Intelligent Design is the middle ground. I used it as an example, not as an explanation. Again, read my comment and this time, when you look up the difficult words in the dictionary, look up the difficult words in the definitions as well. Eventually, you might be able to comprehend what I wrote. Please stop replying until that time - you aren't doing the discussion any favors by picking two words I used and acting like they were my entire comment, and the fact that you're receiving +1 Funny points shows just how seriously you are being taken in that endeavor.
I'll take your False Dichotomy and raise you a False Compromise.
Anyone who gets his hopes up this might end the bullspit about creationism should realize one thing: Religions were never really bothered by facts.
You can fly back in time 250,000 years and prove that Earth existed before the Bible tells you. You'll get 3 reactions (in this order):
1. They'll claim your results are just fabricated.
2. If your results are simply true and claiming them as fabricated even they can't pretend anymore it's not there, they'll claim that God tricks you into believing it, to test your faith.
3. Once it's proven past the point of any doubt, they'll find a new pet project to "prove" the existance of God.
Take a look at the debate whether the sun revolves around the earth or v.v.
First the observations were called false, since the telescope produces false results.
Once it could no longer be blamed on the telescopes, it was a test of God to ridicule scientists and test the strength of their faith.
Once our probes went to every corner of the solar system and found moons around other planets, proved that the sun is the center etc., the matter was dropped and we got a new "proof" for the Bible's story.
Simply stop listening to those who do not want to learn. If they want to be happy in their own little world, leave them there and let them enjoy being stuck in the past. Should creationism be taught in your school, explain to your kids that the schools have to do that to appease the religious fanatics.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If we dig up bones from hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago, how can we show that bones from one era are from an animal/human that evolved later into another animal/human? That is, why couldn't both of those animals/humans have lived at the same time, independent of each other? We don't have all that many samples, considering the life of the earth. How can we show anything more than that bones from one era look similar and have similar characteristics to bones in another era?
See my other response in this thread here regarding mistaking science for religion or vice versa. What point am I missing? You claim that, because evolution is compatible with the Anglican view and also compatible with the Confucianist view, it is therefore incompatible with any religious views. Your conclusion simply does not follow from your premises. The correct conclusion to draw is that, for all religious beliefs which are not incompatible with evolution, those religious beliefs can be held by a person without stubbornly denying on purely religious grounds the veracity of the theory of evolution. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Keep religion and science separate. Both are important parts of human history and culture, and adherence to either should not be a badge of ignorance. Again, all I'm asking is for people to stop bowing to a false dichotomy. If you can't follow my point, don't tell me I'm missing yours when it defies all logic. And if you follow my point and disagree with it, then debate me about it. I am always open to criticism, but you are going to look foolish if you do nothing but throw red herrings at me.
Macroevolution is, and probably always will be, the "theory" part of the "theory of evolution". From there, I make no claim in this post to its truth because quite frankly, it will make no difference to the fundamental views of anyone reading it. And please, don't make assumptions about how much I do or don't understand. That's what most non-Christians hate about many Christians, is it not?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
You're the fourth person to reply to my comment, and you take first place for the most succinct response. However, your response misses the point. Read my other replies to help you find it, but the key is not to read my use of an example of middle ground as my endorsement of that middle ground as the only possible explanation. I am really beginning to wish I had used a different middle ground as an example, but ID is the most commonly-known example.
Are you arguing that only one of the two extremes must be correct? If not, then are you arguing that the words "a middle ground" mean the same thing as "the only possible explanation"? If not that, then what exactly are you saying? As far as I can tell, you are making one of those two statements. If a third exists, I am unaware of it and will await your explanation.
Meanwhile, you have still been unable to explain why your proposed "middle ground" contains a supernatural being who is exempt from evolution AND intelligent design/creationism.
No, your "middle ground" is nothing more (or less) than wrapping the scientific findings in your belief that "God wanted it done that way".
Science is not faith.
Faith is not science.
There is no "false dichotomy".
I've thought about this one, and a burning bush or being spoken to directly by God probably wouldn't do it for me. It would be far more likely that I was experiencing a hallucination or some other psychological phenomena, which is probably a good reason for God to pick someone other than me if He decides to reveal Himself to humanity (again).
Reality has a liberal bias
That, sir, is an *excellent* riposte.
Excuse me while I start to 'fish' my tuna sandwich out of the gaps in my keyboard...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
My wife was a very strong Christian with absolute faith in her life and her life after death until she took a theology class with a very obviously biased professor who spent a great deal of effort convincing his class of the folly of such belief. Now she questions her faith and correctness every day.
All it took was ONE "obviously biased" professor to break her absolute faith?
Yeah, that's some absolute faith there, buddy! Sheesh!
You think maybe she just internalises anything told to her by a person of authority?
She accepted blindly (what you called 'absolute faith') what her preacher told her, until she met a professor and then she accepted THAT blindly? That's the problem with accepting to be a lamb: You'll get taken on a ride by every sheep herder you meet.
You can't take the sky from me...
He'd/She/it would have to open all registers to make me believe. And would have to promise to make an appearance every time I'd be making a convert. Or else agree to the fact that all his other believers wouldn't actually believe in HIM/HER/IT but in my poor attempts at demagogy or enlightened self-interest or be sheep or indoctrinated at extreme young age.
Those prophets sure had a raw deal (or ate too many mushrooms).
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Well, no one really needs to make any assumptions about what you do or do not understand, since you yourself prove your ignorance about what a scientific "theory" is, along with using the term creationists made up, macroevolution
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The scary thing here is nothing to do with what 'BadAnalogyGuy' was posting, it's that you're too intellectually-challenged to recognise it as humour - it was in bad taste, malicious, and morally bankrupt, just like most good humour. I would point out that there is a difference between satire and genocide, and that a lot of the most lauded works of literature exhibit "the pen is mightier than the sword" characteristics.
Humour is a sophisticated weapon, no-one likes being the butt of a joke, and cracking jokes at these folks expense is one way of getting them to examine their beliefs in a social context. It may not be the most persuasive of options, but hell, we've *tried* reasoning with them... [sigh] the problem is that they insist on believing their 2000-year-old fairytale. Just because it's old, doesn't make it right.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
"Missing link"? That's not scientific terminology, and it hasn't been scientific terminology for many, many decades now. The only ones talking about "missing links" these days are creationists who are under the impression that Darwin's Origin of Species is the latest and the greatest on the science front.
My other body is also not wearing any.
Wouldn't it be amazing if we could somehow genetically reengineer Home Erectus and revive the species? Imagine how much we would learn.
I would be content with this except for one worry; social evolution, as far as I can see, seems to be the survival of the "worst", not really the best. Look at society and tell me, who's making the babies, raising them and indoctrinating them? It's not the smarties, it's the dumb ones.
Too bad he'll spend forever whining about how 8 high is the highest hand in poker because his religion told him it was, so you'll never get the pot.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
That is quite possibly the scariest thing I've ever read... "intellectual fundamentalists" is a new term I think we'll begin to see. The level of hate you seem to have for those you feel "intellectually inferior" is quite alarming... Take that idea, let it nurture and grow over the next couple of generations... I wonder if an eventual genecide will take place. Scary stuff and glad I don't live in the US.
Delson said the fossil found in Ethiopia "might represent a population broadly ancestral to modern humans or it might prove to be one of several side branches which died out without living descendants."
note the strong "or" in the middle. Then to put it simply, we could have Bigfoot here **OR** just another old bone. Sounds like a slow news day on cnn.
Perhaps in the 4th sense of the word, but christianity is a religion in the first sense.
This is a tad like the whole "theory" extravaganza. You can use the same word to mean two different things, and then confuse everyone by equating these two different things with a crossover use of that word.
So people can be religious about their atheism, but atheism is not a religion in the sense that christianity is a religion.
You can't take the sky from me...
Australia won't be producing oranges for much longer. Every time I go to the supermarket, the only oranges (and table grapes) they sell are from California. Meanwhile Australian friut growers in the Riverland are plowing their produce into the ground and ripping up fruit trees. It's a fucking disgrace.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Hooray! Yet another person who entirely missed the point. What I would actually say is that my religion and the game of poker have entirely separate rules. Thanks for playing and for helping to further verify my point in the minds of those who actually understood it.
Anyone care to speculate where this will leave us in 50 years, let alone 250,000?
It's been done -- look up the old SF short story "The Marching Morons". Brilliant story, Swiftian humour. 1930's I think. Read it.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Creationists co-opted the term "Macroevolution". They didn't invent it.
No data, no cry
That's as maybe, but the real argument (at least in my view) is down to whether there is a divine creator intelligently guiding/controlling the development of species on earth or not.
The Easter Bunny?? I've always seen religious types as being children who never stopped believing in Santa Clause and the holy scripture 'Twas The Night Before Christmas.
As for "Intelligent Delivery", as you can see from the following passages [Moore, 1:49-52]:
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
the Holy Scriptures don't actually say that Santa Clause puts the presents under the tree himself; he only fills the stockings. So, the "middle ground" is that Santa brings the presents to the parents, and they put them under the tree.
But then, maybe it's all metaphors.
It was dated with Argon decay. Go read the real press release by the original author at http://www.stoneageinstitute.org/. Press releases by the popular press are often only mangled versions written by some liberal arts major and often contain errors.
>Radiocarbon dating only works up to about 50,000 years.
Other atoms has longer decay times, giving the ability to date rock up to billions of years.
> As the result, the meaning of that skull can be seen to be entirely fabricated.
Interesting interpretation by you.
> But how are geological layers dated? By the fossils that are found in them! This is circular reasoning!
Yes, your reasoning is very roundish.
Another method they are using to date this fossil is by the chemical composition. It was buried in volcanic ash and each volcanic eruption has a unique chemical signature. By matching the chemicals in the fossil to the eruption they can use other methods to match the eruption to a date.
