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Study Detects Recent Instance of Human Evolution
The New York Times is running a Sunday article regarding new evidence about 'recent' human evolution. A research team at the University of Maryland has done some work looking at the rise of lactose tolerance in the human populations of Africa. From the article: "The principal mutation, found among Nilo-Saharan-speaking ethnic groups of Kenya and Tanzania, arose 2,700 to 6,800 years ago, according to genetic estimates, Dr. Tishkoff's group is to report in the journal Nature Genetics on Monday. This fits well with archaeological evidence suggesting that pastoral peoples from the north reached northern Kenya about 4,500 years ago and southern Kenya and Tanzania 3,300 years ago ... Genetic evidence shows that the mutations conferred an enormous selective advantage on their owners, enabling them to leave almost 10 times as many descendants as people without them. The mutations have created 'one of the strongest genetic signatures of natural selection yet reported in humans,' the researchers write. "
Nah.... too easy.
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
It lets another species do the hard work of converting grass to usable nutrients. Milk is a great source of calcium, with helps keep bones strong.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"Humans that couldnt drink milk found something else to eat." Not to nit pick but when my fridge is out of milk I don't start eating a potatoe, I find something else to DRINK
I for one welcome our new milk drinking overlords.. Dunno if it's a slow news day or not, but this striking piece of news really is quite dull. Although admittedly, if true, it's fascinating to speculate as to what other evolutionary changes have occurred only in the last few thousand years, but ultimately evolution is something which happens over millions of years, so it's unlikely to see any other real notes / changes in my lifetime.
Ah. First I was ready to dismiss this on the count of it being irrelevant. But now as I think of it, I can clearly see why being lactose-tolerant is of utter (- haha) importance.
For example, if Adam & Eve were the only parents why are people so different?
How did all the animals fit on Noah's Ark? If there were just 2 of the animals (dogs for instance) why are they so different now?
What about humans on the Ark, were they forced to inbreed for a second time to populate?
Also, we may not have the ability to actually observe Macro Evolution, but Micro Evolution has been evident for some time now. We have documented proof that Americans have gotten taller for instance.
So when you have small changes over a small period of time, is believing that over a large period of time you could have large changes really that unreasonable?
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
So I read the article and it sounded like there was never a time they could point to and say 'here's when the mutation occured'. Instead they stated when the mutation started to have an effect on the population by weeding out those without the mutation.
So I'd say natural selection happened as recently as ~5000 years ago, not evolution. But maybe TFA didn't explain everything.
dan quayle - is that you? ;-)
I realize that this is popular press and all, but why is mutation always mentioned, but crossover, never so?
Generally speaking, mutation is almost always fatal, crossover is almost never so. Crossover keeps you "in the genome", where mutation is just as likely to kick you out of it. My own theory is that mutation is the driver behind speciation, while crossover is the driver behind evolution.
I've run lots of GAs with mutation turned off, letting crossover do all the work. Crossover, not mutation, is what lets a population do that slow walk/hillclimb, over time, through the genetic landscape.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
She's NOT topless!
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
Unfortunately this will prove to be an evolutionary dead end, as these genes will never be passed on.
Home fucking is killing prostitution.
And it gets modded up.. As insightful at that.. :( Sigh. Note to the OP i don't have anything against you but I wish you wouldn't generalize. Feel free to make fun of the "crazies". It's okay. But don't bring Jesus into stuff like this. He didn't say anything about this kind of thing! His whole existance on this Earth was to set an example as to how we should behave and to give our lives meaning.
I think this is an awesome find. Cool. I look forward to more. Guess what I'm a Christian and obviously believe in Jesus.
As I post in all these threads: I'm for gay marriage, pro choice (though anti abortion I don't feel I can make the choices for others), for legal gambling (we don't live in a theocracy), pro legalized drugs and prostitution (what do you think Mary Magdalene was???) etc.
Slashdot would be a wonderful place if we could lose all the religion bashing.
People on the fringes don't speak for all of us. I don't try to force my views on others. I interest my friends in learning more about my views by: being nice to them and treating them well, and listening when they have problems and trying to help them out whenever I can.
Did you know that if, today, you went and tried to translate the original Genesis story into English today it could have 4 or more meanings? The Bible you read is the most *probable* meaning but it is NOT the only meaning that Moses could have intended when writing it.
Seriously, evolution happens all around us. We know. However, it doesn't necessarily mean God didn't put us here, or any of that Jazz. In fact the two don't really have anything to do with each other at all. The fossil record DOES show species just "appearing" as if they were just created. It also indicates that the Earth is very old. So what? That just indicates that: we have more stuff to figure out about our world. We discover stuff that was previously unkown all the time. Cool. I believe God gave us our mind so we could do as much as we can do understand the world around us. Are we always going to be right? No. But that doesn't mean you are a "dirty sinner" or something if you are.
Humans don't have a full understanding of everything. I'm cool with that. I look forward to learning more about evolution. As we learn more and more about the detail of the universe I think it shows us more and more about how awesome God is for putting it into place.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
It is actually advertising prostitution, if you want to sleep with this lady, she works Saturdays and Wednesdays from 12 pm to 9pm(though it seems you have to get there by 8 to use her) at the "Soapland lovers" place in Tokyo, Taito-ku, 4-21-3(how streets are addressed in Japan) at Chitsuka(I'm not 100% sure on the name).
Monstar L
Didn't we see human evolution pretty close to home? But only backwards;).
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
significant figures. I would say that "2700-6800" signifies certainty between 2650 and 6850 years ago, with slightly less (but consistent) certainty that it is between 2750 and 6750 years ago.
Don't feel bad. Apparently Pandas are no longer endangered. I think it's high time we cooked a few of them up to see how they settle. With bamboo shoots and sweet and sour sauce. :) /posting without karma bonus cuz this is sooo off topic
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
It was a tongue in cheek comment, I actually said Jebus to avoid that interpretation. It was only making fun of the crazies who use his name. I agree it shouldn't have been modded insightful, but hey it certainly wasn't flamebait.
I never get used to these constant resurrections
All I can find is their list of publications and their 'Homeland Security' website. Apparently UM is very 'prepares' - or they've just made a bunch of lists with staff people's names on them.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Being able to digest milk can be incredibly valuable in an environment where protein and many other nutrients present in milk are scarce (a fair assumption regarding conditions a couple of thousand years back).
But yes, of course smarts can pay off to various degrees in Darwinian terms too, depending on what niche you are looking to fill.
Because you're far more likely to survive the couple of millenia between domesticating cattle and making your first gun if you can tolerate lactose.
Mmmm... I think saying "I really don't think" is quite honest of you, although it is already painfully obvious to most of us here.
Humans originally didn't have the enzymes to digest cow lactose; why should they? It serves no purpose in a hunter-gatherers genome.
Most infants can digest lactose well enough to get by as they are expressing genes at that age to aid in the digestion of human milk, but by age 5 cow milk normally makes a lactose intolerent person puke mucus.
Occasionally through mutation some did have the right enzymes to digest cow lactose through adulthood, but as humans did not keep cows those people had no advantage over other people without the mutation, so the mutation was lost as it had no benefit.
When humans started to keep cows they had access to a new food source, milk.
This would have been used to feed infants to replace or suppliment the mother's milk, probably as part of the weaning process.
As those infants grew older those with tolerence to lactose had access to a renewable food resource denied to those who were intolerent to lactose. Those lactose intolerent infants whose parents kept feeding them milk would have been sickly and malnourished.
There would be such a big ebenfit to lactose tolerence that somethng called 'runaway evolution' took place. It's a bit like how mudskippers evolved; if ten fish of a species in a river survive a drought survive because of x charecteristics only they (in that species) have, after that drought all members of that species have x characteristic.
Similarly with human lactose tolerance the stronger, better fed, healthier members of the population with lactose tolerence would have had way more offspring then those who didn't have the genes for it, and those offsrping would fare better.
If 5% increase in genetic transfer through natural selection can make a new characteristic spread throughout a population in less than 200 generations, think how more quickly one with a much higher advantage might spread.
Guns are part of an extended phenotype, and are NOT subject to genetic transmission. Idiot.
You've obviously never been in a starvation situation have you? Well for most of their lives, most of your ancestor were...this is why: being able to drink milk as opposed to dying is an advantage. If you could metabolise rocks it would be a good thing.. Are you lactose intolerent? Maybe you're afraid you've been left behind?? Don't worry I've Celiacs in the family so we're a bit behind as well...
Touch the monolith, monkey boy.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
You're far too reasonable, I don't think you'll like it here.
...OR maybe its simply because lets face it: who wants to have sex with someone with diarrhea???You must be new here.
Just FYI the Internet is full of people like that.
I believe this line of reasoning to be mistaken to some degree - evolution of man and squirrel alike indeed continued apace until ~approx 100 000 years ago, when modern man first left Africa and the laws of evolution ceased to apply to humans, due to the plasticity of spandrels. Hence, positing evolution of humanity is incorrect in timespans extending much further back than a mere 6000 years. After this no evolution whatsoever has taken place among humans, and therefore the article referenced above must be incorrect.
o ry-Ancestors/dp/1594200793
8 .htm
It is hard to determine if this study and many other recent similar ones implying recent evolution in humans are driven by mere ignorance or if more sinister motives are at work. The author referenced here, one Nicholas Wade, is notable for engaging in ideologically dubious activities, such as his recent book "Before the Dawn". He must be watched closely, or his dangerous line of thinking might be allowed to spread among the easily manipulated masses.
Prof. Beata Brattenschlick
Dept. of Deconstruction, University of Copenhagen
References:
"Before the Dawn":
http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-Hist
"Breakthrough in human genetics":
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N2220502
It's really simple, drinking milk or not really had no influence on human evolution
Says YOU. Tell me, what is it that babies were supposed to drink 6000 years ago? Formula? Diet Coke?
The problem is that you're looking at this in the wrong context. You're seeing it as an adult, and you're thinking about cow milk.
The leading cause of death for infants less than 100 years ago in developed nations (and STILL the leading killer today in underdeveloped countries) was diarrhea. How do you get diarrhea? Hmm, lactose intolerance causes - guess? Diarrhea. Baby can't drink breast milk, so you give it something else - something more likely to be contaminated with diarrhea causing viruses. Net result? More diarrhea.
Who cares if an adult - who has probably already reproduced (this is before birth control remember) dies of diarrhea? Those genes have already been passed on. The important factor here is all those dead babies who never got old enough to pass their genes on. Lactose intolerance has played a MAJOR part in this.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Which women?
Eve, lilith (who was obviously evil because she considerd herself an equal of man) or the other one that adam saw being created and was too disgusted to go near after realising she was made of meat.
Or the other tribes the kane and able encountered during their wanderings?
Oh you never bothered to read the Kabbalah? Maybe you ought to check the orignal source material...
There are 2 kinds of people that have read the bible: those that have understood it, and christians.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Does she lactate? Just trying to stay on topic.
Good for you. Except that strikes to me as quite a hypocritical view. Maybe you'd like to explain that one item you didn't try explaining? You are for gay marriage even as the bible very clearly condemns homosexuality in several passages. Or do you mean with marriage something else than christian marriage? Like a "registered relationship" etc. In that case I would refrain using the word marriage as it gives wrong impression.
Or maybe you are one of these christians who think that "god's will" should not shape the values of our society, but our societies everchanging values should shape god's will?
Disclaimer: I'm not a christian, but I much more value a christian that practices what his book preaches than a christian that changes his opinion based on what's "hip" in current opinion climate.
Erm. You're confusing general lactose intolerance with adult lactose intolerance.
General lactose intolerance is a bad thing. Any mammal that doesn't tolerate lactose while still nursing is in very deep doodoo. It's a mutation that'll basically kick you out of the gene pool immediately.
Adult lactose intolerance is, for most mammals, a normal thing (which is why you shouldn't give milk to cats/hedgehogs/etc). Adult mammals aren't supposed to seek out sources of milk, for obvious reasons, which is why the production of lactase usually stops once the mammal is old enough to eat real food. Of course, this mechanism evolved loooong before humans got the idea of domesticating goats/sheep/cattle and use the milk of a completely different species to supplement their diet. This made a mechanism that would have been faulty (adult mammal that tolerates lactose) suddenly become a genetic advantage.
It's really simple, drinking milk or not really had no influence on human evolution. Humans that couldnt drink milk found something else to eat.
Yeah, because 6000 years ago you could just go down to 7-11 and grab a burrito, right genius? Fact is that you have two populations - one that can eat the enormously nutritious, high-calorie food that comes out of this cow/goat/wildebeast over here, and one population that can't. Guess which one dies first when famine hits, or the grain crop spoils?
Most evolutionary advantages are slight and happen over time. In this case, you have people living in rather arid conditions, some of whom live a whole lot better because they can drink milk. Not hard to figure out, really.
You've got some troubles with irony now don't you?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
They point is that they often couldn't. Check populations such as the African's Masaï tribe, cows are their lifeline and most of their diet is composed of milk and dairy products and cow blood (for warriors). A masaï suffering from adult lactose intolerance wouldn't reach puberty.
No it didn't, guns haven't yet generated any new evolutionary path. If you one day discover bullets-resistant humans then they may be favored by natural selection, until then guns have no major influence on the human evolutionary path.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Evolution is a process. It doesn't happen in an instinct, but even minor genetic changes can take thousands of years to permeate through a population. I think that sentence means that the processes began 6800 years ago and completed 2700 years ago.
Convergent adaptation of human lactase persistence in Africa and Europe
A SNP in the gene encoding lactase (LCT) (C/T-13910) is associated with the ability to digest milk as adults (lactase persistence) in Europeans, but the genetic basis of lactase persistence in Africans was previously unknown. We conducted a genotype-phenotype association study in 470 Tanzanians, Kenyans and Sudanese and identified three SNPs (G/C-14010, T/G-13915 and C/G-13907) that are associated with lactase persistence and that have derived alleles that significantly enhance transcription from the LCT promoter in vitro. These SNPs originated on different haplotype backgrounds from the European C/T-13910 SNP and from each other. Genotyping across a 3-Mb region demonstrated haplotype homozygosity extending >2.0 Mb on chromosomes carrying C-14010, consistent with a selective sweep over the past 7,000 years. These data provide a marked example of convergent evolution due to strong selective pressure resulting from shared cultural traits--animal domestication and adult milk consumption.
You can get it fron Nature Genetics if you have institutional access.
If you want to know why Lactose tolerance is a big deal read this (mainly because it's a nice example of Gene-Culture co-evolution).
--Simon
henry -- the human evolution news relay
- About only 2% of Swedes are lactose intolerant.
- About 20-60% of Africans are lactose intolerant.
I can personally see a much stronger signature of these genetic traits in Scandinavia? Is the difference that this evolution was not "recent"? Because surely it has to be some form of natural selection causing this in Scandinavia too, perhaps trigged earlier for some reason?
Some useful links:
- Lactose intolerance by human groups.
- World map with lactose intolerance distribution.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
If there is a step-by-step path from point A to point B, we have something plausible.
The problems come in when there is a system which step-by-step scenarios are implausible. I and others would say that is unreasonable.
If you have a system that requires a bunch of things to happen before any natural selection advantage is given, I would find that unreasonable.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In the beginning there was MS Word.
Later came Virgin Records.