It sounds like the fossil might have been a "float", meaning that it was eroded out of it's original bedding and washed downhill. Unfortunately that would mess up the context a bit. Still, a nice find and with some more detective work they can narrow down the date (hopefully).
This news was just a press release from the group that is studying the fossils and a full blown paper with more details should come out later.
True.
Hate is bad in any context, it's not rational (and that's what brings the circle round in a discussion about religion...)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Exactly my point. :) Whether there is or is not a divine creator/guider/designer/whatever is entirely separate from the question of how species evolve and develop. The problem is that too few people actually discuss the real question because everyone is too focused on claiming that they are right and thus everyone else is wrong, committing themselves to the false dichotomy. If people would cure themselves of the false dichotomy, they would be able to actually think about the real issues.
:)
I don't know for a fact that the theory of evolution explains everything about life on Earth, but it does a good enough job that I tend to trust it unless the small blanks left on the page get filled in with entirely inconsistent entries. I also can't prove that there's been divine intervention in the evolutionary process at some point, nor can anyone prove that there hasn't been.
These are entirely separate concerns. I like discussing either of them. I like discussing their interplay. I don't, however, like dealing with stubborn ignorami who can't understand that they are separate discussions. Thanks for reminding me that I'm not alone.
I love how every creationist is an expert on all things related to evolution. They alway bring up some insignificant little issue with carbon dating or the theory of evolution, and parade it around as if all the scientists in the world had never even considered them. God, you creationists are so smart!
Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is always the correct one and the simplest explanation in this case is that god created the entire universe in 7 days! So simple a child could understand! Now, THAT is how it's done. Scienced.
"I'm not religious, but at the same time I don't get why science always has to have something to prove."
I dated a fossil once. We split up long ago. She didn't like carbonated.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
And please, don't make assumptions about how much I do or don't understand.
Didn't you express that you understand microevolution, and that you don't understand macroevolution? That's ok; its not the easiest science to come to grips with. It took me years to pull out of creationism and study evolution. Its worth studying though, and it'll aid your understanding of astronomy, biology, and geology, because they all tie together.
Just remember that you can't learn science through creationism.
No data, no cry
wait the universe is only 10,000 years old!!! that is why we can see starlight from billions of lightyears away!!!
A dichomoty exists in that one side bases their belief upon blind faith and the other side rests their believe upon observation that suggest certaian phenomenon occurrances a/k/a science. The side on the faith that the content o f the Bible today is actually the same content drafted by "prophets" (read: people whose motive and purpose in drafting the Bible is unclear).
On the otherhand many people today can trace the development of evolution science and can rely upon specific evidence that supports their belief.
It doesn't matter what support either side has. The issue here isn't the merits of either side of the dichotomy. The issue is that it is a false dichotomy.
"The "missing link" hysteria in the media is ridiculous. How many times have we already found the "missing link"?"
I've pointed this subject line out before and I agree about the media hysteria. However the missing links of the past apemen were faked. Nabraska Man, Piltdown Man, etc. All faked. And well known now that they were faked. And it's nearly every week that we have a media and slashdot story promoting "The Missing Link" and the "facts" of evolution. Find a piece of bone or a few bones, looks like a skull, get an "artist" do to an "impression" of a running apeman chasing a deer and voila! the latest proof of evolution. Yeah, really scientific.
However when it's discovered that it's only 1000 years old and/or faked, there is no media hysteria and no slashdot story showing it's false.
And comments like mine are always modded down to 0 or -1 due to the fact that if you don't say what the moderators like to hear then they mod you down. Not that I give a damn actually!
Wouldn't God just simply have the power to make you believe? If you didn't, or had doubts, not god. All that free will stuff seems like rationalizations to explain why skeptics exists, and why real miracles (not the faces on grilled cheese crap) are not regular occurances.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
People are welcome to believe whatever they want about religion and I don't care. They just can't call it science, and that's where your post goes horribly wrong. Intelligent Design's most recent reincarnation began in 1987. This was the year that teaching "scientific creationism" in public schools was struck down by the courts as unconstitutional in Edwards v. Aguilard. Also in this year, early drafts of the book Of Pandas and People started swapping out references of "creationism" and replacing it with "intelligent design" and "creationist" with "design propent," so at the beginning intelligent design == creationism, using little more than a word processor's search and replace function. This is exemplified by the instance of "cdesign proponentists" in place of "creationist," being found out in the the recent intelligent design lawsuit in Dover.
The Pandas wordswap was not the only piece of evidence in the Dover trial showing that Intelligent Design is just warmed over creationism, or even the most significant. Probably the most damning evidence came from the statements of the defense (Dover school board IDers). Classic bits from the trial transcript include moments where a member of the school board is shown to lie under oath to conceal the role of his church in procuring the alledgedly scientific and entirely non-religious Pandas book. Another is where Michael Behe admits under oath that calling Intelligent Design science requires revising the very definition of science, with the new definition making astrology science as well. Behe also admits that there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred. Fellow witnesses for the defense also provided ammunition in Jones' decision against ID. Wikipedia has writeups on both Of Pandas and People as well as on the Kitmiller v. Dover decision, together with links to the trial transcripts, Judge Jones' decision, and other relevant material.
So if ID isn't science, than what is it? It seems clear that it's religion. Besides the Dover trial, here's some supporting evidence ripped from a post I made a while back: 1. The Wedge Document, 2. the Discovery Institute is funded largely by Howard Ahmanson, a person who also funds relgious extremists such as the Chalcedon Foundation, which has the express aim of turning the US into a theocracy, 3. Prominent proponents of ID frequently speak in churches, just like proponents of creation science, 4. the Dover school board was defended by the Thomas Moore Law Center, which is "...a not-for-profit public interest law firm dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. Our purpose is to be the sword and shield for people of faith, providing legal representation without charge to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square." (from their own website, 5. "Of Pandas and People" despite being an ID textbook was written by creationists, 6. Bill Dembski says "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory" (quoted from wikipedia, refering to Touchstone Magazine. Volume 12, Issue4. July/August, 1999, the entire issue being devoted to supporting ID).
So again if someone wants to believe in god or not, that's fine by me. They can even believe that periodically God stops by to bring a flagella or something into existance in a "puff of smoke," to use Behe's view of Intelligent Design. They just can't call it science.
I don't think it is a continuum. More like a really tall, yet discrete, family tree. If you figure 1 million years of evolution and 20 years per generation then the tree has about 50,000 generations between us and the common ancestor at the root.
enter the most awesome quote ever: "Praise me, for I am zombie Jesus. Behold my glory and stuff your kids with caffeine and chocolate."
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
whenever it wasn't vacationing at the ranch in Texas.
Clearing brush is a job the missing link can handle.
If we had more missing links clearing brush, we wouldn't need all those immigrants the missing links want to make felons for being here.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You're missing the point. He's making broad generalizations exactly like the grand parent post yet he gets modded as flamebait while the grand parent gets modded as insiteful.
but i guess that went completely over your moronic heads.
Two points.
Economically, you're right. The loss of CA would be a huge hit to the economy of the rest of the country. However, agriculturally, the rest of the country would do just fine. There is plenty of food grown elsewhere in the country, and I don't know about you, but citrus fruits do not make up the bulk of my diet. The bulk of my diet is grain, cow, and vegetables which can be grown practically anywhere in the country.
Second point is: have fun supporting that tech industry with all those rolling blackouts. What's that you say? California imports about 20% of its electricity? And most of the electricity generated in-state is from natural gas? And Californa imports 85% of the natural gas it uses? I wouldn't raise the price of your oranges just yet. And if you do, you won't be laughing all the way to the bank, you'll be on your way to pay back the loan you took out to keep the lights on.
Funny you mention that... is'nt it interesting that if you look back, the higher the level of society and civilization were' at, the less people have kid's? It used to be kid's were in fact a financial boon, free labor on the farm and such... now they cost a fortune and people don't need to have kid's anymore. Guess that's civlizations' way of cutting off the old growth at the top.
Evangelical atheists are no better than those they hate
Evangelical Atheists don't exist:
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or being in agreement with the Christian gospel especially as it is presented in the four Gospels
2 : PROTESTANT
3 : emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual
4 a capitalized : of or relating to the Evangelical Church in Germany b often capitalized : of, adhering to, or marked by fundamentalism : FUNDAMENTALIST c often capitalized : LOW CHURCH
5 : marked by militant or crusading zeal : EVANGELISTIC
I was hoping they found the missing symlink to a file I lost ages ago.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Is this before or after California kicks out all the illegal immigrants?
Because if you keep them they will continue to multiply while eating all of California's food.
If you kick them out, you will have nobody to pick the fruit.
........What piece or pieces of evidence will it take to convince you that the Theory of Evolution is, in fact, true......
Come up with a repeatable EXPERIMENT that disproves the second law of thermodynamics. Do an experiment that demonstrates by purely statistical, probabilistic methods or any other means you wish, a progression from simplicity to complexity. Show how a collection of simpler components self organizes into a complex system without the application of THOUGHT.
Even WITH the application of all the smarts of all scientists to help, take a collection of the 92 elements and make a "simple" one celled replicating organism, such as an amoeba. You may use any and all methods your imagination can come up with to assemble atoms into a living cell. If that is too difficult, make a virus from these same 92 kinds of atoms and inject it into an already existing cell and see if your newly created virus replicates.
Evolution's central tenet is that the complex life forms we observe came about by means other than involving the activity of mind or intellect. It preaches that simplicity goes to complexity when all we ever observe experientially and experimentally is exactly the opposite. Complex system, left to themselves, always tend to break down into simpler components.
Anyone who can do such an experiment will certainly deserve a nobel prize.
All theory is gray
....I know how PCs are put together, therefore I don't believe that any PCs just magically became assembled from parts......
Funny, and yet do you believe that a "simple" living cell, which as thousands of times more parts, magically became assembled from the elementary atoms?
All theory is gray
The creationists are the ones that keep pushing their views, which have been proven wrong time and time again. They just won't stop. I think their main method of defending creationism is "repeat it enough times and people will start to believe it"... and it works!
Meh.
People need to learn, they need to think... blindly following what some ancient religion tells you is not productive. Why would you not want to progress? Well, I guess that would answer the reason why people are conservative.... they are scared of change. But people can do it, it just takes a LOT of time. This professor is doing his part in educating the masses.
Meh.
Why is it that a certain group of Christians (the so-called creationists) insist on taking the creation account literally instead of figuratively as it should be? The Bible is not meant to be a book of science... STOP TREATING IT LIKE ONE!!!
Meh.
Actually, no. Christianity as it's taught by a loud minority says this, but there's more to it than that.
For example, Paul says in one of the letters to the Corinthians that our faith won't be perfected until we have seen God. In other words, perfect faith can't be attained without perfect evidence. The Bible also has a lot to say about questioning everything that you are told.
It's just easier to tell people that your position is better because they don't have to think about it. Of course, it's also a lot creepier.
Cogito, ergo sig.
> Anyone else want their name stricken from the Book of Life?
Thankfully there is such a thing as "lawyer", I'll simply get another name!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Great statement... from somebody that does not understand the 2nd law. Yes, in a large sense, systems break down over time, or better, they diversify. But you can see systems coming together in real time all over. Evolution is happening RIGHT NOW. It is testable, it is observable, it is fact. Why argue that evolution doesn't happen over very large periods of time when we can watch it happening in short periods of time? Or do you not see evolution happening? Do you choose to ignore it because it complicates your belief?
Meh.
There is no such thing as a "missing link" between species, only a continuum of links. CNN needs better science writers.
Excuse me, I hear the Joke Police sirens...
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
You're right! It's gravity down. Gravity spends all of it's time trying to keep the religious people down (literally)!
The point is well made though, it doesn't count as a conspiracy if everybody is just advancing science.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
.....Or do you not see evolution happening?......
As a matter of fact, I don't know of any EXPERIMENT that was ever done to show how simple parts self assemble into more complex systems. Has anyone even made a structure like a hemoglobin or related chlorophyll molecule by even the application of human intelligence, let alone some mechanistic, probability driven means? We can take such a molecule apart and learn exactly what elements it is composed of. Can anyone now take these elemental parts and build one of these, even though we have an example? Using a living system to make these or using components that were once alive to do this is is not allowed since the experiment must assume that life doesn't exist and needs to be created from the most basic elements. Anyone who manages to do the above, proves evolution's central tenet, namely that simple elements can spontaneously unite to form very complex molecular structures.
It is you that doesn't understand the second law. The principle of entropy has far wider applicability than only thermodynamics.
A quote from the WIKI article: "Unlike most other laws of physics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is statistical in nature, and its reliability arises from the huge number of particles present in macroscopic systems. It is not impossible, in principle, for all 10^23 atoms in a gas to spontaneously migrate to one half of container; it is only fantastically unlikely -- so unlikely that no macroscopic violation of the Second Law has ever been observed."
Evolution of simple life forms into complex ones has also never been observed, and although not impossible, it is just as unlikely as the atoms all migrating to only one part of a container.
True science involves repeatable experiments that can be done TODAY, not philosophizing about what may have takes place millions of years ago. Do just ONE repeatable experiment that clearly demonstrates how a collection of parts assembles itself into some kind of functioning device that can make copies of itself.
All theory is gray
I disagree, I think the Creationism vs. Evolution debate is alive and strong. There are two contradictory views: one, that mankind was created by God as described in Genesis, and the other, that mankind evolved from a lower species. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you ask, I guess), one's viewpoint on this issue and the rationale behind arriving at it is important for developing viewpoints on other scientific theories and moral stances on other seemingly non-related issues.
Now I will admit that there are a lot of intelligent Christians (and of other religions, for that matter) out there who believe in evolution as a tool used by God and that the book of Genesis is metaphorical, not a literal and historically accurate accounting of man's creation. Still others (an interesting set of folks, honestly) believe that God is nature, and that evolution is His spirit at work.
Me, I don't believe either of those philosophies, but at any rate, I still think your anology is incorrect. I'd word it more like the following.
Evolutionist:
Creationist:Well, I would definitely probably get my noggin' checked out if I really saw a burning bush, but even if it's not considered scientific evidence, yes, it would probably convince me.
I guess what it boils down to is that I'm a Doubting Thomas. I like to base my beliefs on what can be seen, touched, observed, repeated, predicted, and so on. If Doubting Thomas were alive today, according to most Christians, he'd probably go to hell because without being able to see and poke around on the evidence, he wouldn't have believed the story of the resurrection.
Now here's something to wrap your brain around. If I'm like Doubting Thomas, why is it that I go to hell for being the same type of person, when he got the proof he wanted and demanded, and that would also have convinced me?
I'm sorry, but it seems that the Christian god, as described in the Bible, has a nasty habit of playing favorites, capriciously sending people to heaven or hell based on whim and when and where they happened to be alive. Moses gets a burning bush, and all I get are "mysterious ways."
If God wants me to give up rational thought and to reject well over a century of thought, research, and evidence, it's going to cost Him more than 2000-year-old stories about His only begotton Son.
I agree with your comment, even though when I first read it, I thought you'd be getting a lot of flack. I guess I was right. :/
If I understand correctly, you're saying that evolution and creation are (for the most part) orthogonal concepts, the truth of one having little to do with the truth of the other. Even as an atheist, I agree with this. In fact, this is what many scientists (many of whom were atheists) have tried for decades to tell creationists (the science-denying kind) to no effect.
[Aside: I also understand (but perhaps not totally agree with) atheists who consider evolution to be evidence against God. It is certainly evidence against one rigid reading of the Bible; a reading and conception of God believed even by its proponents to be a virtual house of cards. It forces a more metaphorical account of Eden, which may be troubling since the fall was a main theodicy and is featured in understandings of Jesus' sacrifice. Evolution is also an explanation that makes parsimony more of an issue. (Is God superfluous?) And evolution does, in the least, remove the argument from design from the table. (Is belief then too difficult to justify?)]
On the matter of language... I guess you found out that using "Creationism" or "Intelligent Design" to mean only that God is responsible for Creation (and not to refer to the crazy pseudo-science) is just simply begging for misunderstanding. In today's language, the specific pseudo-scientific theories are all that the words refer to. I think most today speak of "theistic evolution" or "evolutionary creationism" in order to keep things clear.
Well, I agreed with you except on: "Evolutionists tend to take the closed-minded view that, because evolution happened, it must have happened entirely spontaneously and creationism of any sort must therefore be false."
I guess it depends on what you mean by "evolutionists." Most people who accept evolution are also religious. I believe the rate in the US is 40-50%, which by simple force of numbers requires atheists to be far outnumbered. Perhaps you mean just those who promote an exclusively materialistic account. (I would certainly argue that an exclusively materialistic account fits all the known scientific facts.)
But I would like it to be clear one way or the other, if you wouldn't mind responding.
......we see species change over the course of generations.....
None of the changes we have actually SEEN have evolved one species into another. Innumerable genetic experiments of every sort have been done with one celled organisms which make many generations in a short time. Yet not so much as ONE of these has resulted in a new species. E-coli and other bacteria and moths can respond to environmental stresses, but have and always will remain in their own group.
Countless generations of fruit flies (drosophila) have been subject to all sorts of chemical and radiative mutation inducing experiments. Some rather grotesque aberrations have come from these experiments, but all of them are still fruit flies. No jump from one kind or grouping generally dubbed species, has ever been observed to have actually happened in all this experimentation.
You are correct instating that "Evolution itself isn't science", because it is a system or doctrine based on faith, much like any other religion.
All theory is gray
That is because the creation web sites lie. Fossils are regularly dated by a variety of isotopic dating methods. The most well known is carbon-14 dating. Potassium-argon dating, for example, was used to date Australopithecus boisei and to precisely date the destruction of Pompeii.
Also, the creationist site you linked to is a collection of out of context quotes. Here's one example:
You can find more examples here.
So we don't have to hear any more arguing over terminology and research as its being reported from the field. Then we can put aside all the religious arguments, segmented scientists on theories and update how "where we came from" is taught in school.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
There is evidence that evolution is correct. I have encountered no plausible evidence that evolution is incorrect. Therefore I tentatively accept evolution. (Everything is tentative. Certainty is an illusion. Don't take this as an argument against evolution.)
I have encountered no plausible evidence that creationism is correct. It violates Occam's Razor to accept it. This isn't proof. Occam's Razor isn't always correct, but it's the best heuristic we have.
I don't see a dichotomy. It would be logically consistent to have both creationsism and evolution, and also to lack both, and have some other explanation (yet to be devised). Therefore it's not Creationism vs. Evolution. That is a false picture. But I also don't see any reason for including Creationism.
I see your point, but do you see mine? There isn't any evidence for creationism. None. What evidence would you accept as proof that creationism was incorrect?
(P.S.: This is a rhetorical question. I won't believe what you say, because I've argued with creationists before, and if I successfully produce the evidence they have always defaulted. I may be being unfair to you, but I'm more willing to be unfair to you than to expect you to live up to the agreement. I don't think you know yourself well enough. [I'm accepting that you are arguing honestly. I admit this is an assumption, but it's one that seems reasonable.])
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Unfortunately the rot IS spreading. Australia also now has a growing factional political party bordering on these notions. And don't be fooled by the name (Family First)... they are determined to bring extreme christian religious doctrine into the political process.
Down under we used to have a phrase "only in america...", usually accompanied by a slow shake of the head. However, I haven't heard it used lately, as I think that the US has lost the status of "world leaders of irrational thought".