Jebus has been touring the metropolitan Nebraska area, but their first attempt at a radio single , "Jebus Loves You", hasn't on past the town of Willow Corners.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
NB: This is an example of adaption, not speciation. Speciation has been observed before, and is thus not truly a theory. Only the most boneheaded of creationist would disagree with adaption since it is not incompatible with even strict creationism. What is controversial (according to some crazoids, at least), is the idea that one species gives rise to another (speciation) like humans having an ancestor that was an ape. The idea that black moths can become white in a generation or that humans can become able to drink milk is NOT what the creation/evolution 'debate' is about.
I think we should be clear here, what they are discussing is natural variation within a single species, not an evolution from one species to another.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I guess you're talking about the one species where the males keep lots of childlike mannerisms even after reaching physical maturity, like tantrums, the obsession with toys and sources of milk, and crawling, toddling and babbling (after consuming too much alcohol). Touché.
Because the very existence of religion creates extremism, and if you want evidence of this then, well, you've got basically the whole of human existence to choose from. More moderate people like you perpetrate the myth that religion can be balanced and forward thinking and therefore religion is allowed to continue existing. In fact for this simple reason alone you are more dangerous than the extremists and however deluded they might be you are more so. To them you are the public face, they are the necessary guards of the core values. And in a sense they are right, you have deluded yourself into believing in a god who is kind, just and fair when your own texts say that there was a lot of 'fire and brimstone' behind him. The true face of religion is divided in half, like that Batman villain, with one half being a serene, kind and gentle visage and the other half a snarling beast. But make no mistake, they are the same entity.
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
I am getting my PhD in statistical genetics. Does lactose tolerance reflect a lack of civilized sources of food? Northern Europeans and Nilo-Saharans were relative latecomers to civilized life. As recently as a thousand years ago, Northern Europeans were still a bunch of cannibals running around with stone axes, and drank milk from animals. In East Asia, Mongolians are lactose-tolerant, but they were less civilized than other countries in the region which acquired agriculture thousands of years ago. Similarly, Westerners are alcohol-tolerant because they did not know how to boil water to sterilize it until about 150 years ago, so they added alcohol to their water all the time. Incidentally, genetics do not tell the whole story. Lactose tolerance is also affected by gut flora. Lactose intolerance is increasing in Western countries as bacterial diversity in our environment is decreasing from excessive hygiene. Many differences in phenotype between different ethnic groups, long assumed to be genetic in origin, have turned out not to be so. As Japanese nutrition standards have improved, their average height is now taller than some European countries. African-Americans were long assumed to be genetically more susceptible to cardiovascular diseases, but white Russians in Finland have rates of cardiovascular disease far higher than African-Americans. Race-based susceptibility to diabetes is also under question -- groups such as Pima Indians with high diabetes rates also eat huge amounts of fry bread and other unhealthy foods.
I for one welcome our new loctose-tolerant overloards.
Execpt that it's too late, it already happend.
FRA: STFU GTFO
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that his life and death and resurrection demonstrated that we do not have the capacity to behave well enough and require his forgiveness, hence his repeated use of the phrase 'repent and believe'?
Probably not a prostitute. Though Jesus did hang out with plenty of them. Doesn't mean he approved of what they did, however. In fact, he condemned sexual immorality, which would have included prostitution. The whole bit about lust in the sermon on the mount pretty much precludes it.
Quite a few people have translated it into English today. The English Standard Version, for instance, is less than a decade old. When translating it, they don't spell out whether or not creationism is right or not - that's a task for expositors, not translators.
Amen to that!
Is it in a place where the altelnative sources to milk - for water and nutrition are scarce?
FRA: STFU GTFO
I think it was Dawkins (or was it Rand?) who said: it's amazing how religious people can have their ideas in compartments. That is, sometimes you deal with the world as it is, perfectly rational; then, once in a while, you put reality aside, go to the church/shul/mosque and surrender your brain to the myth.
(not all myths are about deities, just listen to any left-winger talking about the virtues of socialism and you'll wonder if he has ever learned anything about the past century's history)
Circumcision is child abuse.
"Feel free to make fun of the "crazies". It's okay. But don't bring Jesus into stuff like this."
Ummm, technically he only invoked "Jebus". I dunno about you, but in my alphabet "b" and "s" are different letters. Maybe he was intentionally doing this to avoid offending anyone reasonable who does believe in Jesus?
"Slashdot would be a wonderful place if we could lose all the religion bashing."
And the world could be a wonderful place if groups of people identified predominantly by their religion would stop bashing everyone and everything else, too.
"People on the fringes don't speak for all of us."
No, but they speak the loudest. So all us non-religious types hear is fuckwit fundamentalists complaining about violent video games in the army, opposing evolutionary marriage and banning gays.
" I don't try to force my views on others. I interest my friends in learning more about my views by: being nice to them and treating them well, and listening when they have problems and trying to help them out whenever I can."
Then well done - you're pursuing the only path that stands a chance of really converting anyone with more than two brain-cells to rub together.
If it helps, try the following:
s/christian/fuckwit fundamentalist christians/
s/religion/what's done in the name of religion by fuckwits/
I'm pretty sure that's the mental shorthand of most reasonable people on Slashdot - religion has done very good things, but these days most of the good things are shouted down by the constant media-whoring of the lunatic fringe.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Shall we rephrase that without the inflammatory semi-racism:
by this logic in 2000 people can say that having different shades of skin color was a genetic mutation that offered people with such skin a significant advantage in certain environments. As a result, people with darker skin became more prevalent in tropical regions where the darker pigmentation helped protect them against melanoma, whilst those with lighter skins became more prevalent in northern regions as the lighter skin helped them not get rickets. None of which has anything to do with getting infected with HIV.
henry -- the human evolution news relay
There are no passages in the Bible that "very clearly condemn homosexuality" as each passage can be interpreted in several different ways, as the parent suggested. You will also find most of those passages up for debate are from the Old Testament, which isn't from the teachings of Jesus. You will find much in the New Testament that directly contradicts the Old Testament.
So if I read you correctly, he's not a Christian worthy of your disdain because he bothers to think for himself (as the New Testament suggests he should) and not simply "obey the word"? That's very tolerant of you.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
In Soviet Russia, lactose evolves tolerance for YOU!
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Mohinder discovers a new hero with the ability to digest lactose!! Will he be able to save him from Sylar?
[Insert pithy quote here]
Says YOU. Tell me, what is it that babies were supposed to drink 6000 years ago? Formula? Diet Coke?
Breast milk, either from their mother or from another woman. A quote from the History of Breastfeeding:
"In the early years of the human species, breastfeeding was as common as it was for other mammals feeding their young. There were no alternative foods for the infants, and the mother, along with other lactating females, would have no choice but to breastfeed the children. This process is still seen in many developing countries and is known as shared breastfeeding."
It's very rare for a baby to be intolerant to the lactose in its mother's milk (see Myth 21 at this page), and as another poster pointed out, babies that couldn't digest human milk didn't live very long.
The leading cause of death for infants less than 100 years ago in developed nations (and STILL the leading killer today in underdeveloped countries) was diarrhea. How do you get diarrhea? Hmm, lactose intolerance causes - guess? Diarrhea. Baby can't drink breast milk, so you give it something else - something more likely to be contaminated with diarrhea causing viruses. Net result? More diarrhea.
Until fairly recently in the history of human beings, if babies didn't get breast milk from their mothers, they were usually nursed by another lactating woman (see wet nurse). Although breast milk substitutes were already available in the mid-1800s (see a history of baby formula here) it was only about in the 1940s, when women were needed in the workforce, that the use of baby formula really became widespread. Incidentally, one major way babies get diarrhea in developing countries today is from drinking formula mixed with contaminated water. Breast milk is definitely a safer alternative.
Humans have recently (in the evolutionary time scale) started doing something that few (if any) other mammals do: drinking the milk of another animal. The fact that adult humans are developing a better tolerance for lactose is quite significant.
I'm not the original poster, but as I seem to have similar opinions, I'll bite.
First off, the law in the Bible has always been for the people of God. In the Old Testament, that was the Jews. After Jesus, it expanded to include Christians. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that non-believers should be made to follow the law (In the OT, the Jews were told to kill certain unbelievers, and in the NT Christians are called to convert them, but they're never told to force them to follow the law). Biblically, you don't get saved by following the law (or rather, you would, but nobody ever manages to keep it 100%). You get saved by following Jesus. Going around forcing people who don't follow Jesus to act as if they did accomplishes nothing except to get them really annoyed. It's not going to save anyone, and it's counterproductive.
Since, as the grandparent said, we don't live in a theocracy, the government should not necessarily be bound to obey the laws of God. I believe homosexuality is wrong, but I believe the government shouldn't be making laws about morality. Governments should make laws to provide for the security and freedom of its citizens - anything else is (or should be) out of its scope. If it's an issue of morality, then it should be in the hands of the church (as the rules of the church apply only to its followers). So allow gay marriages - as long as you don't force me to partake in one, or force my church to officially sanction it. Allow prostitution and drug use - as long as you don't force me to foot the bill to treat the addicts, or allow people to use being "under the influence" as a means to escape their actions. These are consensual activities, and are issues purely of morality, and should not be prohibited by the government. As long as the government doesn't stop me practicing my religion, it should allow everyone else to do whatever they like, as long as it does not significantly impact other's freedom or security.
On the other hand, things like murder, rape and theft have an impact on the citizen's freedoms and security. The government should forbid them. The current abortion debate (and the therepeutic cloning debate) are essentially a definitions debate, determining when a developing human should be given the same protections as a fully developed human.
As an aside, Mary Magdalene wasn't a prostitute - Rahab was though, and she was judged as righteous. Not because of her profession, but in spite of it. The Bible isn't defending prostitution as a moral choice, it's saying nobody (including prostitutes) is beyond redemption.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Yes, and the reason why is simple: religion is un-reason (and often anti-reason). Therefore, it obliterates the only common grounds that humans can find among each other.
In a world of reason, there are facts, evidence, and proof, with which we can (in principle) persuade each other to converge on a single, objective knowledge... and hence, there is no need to kill each other.
Without reason, it's just your feelings/assertion/faith/whim/tradition versus mine, and there is no mechanism for synchronizing the two databases... so, may the biggest club win.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
In the case of north western Europe (Scandinavians et al.) the severe winter may have acted as the arid climate of the Masaï. If your harvested crops didn't last the winter, and you couldn't tolerate that cup of milk, you were at risk. Other cultures in the north may not have had that strong link to cow/goat farming and therefore never received this lactose tolerance.
Great argument. "Religion is evil, if you want proof, look at history!" Nice as rhetoric, lousy as an argument. I could just as easily say "Patriotism is evil, just look at the history of international conflict!" Or I could say "Trade as evil, look how many wars have started over trade issues!" I can't find a batman villain to compare you to though, you've got me there.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Not at all. The lactose tolerance was of direct benefit. Lighter skin neither produced the only egress north nor provides any protection against the virus. This leaves your little skreed as nothing more than an attempted racist slam. Regionalist as well, as darker skinned individuals are not destined to suffer the same devestation as in Africa.
To PETA, the human race continuing and being prosperous isn't a good thing.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Sorry to nitpick, but the probability of the date falling in a larger interval could only be higher.
However, it probably really is an approximation to 2 places of a confidence interval where the probability that the actual value lies within that interval is high enough (maybe 95%) not to be too worried about the tails. I'm not a statistician though.
Note how he didn't say he thought those things were good, he said the government has no business outlawing them. That's not the same thing.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
You really think some assistant biology professor (with an obvious tilt toward anthropology) and a few grad students are going to cure AIDS?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
>But don't bring Jesus into stuff like this.
>He didn't say anything about this kind of thing!
Jesus was very consistent on Evolution. He never said anything about it. So clearly his response was whatever the fanatical Christians believe.
(with apologies to Colbert)
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
It's very rare for a baby to be intolerant to the lactose in its mother's milk (see Myth 21 at this page),
I don't know what you call "very rare":
The prevalence of lactase deficiency and lactose intolerance in Chinese children of different ages. Yang Y,He M, Cui H, Bian L, Wang Z. Chin Med J (Engl). 2000 Dec;113(12):1129-32.
Institute of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, Beijing 100050, China.
OBJECTIVE: To determine lactose metabolism and lactase activity in Chinese children of different ages, prevalence of lactase deficiency (LD), and lactose intolerance (LI). METHODS: All 1168 healthy subjects between 3 and 13 years were recruited from schools in four large cities in China. They were screened by a 25 g lactose tolerance test. Some subjects were challenged with 50 g milk powder on different days. Both indicators, the expiratory H2 concentration and intolerance symptoms, were analyzed. RESULTS: LD occurred in 38.5% of children in the 3-5 year age group, and 87% of the 7-8 year and 11-13 year old groups. The age of occurrence for LD may be at 7-8 years among Chinese children. The prevalence of LI among Chinese children was 12.2% at age 3-5 years, 33.1% at age 7-8 years, and 30.5% at age 11-13 years, respectively. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrate that LD is very common in Chinese children from these four cities. LD and LI have a dose dependent response: lactose absorption and symptoms are based on lactase activity. The relationship between breast feeding history (or the history of cow milk intake) and lactase activity among Chinese children has not been established.
PMID: 11776151 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
I don't have time to look for more.
I agree that lactose intolerance becomes more prevalent with increasing age, and a nursing newborn has only a very small chance of having this problem. However I would argue that it is more common than you think, especially among certain populations (asians, hispanics). I could also argue that a 30% prevalence in a population not old enough to breed yet (under 13) is quite a common problem (Diabetes mellitus only has between 6-12% prevalence depending on the population's ethnicity) and could have had a significant evolutionary impact before the arrival of civilization.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Did you know that if, today, you went and tried to translate the original Genesis story into English today it could have 4 or more meanings? The Bible you read is the most *probable* meaning but it is NOT the only meaning that Moses could have intended when writing it.
Ok, serious question here, not an attack.
Is that statement used as an excuse for selective belief for what appears in the Bible?
For example, in RSV Exodus 31:15 it says "whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death". So, do you believe that anyone who works on the Sabbath day really should be put to death, or do you chose to ignore that part due to "inaccurate translation"?
What is your criteria for what you believe and don't believe? Is it convenience or a more honest set of rules?
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
I read the article, I'm not the Breast Surgery Chief but I do have a fairly solid background in biology. The thing that made my bullshit meter go into the red is when he tried to discredit pasteurization. Also, he uses very weak arguments and then doesn't back them up. You can't just say milk has bacteria, bacteria makes people sick, therefore milk is bad ... it's simply too broad a brush to use in biological terms. If you want to talk about scary stuff, look at all the recent fecal coliform contaminated vegetables in this county. If this author took a stance on that subject, it would read like this: fertilizer and reclaimed water used to irrigate vegetable fields contain fecal coliforms, fecal coliforms make people sick, therefore vegetables are bad. Disconnected facts do not an argument make.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
The article you quoted does not mention babies. If anything, it mentions toddlers. By the age 3, kids should have started to eat solids (and be able to walk, and talk). In fact, it's not unusual for them to stop nursing before they're two years old.
No, seriously. Getting rid of lactose intolerance was is only relevant for pastoralists. So it mainly happend in Central Asia (and probably spreading from there to Europe) and parts of Africa.
Yeah, and we're talking about Africa here, so what's your point? It's not surprising that this gene arose in areas that could, you know, actually benefit from milk?
The Chinese and Japanese for example did and do rather well with a majority of the population being intolerant to lactose.
There's obviously more than one way to gain an advantage, and a lack of dairy cattle in Japan might have played a role there.
If something is an advantage or not is highly dependent on the context. There is no absolute better/worse. Evolution is not a way to perfection.
Who are you debating this with? This isn't philospohy class. Who ever mentioned absolutism or perfection?