....God proves himself without our help, so all we can do is share his word in a loving manner and tell those we care about what He has done in our lives......
Indeed true. The supreme way that God has proved Himself, is the fact that He raised Jesus from the dead, THE central belief of Christians. If the resurrection of Jesus is not true, then what difference does it make whether a person believes in evolution or creation?
It is indisputable that everyone dies. Yet the resurrection provided proof from God that the death of Jesus on the cross does provide forgiveness from God and a hope, not only for beyond the grave, but also the joy here and now that such a hope provides.
Jesus promises life, eternal life, here right now and after physical death, to everyone who is willing to BELIEVE in His death and resurrection. It's that simple.
All theory is gray
....macroevolution occurred is a factual part of evolution.....
Can you give a definition of what you mean by this term and an example of its occurrence that has been experimentally verified?
All theory is gray
.....One must believe with no proof at all,....
The depends on what you consider "proof". In a court of law, nothing is ever "proved", but evidence and witness testimony is presented and you as a juror must decide whether to believe the evidence presented.
The Bible gives the testimony of eye witnesses and other evidence to the most stupendous event that ever happened on this planet. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead. You, the juror must carefully and impartially consider the evidence, as presented and judge from that alone. You may not take into account any evidence you may have heard from other sources other than what is directly presented. Read the record as presented in the Gospels for yourself.
Arguing about evolution or creation is minor, compared to the issue of death. You WILL die. By returning from death, God demonstrated through Jesus that death is not the end of your existence. God, in love, offers you life through Jesus. You may accept that by believing God's testimony that He raised Jesus back to life. You may reject that and you will get death, which simply means you will will have an existence apart from God forever. Life is light and the absence of life is death and darkness.
All theory is gray
They just found the dumb thing and because its not a dinasaur its a "possible missing link" it could probably be a cure for cancer too - like the blind sea horses they found last week. Its way too early to say anything.
Why are people bothering to point out to this guy that the Blue states are the net contributors to the US GDP, and the Red states are a bunch of welfare cheats?
Don't believe me, check the stats, see who gets more than 100% of their federal taxes back in services, and redistribution payments. Then see which states are paying into the scam.
The poor deluded red stater is in denial. leave him alone. Let him leech off the rest of us and bitch about us. it provides humor and besides, it's kinda cute.
Ha ha! A timely article too! That'll teach him not to post such a stupid argument.
This seemingly goes against your second law... a system seems to be organising itself, rather than tending towards higher entropy.
Now, fortunately for you, the second law applies to thermodynamically *isolated* systems, and the Himalayas alone are not isolated (ie, they interact with their environment, ie the earth's crust).
One could certainly argue that the first organic compounds that came together in some chemical pools in the distant past were, likewise, not thermodynamically isolated, and therefore do not counter the second law of thermodynamics.
Thank you for reading my comment and comprehending it before responding. As the moderation spree (up and then back down) and flurry of responses shows, you are lonely in having done so. I always respond to reasoned responses and sensible questions about what I've said. After all, I'm not a total asshole. ;)
;)
Your "perhaps" nails it. When I said "evolutionists" in that sentence, I meant to refer only to those who say that, because of evolution and for no other reason, creationism is dead wrong; the same as my references to "creationists" tend to be for those who deny evolution for the sole reason that they believe in creation.
So yes, contrary to popular belief, I was only attacking the false dichotomy argument that people on both extremes tend to make. To me, the response that I received proves the related point that the majority of people suck at logic, even the majority of people on Slashdot who ought to pride themselves on being able to think rationally.
So anyhow, I spent my Sunday mastering the art of using the wrong words to get a simple point across. How was yours?
After reading through evolutionists and creationists views in this discussion I think everybody (as in the-whole-society) would benefit from attempt from both groups at the following question:
/. ?
/. the missing meta-link ?)
Why did god create
(with a sub-theme: Is
---
Out of sigs.
If people wouldn't miss that point, there wouldn't be a point to be missed.
Play Command HQ online
By macroevolution, I mean changes that occur between species rather than within species. An example is some primates losing tails, with traces remaining, even in humans. A species getting taller or fatter over time would be an example of microevolution, not macroevolution. A detailed comparison between creatures can show where macroevolution has occurred. Comparing the compound eyes in insects to the kind of eyes that fish, reptiles, and mammals have is enough to show that insects branched off from fish much earlier than reptiles or mammals. (Their lack of vertabrae makes this clear too, of course.) Dissection, fossils, and examining ebroyos are all experimental tools. One very important thing to look out for is correlation; one discovery or experiment that points to an evolutionary occurance is just fodder for skeptics, but when many different experiments support it, the conclusion becomes clear.
Wikipedia describes it here.
You can find web evidence to pore over here.
No data, no cry
2 buck chuck is AWESOME. It's cheap, and gets you and your date drunk. TWO DOLLARS. WTFPWNBBQ~~!!!!???!!
Fahrenheit or Celcius? I mean... it really does matter...
Then you're not a creationist. A creationist is a 'man was created in his current form, as per genesis' type of fellow. You spell too well to be a creationist. You probably dress too nice as well.
But remember, just because you're taking the middle road, it does not mean you are correct. I see a lot of people think they are correct just because they take the middle road (and not just in this debate, some people think the middle ground is automatically correct, for some reason). In many arguements, one side can be completely wrong.
Here is the REAL missing link.
This is from the scientists themselves, not CNN (note, the term "missing link" is absent).And it goes on to give details of the discovery and some photos of the skull and its discoverers. Seeing as it was only found a few weeks ago, there obviously is lots more work before any conclusions can be drawn.
And though it's predicable, of the 500 or so comments so far, about 99% are just recycling the same boring fucking flamewar about creationism vs evolution that happens every time an excuse occurs in an article here. No one is paying any attention to the specific discovery.
Personally, for instance, I found it interesting that it was an Ethiopian scientist credited with the discovery, though sponsored by an American university. That this terribly poor country can still contribute to real science is heartening. So when Americans make evolution illegal, there will be someone to carry on the torch of scientific enquiry.
It's a news article. It only has the amusing details.
People usually believe that you can carbon date a piece of fossil and make a statement that it is 250,000 years old, but it is not the case. Radiocarbon dating only works up to about 50,000 years.
Fortunately they didn't use carbon dating for this fossil.
University of Arizona page about this discovery:
I thought dragging his wife around by the hair was a little weird.
I hope they take the large black rectangle off his lawn too, too many "friends" hootin' n hollerin' and beating the ground at night around it.
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
>>Did Adam have a belly button? :) - i've just found it on amazon for 7 quid
>Cheers
As a matter of fact, I don't know of any EXPERIMENT that was ever done to show how simple parts self assemble into more complex systems.
Apparently you are unaware of crystal formations or, for that matter, the emergence of multicellular organisms from zygote form.
It is you that doesn't understand the second law. The principle of entropy has far wider applicability than only thermodynamics.
Then perhaps you could cite a peer reviewed scientific article that comes to the conclusion that complex systems cannot form.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Evolution occurs by natural selection, not by divine guidance. Evolution by divine guidance is just a slowed down version of intelligent design. It's fundamentally wrong.
How can I be trolling when I'm presenting only the facts? I'm only saying Wikipedia says so and so, and Kent Hovind says so and so.
To be fair, it is difficult to distinguish between an act of trolling and mere repetition of Kent Hovind's claims.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
No, he is correct. He (correctly) says that 'evolution' means the change of frequency in alleles over time. This is not a theory. This is data. We see the gene pool change. Generations are genetically varied. What he is saying is that while this evolution cannot be disproved (and so, it follows one should not use the phrase "disproving evolution", because it makes as much sense as "disproving the existence of hands"), the theory of evolution, holding that all organisms are descended, with modification, from one or many less complex organisms, can potentially be disproved. Thus, the correct phrase to use would be "disproving the theory of evolution".
The missing link is in the cubical beside me. The pungent smell of pits combined with grunting and keyboard pounding are a sure sign.
"Never say Never."
Not so
When certain aspects have either been proven wrong or shown quite improbable, most of the accepted theories of evolution change to account for it
I get the impression that you think this is a bad thing. Indeed, I have heard this many times before - "whenever new data arrives, the evilutionists just change the theory!" I cannot understand this. Evolution has consistently made predictions which have subsequently been confirmed, and it has also changed to reflect newer data. The predictive power shows that it is not merely an ad hoc theory thrown together to give scientists something to believe instead of God, and as for changing to include current understanding of phenomena: this is merely the logical position. To not alter the theory would not make sense.
The usual meaning of 'Creation' is "belief that, at some point within the last 10,000 years, God created the universe, the planet and all life ex nihilo, based on a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis." The Creation myths of other religions are usually described as "(adjective-form of religion-name) Creationism", e.g. Islamic Creationism etc. What you describe as your belief is called "theistic evolution".
What you describe as your belief is called "theistic evolution". :) Nice... what a cool name...
California's economy would collapse because it produces nothing but bad movies and even worse wine
Obviously you know nothing about California. That state is the largest producer of food in USA by quite a bit. And as for the the wine, you must be a white zinfendel drinker. California wines are world renown. When France had the blight killing off it vineyards, where did they go to get cuttings to replant? California. Now, as an avid wine drinker, there are many good places to grow wine, and trying to pick the best is silly. Fifty years from now, great wine will grow all over the world. But California is a huge state with many types of climate. And great wine are made there. Napa Valley Stags Leap district is absolutely awesome.
Now the movie stuff may be true, but who cares, it seems that middle America sure watches all that reality TV crap.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
I agree that it's wrong, but only because I don't believe that there is such thing as a divine intelligence.
However, if such a thing did exist, there is nothing in what we see in evolution that would prevent it being guided by that being. Take selective breading in farm animals as an example - the underlying principles are those of evolution through genetic variation, and there is some form of selection going on, but in this case it's the farmer that's deciding which animals are 'fittest' to breed.