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that non-believers should be made to follow the law
Correct, it doesn't. It says they'll go to hell.
Biblically, you don't get saved by following the law (or rather, you would, but nobody ever manages to keep it 100%). You get saved by following Jesus.
According to your group's interpretation of the collection of literary works that comprise the christian 'bible'. The original authors (the real ones - you know the jews whose 'spiritual' inheritance christians claim a part of) of the vast majority of those literary works (the OT) would disagree with that interpretation to say the very least. Quote the NT to them all you want - they don't believe it is the 'word of god' in the way you do, and they wrote all the parts that christians interpret as validating the divine nature of jesus.
And, for the open minded parent poster above, the christian 'bible' clearly states that homosexuality is an abomination (Lev. 18:22), for which you get to go to hell (Rom. 1:26-28). And I have to wonder, what is gay marriage without gay sex? Don't get me wrong, I applaud such open mindedness, but if you're a christian who believes that every word in the English christian bible was explicitly arranged by god, its pretty hard to reconcile open mindedness about such issues with the 'word of god'.
If it's an issue of morality, then it should be in the hands of the church (as the rules of the church apply only to its followers).
So, if you're not a member of a church, then you're free?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
The fossil record DOES show species just "appearing" as if they were just created.
The fossil record has gaps because it is very rare for something squishy to be fossilized. Lack of evidence is never proof of anything. To claim otherwise is really bad science.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
All you needed was a reference to germs in that last sentence and you would have the name of an excellent book on the topic. I suspect it might not be a coincidence though.
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
Glenn
The Smrt way to trade CFDs on the ASX
More moderate people like you perpetrate the myth that religion can be balanced and forward thinking and therefore religion is allowed to continue existing.
It seems that yours is the extremist approach, not those that follow some sort of religion. It is always amazing that people with religion are required to tolerate those without, but those without religion don't have to do the same.
you have deluded yourself into believing in a god who is kind, just and fair when your own texts say that there was a lot of 'fire and brimstone' behind him.
That would be a correct statement if you only focus on the Hebrew Scriptures and leave out the Christian or New Testament ones. But, then again, the Christian ones re-interpreted the message and meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures and the 'fire and brimstone' wasn't part of it, but love and forgiveness was.
The real question is why does any time an evolution discussion come up, Slashdot turns into a religion bashing discussion. Even for the relatively small group of world-wide Christians that are fundamentalists and hold to the biblical account of creation, most do not.
I would have really thought the Slashdot discussion would have focused on the claim that these two groups of people evolved in a relatively short time and relatively recently. That would seem to beg the question of evolved from what? Where they not homo sapiens before this evoloution? Are they not homo sapiens now? If they were homo sapiens both before and after this genetic trait occurred, then technically, evolution hasn't occurred, just adaptation. You would think researchers would be more precise with their language.
Someone is feeling a heavy dose tonight.
... when the Evolution deniers, pro intelligent design promoters say all their nonsense?
Peopl like you are either too shy or too few.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I mean it, that was beautiful. I wish more people were like this....
I might not be as bitter about the whole religion thing if people were.
Sigh....
Woos? It's not crazy people on the fringes. You really are sadly uncommon as far as I can tell....
"His whole existance on this Earth was to set an example as to how we should behave and to give our lives meaning."
Actually his whole existance on this earth was thanks to his mother and father (yes he did have one). And if he were alive today he'd probably be seeking treatment for any one of a number of psychological issues along with moses, muhammad , guru nanak etc etc.
"I am the son of god!", "God has spoken to me via a burning bush!" , hmm yes , come this way and just take these little pills, it'll all be ok soon...
Perhaps in modern societies there are more ways to compensate for it (just go to the supermarket, lots of food). Still, you probably had to invest some time into working out a proper diet for you etc. Time other people could have spent to improve other skills and get an advantage over you.
Following the law isn't how you get sent to Hell. Hell is, to put it simply, a place where there is an absence of God. As the Christian God is everywhere, and in everything, a place WITHOUT Him is the place designated as "Hell". It was initially described as a place filled with overwhelming sadness and loneliness, but future church officials found that insufficient to motivate their congregation to 'do the right thing', and started making up the whole fire and brimstone story. And the way to go to Hell, the only way to go to Hell, is to completely reject God. Basically, you go to Hell if you CHOOSE to go to Hell, i.e. choose to be entirely separate from God.
Secondly, something that many people forget is that the Old Testament is, quite honestly, a Jewish book. In order to be Christian, you don't have to follow the Old Testament; you have to follow JESUS. Jesus' example and his laws (few that they are) and teachings. One can completely ignore any laws in the Old Testament and still be Christian, as being Christian means you believe that Jesus is God, the Saviour, etc. and you worship and follow him and the God he preached about.
As for claiming that the entire group of Christians has a specific stance on the Bible is particularly naive. Compare, for example, the Catholics to the Fundamentalists. The Catholics follow the precepts presented in the Bible, but only to a point and focusing mainly on the New Testament, and have much external doctrine unrelated to the Bible that is far more important than laws in the Old Testament. Fundamentalism, on the other hand, believes that you should follow what the Bible says by the letter. They tend to be the ones you read about mentioning the anti-homosexuality clauses and the like.
"So, if you're not a member of a church, then you're free?"
I don't get what you mean by that, honestly. If you're not a Christian, why would you follow Christian laws and Christian morality? That's like saying if you live in Australia, you have to follow Chinese law. You aren't a Chinese citizen, so why would you follow their laws?
seems you didnt get the post. I was talking about things people can infer about today in the future based on data that exists they will see millions of black people with HIV in africa and then nearby in europe, far fewer where the only difference being skin color.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Not so much. Despite milk marketing propaganda, higher milk consuption actually seems to be correlated with higher risk of osteoporosis.
Why? Protien. Consuming animal protein causes the blood to become slightly acidic; to balance the pH, your body pulls calcium from the bones (which function not just to keep you from being a blob, but as mineral storehouses).
There seems to be a move afoot to fortify milk with extra calcium to compensate, but more and more people are coming to realize that cow's milk just should not play a significant role in the human diet.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I'm not the poster you responded to, but I personally believe that as I'm not Jewish, I have no reason to follow laws set by God for the Jews. The Old Testament, as it relates to Christianity, is essentially the background information to explain, glorify, etc. the fact that Jesus is the Saviour. The laws in it don't apply, as (to Christianity) any laws or teachings that Jesus gave us basically trump the older Old Testament laws. As his primary command was essentially "love everybody, including yourself", all of those intolerant and violent laws from the Old Testament are obviously contradictory, and are therefore replaced by the 'updated version'.
it's not the christian religion itself that irks me... what drives me crazy about christianity is the sense of entitlement that it creates in it's followers. i'm not usually one to go off on religion, especially someone as progressive in their thinking as you... but even your words smack of good old christian entitlement. that's the problem i have with christianity.
christians can spout off all they want about how they have been persecuted and excluded and whatever and feel entitled to point that out to us all, much like you have here. i don't know where you live, but here in midwestern america there is chirstianity plastered all over every flat surface, and we all just accept it... and yet that's still not enough. you still feel entitled to share your chistianity with us, as if we had forgotten for a moment that christianity is alive and well in america.
looking past the kooks and the bible thumpers, to the average rank and file christian, there is still that that self rightous sense of entitlement. the extremist rehetoric no longer phases me, in fact i much prefer it because it's so easy to tune out. but that subtle sense of entitlement, present in so much of american culture, always rings in my ears.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Anyone seen a cheerleader around? Or maybe strange Japanese dudes? Come on man, we're running out of time!
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
You'll have to do some pretty radical interpretation to change for example these passages into something approving of homosexuality:
"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." - Leviticus 18:22
"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." - Leviticus 20:13
I don't really think anyone honest would claim these are anything else than condemnation of homosexual activities.
So? You will find passages also in New Testament that clearly state engaging in sex with the same gender is a grave sin:
"In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." - Romans 1:27-32
I snipped part of it away to make it shorter but you can verify, if you so please, that the context is not changed and the end snippet does still talk about the same thing.
Let's finish this off with one last item from the New Testament:
"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders" - 1 Corinthians 6:9
And so I thought/think that I don't agree with your response to my ancestor poster:
The people could have changed their way of living (their culture) but in this case they didn't. That's what we have to understand and that's not plain biology/evolution.
You are right that it's not that simple as your parent poster suggested but I felt you underestimated the agency of the people 6000 years ago. If you didn't, fine. Then let's go and bash the simplicity of your parent poster ;-)
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Secondly, something that many people forget is that the Old Testament is, quite honestly, a Jewish book. In order to be Christian, you don't have to follow the Old Testament; you have to follow JESUS.
Not really, it you read Matt 5:17-19. But, if you choose to interpret Luke 16:16, Eph 2:15, & Rom 7:6 literally, then no, you don't have to follow the OT.
As for claiming that the entire group of Christians has a specific stance on the Bible is particularly naive.
Believing that the bible - any part - is a canon of god or god's instructions on how to live is what's actually naive. Pick any christian sect, and they canonize some part of the bible to fit their tastes. That's just trying to translate personal preferences into divine will - something nearly all christian sects have in common (along with a slew of other religions). That was actually the underlying point.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
"For example, if Adam & Eve were the only parents why are people so different?"
t m
I believe that they were not the only parents. It looks like to me that the creation events of the first chapter of Genesis are a separate event from the creation spoken out in the second chapter. If, as I believe, this is true, it would very well explained how Cain could have met his wife.
The humans from the first chapters of Genisis were the hunter-gatherers while the creation of the man in the second chapter was hte beginning of agriculture.
"How did all the animals fit on Noah's Ark? If there were just 2 of the animals (dogs for instance) why are they so different now?"
The actual Hebrew word that is translated to Earth is eretz. Eretz means land or soil. Was it the entire planet that was flooded, or was it the entire land (in that area)? Many cultures totally unrelated to Judeaism and Christianity have records of the Flood. It is obvious that the Flood was a major world event, and to me it looks like the flood covered the entire land (in that area).
"What about humans on the Ark, were they forced to inbreed for a second time to populate?"
Maybe.
"Also, we may not have the ability to actually observe Macro Evolution, but Micro Evolution has been evident for some time now. We have documented proof that Americans have gotten taller for instance."
Americans have gotten taller, and when conditions are right, Americans can become shorter as well. Evolution, natural selection, or whatever you want to call it is a mechanical process, nothing more. There are switches with this program that allow certain features to be turned on and off as conditions warrrant. Software crackers also manipulate these switches to affect the behaviour of a program (by switching of registration screens, etc). Computer scientists are in some cases designing programs so that these types of switches can be easily activated and deactivated by other processes in order to try to cause programs to self improve.
The point is that I have seen physical evidence, historical evidence, and linguistic evidence, and archealogical evidence of Biblical truth as well as fossil evidence of the mechanical process of evolution. Much of both evidence goes against what many mainstream Christian BELIEVE, but it does not go against what the original (Biblical) scriptures ACTUALLY SAY. Am I a Christian? no, I am not. I am a Messianic Jew. I also resent the anti-creator bias that is displayed in slashdot as well as many (not all) scientific circles.
Just as there is physucal evidence of the mechanical process of evolution, there is also physical evidence of Biblical authenticity.
Look at http://www.bibleplus.org/discoveries/sodomfound.h
Long before scientists stated (and proved) that the heavens are expanding, the Bible has stated this fact (Job 9:8, Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, as well as many others). I could go on and on about many pieces of evidence, however this evidence is not really hidden. One can find references to most of it online. Yes, I fully expect that this post will be modded down and labelled as flaim bait (typical). However I post such information so that people will get to see a broader view and diverse opinions.
P.S. Re: Mary magdalene - there are a lot of people who think that the story about her being a tart was put about by the male disciples (*cough* Paul *cough*) in order to discredit her.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Who are you debating this with? This isn't philospohy class. Who ever mentioned absolutism or perfection?
I offer a devil's advocate service. For a mere $100, I'll argue for the strawman position you are skilfully demolishing for 10 posts, and then admit you've changed my mind. But since you misspelled 'philosophy', you're clearly not worth debating.
Special offers this month:
Free spelling flames, insults and ad hominems!
Just $10/post to continue any argument!
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Evolution is about speciation, the creation of new species. Darwin's book was titles "The Origin of the Species". The misuse of the term evolution in this instance implies that people, like myself, that are lactose intolerant have become a different species. The simplest test of speciation is to determine if breeding is possible. Bend over!
I would say the very existence of humans creates extremism.
Religion is just one of the many ways they express their extremism.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That is an extremely vacuous statement. It is like saying "If you want evidence that what I said is true, go look for it yourself!" The burdon of proof is on you when you make such statements. The rest of your argument is based on that, so I'll stop here.
No data, no cry
/ducks tomato
Actually, the whole of human existence will show that humanity creates extremism, with or without religion. It's not like areligious or even antireligious ideologies in history don't have as many, proportionately, extremists as religious ideologies, only that religious ideologies are historically much more common.
It doesn't, NS isn't a conscious process, it doesn't "favor" anything.
It's just that, in a not-so-distant past, people who could absorb dairies had a higher chance of survival during famines and such (because they didn't have to slaughter the cattle outright), therefore had a higher chance to reproduce and spread their lactase-tolerance to the next generation.
6000 years ago, in some parts of the world, lactase tolerance was a survival advantage. That's all there is to it.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
"in 2000" is not in the future, its 6 years in the past. Maybe a calendar would help?
Which won't show the kind of evolutionary advantage you suggest; you'll note that Europe still, lower HIV incidence or not, has a lower, not higher, rate of natural population increase than Africa. Individually, white skin may seem to be or be linked to an advantage in the modern world, by evolutionary standards, not so much.
The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know.
Adaption has been observed before. Not speciation.
Speciatian has been observed also
Also, you said that "Only the most boneheaded of creationist would disagree with adaption...". Are you unaware that the vast majority of creationists -- at least those who are vocal on the subject -- would, in fact, satisfy that criteria of 'bone-headedness'?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Leviticus 18:22 by its bare words condemns bisexuality
No it says, "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination." Also, Lev. 20:13, "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death." That seems to paint things out in fairly unambiguous terms.
And Romans 1:26-28 doesn't refer to anyone going to hell for anything, it refers to people being left manifestly degraded on Earth in the eyes of others
Quite true, although it does make a strong argument for anything other than heterosexuality as a 'sin' (if you subscribe to that idea). Its 1 Cor. 6:9-10 that says they will not 'inherit the kingdom of god' - in the belief system of most christian sects, that just leaves hell (or purgatory - I forget, do people get to choose, or is it like a lottery?).
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
You mean the century during which, along with the previous one, every advanced democracy adopted policies directly inspired by socialism, and the ones in which people are happier with the performance of their government generally were the ones that adopted more "socialist" policies than other advanced democracies?
"If they were homo sapiens both before and after this genetic trait occurred, then technically, evolution hasn't occurred, just adaptation."
The word you're looking for is "speciation" -- it is not equivalent to "evolution". From Wikipedia: "Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise." However, not all evolutionary changes imply speciation, though over time the effects of evolution can result in speciation.
Cause the most objective site to reference is 'milksucks.com'
I'll stick to searching 'pubmed.org' for "milk, osteoporosis" and seeing the randomized control trials, thank you.
And this makes sense...how?
:(){
Blind patriotism and trade without conscience *are* "evil", in the "they cause human misery" sense of the word.
Those without religion do not purport to have any kind of 'authority' over others, unless it's based on reason.