What is particularly mod-worthy is the subtle manner in which the parent post proves the point that even a "burning bush" isn't enough to change the OP's mind about our origins. An anonymous post from God on Slashdot is essentially equivalent to a burning bush, just as any other manner of revelation would be. If the OP thinks that an AC post here is fraudulent, what's to stop him from making other excuses when confronted by more in-your-face appearances of God?
You make fun of Truckstop Virgin Marys, AC posts from God, people who tell you that they feel God work within them, and all the rest. The OP lies or is at least self-deluded when he says that a burning bush would convince him. He would be looking for the reason for the bush burning instead of accepting that it was really God talking to him.
Excellent post. Sadly, totally ignored.
It is very rare that I have anything nice to say about Florida, but I have to call BS. Every California orange I've had has been thick skinned, bitter, tasteless and mealy compared to FL oranges. I spent many days of my childhood riding horses in FL orange groves and sampling fruit. There are oranges out there that would blow your mind they are so good.
Granted, I haven't had a California orange since 1978 so things may have changed since.
I suspect if FL oranges truly are inferior now, it is because of economic reasons. Perhaps people are more likely to drink OJ than they are to eat fresh fruit? In the 1980's we had severe freezes which wiped out many thousands of acres of groves. That would have been an opportunity to replant with more profitable juice trees. Just a guess.
Say all you want about the Bible thumping homophobic bitch who used to be spokeswoman for FL oranges. She knew oranges, but she didn't know about the better bipedal fruits that have evolved:-) >sorry
http://www.marxist.com/
Thats a good example of why religion is a like meme. Those religions that survive ie the agressive outspoken religions, increase their followers, whilst the less vocal die out.
I am reminded of Voltaire (of course) when he made the observation that England in the 18th century was a place of tolerance and peace because there were so many "competing" faiths. A country that had only two competing faiths its people would be at each others throats (France at the time). A country with only one faith would be a dictatorship.
Its disheartening to think that ultimately, when we are left with two dominant religions, we may face worldwide conflict like that seen on a lesser scale in Northern Ireland, Palestine, Chechnya, Bosnia etc. Our only hope save save us from our selves is edjumacation (we're doomed).
It is interesting that when the news media reports on a crime, it is an alleged homicide that someone allegedly committed. It has to be tested and proven before they will make a definitive statement about it.
/. or CNN or whatever...then it is up for debate - why? Because debate among amateurs who have little to no access to the entire story is much more arousing than the scientific process. I'd much rather speculate and hear myself pontificate among other equally bullheaded individuals than put in the lab time and maintain perspective on the bigger picture.
On the contrary (IMHO) it seems that a scientific "find" is automatically classified as "evidence of" some theory without being tested or proven at the point on which it is reported to a journalistic/blogging community like
Could it be that we just blindly trust whatever "scientists" tell us? I have my theories on different scientific hot-button issues, but they are irrelevant as news or banter because some are faith-based and others are just how I process bits and pieces of scientific information I receive (not being a professional scientist, my opinion isn't one to lean on unless you are, well...me).
Maybe this is the long way around just saying that we should take what we hear with a grain of salt. Finding a missing link doesn't change my life. Finding a missing remote changes my life. What I think about a missing link doesn't ultimately make much difference in your life. What I think about you and how I treat you does.
Wasn't the missing link found quite a while ago? I think I read about it over at this site...
Frog blast the vent core.
If you studied Biology you would know that the simpilest forms of life are barely more then basic proteins linked together. They really aren't that complex at all. You can also follow how each organism through time got more and more complex by the smallest of increments. There is no magic, just ALOT of time and ALOT of simple proteins combining.
Actually, the idea of change in species gained a foothold at least a century before Darwin. What Darwin provided was a reason for such -- the conflict between population growth and the environment. That conflict results in precisely the same pressure on breeding stock that human farmers and pet owners have been artificially imposing on their animals for the last few thousand years to spectacular result.
He was preceeded by a century or more of geologists who had started systematically studying strata and noticed that the Earth was at least several million years old. They also noticed lots of funny fossils in their rocks. People such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and others had proposed systematic change in species, but they didn't have a reason for such.
Darwin didn't just jump up and scream "Eureka". He noticed the variation in Galapagos Finches and went over his notes from the voyage. He then spent the next ten years studying variation and diversity of barnacles, thus becoming a very respected naturalist. He only started writing the Origin of Species when Alfred Russell Wallace sent Darwin a paper for proofing that described the same sort of evolutionary pressure that Darwin had been pondering for the last decade.
It's important that we are not just talking about humans -- Africa's fossil record for the last 25 million years is crap. There is a much richer wealth of fossils on other continents and for different eras, and 19th century geologists had already started cataloguing such by the time Darwin was choosing between joining the clergy or first sailing around the world.
My other body is also not wearing any.
......Apparently you are unaware of crystal formations.....
A crystal is nothing more than a repeating structure of atoms arranged by the "shape" of the atoms. Comparing a crystal to a living cell is like having a 800 page book filled with pages of "aaaaaaaaaaaaa" or "ababababababab" as compared to "The Lord of the Rings" or a similar work.
Evolution has no way to account for a structure like the human eye or the existence of consciousness. Perhaps you can show me a peer reviewed scientific article that describes a procedure on how to duplicate any of the complex sensory systems found in mammals. Even today, there exists no manmade image sensor that can register a single photon and yet also not be instantly destroyed by the light input of a snowy, sunny winter scene. Yet your eye can do this. How did it "evolve" to have such a huge dynamic range of light? Even more, man made image sensors come nowhere close to having the sensitivity to light and the incredibly high resolution, all in one instrument. If man cannot duplicate the performance of such structures by intelligent efforts, you expect me to believe they came about by chance? You may have that kind of faith, but I don't.
All theory is gray
....are barely more then basic proteins linked together.....
This statement shows how ignorant you are in micro-biochemistry. Do you know how many atoms have to be precisely arranged in order to make even the simplest functional protein? Has even the best scientist ever synthesized a chlorophyll molecule from basic elements, as found in the so called "simple" algae? Exactly how the chlorophyll molecule in green things captures sunlight and enables green plants to make the food you eat is still largely a mystery. Yet just by "chance" it's process tailored to spectrum of the sun's light. Even WITH our intelligence and a working prototype to study, humans cannot make a working chlorophyll molecule. Do you really expect me to believe that random, probabilistic processes occurring over millions or even billions of years have accomplished to build functional molecular structures such as chlorophyll, hemoglobin and DNA information storage systems? Scientists have actual examples of all of these, yet, by the best INTELLIGENT efforts have never duplicated any of these mentioned. Scientists are learning that the biochemical processes in living cells are unimaginably complex.
All theory is gray
Ever watched Stargate SG-1? It would take quite a bit of convincing for any being to prove to me that he/she/it is God. Maybe collapsing the entire universe into a black hole would do it for me...
You may not take into account any evidence you may have heard from other sources other than what is directly presented.
Huh?
Your argument by analogy is incredibly flawed, in multiple ways.
*Even* if I stipulate that the New Testament is, indeed, eyewitness testimony (although we have no concrete proof that the writers of any particular text we have were actually eyewitnesses, as opposed to second- or third-hand reporters), it is hardly unbiased.
You miss the most important aspect about the rules of evidence in a court of law: that the judge is presumed to be applying the rules of evidence in an impartial way. Reasons to exclude evidence include that it is inflammatory, or that it cannot be properly contested by cross-examination, that it cannot be authenticated, etc., etc. If the jury were to see such evidence, they would be improperly influenced, and the judge's role is to prevent that.
Gospels are not evidence in the legal sense. They were written *specifically* to persuade people to believe in the Christian religion. They are *not* impartial accounts. We cannot cross-examine the writers of the Gospel to get them to explain certain unclear points of authorship and motivation.
For instance, the Gospels do not, and would not, include any accounts from the thousands of people in and around Jerusalem who did NOT see Christ after the resurrection. Instead, we are left pretty much with those accounts that third-century authorities decided would be most proper for use in Christian worship. Everything else was to be suppressed.
"What they don't realize is that if a scientist could discover some piece of incontrovertible proof that the Theory of Evolution is all just a bunch of hooey, he would undoubtedly be one of the most famous people in the world, winning all sorts of Nobel Prizes and recognition in his field."
Actually, that would never pass peer-review so it would never happen.
....Not so...
There has been a lot of disagreement about the definition of species and other biological groupings. The point is that there are distinct groupings, whatever they may be called, that cannot cross from one to the other. All the fruit flies in the article (drosophila) always were and remained fruit flies, even though their behavior and other characteristics were different. None of them ever became some entirely new creature.
All theory is gray
.....You miss the most important aspect about the rules of evidence in a court of law.....
So do you. A witness is assumed to be telling the truth unless other evidence also PRESENTED IN court contradicts such a witness. The gospels are four witnesses to the event of the resurrection.
Every lawyer in the US is required to study an extensive volume written by a law scholar by the name of Simon Greeenleaf. It is called simply "The Rules of Evidence" and is still used as the basis of operation of every court of law. This highly esteemed legal scholar has also written a book called "The Testimony of the Evangelists" wherein he examines the biblical record of the four Gospels as we now have, by the same rules of evidence used in our courts today. You may still be able to get a copy for yourself. Its ISBN= 0825427479 I recommend you read that and thereafter read the four Gospel accounts in light of the rules of evidence.
All theory is gray
A crystal is nothing more than a repeating structure of atoms arranged by the "shape" of the atoms.
I am aware of this. However, crystal formation creates structures corresponding to a complex "pattern", which -- according to your interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics -- is impossible. I would suggest that it is your understanding of the Second Law that is in error, rather than a case of every biologist on the planet simply not considering fundamental chemistry.
How did it "evolve" to have such a huge dynamic range of light?
Very simply. Biological photoreceptor structures that could not handle such a dynamic range resulted in the organism with such structures not surviving to reproduce.
If man cannot duplicate the performance of such structures by intelligent efforts, you expect me to believe they came about by chance?
You are appealing to incredulity, and you are also demonstrating a lack of understanding of the process of evolution. While mutation and environmental shifts are themselves "random" events, the result of natural selection is not "random", and is what creates the specialized structures found in living organisms. The result is that a diverse number of structures can come to exist, but only a select few will remain in existence for a significant length of time. Human development techniques do not tend to use such a process, because such processes are cost-prohibitive.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
You can't just go around applying physical law by analogy or equivocation. I can't say that a person's attraction to sweet food is "like gravity" and start applying relativistic calculations to strawberry shortcake. Likewise, I can't say that the government forces me to pay taxes, so we can apply force = mass*acceleration and figure out my income based on how long it takes the check to get to the Treasury department. Somehow, tortured analogies and equivocation become fair game with thermodnyamics. I just don't get it.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
.....a little bit of cherry picking from Wikipedia......
I'll give you a little "cherry picking".
The second law of thermodynamics encompasses more than just temperature.
A quote from the WIKI article: "Unlike most other laws of physics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is statistical in nature, and its reliability arises from the huge number of particles present in macroscopic systems. It is not impossible, in principle, for all 10^23 atoms in a gas to spontaneously migrate to one half of container; it is only fantastically unlikely -- so unlikely that no macroscopic violation of the Second Law has ever been observed."
Evolution of simple life forms into complex ones has also never been observed, and although not impossible, it is just as unlikely as the atoms all migrating to only one part of a container. If you have two such containers connected with a pipe, the pressure in both of them will be equal. If you replace the pipe with an intelligently designed power-driven pump, you can get all or most of the atoms into one container only. If you supply energy only, such as heating the pipe, there will be be an equal increase of pressure in both containers. Only the designed pump, supplying energy does the job.
All present experience shows the opposite of the evolution dogma, namely that complex things fall apart into simpler pieces. Do an experiment TODAY that shows the opposite. There is no mechanisms you can show today of what evolution conjectures by faith happened by whatever processes you care to name in the past. You don't have to use the "expensive" processes evolution supposedly employs. Just come up with a plausible experimental simulation. Write a computer program that shows how an eye might "evolve".
All theory is gray
......So, you seem to have a pretty good idea of what constitutes speciation.....
Scientists have argued over the exact definition of this term for a long time. How many kinds of dogs are there? How close to dogs are coyotes, foxes and wolves? Want to call them all a species? Probably not. Mice, rats, rabbits and so forth are classed as rodents and house cats, tigers, leopards, lions etc. are all some kind of cat. Evolution claims that all of these had a common ancestor, eventually going back all the way to the primordial ooze. The biblical presentation is that these various "kinds" were created each of them distinct with no crossovers between them. This is what we still find today. Nobody has ever made a transition creature nor found one between say a reptile and a bird. That line has not and cannot be crossed. Yet evolutionists claim that birds descended from reptiles.
All theory is gray
Indeed you did. You just whacked my entire post and all of the arguments in it. Touché.
And that's all very true. That's NOT where your argument falls flat on its face.
This is where you're failing. You CAN create localized decreases in entropy by applying energy. The entropy merely moves elsewhere. That's how life stays alive. That's how you end up with salt crystals and steam when you boil salt water. Your particular experiment demonstrates the second law, but it doesn't demonstrate the concept I'm trying to point out to you. You have yet to explain how life holds itself together by taking in energy without violating your understanding of the second law. You have yet to explain how we ended up with crystals and steam without violating the second law. The bottom line is, you have only a peripheral understanding of the second law and you're using it the wrong way.
This sentence is an oversimplification, so any experiment I do to demonstrate that it's wrong has no bearing on thermodynamics. The salt water experiment I linked to in my post does, though. You've been ignoring it consistently. Why?
Go back to the salt water experiment and explain how it fails. We start with a pot of salt water. We apply heat (and heat alone!). The water boils off and we get high entropy steam and low entropy crystals. The net entropy has not decreased, but localized entropy has. Does this violate the second law? Now, think about a living being growing: It's bringing about all sorts of order and complexity by taking in energy from the sun and producing entropy. Its body remains a localized area of steady or decreasing entropy until it dies and stops converting energy. The same thing happens for evolution.
Or, to take another approach: A strand of DNA can be viewed as a bit stream (although small changes in DNA can result in HUGE changes in protein functionality, we'll ignore this fact for the moment). We have observed that natural mutations can substitute, duplicate, insert, and delete base pairs. Those things can and do increase the entropy of the string. You can calculate it. In fact, why not start there? Define what you mean by complexity (Shannon entropy, Kolmogorov complexity, e
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
......Comparing the compound eyes in insects to the kind of eyes that fish, reptiles, and mammals have is enough to show that insects branched off from fish much earlier than reptiles or mammals......
:-) !!
All these are interpretations of the past. Nobody has ever done an experiment today, that such things really happen. The ID camp can just point out that the good, workable aspects of a design gets re-used, just as we do in human designs. (Put an automobile analogy here)
Neither evolution nor ID can demonstrate their conjectures by present day experimentation, but you may choose which one you wish to BELIEVE.
All theory is gray
So what's your take on archaeopteryx? In fact, given that the existence of something like an archaeopteryx (not just the general form, but the time period when it would be expected to have existed) was predicted before the fossil was found, what's your take on the prediction that evolutoinary made? Just good luck?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
No, the jury (or the judge, acting as finder of "fact" when there is no jury) can choose to ignore testimony or evidence that it believes not to be credible. Just because. It does not need to be explicitly questioned by the other side.
It is, of course, in the interest of the other side to elicit testimony or produce evidence that tends to question the credibility of witness testimony that was harmful to the case. But not required.
The point still remains that the rules followed in a court of law are not meant to establish "absolute truth." They are intended to provide a fair, just, and hopefully reliable system for determining outcomes of trials. That the O.J. Simpson jury decided that the government had not met the burden of proof to convict O.J. does not mean that it is conclusively proven that O.J. did not actually kill Nicole Simpson.
The judicial rules of evidence are completely and totally irrelevant to questions of historical fact or religious belief. That you have confused these very different fields is evidence that you are a clueless nut.
The fact that you seem to think the Gospels are some objective eyewitness testimony, as if they were simply wire service bulletins "This just in: Reuters reports Jesus Christ found risen from the dead. Interviewed at the scene, Mary Magdalene stated that..." is additional evidence you are a clueless nut.
They are written accounts, probably written many years after the events, by people who were hardly objective in their descriptions, and often wrote about events (like the Annunciation and the Nativity) they were highly unlikely to have any first hand knowledge of. They got important historical and geographical details confused. Where they share common text, it often appears they are quoting from each other or from an earlier common source. They have clumsy patch jobs on them, like John 21:23. They were deliberately chosen because they were in accord with a particular Orthodox school of thought, and other texts were deliberately suppressed.
Now this is a fascinating claim. You seem to be saying that, even if God was standing right in fron of me, it wouldn't prove the existence of God. Please explain ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'm always amused at creationists who think that scientists are in some kind of dark conspiracy to push "the agenda" of evolution.
I thought that the agenda was to push naturalism and atheism. (Hint: science cannot use, assume, or conclude supernatural things; it would then have to explain how they work under the laws of nature.)
What piece or pieces of evidence will it take to convince you that the Theory of Evolution is, in fact, true and that creationism is not?
How about this: analize DNA on a base-pair by base-pair level. The statistics should say whether the DNA can reasonably be explained by chance; if so the Bible is wrong (I don't think people can honestly reinterpret the Bible as saying that creation took millions of years and occured by chance).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
No jump from one kind or grouping generally dubbed species, has ever been observed to have actually happened in all this experimentation.
Careful there; species seems to be defined as a group that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, though there seems to be plenty of exceptions. It's actually quite easy to create a group that cannot interbreed with the original species, even if it does look exactly like the same critter.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
So what's your take on archaeopteryx?
arminw: None of the changes we have actually SEEN have evolved one species into another.
Though by 'species' I think he means 'what the layman would call the same species'
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
.....They are written accounts, probably written many years after the events, by people who were hardly objective in their descriptions, and often wrote about events (like the Annunciation and the Nativity) they were highly unlikely to have any first hand knowledge of......
These people claimed to be eye witnesses of the resurrection and were willing to and did die for the truth thereof. How many people do you know that are willing to die for a story the KNOW to be false or mere hearsay? The enemies of Jesus would have dearly loved to squelch these rumors by producing the dead remains of Jesus.
Peter writes in one of his letter to early Christians:
2Peter 1:16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
Peter and many others have since died for disseminating these "stories" about the resurrection and the life of Jesus.
Just read the book the told you about. It may be in your library and then tell me your considered opinion. The work itself is in the public domain, so you might even find the text thereof online.
All theory is gray
The process of evolution is a fact, backed up by mountains of evidence. We can even see it happen over short timescales of a few days or weeks.
Care to give an example of evoultion that we have observed adding new information? Eg not a change that simply rearranges a protein without changing any functionality other than that it is no longer recognized by antibodies, or actually removing information (such as the regulatory mechanisms that prevent a bacteria from using too much of its resources on a resistance)?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Parents pass on traits to their children, and siblings and cousins share many traits that non-siblings. Tracing how macroevolution occurred is based on this. In the case of fish, we share more traits them than with insects, so the pattern is clear.
The ID camp can just point out that the good, workable aspects of a design gets re-used, just as we do in human designs. (Put an automobile analogy here) :-) !!
Sometimes something like this happens, i.e. how birds, bats, and insects independently developed wings. Sure their wings are very different, and its clear that bats didn't evolve from birds or insects, but wings are a "good design."
No data, no cry
.....So what's your take on archaeopteryx?.....