From Thomas Hardy to the Beatles to Dogma there are a million examples in the last century alone of religious people being intolerant of anything which even hints at atheism, or mocks/insults their religion. I have no idea how you've managed to construe it as the other way round except, perhaps, in the very small world of slashdot users.
Stupid people think it's cool. Smart people thinks it's a joke; also cool.
No, it's debilitating stomach cramps, then extreme flatulence followed by diarrhea.
No, its the existence of humans that leads to extremists. You can find plenty of people who don't really belong to any religion in particular who are extremists of some time or another. This would include the parent poster!
But it teaches little Joe that the way to resolve your problems is through violence.
Prove it. Give me just one scientific study that hasn't been debunked which shows a causal link between video games and violent behaviour. And no, your own gut feelings and those of your military friend do not apply.
Look, your long exposition is very well written and, I'm sure, well-meaning, but to coin an over-used term, it's nothing but "truthiness". The fact is, there are no well-constructed studies that demonstrate the link you claim. Much like the Birthday Paradox, human instinct is really shitty at dealing with things like this, hence why the scientific method exists. And, thus far, the scientific method disproves your beliefs.
not all myths are about deities, just listen to any left-winger talking about the virtues of socialism and you'll wonder if he has ever learned anything about the past century's history
Now who's being religious?
It's natural selection resulting in the adaptaion of favorable traits among a particular population.
See the wiki definition of Human Evolution.
then, once in a while, you put reality aside, go to the church/shul/mosque and surrender your brain to the myth.
While that sounds nice, it would be talking about a sufferer of neurosis who has split his concious and unconcious into nearly a second personality. Fortunately, that does not really happen because the unconcious forces itself on the conciousness when repressed too much.
Other than that, a split personality would require strict one-sidedness on "normal" life as well, and its immaturities would be shown there as well. Dawkins or Rand, it doesn't matter, the idea is patently absurd.
The only person who would believe such idiocies, is someone who himself is having issues and needs to hear new age Rationalism to supress it.
Have you read my journal today?
Frankly, I've always thought people should be more tolerant of lactose.
Score: -1, Doesn't understand the difference between Stalinist Communism and Socialism
Seriously, you obviously have no idea. Look at the Socialist countries of Europe, and see how they're performing better than the US. See how their crime rates are usually lower, how their healthcare is usually better, how more people vote, less poverty, etc. etc. etc. Why are you so poorly informed about other countries? It makes you look a wee bit foolish when your indoctrinations come clashing up against reality. It's not your fault, most likely an influential family member also had the wrong end of the stick and kindly imparted that knowledge to you when you were too young to realise adults get things wrong. Either that or a communist stole your girlfriend when you were at college. Either way, you're not arguing from logic :)
From Thomas Hardy to the Beatles to Dogma there are a million examples in the last century alone of religious people being intolerant of anything which even hints at atheism, or mocks/insults their religion. I have no idea how you've managed to construe it as the other way round except, perhaps, in the very small world of slashdot users.
If you remove the Islamic extremists and the Christian fundamentalist who use religion to further their political goals, then this statement is not true. While I have no idea whether the majority of the world's people have a religion of some sort or another, it is save to assume it is not a small minority. That said, most people in the world seem to be able to live in harmony with others regardless of their religious views. It only becomes an issue when those in power (political or otherwise) try and co-opt the religion for their own personal or political agenda that problems occur.
Intolerance and its cousin prejudice are not a product of people with religion, they are products of human nature.
Why do you define yourself as a Christian when you don't share most/many of their beliefs? How can you ignore most parts of the bible? How "dare" you decide which parts of the bible to ignore?
I'm not trolling. I just can't understand why you would need religion when you are obviously a fairly rational person.
Not that this will shut her up or anything, but it's a nice on to lab at her with the next pie.
Are you a chemist? Would you value a chemist who still believed in phlogistion theory because an old book says it's true?
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
People, no need to read the rest of this thread, it's all about different interpretations of the delusion of the parent, it'll bore you to death.
according to dan brown jesus was married to a female prostitute :-)
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
What you are talking about is incorrect, and even if it was correct, it applies only the the Judaism-Christianity-Islam trio. It does not apply to Dharmic religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Skihism, Zoorastrianism, and others of this mould). The cultures are so vastly different that a comparison becomes meaningless. In these religious traditions, religion has been the source of progress, not of regress (at least until the Muslim invasion of India, which ruined everything).
Nah! That's the argument for Beano, not LactAid. Sheesh. I hate it when people get their science all messed up.
That is all.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
I think I've figured out the cruical difference between Creationists and Evolutionists.
Creationists support a static view of the human body and believe it has always retained the same form and structure.
They admire the current form of the human body with all of its prefections and don't want to imagine it in a "lesser" state.
Evolutionists support a dynamic view of the human body, where it has changed over time.
They admire the adaptions that allowed it to adapt to changing environments. They note the deficencies of the human body and work to discover how it can be improved and how/why it came to be.
I don't know how/why we are intelligent enough to concieve of a God and/or evolution but I'm more inclined to believe the arguments of the evolutionists because:
a) they have more evidence
b) they have the power to change my environment in a real physical manner (think drugs that defeat natural germs, etc...) where the creationists can only offer faith and comfort.
c) the mind's imagination is an extremely powerful force for making the imaginary seem real.
I admire static beauty but admit that all things change. We grow up, we grow older, eventually we will die. Buildings are worn down, they are destroyed/fall down, and new ones are built. Same for trees, plants, seashores, forests, etc.
Hopefully, our children will learn from our mistakes and change themselves/their environments so their children can live happier lives.
Cheers
Ben
Additionally, all major religions are already inherently a political agenda. It contains within it a power struture and a manifesto for controlling people according to a given doctrine. In this, it does not need to be "co-opted", it just needs to be reinforced.
Stupid people think it's cool. Smart people thinks it's a joke; also cool.
Except that when it comes to war, being physically the largest is no longer a deciding factor. Once the war is over, anyone survivors that breed, get to pass on their genetic code, including any mutations. While you may argue that the gun hasn't been around long enough to have any significant impact on our genetic code, it no doubt will.
It's only prejudiced because of what you substituted in. Replace "Black people" with "utter loonies" and it'd be fair comment.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
There was an article in the LA Time Magazine called West that talked about Raw Milk. That is it talked about milk that was not pasteurized. It mentions that there are enzymes naturally occurring in milk that allow people to digest milk. That means that the ability to tolerate Lactose is not a very big deal since people thousands of years ago presumably were not pasteurizing milk.
Excellent, thanks for the response.
So, the issue I have is why does the Christian Bible contain both parts? The verse I listed was a statement from God, not from one of the mortal characters. So...is the New Testament God a different one, or is Jesus just ignoring all the rules of his father? Is the Old Testament basically mythology?
Also, how do you explain something like: Matthew 5:17 "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill."
From the interpretations I've read of this, he is referring to Old Testament Law. It seems we're back to picking and choosing truth again.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Nothing but FUD!
This story is totally fake. Lactose intolerance isn't actually a real affliction/illness or whatever you want to call it. It was originally concieved by the International Orchard Proprieters Association. It was part of their campaign to topple milk as the number one healthy beverage in the world. To date there are no confirmed cases of lactose intoelerance. People merely think they're lactose intolerance because of a phony medical paper made up by the IOPA's pr department. The document stated that patients suffered stomach aches and discomfort after eating three gallons of ice cream, thus leading to the conclusion that they must have some intolerance to the lactic acid in the ice cream, and by extension ALL dairy products. Which when you think about it doesn't make any sense, since if people were allergic to lactic acid they'd be dead, seeing as how it's used constantly by your muscles. Anyhow, the document sent shockwaves across the world. Overnight thousands of cases of 'lactose intolerance' were reported by authorities. Juice sales skyrocketed. Suddenly people began to say 'Who needs milk? Juice tastes better anyway'. This nearly killed the milk industry as we know it. However, the Oganization of Milk Exporting Countries had developed a new 'wonder drug' that they hoped would help put a stop to lactose intolerance. It was chocolate milk. For the most part it had worked. People stopped worrying about lactose intolerance and embraced chocolate milk. However the damage had already been done, and the IOAP had taken a huge share of the beverage market away from OMEC. You still hear about people putting juice on their cornflakes in the morning.
It wouldn't suprise me if this new finding is an attempt by OMEC to take back some of the market it had previously lost.
I don't own a snook, and if I did I wouldn't leave it cocked.
Incorrect. That's what a modern English translation of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of an Aramiac document writen down by somebody who heard it from someone who heard it from someone says.
Did it go Aramaic -> Greek -> Latin -> English, or was the original language an ancient form of Hebrew? Wouldn't that make it Ancient Hebrew -> Greek -> Latin -> English -> televangelism?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
I believe that you are on the fringe, not the other way around. The offical position of most Christain churches is to be anti-gay marriage, anti-choice, and anti-gambling. Your reasonable position is not the majority, mainstream, or offical position of many churches.
How the hell is that even remotely related with my post?
So what? Modern warfare usually slaughters anything in its way, there's no known genetic trait making you immune to shrapnels or lead bullets in the head, so no specific mutation will be favoured often an other except by sheer chance/randomness.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Not really, it you read Matt 5:17-19. But, if you choose to interpret Luke 16:16, Eph 2:15, & Rom 7:6 literally, then no, you don't have to follow the OT.
There aren't actually any verses or chapters in the Bible that explicitly define Christianity. The generally accepted definition of Christianity, as is indicated in the name, is the worship of Christ. How you go about worshipping Christ and what rules you feel are applicable to it is of course a personal decision of beliefs, and is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible.
By that logic, as Christ is not present in the Old Testament, there is no requirement to follow it.
Pick any christian sect, and they canonize some part of the bible to fit their tastes. That's just trying to translate personal preferences into divine will - something nearly all christian sects have in common (along with a slew of other religions). That was actually the underlying point.
If that was really your underlying point, which I frankly can't see in the post I originally responded to at all (that may be just me, but I still can't see it), then you should really be specifying which version of the Bible you're taking your quotes from. After all, they're all different translations for different sects.
Looking back at that other post just now from that point, I just want to mention that there isn't really a prevalent belief that the Bible is actually "written by God" in the sense you used it. God didn't come down and have some random Jew take dictation. The Bible is believed, rather, to be the result of direct divine inspiration. Obviously there then has to be taken into account the fact that the "Word of God" was then diffused through the writer's perception. There are a few sects who believe that it's literally the exact Word of God, but I'll refrain from commenting on that.
Hm.
I think somehow, this is sarcastic. I'm no expert, though.
Anyways, a mutation to generate an enzyme to breakdown a common compound that is chemically similar to another compound we produce ourselves (ie: glucose), is a far smaller jump in the genetic map than, say, a mutation that would generate a chelation molecule specifically designed to capture lead, while simultaneously producing exotic polymers that weave themselves throughout your skin.
Not to say it couldn't happen, but mutation A is far more likely than mutation B.
Though, at least half of mutation B would very likely exist if, say, all of humanity were exposed to levels of lead sufficient to kill off the population after 15 years of exposure. That is to say, higher than was consumed by the Romans (in the form of Lead (II) Acetate from wine served from lead casks); they regularly lived 30 years or more.
Thing is, we're well aware of the dangers of Lead; even if it somehow found its way into all our water, we'd pretty quickly notice and take action to filter it out. The same applies to a lot of dangers. Human evolution, if not stopped, slowed dramatically when we were able to clear out most macro and microscopic dangers.
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But the power structure or manifesto for controlling people only applies to those who "choose" to follow that religion, not those who chose not to. The intolerance, on the other hand is directed at those outside the religion. Now from a very basic organizational view, if you are intolerant of outsiders and chase them all away, your organization or in this case, religion is going to die out, because there will be no new members. That has not been the case throughout history.
So, while there may be intolerance of specific behaviours found in various religions, which ultimately lead to moral behaviour, that is no different than intolerance of specific behaviours based merely on reason. As an example, most religious moral codes and those based on reason alone, would find pedophilia an intolerable act. Same with rape, murder, and a slew of other behaviours.
So, intolerance of specific acts must not be the problem with religion, because even non-religious views are intolerant of specific acts of their own choosing (many of which coincide with the religious ones).
No, it seems that the intolerance, in the way you are using it, has to deal with when religion is used to control the masses or is used to target a population. That isn't the purpose of any religion (which in some form or another is to find G*d or enlightenment or other such expressions). It is only when the real purpose of religion is co-opted, whether by religious leaders or others and it becomes a tool to further personal and political goals that the intolerance that leads to hate and war and other atrocities occurs.
Again, that isn't religion doing it, but is people using religion.
A fairly uncommonly contextual quote, which follows that long list of "things not to do" that everyone loves to quote in the whole the-Bible-is-anti-homosexuality debate:
Lev 20:22 Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out. (KJV)
To simplify, those rules were rules he gave them in order to survive in the culture of the land they were moving to. It wasn't an expression of the Will of God or any such thing, it was just practicality for survival of His people.
Such are the dangers of quoting out of context.
I agree with what some here have said in that this is natural selection and not evolution. Natural selection leads to evolution according to the theory. (I stress the word THEORY) The existance of natural selection alone does not prove the theory. Furthermore, for this to truly be considered "evolution" then a lactose intolerant individual would no longer be able to mate with a tolerant one as the two would be a different species.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Seriously. Isn't it shocking how some people see evolutionary processes? Like it's some great beast pushing things along?
To them, picture it like this:
There's this game, with this system of rules. There are players in this game. They have different attributes, chosen initially at random, but every 'generation', each player mates with another to generate offspring. Those players who die before the generation, get to control one of the offspring in the next generation (the number of offspring is always equal to the number of players, the 'twinned' offspring are chosen at random). The offspring have a combination of their parent's attributes, plus variation at 1%.
After a few generations, you'll find, the players all have characters that were far better suited to the game than their 'ancestors'. Of course, the rules can change; it is a game after all. When the rules change, the characters now have attributes that are suited to a world very different to the new one. Sure, after a few generations, they'll be back in place, but chances are a few key things will stay the same. Say they developed ultra-hard skin in the first world; they may just keep it, despite, say, the speed disadvantage, because it still keeps them from dying (even if it make them look like idiots).
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So, the issue I have is why does the Christian Bible contain both parts? The verse I listed was a statement from God, not from one of the mortal characters. So...is the New Testament God a different one, or is Jesus just ignoring all the rules of his father?
I think I mentioned something along these lines earlier, but my memory is awful so I'll assume I didn't.
The Old Testament is included in the Christian Bible because Jesus is the Messiah, the one foretold in the Old Testament. The OT is basically kept as a reference/background for the validity of Jesus' role as the Saviour.
Also, Jesus is believed to be God also, so what he says has equal weight to what was said before. And there's no reason why God couldn't change his mind. He apparently did in the Old Testament several times, so changing it again for Jesus is fairly reasonable.
As for why he would've been so harsh and mean to the Jews, and then changed to being loving and all with Jesus, you can glance over the Creation story for a pretty good explanation. He started out loving and caring for his people, back when He created Adam and Eve and all. Then they went and betrayed His trust, and He got angry. All of His treatment of the Jews can be seen as punishment for the betrayal, which since God is an infinite being and was betrayed, is a pretty big punishment. His temper would have cooled over the millenia, I'm sure, and then Jesus decided to come down and pay fully for the big betrayal. So God always loved us, but he isn't angry at us any more.
I think that was a bit of a tangent. *cough*
Also, how do you explain something like: Matthew 5:17 "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill."