Its first fossils were discovered in Germany about 90 years ago. Recent fossil discoveries and recent research on Archaeopteryx argue strongly against the suggestion that it is transitional between reptiles and birds. The rocks in which fossils of Archaeopteryx have been found are designated Upper Jurassic, and thus are dated at about 150 million years on the standard evolutionary geological time scale.
However, since the time of this discovery, Archaeopteryx has become more and more reptile-like until it is now fashionable to declare that Archaeopteryx was hardly more than a feathered reptile. In 90 years, Archaeopteryx has thus evolved from a creature so emphatically bird-like its reptilian ancestry was barely hinted at into a creature some evolutionists declare to be nothing more than a reptile with feathers!
The sudden appearance, in the fossil record, fully formed, of all the complex invertebrates (snails, clams, jellyfish, sponges, worms, sea urchins, brachiopods, trilobites, etc.) without a trace of ancestors, and the sudden appearance, fully formed, of every major kind of fish (supposedly the first vertebrates) without a trace of ancestors, is strong evidence that evolution as commonly taught has not occurred.
All theory is gray
Better question: Why don't we find any rabbit fossils in the pre-cambrian layers? Do rabbits just not sink as deeply into the mud, or did they arrive later via some as yet unexplained path?
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.....Better question: Why don't we find any rabbit fossils in the pre-cambrian layers? Do rabbits just not sink as deeply into the mud, or did they arrive later via some as yet unexplained path?.....
:-)! like an ancient wheelbarrow evolving into a modern automobile. If living systems, even at the molecular, cellular levels are compared to machines, they are unbelievably advanced. I am an engineer, not a biologist, but I am greatly impressed by the incredible engineering evidenced by living devices like the eyes and ears. The radar (sonar really) of bats is an incredible feat of engineering. The navigation systems of migratory birds and insects still hold deep mysteries in their operation. The fact that wales seem to be able to communicate via sub-sonic waves over vast distances is a relatively new discovery. How did some of the complex, multi-host parasitic and symbiotic relationships evolve? Does metamorphosis of a what most people term an ugly caterpillar crawling on a leaf, becoming a beautiful, iridescent butterfly destined for the sunny spring skies, point to something far greater for us humans in an entirely different existence and dimension?
All of the various fossil finds and their supposed indications of evolution don't give me that much problem. The big problem in my mind with evolution is its idea of simple structures "evolving" into the incredible complex biological systems we see today. It is (another dumb automobile analogy
I believe that there is some merit to the idea of evolution, but it fails to satisfy my sense as an engineer that all this complexity came to be without the direct activity of a great mind. There is no way of course to "prove" or "disprove" the existence of God, but the natural world to me speaks of a designer, an "engineer" if you will, who conceived and executed this marvelous design of the entire cosmos, both living and non-living. I want to believe that there is a purpose to my existence and it somehow ties in with the purpose for which God designed all these marvels in the first place. The Bible presents a much more satisfying view of our existence, purpose and destiny that any other religion or philosophy. Evolution's godless explanation of how things came to be and its ultimate purposelessness is not very satisfying, neither spiritually nor intellectually. The expensive SETI search testifies that there are others that hope that we are not alone in a cosmos that apart from God seems to have no specific direction and purpose.
All theory is gray
> who met secretly and drank blood and ate human flesh ("eat of my body, drink of my blood")
... :) Surely talking too loudly is a crime worthy of death (moreso if it's while on a cell phone in a movie theatre)! They "had" to do these things to keep the peace you say? It's funny how quelling dissent with violence tends to produce exactly the opposite reaction from the one they claim to desire... I mean, no one has ever heard of Falun Gong, right?
:)
Didn't know you believed in transubstantiation? You must be one of those neo-atheists? Or neo-pagans. Whichever. It's all the same, right?
> No one ever seems to talk about exactly why Christians were fed to the lions. Rome at the time was actually quite a tolerant society and people freely practices hundreds of religions and nobody really cared.
Well, yeah. That and you'd better agree to worship the Emperor (or die). Oh, and I really hope you were a citizen, not merely one of the subjugated. Although I'm sure that even citizens could have fun with such englightened practices as decimation (that's where you kill 1 of ever 10 soliders in a unit that failed... you know, for *cough* troop morale).
> The early Christians would show up at other temples and scream at the people there about their worshiping slighting the "one true God" and they would suffer eternal damnation. (This is similar to what Christ himself did and is the reason he was crucified--for being an asshole.) Before too long, their fanaticism had managed to piss off just about everyone else in Rome and it got so bad that the Senate was forced to pass a law outlawing the practice of the religion in order to preserve the peace. (Only two religions were ever outlawed.)
Ahh yes, from whence came our ideals of freedom of speech, religion, and all that. I mean, why would anyone ever enter a debate at Mars Hill
Well, thank you for the enlightening tour of Roman history. Thanks to you, I've learned quite a lot about assholes
Hate to break it to you, but only the most credulous readers of the New Testament believe 2 Peter to actually have been written by Peter. It was almost certainly written by someone who wanted to claim the authority of Peter, but was not Peter himself. It was probably written sometime between 100 and 160 A.D., after Peter himself was martyred.
People have been willing to die for all sorts of baseless ideas; people poison themselves so they can hitch rides on comets, they blow themselves up because they think Osama bin Laden wants them to. The willingness to die speaks only to the psychological hold these ideas have on the believer. They are not objective evidence as to the factual basis for these beliefs.
I don't need to waste my time reading what some 19th century lawyer thought was proved by it. I already know that legal standards of evidence developed starting in the 13th century in England are irrelevant for evaluating the truth of statements in manuscripts which were written in the first few centuries A.D.
.....Go back to the salt water experiment and explain how it fails. We start with a pot of salt water. We apply heat (and heat alone!). The water boils off and we get high entropy steam and low entropy crystals....
Anything that has a specific structure, such as molecules and atoms also contains information inherent in the structure. Sodium chloride molecules are included in this. When they form crystals they arrange themselves according to the structure information inherent in their nature. The level or amount of information in atoms and molecules is sufficient to allow them to form regular, repeating structures under the right conditions. Living structures contain orders of magnitude more information. We see this in manmade things also. An automobile contains much more information than a wheelbarrow.
To reduce entropy requires not only energy, but also information that directs how and where to apply this energy. In my pump example the pump applies energy in a specific way. Increasing entropy also decreases the information or order and vice-versa. Any kind of order is the direct result of adding information to the system. In living systems this information is resident in a storage device called the DNA molecule. Unlike computers, which work on a binary system, DNA operates with a four level code. It is these codes, in combination with energy, that direct the assembly and function of all living things.
A computer is a very good analogy. It consists of hardware, which in itself contains a large amount of information in its very structure, put there by the engineers who designed its chips and circuits. However, that in itself only gives you a very expensive doorstop. In order for a compute to function, it also has to have software, additional information that really determines how it operates. The new Intel based Macs normally run the OSX OS, but with a little judicious hacking can also be made to run Windows. It is the software that determines the "personality" of a computer. In addition to software, every computer requires a source of energy, electrical power.
Living system, especially man, mirror this. You have a physical body which in itself contains and is determined by the codes stored in your DNA. After your body was formed a large amount of information was and is still being loaded, by a process we call education, into a special part of you called the mind. All of this is driven by an energy source called food.
A major problem with evolution is that it really has no good explanation of where information originates. Information or knowledge, software, these are immaterial products of MIND. Software as such has certain properties that exempt it from some laws of physics. It has no mass and therefore is may be transmitted at the speed of light. In itself it is not subject to entropy or decay. Its carriers of course are. That's why computer engineers take great pains to ensure data integrity in spite of hardware failures.
ID and creationism posit that there is a mind wherein all information originates. The nature of this mind however cannot be explored by any science we presently know about. That is where faith comes in. You can have faith in evolution which specifically excludes reference to any mind. However, I have chosen to include the idea of God, the great mind and source of information. He tells us in the Bible, which I believe is His communication to us, in 1Corinthians 13:11-13, the great chapter on the nature of love:
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways. Now we see only a blurred reflection in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now what I know is incomplete, but then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. Right now three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
It is my hope that you may decide by faith to seek this God of love and get to know Him, as I have. You WILL find Him if you seek Him with all of your being.
All theory is gray
Your overall thesis seems to be that anything that allows even a localized reduction in entropy contains information, and anything that contains information is intelligently designed. It follows from the premise, that sodium chloride molecules and life are intelligently designed. OK. We'll go with that particular piece of circular reasoning. My gripe isn't really with the fact that ID supporters are using flawed logic and assuming their conclusion at every turn as long as they do it outside the school system. My problem comes when ID supporters use their whacko ideas of actual scientific principles to shoot down the GOOD work of real scientists.
Case in point: Your abuse of thermodynamics and rather unconventional take on the concept of information as it applies to physical systems. If equivocating terms and spinning those laws makes you feel better about your underlying belief, that's fine by me. It is, however, insulting to the people whose life's work you're smearing. We've observed and recorded genetic mutations adding information by any reasonable definition of the word. You're claiming that those observations are wrong, the entire world of biologists is out of their minds, and that your touchy feely interpretation of physical law invalidates it all. My only concern is that there are people out there who don't have the time to study information theory or thermodynamics who might believe you.
Think of it this way: I'm betting that you're a computer engineer or computer scientist. That's OK. I'm a CE myself. I think we differ in an important way, though. When my reasoning conflicts with the experts in topics outside of my field, I assume that I'm probably missing something and I should study it more deeply. I don't claim that the experts are all wrong, or that their entire field of study is a fanciful waste of time, or that there is a vast conspiracy to shut down my insight (an insight which, by the way, is only shared by other people with an equal lack of expertise). Imagine a biologist haranguing you about cache design, claiming that direct mapped cache should be far faster than fully associative cache. Reason? It's well known that a DIRECT route is always faster than any other. Computer engineers just choose to ignore the fact because of indoctrination! Teach the controversy! Stop silencing us!
My guess is that you'd try to point out that the word "direct" perhaps does not mean what they think it means. You'd probably also be a little bit miffed at a person dumping on your design decisions based on a deeply flawed understanding of basic principles. The worst part? Imagine he's going to your boss. Or trying to change the computer engineering curriculum at your local university. You can see where I'm going with this.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
....My gripe isn't really with the fact that ID supporters are using flawed logic and assuming their conclusion at every turn as long as they do it outside the school system. My problem comes when ID supporters use their whacko ideas of actual scientific principles to shoot down the GOOD work of real scientists.......
You have it wrong if you think I am saying that ALL of evolutionary theory is wrong. I would not dispute that living things are able to make changes in their structures and operation that allows them to survive often severe environmental stresses. The fossil record is fascinating
evidence of creatures, many of which no longer are around today. Frankly, I'd hate to be a snack for a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Actually I am an electronics engineer specializing in control systems. In my beginnings these were all analog electric or pneumatic. I was, as it were, dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age. From my perspective as an engineer, I have come to understand that living systems are far too complex to have arisen spontaneously, without the input of thought. Every true science involves experiments and current observations. I believe this must be applied to the study of origins also. The problem is that the main tenet of evolution cannot be experimentally verified. The core of evolutionary teaching I greatly disagree with is that simple parts self assemble into complex systems. Ordinary, every day life, as well as scientific experimentation show exactly the opposite. If your car has a worn, broken part, energy and intelligence must be applied to make your car work properly again.
Any subject not experimentally verifiable is beyond the reach of science. Evolution, ID and creationism are all part of the study of origins and all are unfortunately, not subject to true experimental scientific investigations.
I agree with you that ID and creationism should not be taught in a science classroom, but neither should evolution, at least not that aspect of it that asserts that living systems are the result of mindless processes. The study of origins could be taught on an equal footing in a philosophy or religion course.
Do you deny that electrons, atoms, stars, planets and living things ALL have some level of coherent organization, ie. structure? Structure or coherent organization cannot be achieved without the information that determines that structure. It is that very organization and reliability all throughout the universe, that even makes science possible. All of nature operates by certain universal laws and principles. Again, laws and principles of operation are at their core consistent information that tells use how things work. By understanding, again the application of THOUGHT, we can use the information conveyed by these laws to make predictions and then test these by experiments and careful observations of what is happening NOW. We are creatures essentially bound to the present. Whatever happened in the past cannot be changed, although hopefully we may learn something. The future is unknown. None of us know when we will draw our last breath.
(....We've observed and recorded genetic mutations adding information by any reasonable definition of the word...)
Unfortunately mutations never ADD information but lose or garble it every time. Information is stored in physical systems and because these are subject to decay, (entropy) the information stored therein is never increased, but always lost or corrupted in some way. As a CE you surely know of the elaborate measures taken to ensure that physical entropy does not change the data in any way. The DNA coding system also uses error correcting schemes and redundancy to minimize the loss of and corruption of vital data.
(.....I don't claim that the experts are all wrong....)
If you have studied the history of science at all, you should know, that it often was the lone "voice in the wilderness" that was right, against the prevailing wisdom of the large majority of "experts". Many theories have only fall
All theory is gray
I suppose, if by "structure" you mean "the way things fall together based on fundamental forces." A star has structure that appears to be subject to the nature of gravity and nuclear fusion.
And my problem here is that you appear to be calling the laws of gravity and nuclear forces "information" and then attempting to apply information theory to them. I acknowledge that the laws of physics are "set up" one way or another and that matter and energy obey them. The question of where those laws come from is, for me, well outside of anything that I've been interested in thinking about. You're falling back on the idea that the fact that the universe has rules indicates an intelligent designer. I agree that an intelligent designer could cause rules. I disagree that having rules indicates an intelligent designer to the exclusion of other possibilities.
An interesting aside that falls out of this is that the claim "order can't arise from disorder without the application of intelligence" becomes tautological if you assume that everything in the universe is "pre-programmed" by intelligence. Any example that I give of order spontaneously arising to indicate that intelligence is not necessary, you refute with the idea that the intelligent designer has preprogrammed some unquantifiable "information" into the physical laws that caused it to happen. That's why ID is a completely uninteresting premise to me. Any observation and test you could possibly make is simply explained by "the intelligent designer pre-programmed the universe to work that way." So now we have salt crystals forming not because thermodynamics allows localized decreases in entropy (it does... and that's why arguments against evolution based on thermodynamics are still silly), but rather because the intelligent designer pre-programmed NaCl with "information."
As yet another aside on the entropy and thermodynamics topic, it is worth noting that normal heat flow causes localized decreases in entropy all the time. A variation on your very own experiment demonstrates this fact. Take a hot block of steel and put it up against a cold block of steel. Heat will flow from one block to the other. The net entropy remains the same. The entropy in the block that was originally cold increases. What does that say about the entropy in the hot block? That's right--a localized decrease. No intelligence required, unless we go back to the assumption that some intelligence pre-programmed the steel with the "information" necessary to cause that heat flow. I don't see how the data supports that idea, though.
This statement is flatly false, as has been observed in any number of experiments. All of the following mutations have been observed occurring randomly:
* Substitution of base pairs
* Deletion of base pairs
* Addition of base pairs
I challenge you to find any definition of "information" that cannot be increased by these operations being performed randomly. Any change in DNA sequence (even those that "increase information") at all is simply an additive combination of the above. All it takes is one base pair to change in such a way that a different but passably useful protein is created, and we have another step in the stochastic hill climbing process. We have observed mutations that add novel proteins and structures. To say otherwise is simply to ignore the data.
Interestingly, for all of the arguments about "inform
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
....I acknowledge that the laws of physics are "set up" one way or another and that matter and energy obey them. The question of where those laws come from is, for me, well outside of anything that I've been interested in thinking about.....
/. don't seem to be capable of such.
First of all let me say that I appreciate that you are discussing these admittedly controversial things with me without name calling, profanity and personal attacks. Many on
In don't see nearly the chasm or distinction between things and principles of nature and the manmade systems and knowledge. You cannot deny that human laws are made by intelligent beings. Sometimes though the stuff that our politicians come up with may cast doubt on that. (-: !! Why then should natural laws and objects not also be the result of deliberate thought, although an infinitely higher level?
Can you deny that evolution is also subject to these laws "of nature"? If the underlying laws were random, then random evolution would result from them. The fact is that we observe a highly ordered universe obeying consistent unchanging rules. Do the rules by which evolution operated REALLY disinterest you? To me that is akin to seeing a marvelous building and not wanting to learn of its foundations and exploring the wisdom of the architect. This universe is a fascinating place and science to me is one avenue to learn about its designer. By knowing even the tiny amount I do, I stand in awe and respect of the One who formulated its rules by which it was constructed and still operates. However, I also see that there are some serious flaws in the design. The question now is: Were these flaws there in the beginning? Unfortunately science can only study things as they are, not how they may have once been.
From the time I was knee high to a grasshopper, I have always been keenly interested in "what makes it tick?" This was and still is true of both manmade and natural technology. Science is much better at telling how things work than why. Yet the most profound questions we humans ask usually begin with "why". Why is there so much trouble and evil? Why are humans almost constantly at war? There seems to be no end to these "why" questions.
There are still very many gaps in our understanding of even the how questions. Is the brain REALLY the seat of intelligence and consciousness? How does consciousness and thought arise from a pile of cleverly arranged atoms? I'm sure you can think of many others.
Science may, with time answer some of these "how" questions, but the more important "why" questions are outside of its grasp. If you find a watch on a beach, you can study it's design and make certain inferences of the designer. You could examine the watch down to the atomic level, but would never learn WHY the designer made it. Only if the designer decided to communicate with you, could you really know, at least to some degree who he is and what he is like and why he made the watch. If he did communicate, you would have to BELIEVE by faith in such a communication.
I believe, for reasons I could tell you, if you are interested, that the Bible is the authoritative message of the Universe's designer to mankind. He does therein answer many, but not all of the burning "why" question most humans ask in their life. He tells us why there is death and decay. He tells us that there is a purpose and reason for our existence. He tell us of our origin and eventual destiny. The Bible tells us that this One is not disinterested in human affairs and suffering. At one point in time, almost 2000 years ago, he laid aside the privileges and powers of deity and limited Himself to time and space and clothed Himself in a human body and dwelt on earth for 33 years. He entered our world the same way we all do, as a baby.
There are many religions and philosophies and various gurus and teachers have come and gone. None of them claimed to be God and proved it by conquering our greatest, final enemy -- death. If you meet some nuts who claims to b
All theory is gray
The definititon of the word often would suggest that what you're describing is a frequent event but it isn't when you consider how many 'frustrated geniuses' there are out there. For every Galileo there are a thousand "voices in the wilderness" being ignored by the scientific community simply because their work has no merit.
Since the chances of the lone voice being right are pretty remote when we look at all the lone voices, I don't think we can consider it a frequent event.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
......For every Galileo there are a thousand "voices in the wilderness" being ignored by the scientific community simply because their work has no merit.....
I would agree with you that the word "often" is probably misapplied here. The scientific community only ignores the ones that don't cause too many waves by their ideas. The real troublemakers are the ones that come up with evidence that totally destroys the house of cards that the scientific establishment has built up over, sometimes the course of an entire lifetime.
Anyone who brings evidence against the tottering edifice of evolution is going to be violently opposed, no matter what and how much evidence there is brought. It doesn't matter that evolutionary theory makes assertions for what happened in the past, that we do not see happening today nor can be duplicated by experiment. Nothing like this happens in manmade systems either. No human made system ever becomes more complex or sophisticated on its own, yet that is what evolutionists ascribe to the natural world.
All theory is gray