Actually that's part of what I said about the reason for the OT being there at all. He came as a fulfilment of the prophecies of the Old Testament for the coming of the Saviour.
Parent is implying that guns removed the "genetic advantage" of the strong and powerful warrior types who could be killed by the common peasant with a gun.
He neglected to factor in that the former warriors used their family relations to get into politics, and they found ways to screw over the common man without running him thru with 2 feet of metal!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If you look at history, a lack of potable water has been a huge problem. In many cases I would bet that the milk had less microbes in it than the water.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Got it.
:)
Then they went and betrayed His trust, and He got angry.
Wait, isn't God "all-knowing"? He should have known he would be betrayed. Sounds like it was a setup to mess with the Jews for a bit. Hmmmm, maybe God is Borat?
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Have there ever been wars fought over "trade"? It seems to me that any such wars would be caused by a lack of trade. This is one reason that first-world democracies don't invade each other—there is no need to conquer the other guy to get his resources when he is willing to dig it up and deliver it to your doorstep.
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On the other hand, if you're talking about a non-christian marriage which grants gays the same benefits as marriage, then sure. I see nothing hypocritical about that. It's just that when people are talking about marriage it is still easily understood to mean christian marriage, and you should be careful to spell it out if you don't mean it.
Given that marriage far predates Christianity and has always been more of an economic institution than a religious one, you might want to quit it with the moronic attempt at revisionist history. Also, there are far more marriages than there are Christians in the world.
Isn't the requirement captured in some sort of "turn the other cheek" thing (that far too many religious people ignore)? There is no such requirement in atheism. What do you call people who don't follow their own rules?
Idealism is religion.
I just wanted to add a note on the milk digression, I suppose. There are huge nutritional differences between pasteurized and raw milk, in terms of health benefits to humans. The live enzymes present in raw milk (phosphatase for cascium absorbtion, lipase for fat digestion, lactase/-ose, galactase/-ose, catalase, diastase, peroxidase, etc) are destroyed to a large extent by the pasteurization process. In raw milk, all 22 amino acids are present as well, whereas in pasteurized milk, the polypeptides lysine and tyrosine are changed by the heating process such that they are not as easily metabolized (meaning your body can't use the proteins as readily or as easily). Vitamins A, F, E, and D are lost to a large degree by the heating process as well, as is Vitamin C (though to a lesser degree). B6 and B12 are pretty much destroyed all together. Also, raw milk is seriously tasty. If you ever to a taste comparison, there's really no contest. It's a full, earthy flavor, whereas the flavors of pasteurized milk and milk products are shallow and less complex. Obviously, drinking raw milk has its risks. It's important to know where your raw milk is coming from and the process by which it's being produced. If the cows are fed what cows are supposed to be fed (grass, pasture plants, etc) and if the conditions on the farm are clean and natural (no anti-biotics, no hormones, no cows being fed other cows, no over-crowding), there shouldn't be a problem with pathogenic bacteria in the raw milk and it should be safe for human consumption. The beneficial bacteria, as the dominant culture, will prevent the growth of harmful bacteria (whereas in pasteurized milk, a sterile medium, there is no active culture of good bacteria to prevent bad bacteria growth). Going to the farm yourself is the best bet, although there are many states in which it's illegal for farms to sell raw milk due to the risks involved with sub-par milk production (factory farms, etc) and so raw milk purchases, even at all-natural organic farms, have to be made rather on the down low. It's good, though, for people to be involved more in their food, to know where it's coming from, to take an active role in their health and diet through awareness of the production process and its results. Also, a last thought: I don't think that relying on milk as a sole source of calcium would be good, but then, relying on any one thing for nutrition is probably not wise. Moderation and diversity are most likely the best routes to take. Go team Human.
crap, I suck at the formatting
The original authors (the real ones - you know the jews whose 'spiritual' inheritance christians claim a part of) of the vast majority of those literary works (the OT) would disagree with that interpretation to say the very least. Quote the NT to them all you want - they don't believe it is the 'word of god' in the way you do, and they wrote all the parts that christians interpret as validating the divine nature of jesus.
Um, what?
The "original authors" of the OT were dead and gone long before Jesus was born or the NT written, so you can't claim they accepted or rejected anything. You're using the modern meaning of Judaism -- someone who follows the God of Abraham but does not accept the teachings of Jesus -- and transfering it back in time to the authors of the OT, long before that definition had any meaning at all. Your claim only makes sense if you are granting ancestral authority to those Jews who were alive at the time of these events and rejected the NT, remaining practitioners of Judaism. Well Jesus and his follewers were all Jewish, racially and religiously, and thus they all have equal claim to ancestral ties with Abraham. It was the acceptance/non-acceptance of Jesus and the NT that caused the split in religions of Judaism and Christianity. So saying modern Jews don't accept the NT is as insightful as saying that Christians don't accept the Koran, and saying the authors of the OT reject the NT makes as much sense as saying that the Disciples rejected Mohammed.
And, for the open minded parent poster above, the christian 'bible' clearly states that homosexuality is an abomination (Lev. 18:22), for which you get to go to hell (Rom. 1:26-28). Don't get me wrong, I applaud such open mindedness, but if you're a christian who believes that every word in the English christian bible was explicitly arranged by god, its pretty hard to reconcile open mindedness about such issues with the 'word of god'.
The argument for open-mindedness comes largely from the words of Jesus himself. I'll grant this is just my interpretation, but when Paul says something is an abomination and you will go to hell, and Jesus says we are all sinners and judge not lest you be judged yourself as only God has that authority, and accused anyone who would try to punish those who sin as hypocrites, I'm going with Jesus.
The enemies of Democracy are
In modern times, with most modern western countries advocating a clear seperation of church and state it is true that religion only affects those who choose to follow it, however, it is not long ago that religion DID have a wide-reaching, politically stifling effect into most corners of society, and continues to do so in many countries. To return to the original reason for our debate, it is a fear of a return to this that makes atheists become militant about religious intolerance (please note: I am not actively advocating intolerance on either side, and i would hope that you find my arguments support this, however in terms of the intolerance on the atheist 'side', in the words of Chris Rock re: OJ Simpson "I'm not saying he should have killed her. But i understand.")
I guess the whole debate comes down to a belief of whether you feel religion to be a cynical form of manipulation, or whether you believe it to be a search for God. I believe the former because I can see no evidence for the latter but plenty of evidence for the former. It validates the latter to discuss religion as a whole perhaps more than it should because the search for a (non-specific) "God" is more reasonable than all Religions actually are, as they not only have tagged any such potential God as their own but also have attached many sub-clauses to him/her and his/her opinions that he may have, should he exist.
Anyway, I have to go home now, but I have enjoyed debating with you, thanks for not degenerating the discussion into a "nah nah atheists are worse" type conversation.
Stupid people think it's cool. Smart people thinks it's a joke; also cool.
I'm pretty sure that these countries have private ownership of businesses and personal property. This makes them only "socialistic". Naked Socialism would work out about as well as Communism did.
Isn't the requirement captured in some sort of "turn the other cheek" thing (that far too many religious people ignore)? There is no such requirement in atheism. What do you call people who don't follow their own rules?
I believe that the "turn the other cheek" thing would only apply to Christians and there are a lot of other religions than Christianity on the planet. Obviously, though, by your last sentence, you were making a slur against Christians. Very subtle, but a derogatory remark, none the less.
In that same verse it says you shouldn't sacrifice your children in the fire to Moloch, yet I find it scandalous that nobody nowadays complains about such practices anymore. What is the world coming to !!!!?!111!
When are our governments going to pass a law that it is forbidden to sacrifice children to Moloch (or Baal-Marduk etc.)?
And what does the author of Leviticus mean (yes, in the same verse) with
"neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion"
does that mean the woman will be confused or the animal?
What is the XXI^{th} century's bible-thumpers' opinion on this matter?
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I would argue that any Christian whose faith is not ABSOLUTE is not a Theist at all. They are Theistic Agnostics.
I never understood this distinction between micro- and macro-.
If you have a species, split it in two, and geographically (or otherwise) isolate the two identical groups, then shouldn't several milleniu of micro-evolution lead to macro-evolution? After a certain point, the two groups would not be able to reproduce with each other. You don't even need to develop complete sexual incompatibility -- horses and donkeys provide a good example of reproductive isolation while still being very similar.
Or am I missing something?
In a world of reason, there are facts, evidence, and proof, with which we can (in principle) persuade each other to converge on a single, objective knowledge... and hence, there is no need to kill each other.
Heh. Yeah. Because there's no way two people using facts and evidence would come to the conclusion that they have an unreconcileable conflict of interest and they won't get what they want unless they kill the other.
No King has ever decided that, based on pure reason, that it is better for him to invade a neighboring country, slay or enslave the populace, and steal their resources and land for himself.
It's religious conviction, anti-reason, that motivates organized criminals to kill snitches.
Okay, sarcasm over. I will fully accept the ills that relgions have caused, though I think you'll find that it is generally only as it is used as a mechanism to control the masses. The one doing the controlling usually has very practical, very rational, and completely brutal reasons behind the manipulation. The people are often driven to war by appealing to their religion, but the leaders seek war as they seek power and wealth and resources, like every war ever.
Frankly I reject your initial premise, that reason is the only common ground humans can find. Art, music, simple human empathy, are all based on emotion and are at least as effective at bringing people together.
The enemies of Democracy are
But the power structure or manifesto for controlling people only applies to those who "choose" to follow that religion, not those who chose not to.
Right, sure. Hence all the murder, torture, burning alive, and general asshattery which was the *primary* tool used to spread all major religions.
Oh wait, your statement was actually totally false and nonsensical.
Now from a very basic organizational view, if you are intolerant of outsiders and chase them all away, your organization or in this case, religion is going to die out, because there will be no new members. That has not been the case throughout history.
You do know why gay hatred and forcing women to have as many babies as possible is the number one agenda item for most religions, right?
This is basic historical knowledge and common sense.
It's that sort of ignorance that religion promotes. You can argue reasonably on other subjects, but here you completely abondon reason. That was the simple obvious conclusion to draw and entriely consistent with reality.
Ask yourself how you could possibly have missed that?
No, it seems that the intolerance, in the way you are using it, has to deal with when religion is used to control the masses or is used to target a population. That isn't the purpose of any religion (which in some form or another is to find G*d or enlightenment or other such expressions).
Ah, but it is the purpose of religion. That's the baisc historical fact you're failing to get.
Sure, it's *sold* as a search for enlightenment, but please don't be so horribly naive as to assume that religious leaders have ever been stupid enough to buy into what they're selling to the rubes.
It is only when the real purpose of religion is co-opted, whether by religious leaders or others and it becomes a tool to further personal and political goals that the intolerance that leads to hate and war and other atrocities occurs.
Not true. Again, that is the true purpose of religion. Show me a time and place in history when it hasn't been used for that purpose.
Again, that isn't religion doing it, but is people using religion.
It is people using religion exactly as it was intended to be used.
Seriously, do you really believe that god is so fucking stupid as to be that big of a failure at getting a simple basic message across?
That's what really blows my gourd about religious types.
They claim to believe in an all powerful all knowing being.
Yet he's too entirely incompetant to deliver a simple message to his creation.
Now if you're going to insist, nonsensically, that he did, then you'll have to explain exactly which religion got the right message and exactly how you know with 100% certainty that it is actually the right one you believe.
If you can't do that, then you are saying that you god is an incompetant moron.
If he were not, there would not be multiple religions killing each other over trivial bullshit which had he just done his job correctly would never have happened.
Well, unless god intended it that way, in which case he's an asshole.
There really is no upside to religion.
Please don't be offended, but your post clearly shows you have a child like understanding of science. You are unwittingly commiting a fallacy of equivocation. From wikipedia:
"In common usage, people often use the word theory to signify a conjecture, an opinion, or a speculation. In this usage, a theory is not necessarily based on facts; in other words, it is not required to be consistent with true descriptions of reality. True descriptions of reality are more reflectively understood as statements that would be true independently of what people think about them.
In science, a theory is a proposed description, explanation, or model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation. It follows from this that for scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theory which explains why the apple behaves so is the current theory of gravitation."
So for something to attain the status of scientfic theory it must have been tested rigorously, be able to make predictions and be observable. Theory is as close to "truth" as you can get in science. Hypothesis is a closer analog to the common usage of theory.
Also if you are interested you read why evolution is a fact and a theory
Rev Cat
Any trait not needed will be eroded by random mutations until it no longer functions.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Even within that trio, religion has been a source of progress. Look at the Muslim astronomers, the Christian philosophers, the Jewish yeshivas. The vast majority of colleges and universities in the Western world, and a good many of the hospitals, were founded by religious organizations. Much of the great art, music, literature, film, and architecture in the world was inspired, wholly or in part, by the religious impulse, whether from that trio or from other, earlier Western religions: the Canterbury Tales, the cathedrals of Europe, Handel's Messiah, the Song of Solomon, the Parthenon, the Kalevala, the Dome of the Rock, the Lord of the Rings, much Greek sculpture, the pyramids, the Mormon Tabernacle, Paradise Lost, Ben Hur, the Eddas, Sufi poetry, Allegri's Miserere, the Iliad, Fiddler on the Roof, the Ka'ba, the Taj Mahal, the Venus of Willendorf, perhaps Stonehenge -- and all of those are off the top of my head.
;-)
But you're right -- the GP is incorrect anyway, and I'm preaching (as it were) to the choir.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Or maybe you are one of these christians who think that "god's will" should not shape the values of our society, but our societies everchanging values should shape god's will?
As a practical matter, society has shaped dieties. God is no different in this regard and has changed drastically over the milenia from being one member of a pantheon to whatever he is interpreted to be today. Besides the whole idea, that someone can from virtually no knowledge and as far as I can tell no deific input determine the will of a deity, is pretty absurd. And it shows in the wide variety of interpretations and rules that come from common sources like the Old Testament.You are missing the hubris that dictates you are super special in the universe and were created by an all powerful and all loving god who will burn you in hell forever for not believing in special creation.
There is so much rubbish in your post, I don't even know where to start. First off, your post is a very Christian-centric accusation against religion. Christianity isn't the only religion out there. Second, most of the abuses you mention are directed at a specific form of Christianity, Catholicism and they all occurred when the Catholic Church was more than just a religion, it was a political power. So,it would seem to support the argument of using religion for personal and political gain is the problem, not religion in and of itself.
As for forcing women to have babies, since prior to the early 60s, there really wasn't effective birth control, it seems that religious and non-religious types were having lots of babies. Here I just thought that prior to the industrial revolution, people had a lot of babies, because they needed a lot of help on the farm or the factory. I didn't know it was a secret conspiracy to get converts.
It seems like your rant and anger are really is directed at the Catholic Church and/or G*d. Since we live in a tolerant religious society, you're welcome to those feelings. But please, don't assume that Christianity is the only religion and that the whole world agrees with you.
Lets not call it "religion-bashing". If we call it "fanatism-bashing" we can all be happy.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I think the real danger, whenever religion topics come up, is that we quickly jump to specific instances of religion, most usually Jewish/Christian/Muslim (JCM). And yet when talking about the anthropological purpose of religion, the JCM viewpoint leaves out the majority of world religions throughout history. Furthermore, it causes us to tend to focus on the current state of the JCM religions. Go back 200 years ago and you could draw very different conclusions just focusing on JCM and that time frame is relatively young in the time frame of these religions.
While it is true that religion can and has been used to manipulate people, it is also true that many people find comfort in it. Whether it was primitive man explaining the natural world around him or later on seeking to find their place in the universe, the manipulation of people by religious or political leaders was secondary to the "believer's" purpose. Besides, it is reasonable to assume that with or without religion these same leaders would have found other ways to manipulate the people. Playing on their religious beliefs just made it easier.
Even intolerance, in and of itself is not the problem. As stated previously, most people are intolerant of certain behaviours (murder, rape, pedophilia, etc.) regardless of religious beliefs. Where it becomes a problem, for the Atheist or the religious type is when it degenerates form intolerance towards certain behaviours into intolerance against certain peoples. And yes, your arguments show thatyou are not advocating intolerance on either side.
Even intolerance of certain behaviours can become a slippery slope into intolerance of any behaviours that the few in power deem wrong. As an example, leaders, no longer need to resort to fear of God and religion to manipulate society, they now do it with fear of violence from others, from outside. Whether is is weapons of mass destruction, or violent crime, or some other loss or destruction, and it works.
In the end, there are those who want to control everything and to do so, they are going to have to manipulate the masses. In the past it was through co-opting religion. Today, it is co-opting our rational fears and concerns. Regardless, the outcome is the same. Which is why I don't buy into the argument that the purpose of religion being that of control (however, I do admit it has been used for that).
Anyway, I've enjoyed the discussion, too. Have a good rest of the day.
Hmm.. Linking to a obciously biased source which doesn't link to any data (fabricated or otherwise) to support it's claims. I think you really should be modded down a few times.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Culling out publications from obviously biases sources such as the "Journal of Dairy Science", can you find a randomized controled trial showing that unfortified dairy products have a protective impact on osteoporosis?
Such a result would be surprising given the findings of a study published in the American Journal of Public Health which followed 77,761 women and found no protective impact of dairy products on fractures.
A PubMed search will find this meta-analyis from Pediatrics on osteoporosis, or this article on the increased risk for prostate cancer from dairy consumption from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This study from the same journal notes "Over the years, doubts have arisen concerning the use of milk as a calcium source in the prevention of osteoporosis, particularly because of potential offsetting effects of protein and phosphorus." This letter in that same journal points out that living in countries with a high dairy consumption is a risk factor for osteoporosis.
This page from PCRM give citations to several studies on the health impact of dairy consumption.
See also this analysis in Public Health Nutrition which states, "Regarding associations relating the consumption of dairy products with chronic diseases, in Western societies consumption of dairy products has traditionally been linked to cardiovascular diseases (arteriosclerosis) and osteoporosis owing to their saturated fatty acids and calcium content, respectively. While the association between saturated fat intake and risk of arteriosclerosis is well established, the association between calcium from dairy products, together with vitamin D, and osteoporosis is less clear."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Have there ever been wars fought over "trade"? It seems to me that any such wars would be caused by a lack of trade. This is one reason that first-world democracies don't invade each other--there is no need to conquer the other guy to get his resources when he is willing to dig it up and deliver it to your doorstep.
Yes, There have been wars started due to one side deciding they get a better deal trading with someone else.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The information in the above source seems reasonable enough, and well-backed with scientific reports. Please read it, I assure it is worth it. So I've read this article, and all I can say is -- what complete crap! He draws conclusions with no evidence (I guess his say-so that he "read 500 scientific studies" is enough -- unreferenced studies, I might add.). How would I summarize the articles? They were only slightly less than horrifying. First of all, none of the authors spoke of cow's milk as an excellent food, free of side effects and the "perfect food" as we have been led to believe by the industry. The main focus of the published reports seems to be on intestinal colic, intestinal irritation, intestinal bleeding, anemia, allergic reactions in infants and children as well as infections such as salmonella. Wow, open right up with the scare tactics! Because we know in the countries where people drink a lot of milk, all of these things are epidemic! Note that he didn't say that milk caused these problems but inferred it by saying that they were the focus of the unsourced studies he allegedly read. Our paleolithic ancestors are another crucial and interesting group to study. Here we are limited to speculation and indirect evidences, but the bony remains available for our study are remarkable. There is no doubt whatever that these skeletal remains reflect great strength, muscularity (the size of the muscular insertions show this), and total absence of advanced osteoporosis. And if you feel that these people are not important for us to study, consider that today our genes are programming our bodies in almost exactly the same way as our ancestors of 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. The last I heard, our ancestors of 50,000 - 100,000 years ago did not commonly live for 30+ years. This is the typical minimum age for onset of osteoporosis. Consider for a moment, if it was possible, to drink the milk of a mammal other than a cow, let's say a rat. Or perhaps the milk of a dog would be more to your liking. Possibly some horse milk or cat milk. Do you get the idea? Well, I'm not serious about this, except to suggest that human milk is for human infants, dogs' milk is for pups, cows' milk is for calves, cats' milk is for kittens, and so forth. Clearly, this is the way nature intends it. Just use your own good judgement on this one. That's the way to do it. Make a comparison designed to get an emotional reaction, then reinforce that reaction. That's scientific. It seems that the public is uneasy about this product and in one survey 43 per cent felt that growth hormone treated milk represented a health risk Source? Oh, wait, he doesn't have one. And I'm sorry, is he citing a public survey in a 'scientific' paper?
Oh, and what kind of scientific discourse would be complete without anecdotal evidence?
I had one patient who did exactly that. He had no obvious vices. He didn't smoke or drink, he didn't eat meat, his diet and lifestyle was nearly a perfectly health promoting one; but he had a passion. You guessed it, he loved rich ice cream. A pint of the richest would be a lean day's ration for him. On many occasions he would eat an entire quart - and yes there were some cookies and other pastries. Good ice cream deserves this after all. He seemed to be in good health despite some expected "middle age spread" when he had a devastating stroke which left him paralyzed, miserable and helpless, and he had additional strokes and died several years later never having left a hospital or rehabilitation unit. Was he old? I don't think so. He was in his 50s.So don't drink milk for health.
Wow. Here's a surprise. Guy eats like crap his whole life -- ice cream, mind you, not milk, and not in reasonable quantity -- and then dies from it. Blame milk! (Literally. Very next line. )Otherwise easily translated as: "...until the cows come home." *ducking the flying vegetables*
Thank you very much, I'll be here all week. While you're visiting Chez André, please remember to try the veal. The chef has been working hard at perfecting that dish for almost 6000 years, now.
Give a man a match: warm him for an instant. Douse him in petrol and set him aflame: warm him for the rest of his life.
Seeing as they used the number "2", wouldn't it be that they don't understand base 3?
From reading the article, it seems that humans are lactose tolerant early on. And then the ability shuts off. Lactose tolerant people lost the ability to shut down that ability. So it seems something stopped working.
That's a lot less impressive than a mutation which added the ability to consume lactose.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Since when, in recorded history, have people acted with the peaceful rationality you attribute to them?
Furthemore, there are different brands of logic and rational approaches to situations which could (with or without religion) lead to conflict. Religious violence may occur in dramatic affairs, but I say that the logic of personal interest has caused just as much, if not more bloodshed. If you doubt this, consider how many people, from the dawn of time have been individually killed for food, money, land, possesions, and so on.
Never doubt that in a world without religion that people would still kill eachother in similar numbers and level of senselessness.
-Grym
It is not like extremism is purely the domain of the religious. You have the whole of human existence to choose from in this case as well. There have been stateist extremeists, environmental extremists, technological extremists, and extremists of just about every ilk. Even Mac users can be every bit as fervent in their extremism as the craziest religious radical.
I find it very hard to condemn religion simply because a few of its indoctrinates take it way to far. After all, I would have to condemn other noble pursuits (like environmentalism) for the same reasons. I still find plenty of value in environmentalism, just as I find a lot to love in what religious people have DONE for this planet. They are a bastion of charity and goodwill. Churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship have been at the center of community development since the dawn of human history. Religion has often been the glue that binds strong societies together (as well as the force that drives them apart). I don't think the world would be better off without religion, it would be better off if we could convince everyone in the world to do what their religions actually TEACH them.
Just because some hijack religious interpretation to further their own need for control (and power), doesn't make religion bad. It makes those people bad.
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Excellent comment, quite incisive.
What's really amazing to think about is that human culture, ultimately individual human behavior, is what's predominantly causing the changes in our own genetic code in the modern era. We're causing our own evolution, however unintentionally.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
your formatting may be off, but want you wrote made sense.
You got your point across at any rate.
Thanks for the insight.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
In a world of reason, there are facts, evidence, and proof, with which we can (in principle) persuade each other to converge on a single, objective knowledge... and hence, there is no need to kill each other.
Interesting, then, that in this last century, where the culture was substantially influenced by this Enlightenment-based "world of reason" you describe, we have seen the bloodiest wars, and the most shocking instances of genocide, in all of history. Even accounting for the increased population.
And while yes, some of those conflicts exploited religion, none of the big ones had religion as their real motivation, as did e.g. the crusades, or the Catholic-Protestant conflicts of earlier centuries.
I'm not arguing that religion doesn't lead to violence, obviously it can and does. I am arguing that your supposed remedy to this violence simply doesn't work: human beings are, and will remain, violent. Religion is just one of the many excuses we use for it.
Without reason, it's just your feelings/assertion/faith/whim/tradition versus mine, and there is no mechanism for synchronizing the two databases... so, may the biggest club win.
I'm curious where you've ever seen this example you describe of perfect, mutually agreed upon rationality used to such a degree that rationality is actually the dominant means of decision-making, rather than a useful means of discussing issues. From what I can see of the world, even fairly "rational" people often form opinions and make decisions based substantially (if not entirely) on emotion, and then, in the ideal case, apply reasoning to evaluate those decisions. But emotions are still a very large part of human society, and I'm not sure how you propose to eliminate that through logic -- while some people may (claim to) be able to work that way, the vast majority of people do not and cannot.
And: even people who arrived at their conclusions "rationally" still frequently use power, rather than persuasion, to attain their ends.
I am the man with no sig!
and I have to wonder, what is gay marriage without gay sex?
What? You never herd of a sexless marriage?
But really... that Jesus dude changed the rules ... again.
Even the King James Version was based on the Masoretic Text (Hebrew) for the Old Testament, and the Textus Receptus (Greek) for the New Testament. This bypassed the Latin completely (except for a portion of Revelation in the Textus Receptus that was back-translated from Latin). Granted these were not as good as the manuscripts that are available today. Modern translations are based on a huge number of Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.
Even atheists and agnostics can have dogma. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming you took this misinformation on authority, and not that you know better and are intentionally being dishonest.
I may twist orthodoxy to partly justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.
there's no known genetic trait making you immune to shrapnels or lead bullets in the head, so no specific mutation will be favoured often an other except by sheer chance/randomness.
Intelligence is a genetic trait, isn't it? Using your brain to avoid getting into a situation where you will be placed on the front line seems like it would be favorable.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I'm not so sure you didn't leave out 28 - 31 because it said:
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;
31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless
Which even in context makes: envy, deceit and malice, gossips, slanderers, insolent, arrogant, boastful, they invent ways of doing evil, they disobey their parents, senseless, and being ruthless all 'grave' sins (death).
Personally I like 26... Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. Sounds yummy !
There is so much rubbish in your post, I don't even know where to start.
Yet you're unable to point out any... Odd that.
Second, most of the abuses you mention are directed at a specific form of Christianity, Catholicism and they all occurred when the Catholic Church was more than just a religion, it was a political power.
Well, the Catholic Church was Christianity while it was being spread by the sword, so, you're still not pointing out anything inaccurate. Of course, the Salem witch trials and various other atrocities were, of course, the Catholics.... Oh wait, it wasn't. So not only are you failing to point out anything inaccurate about my poist, you're making blatantly false statements.
Of course, the fact that the Catholic Church became a political power backs up my point entirely, not yours.
If you actually study the history, the Christian faith was created by the Catholic Church. The various ridiculous matters of dogma were created as a way to declare a different political group as heretics and murder them. That is how Catholic dogma got where it is, but it's also how the New Testament was created so every Christian church uses the same politically motivated, selectively edited and often completely made up crap.
As for forcing women to have babies, since prior to the early 60s, there really wasn't effective birth control, it seems that religious and non-religious types were having lots of babies. Here I just thought that prior to the industrial revolution, people had a lot of babies, because they needed a lot of help on the farm or the factory. I didn't know it was a secret conspiracy to get converts.
It's no secret. It was quite clear out in the open. It's not only religions who pull that one though. It's typical of warlike societies.
Of course, birth control and abortion have existed for a long time contrary to the false statement you made.
Trying to eliminate those options is how the church has and still does force women to have babies.
Damn, just look at the atrocity that is Vatican policy in Africa. Oh wait, Catholics. Well, for other Christians, jsut look at how the lunatic contingent in America has shaped our policies on reproductive freedom.
Hell, the only nations we're in agreement on "moral" issues are extremist islamic countries.
It seems like your rant and anger are really is directed at the Catholic Church and/or G*d.
No, my "rant" was directed at the blatant falsehoods in the OP.
. Since we live in a tolerant religious society, you're welcome to those feelings.
Wow, are you allergic to making honest statements?
Since we live in a tolerant *secular* society, I'm welcome to those feelings.
You might notice that the seperation of church and state is the one thing that most made America stand out when it was founded, right? Democracy and Republics were both already very old when America was founded.
I'm welcome to those feelings *in spite* of the religious community. You might notice that they are fighting tooth and nail to destroy exactly that if you actually looked around a little.
But please, don't assume that Christianity is the only religion and that the whole world agrees with you.
I assume nothing of the sort.
There is nothing to understand - your surmise is correct. The distinction seems to be invented whenever religionists have to concede that something 'micro' is indeed observable - whereas 'macro', almost by historical definition, never can be. So whenever you see a micro/macro divide adduced, suspect that religionists are around.
I know teacher... the answer is you !
For if you were an atheist then you'd be tolerate of religions. Because you wouldn't care what they think. And there is no better tolerance then not giving a fuck.
I don't know that I'd say religion creates extremism. Seems to me that's just a convenient excuse. Even if there were no such thing as religion, we'd still come up with a justification to try and destroy "others".
What you described as the "face of religion" is also the face of Man.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Have the conspiracy theorists ever converged on a single opinion of whether Bush invaded Iraq to raise or lower oil prices?
Well, to fill in the missing bit, living in crowded, dirty conditions builds up people's immunity to disease. The important one here is cowpox, a close relative of smallpox. Cowpox is pretty harmless to humans, but catching it gives you an immunity to smallpox.
Why it is that so many who call themselves "Christian" devote so much of their religious study to looking for an "out clause" - going over the old testament with a fine-toothed comb in search of obscure and disconnected justifications for prejudice and greed?
Christianity by definition means following the teachings of Christ. It is about practicing tolerance and love, for all mankind. Jesus would be really pissed at some of the linguistic gymnastics going on these days.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
And I'd say crusading/jihading religion is evil - that doesn't necessarily generalise to "all religion is evil and should be expunged".
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Score: -1, Doesn't understand the difference between Stalinist Communism and Socialism
Seriously, you obviously have no idea. Look at the Socialist countries of Europe, and see how they're performing better than the US.
What does the United States have to do with Stalinist Communism or Socialism? Also, why don't you move to one of those countries?
Only "biased" in the sense that choosing facts over advertising messages is a bias. (You'll notice that the dairy industy puts their claims on TV and in print, where they're only loosely regulated by the FTC, not on milk cartons where they'd be subject to stricter FDA regulations. )
I admit to grabbing the first source at hand and assuming that most people had at least heard of the notion that milk isn't a healthy food. If you want some links to research, see my post here .
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If you actually study the history, the Christian faith was created by the Catholic Church.
Uh? What? Reading the Da Vinci code doesn't count as studying history.
meh
Well, it looks like you can have both after all!
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
Taking any economic, political or social system to it's logical extreme is invariably a bad idea. All developed nations have learned that. In many cases they learned the hard way - see the industrial revolution and the backlash it spawned against laissez-faire ideas, or the opposite extreme in former Soviet states.
Instead of extremes, what we have now is moderation, with elements of various philosophies mixed together in what way seems best to the citizenry (or at least that is the case is democratic countries). All modern developed nations are somewhere in the middle.
When comparing, for example, the US and "socialist" European countries, the comparison is between two different mixes - 70/30 vs. 50/50 say.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Blind patriotism and trade without conscience *are* "evil", in the "they cause human misery" sense of the word.
GP said patriotism and trade. You sneakily inserted "blind" and "without conscience" to prove your point. This would be reasonable, if in the original discussion we were talking about blindly following religion, religion without conscience, etc. -- but we weren't.
The point GP was trying to refute was the claim that all (completely unqualified) religion is bad and inherently extremist and the source of all kinds of conflict and so on. This was refuted by pointing out that the same reasoning would imply that all trade, patriotism, etc., are evil: there are many instances throughout history where they have been correlated with evil, just as with religion.
The conclusion we should get out of this is that practically anything can be an evil when it is taken to enough of an extreme, or is followed without conscience or perspective. Religion isn't somehow special, or the single source of the world's ills -- the source of the world's ills is, briefly, humanity, and we find ways to mess things up with or without religion.
I am the man with no sig!
Sorry, but if you are making a statement based on anecdotal evidence, it's up to you to provide the proof of the theory. Yes, anecdotally people who have smoked have sometimes lived a long time, but smoking still causes cancer. A story, even a verifiably true one, is not proof. People from a century ago drank raw milk, but they also died of infectious diseases far more often and earlier than most modern societies now. Which would kind of argue that safety from germs might trump whatever benefits raw milk may have had. Amazing how an article on an interesting scientific on genetics brings out the anti-milk, or anti-pasturized milk, or whatever else kind of semi-science crusade people are on based on web site anecdotes.
This does not have to do with evolution, nor does it support the imagination.
This is very recent prehistory. If the Arabs were slave trading 1000 years ago in Zimbabwe, it isn't difficult to imagine significant incursions into Kenya several thousand years ago. And I believe the vikings, for instance, were reasonably shipworthy even in the bronze age.
But, apparently, if there are three distinct and unique gene locations that promoted tolerance in different populations, we should be able to dispense with speculations like that before we begin. And that's what I find interesting about the article.
>>> It's important to know where your raw milk is coming from and the process by which it's being produced.
No doubt. Now I didn't RTFA (gasp!) but this being East Africa you'll recall that oftentimes that milk is mixed with raw blood. Would you really be worried about where the milk came from?
In the series "Tribe" with Bruce Parry (IIRC) he visited with some of these tribes - he had the honour of being served with a stick of blood clots gained by stirring the milk/blood mix (candy-floss style!). Yum!
Thing is, we're well aware of the dangers of Lead; even if it somehow found its way into all our water, we'd pretty quickly notice and take action to filter it out. The same applies to a lot of dangers. Human evolution, if not stopped, slowed dramatically when we were able to clear out most macro and microscopic dangers.
I would argue evolution did not stop, but it actually sped up. Becoming aware of dangers and being able to eliminate or work around them is a form of adaptation, and learning from experience is in this way, a type of evolution. The human brain is the killer-app of the human species, it is a feature that permits almost instant evolution of the population. When an adaptation is learned, it can be transferred through language, adoption can be spurred through fads, advertising, and other modes of persuasion, and large populations can change overnight. It is not exactly the same as natural selection, it is not based on genetic code, it is instead based on learning, and skill, evolution of the knowledge held human brain, which can occur much more quickly than evolution through reproduction could occur. It would have taken generations and countless lost lives for humans to genetically become lead resistant. But avoiding lead and learning to filter it is a simple patch, that can occur in decades, instead of centuries, and without massive casualty. Filtering/avoiding lead is just another way of becoming lead-resistant, and it happens to be more efficient to fix it in the software, than to go change it in the hardware.If you actually study the history, the Christian faith was created by the Catholic Church.
Uh? What? Reading the Da Vinci code doesn't count as studying history.
I'm well aware of that fact. The Da Vinci code did more to back up Christianity than to hurt it anyhow, which is pretty funny.
Perhaps if you're such a history expert, you'd care to point me to one single credible scrap of historical evidence that there ever even was such a person as Jesus?
No? Thought not.
Back to the original point, perhaps you can name some other group than the Catholic Church that creeated Christianity?
They selected and edited the books that would become the New Testament to push political goals. What more do you need to invent a religion?
I'll try to keep it short:
though anti abortion I don't feel I can make the choices for others
Well, I'm anti theft, extortion, and murder! Should those also be made legal? You just don't recognize abortion as infanticide (read: murder of a human), do you.
what do you think Mary Magdalene was???: She was repentant and demon free. The latter implying that prostitution and demonic activity go hand in hand.
Did you know that if, today, you went and tried to translate the original Genesis story into English today it could have 4 or more meanings?
Obviously there is some consensus on the current meaning, otherwise the criticism would ring down through the ages, if not by someone in the 'Christian' West, certainly by non-Christian detractors who have come into enough contact with them over the centuries. Not only so, but reading-level fluency of Hebrew and Koine Greek used to be required for Protestant ministers; that makes for a lot of eyes examining those works and translations and making sure it's accurate.
In light of the above, you really seem more of the 'nominal' sort en contra a real Christian.
I'm well aware of that fact. The Da Vinci code did more to back up Christianity than to hurt it anyhow, which is pretty funny.
I'd disagree with that. An anecdote, my sister in law read the Da Vinci code and her immediate comment was this it made her doubt the accuracy of the bible. The Da Vinci code is written in the style of historical fiction, where the facts of the book are correct, however an event or person is inserted into the context. The Da Vinci code is fiction on fiction, but people read it as fact. FWIW I think everyone should test their beliefs however they should no test it on the basis of fiction.
Perhaps if you're such a history expert, you'd care to point me to one single credible scrap of historical evidence that there ever even was such a person as Jesus?
No? Thought not.
This is slashdot, but I believe it is customary let others answer the questions you ask. Also I never said I was an expert. Anway...
First off the gospels are credible historical evidence for the existance of Jesus. They are 4 independant accounts of his existance. In addition there are surviving fragments or full copies of the gospels dating from the 2nd and 3rd centuries (example). You'll have to excuse the web reference, I've just spent half an hour hunting for a book on this.
In addition there is corroborating historical evidence from contemporary historians (eg Josephus).
Back to the original point, perhaps you can name some other group than the Catholic Church that creeated Christianity?
This is a difficult question to answer, equally your question about who created the "christian faith". Which christian faith? What do you mean by Christianity? Catholic? Orthodox? Protestant?
I'd certainly say that the Catholic church has had a larger influence on the church institutions we have today.
They selected and edited the books that would become the New Testament to push political goals. What more do you need to invent a religion?
Ha ha, so you do get your historical evidence from the Da Vinci code.
Quick history lesson. The catholic church was a splinter formed from the Byzantine church, now the orthodox church. This occurred in 1054. The canon of scripture was formalised around 300AD. So the Catholic church had nothing to do with it. In addition the religion existed before 300AD.
If you really want to learn about why we have the bible as it stands today, read "The Canon of Scripture". However from your comment it appears you would prefer to keep your current views, regardless of the evidence.
meh
You are far more likely to get laid and thus preserve your gene stock, if you don't fart constantly, like lactose intolerants do in cattle raising societies.
My fiance is lactose intolerent; I was being deliberately vauge ;-)
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's religious conviction, anti-reason, that motivates organized criminals to kill snitches.
He didn't say religion was the source of all evil, just whatever it touches collapses in a flurry of slurry, which is true. He also didn't say reason is the only thing that could bring people together, just that it could, which is also true, Mr Strawman O'Troll.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Since when, in recorded history, have people acted with the peaceful rationality you attribute to them?
All the time, all around you, every day. Thats why we have a society and civilisation. In fact you can safely say that proportionately, wars are much more of a rare, occasional aberration. And even then we go about them in an organised and rational fashion.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Interesting, then, that in this last century, where the culture was substantially influenced by this Enlightenment-based "world of reason" you describe, we have seen the bloodiest wars, and the most shocking instances of genocide, in all of history.
Just as interesting is the development of automatic weapons, nuclear weapons, mass production, and so on and so forth. All of which made possible, in fact, by rational cooperation. And all of which lend themselves to easy, bloody wars.
But emotions are still a very large part of human society, and I'm not sure how you propose to eliminate that through logic -- while some people may (claim to) be able to work that way, the vast majority of people do not and cannot.
So are you telling me that skyscrapers were raised, national grids plotted and the internet itself put together, among almost all of our societal achievements through emotional power? Also the OP wasn't talking about eliminating emotion through logic, although it may be very trendy in slashdot groupthink to mouth that meme of an exceptionally hackneyed 1970's sci-fi show.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Well, you're right in the purely intellectual sense of evolution, that is, adapting to changes in our surrounding environment quickly enough to avoid being killed. However, we fail in the by-and-large expression of new and exciting genes (ie: if a mutation doesn't kill us, if ends up buried in the genetic soup of the human race at-large). We, as a species, probably have more slight variation due to mutation than most other species, but mostly because I believe we've probably not had any of them become prevalent - none of them pose an advantage one way or another towards survival.
Though, I'm noticing a propensity for the cute-but-stupid to breed a lot faster than anyone else. I'm not saying that's bad or anything, but it's likely it's not good.
Heh. More people like myself should breed - cute-but-brainy.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
"To a degree, you are correct. I don't know of anyone who has taken a group of children and raised them in a specific manner as to test these claims, and compare them against another group of children who were strictly kept from these kinds of exposures."
Happily, there's another way to test it, that's almost as good as the one you suggest.
We take one group of children and raise them in a hazily-remembered "golden age", when people didn't lock their doors, nobody had ever heard of drugs and video games were unknown - say, roughly 1976.
Take another group of children and raise them in a sharply-delineated "modern" world, with mass-media, pornography, violence nightly on the TV and violent video games in every bedroom - say around 2006.
Now, take national statistics from both groups, and what do you find?
Well, this, actually.
The US DOJ does this each and every year, and the result is that violent crime, including violent crime by minors has dropped in a more-or-less straight line ever since 1973. I've seen other similar charts which purport to go back even further - to 1903 in one case. All show the same trend.
Say it with me: Media Hysteria != Factual Statistics
"However, if the military knows that to weaken (to the point of destruction) a person's inhibitions against doing X, they just need to "brainwash" them into doing X over and over, the idea has some merit, no?"
No. Brainwashing != playing. The military uses an entire suite of techniques to break down civilian response-sets and inculcate military-appropriate ones - reduction of sleep, tightly regimented lifestyle, punishment for hesitation or disobedience, etc, etc, etc. This is why boot camp isn't "fun" - it's deliberately stress-inducing and unpleasant.
A kid can turn off their console at any point, and games which aren't "fun" don't sell.
It's like comparing apples and peas, because they're superficially similar and both involve "green".
"So, repetitive exposure to exercises where you shoot a human-shaped target creates a habit and a reflex such that you then do this without thinking. This isn't rocket science. It's how you create habits."
The main aim of repetitive exercises is to build up "muscle memory", making the action automatic. Soldiers use guns, and actually run around in muddy fields.
Our kids sit in warm heated/air-conditioned rooms and use joypads or mice.
All we're training our kids to do is to wave a mouse at an enemy soldier and click.
I can see where you're coming from, but this does indicate:
1. A lack of understanding of the technical details of indoctrination/brainwashing procedures
2. A lack of understanding of muscle memory
3. A completely unproven (in fact, counter-indicated) link between two disparare activites
4. A complete inability to differentiate between a fun, unreal game and a real life-or-death choice
"t should not be that difficult to apply the understanding of techniques for creating a habit to the situation of a child with minimal (or oppressive) parental supervision who has a TV or a computer for a baby-sitter."
Aaaaah, the venerable "Of course, my kids are well-brought-up and know the difference, but think of the poor kids with bad parents" argument.
How about we also ban:
* Action figures or toy guns (since it involves actual movement it's more "realistic" training than FPSs)
* Plastic bags (Timmy might choke)
* All cars (Timmy might run out into the road)
* Etc.
"No, this is not the beloved Scientific Method; it involves more than following a rote set of rules and procedures. But if you seriously think about it, it will take you out of your comfort zone, particularly if you enjoy those kinds of games, but mostly because it can apply to multiple areas of life outside of gaming."
Bonus points her
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
He didn't say religion was the source of all evil, just whatever it touches collapses in a flurry of slurry, which is true. He also didn't say reason is the only thing that could bring people together, just that it could, which is also true, Mr Strawman O'Troll.
Okay, Captain Lack of Reading Comprehension, I'll have to quote him for you.
"Yes, and the reason why is simple: religion is un-reason (and often anti-reason). Therefore, it obliterates the only common grounds that humans can find among each other."
Anti-reason obliterates reason, the only common ground humans can find. He was very clear, to anyone who understands the difference between "a" and "only". Is that you?
"In a world of reason, there are facts, evidence, and proof, with which we can (in principle) persuade each other to converge on a single, objective knowledge... and hence, there is no need to kill each other."
In a world of reason, one without the anti-reason of religion, there is no need to kill each other. He isn't saying religion is the source of evil, he is saying reason by itself does not give people a reason to kill. It is that claim which I was refuting.
But if it makes you feel better to toss around the word "strawman", feel free. Or you could have read and understood the conversation taking place, but that's more effort and idiot trolls aren't about effort.
The enemies of Democracy are
"Semi off topic, but why must you assume that any person with an opinion is a religious fuckwit fundamentalist?"
1. The GP is talking about religion. I did not make this a topic about religion. We were talking about religion, and someone was complaining about how people perceive "people with strong religious opinions" are "religious fundamentalists". I was explaining that (for the non-religious) that's because those people shout loudest, so we have most experience of them. I don't actually share this view, but it is a handy mental shortcut that many people take, and it does often prove fairly reliable.
Why do you think "Islam" is often (completely wrongly) identified with the kind of people who hate foreigners and blow themselves up to make a point? And yet many of the same people to take offence at the previous generalisation will argue in favour of this one!
2. I don't believe "anyone with an opinion" is a religious fundamentalist - I have many friends, with many fine opinions, many of which I disagree with, and some of whom are religious. There is no connection.
3. I'm not, actually, an athiest. I am an "evangelical (fuckwit) agnostic". I don't think it's possible to prove whether God exists or not, I think anyone who chooses to belief/emphatically deny without proof is silly (why not believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster instead?), and anyone who claims to have proof either way doesn't understand the meaning of the word "proof".
Good luck arguing against that position.
"so you assume I'm a Christian fundamentalist."
Did I say that? All I said was that non-religious types only really hear from the (loud, shouty) lunatic fringe, so naturally they assume anyone shouting is one of those loons.
Quiet, demonstrative religious types keep themselves to themselves, kind of like moderate muslims, non-militant homosexuals and paedophiles who live with their urges but never even think of abusing a child.
Where are their cheerleaders jumping up and down at the slightest perceived slight?
All these groups are persecuted or "disapproved-of" because of the lunatic fringe. I was explaining how/why this happens, not agreeing with it. Get a grip.
"P.S. What the hell is evolutionary marriage, I've never heard of that, nor have I heard about anyone wanting to ban violent video games in the army or banning gays, just gay marriage."
Oh sweet Jesus - this was supposed to be a joke. Violent games in the army aren't a controversial subject - they've already got fucking guns, for christ's sake. I was humorously referencing:
Evolution (teaching of)
Gays in the army
Gay marriage
Banning violent video vames
Banning guns
I've got to say, though, you're doing a wonderful job of conforming to the Humourless Christian stereotype that so many people (wrongly) subscribe to.
And since it's clearly been mis-interpreted, let me just clarify the following phrase from my previous post:
This means that the world would be a wonderful place if some people who called themselves religious stopped bashing everyone else.
;-)
Like, "religion wouldn't get bashed so much if so many fuckwits didn't push their own agendas in its name".
It does not mean all Christians are dog-rapists, or whatever you were thinking, ok?
it down and read it carefully... and strap down that jerking knee before you do yourself a mischief.
And because you clearly missed it the first time, let me re-iterate (this time, with annotations!):
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
That would be the Maasai, with under a million people, not a huge culture, so 'oftentimes' is a stretch. Raw milk is drunk by billions, however.
Fresh blood out of healthy living cattle should be better than safe, anyway, it's incredibly healthy for those adapted to it.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I'd disagree with that. An anecdote, my sister in law read the Da Vinci code and her immediate comment was this it made her doubt the accuracy of the bible.
Which really does nothing to address my point. The Bible is inaccurate. That's no big surprise to anybody (well, loony fundies aside, but they're not really known for either sanity or common sense).
What the daVinci Code does though, is propogagte the silly myth that there even was a Jesus. If it went for the historically accurate picture, then that would have been a far more negative picture of the state of Christianity.
The Da Vinci code is fiction on fiction, but people read it as fact. FWIW I think everyone should test their beliefs however they should no test it on the basis of fiction.
Wow, that's truly dizzying.
People should question their fictional fantasies, but not do it on the basis of fiction.
If that was even possible, it would certainly be interesting to try.
First off the gospels are credible historical evidence for the existance of Jesus.,/i>
Nonsense. Circular reasoning in the first place.
In the second place, they are nothing of the sort.
Who wrote them? Oh yeah, nobody knows. They do know it wasn't contemporary with the supposed lifetime of Jesus.
They are 4 independant accounts of his existance.
Wow, amazing. It's like never before have stories circulated in the world. It's almost as if the biblical flood story wasn't a blatant ripoff of Gilgamesh.
Perhaps you should look into the origin of those myths and how they predate the supposed birth of Jesus by a century.
Seriously now. A *little* bit of research would do you good. Repeating half truths and flat out lies is just silly.
In addition there is corroborating historical evidence from contemporary historians (eg Josephus).
So I ask for *credible* evidence and you respond with a circular argument and then this. In the first place, there is nothing from "historians". There is one item from one historian "Josephus" as you said, but had you done any research whatsoever (no, checking fundie sites obviously does not count as they are pathological liars) you would know that the passage from the Josephus document is a thoroughly debunked forgery.
Look, it's obvious that you do not know a damn thing about the subject. You have a belief and you want to try to justify it.
I understand that you desperately need for this to be true, but sorry, reality does not need to bend itself to be what you want it to be.
This is a difficult question to answer, equally your question about who created the "christian faith". Which christian faith? What do you mean by Christianity? Catholic? Orthodox? Protestant?
The New Testament.
If you really want to learn about why we have the bible as it stands today, read "The Canon of Scripture". However from your comment it appears you would prefer to keep your current views, regardless of the evidence.
What's clear is that you will buy into whatever allows you to keep your delusions.
I have no preconcieved notions, and no need to prove or disprove anything. The facts are all on my side though.
When you repeat silly lies like the Josephus nonsense, you demonstrate that you don't care one bit for what's actually true and just seek to prop up your delusional needs.
Sorry to have to break it to you.
It is becoming quite irritating for me whenever "scientists" trot out an instance of natural selection as proof of evolution. To be clear, there is absolutely no controversy over the concept of the survival of the fittest. Every rational being accepts that concept, even those who ascribe to the most conservative religions. Confusing natural selection with evolution does nothing but confuse the argument.
Please, the next time someone wishes to prove evolution, show that a series of random genetic mutations in a complex organism creates multiple instances of a new, viable living species that is no longer able to interbreed with the original species. Don't show how one variation of a species survives better than a different variation. That proves nothing.
Which really does nothing to address my point. The Bible is inaccurate.
This is a claim for which you have provided no proof.
Wow, that's truly dizzying.
People should question their fictional fantasies, but not do it on the basis of fiction.
Nice work twisting my words. I am saying that people should not question what they believe to be true based on fiction.
Wow, amazing. It's like never before have stories circulated in the world. It's almost as if the biblical flood story wasn't a blatant ripoff of Gilgamesh.
What does that have to do with anything? There is a lot in the Genesis that is similar to contemporary stories. The Geneis creation story is very similar (with important changes, largely the removal of muliple gods and the replacement with one God).
Perhaps you should look into the origin of those myths and how they predate the supposed birth of Jesus by a century.
Seriously now. A *little* bit of research would do you good. Repeating half truths and flat out lies is just silly.
And once again you think I have not done that research.
So I ask for *credible* evidence and you respond with a circular argument and then this. In the first place, there is nothing from "historians". There is one item from one historian "Josephus" as you said, but had you done any research whatsoever (no, checking fundie sites obviously does not count as they are pathological liars) you would know that the passage from the Josephus document is a thoroughly debunked forgery.
Why is this a circular argument? There are strong reasons why the gospels have credibility. One is that there are early manuscripts (which I mentioned), and manuscripts up til today that satisfy historians that the gospels we have today are original or very close to. In other words the "church" has not doctored them.
Secondly there are methods historians apply to texts such as these to test the authenticity. I'd list them out but I don't think you are really listening.
As for the Josephus quote, could you substantiate that please.
Look, it's obvious that you do not know a damn thing about the subject. You have a belief and you want to try to justify it.
I understand that you desperately need for this to be true, but sorry, reality does not need to bend itself to be what you want it to be.
What's clear is that you will buy into whatever allows you to keep your delusions.
I have no preconcieved notions, and no need to prove or disprove anything. The facts are all on my side though.
When you repeat silly lies like the Josephus nonsense, you demonstrate that you don't care one bit for what's actually true and just seek to prop up your delusional needs.
Sorry to have to break it to you.
Hey thanks. I love being called an idiot and a liar by someone who claims in the face of all historical evidence and all credible historians that the person of Jesus never existed.
On that note, Christians are often called closed minded and unwilling to listen to facts. They are sometimes said to be insulting and condesending in the way they express themselves. Throughout these comments you have been insulting, closed minded and pretty much everything Christians are accused of. Even if you are right (and I accept the possibility) your manner makes me disinclined to continue the discussion. You don't think you have to argue "fair" with Christians? Ad hom and unsubstantiated claims are fair game because Christians deserve it?
meh
This is a claim for which you have provided no proof.
Wow, just wow. How much proof do you need? Seriously.
Nice work twisting my words. I am saying that people should not question what they believe to be true based on fiction.
Well, you're saying they should not question what they believe based on facts either. Logically, it follows that you believe people shouldn't question their beliefs.
What does that have to do with anything? There is a lot in the Genesis that is similar to contemporary stories. The Geneis creation story is very similar (with important changes, largely the removal of muliple gods and the replacement with one God).
What it has to do with anything is that you're trying to claim that the existence of some old manuscripts is proof that a person mentioned in said manuscripts existed. Therefore, the fact that the myths being recounted in the manuscripts predate the "person" who is supposed to have been an actual character in said myths is entirely relevant.
Your point there is entirely equivalent to finding a copy of the Iliad written a hundred years after Homer died and claiming that that is proof that Achilles existed 100 years after the time of Homer.
The problem with that attempt at reasoning is that not only do we have no proof that there ever really was an Achilles, but even if there was such a person, he didn't live at the time you'd conclude he did.
And once again you think I have not done that research.
Why is this a circular argument? There are strong reasons why the gospels have credibility. One is that there are early manuscripts (which I mentioned), and manuscripts up til today that satisfy historians that the gospels we have today are original or very close to. In other words the "church" has not doctored them.
I didn't say that the church (or anybody for that matter) doctored them. The previous point, that the stories were far older which you just admitted to knowing (or at least very strongly implied as much) proves that to be false.
They can't really be the originals, now can they?
Secondly there are methods historians apply to texts such as these to test the authenticity. I'd list them out but I don't think you are really listening.
You keep making the same silly mistakes.
Nobody is saying that when whoever wrote the particular documents in question that they were later altered.
What I am saying is that the authors are unknown and were not contemporary with the supposed lifetime of Jesus.
Further, the stories they were telling were older even than that.
As for the Josephus quote, could you substantiate that please.
Since you're the one clinging desperately on to it as your sole hope of finding any evidence whatsoever for your viewpoint don't you think you owe it to yourself to spend 5 minuted checking it out instead of blindly swallowing nonsense spouted by whoe3ver sold you that line of crap?
However, just so you can pick out some trivial meaningless detail to use as an excuse to ignore the whole subject, here's one link.
Hey thanks. I love being called an idiot and a liar by someone who claims in the face of all historical evidence and all credible historians that the person of Jesus never existed.
Well, when you keep pretending that "no historical evidence whatsoever and no credible historians" means "all historical evidence and all credible historians", how can you expect any decent person to treat you as anything but an idiot and liar?
When you continue to repeat idiotic lies, you *are* an idiotic liar.
Don't blame me, that's just how it works.
Throughout these comments you have been insulting, closed minded and pretty much everything Christians are accused of.
I'm not closed minded at all. The thing is that I have researched these issues, and so I *know* that you
Some would be good. You still haven't provided any.
No I am not saying that.
Look I can't be bothered to read the rest of your comment. You are not arguing based on facts, you are arguing on emotion. I see no point in aruging any further. Go argue with your strawman, that seems to be what you really want to do.
meh
Heyyy I could knock around your tedious, repetitive, hackneyed, tired old points all night, or I could just tell you to learn to use italics in HTML, which I feel would be more productive than getting in a flamewar with a pompous and hideously incorrect prat. Here are teh valuable new infos.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Vague, or incorrect?
"Ill" is vague; "Puke mucus" is incorrect.
Otherwise easily translated as: "...until the cows come home." Right, because the environment is constant and creatures never migrate. In three words: sickle cell anaemia.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
I'll tell that to my fiance, she'll be most relieved to know the vomit exiting her body when she accidentally consumes cow lactose is a figment of her poor ickle imagination. Or rather 'íncorrect', LOL.
Some would be good. You still haven't provided any.
Like I said, if you can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes researching something, you really shouldn't bother piping in on the subject. It's not like it's hard to find contradictions and inaccuracies throughout the bible.
You want to believe that it's magically true so you refuse to put in any effort to be informed on the issues.
Not a big deal to me, but you really should try to be honest about it.
Look I can't be bothered to read the rest of your comment. You are not arguing based on facts, you are arguing on emotion. I see no point in aruging any further. Go argue with your strawman, that seems to be what you really want to do.
By which you mean that you're not happy with the facts and so prefer remaining in denial of reality.
Your choice, but don't bother piping up on subjects you refuse to learn anything about. You just look silly.
I think you misunderstood my point...
Just as interesting is the development of automatic weapons, nuclear weapons, mass production... all of which lend themselves to easy, bloody wars.
Alright. You can at least argue that these types of wars would have happened earlier if the technology existed, though in my opinion something like e.g. the Holocaust was only in small part enabled by technology, and was much more of a social issue. Despite widespread anti-Jewish sentiment throughout much of Western history, the 20th century was the first real systematic attempt at wholesale extermination, even though there was no real technological barrier to attempting this earlier.
But my point wasn't just that a rationalistic outlook causes bloody wars. I was just trying to refute the earlier claim that religion causes such wars in a way that a "rational" outlook is not susceptible to. I don't think this is true -- wars both reasonable and unreasonable continue unabated.
So are you telling me that skyscrapers were raised, national grids plotted and the internet itself put together... through emotional power?
Of course not. I'm distinguishing between reason as a tool for accomplishments, versus a motivation for those accomplishments. In saying that people's behavior (in general, but especially in serious conflicts of the type the earlier poster suggested reason could resolve) is very frequently more based on emotion than on reason.
This doesn't mean they don't use reason to achieve their ends, e.g. to plan/build power grids and skyscrapers, as you point out, but it does mean that resolving questions like "Should we build a skyscraper here?" or "Who has the better claim to the West Bank?" are not just a matter of rigorously applied reason. Such practical questions always come with some prior set of assumptions and priorities, and these almost never match between opposing parties -- and reason can only be rigorously applied (even in principle) from some common set of mutually agreed premises.
Also the OP wasn't talking about eliminating emotion through logic, although it may be very trendy in slashdot groupthink to mouth that meme of an exceptionally hackneyed 1970's sci-fi show.
Err. This wasn't a sci-fi meme, and I didn't get my opinion on this subject from slashdot. But you misinterpreted my opinion anyway, so let me clarify:
The OP suggested that violent conflict, caused by religion, can be prevented by the use of reason. I disagree, for a number of reasons, but my point in the section you reference is that very, very few human beings (if any -- but I'm willing to grant their existence, for the sake of argument) are even capable of applying reasoning in such a consistent and objective way that their opinions on, say, the ownership of the West Bank, will be entirely decided by pure logic applied to uncontested fact. Even if such an approach were possible, it doesn't work for most people, and a recipe for "world peace" that requires only that we ignore 99.9% of humanity is in the end untenable. (I'd argue that the approach isn't possible in the first place: there are far too few "uncontested facts" from which to reason, and any conclusion about it in either direction comes with a huge amount of baggage in terms of implicit assumptions.)
I wasn't saying that reason and emotion can't coexist -- obviously they can, and very productively. I'm just providing a pile of counterexamples to the original claim that violence wouldn't be a problem if only people behaved rationally.
I didn't go on at length about this point, but other posters also mentioned that it's entirely reasonable to argue that under the right circumstances, I could decide that the *rational* thing to do would be to kill other people and take their resources for myself. You can argue against that on a practical basis in current society (someone who used that strategy probably wouldn't end up the better for it), but if we don't assume a
I am the man with no sig!
>>> Fresh blood out of healthy living cattle
m l
OK. I don't think it's just the Masai; the Nandi for example and the Suri and Hamar that were featured in the "Tribes" series. But I guess that your point probably still stands.
I'd have thought "healthy" cattle would be quite hard to come by.
----
http://www.bbc.co.uk/tribe/tribes/hamar/index.sht
I've never seen a baby allergic to breast milk. I'm lactose intolerant but not to that degree.
Show me some evidence that there are babies that can't drink breastmilk because I find that difficult to believe.
It does cause diarrhea but I don't know of babies dying of it either. The people I know who were lactose intolerant as children, did not die of diarrhea. Obviuosly people managed otherwise the gene would not have spread so fast.
"Your point was to emphasize that people see anyone 'shouting' their opinion as a religious fundamentalist, I got that. My point was that not everyone 'shouting' their opinion IS a religious fundamentalist. By the way, you remember that saying about assuming?? ;) "
Not quite. My point was that when someone is clearly religious and shouting, or shouting about religion that person is usually/often a fundamentalist.
And people assume this because non-fundamentalists don't normally shout about religion (or opinions derived therefrom) - non-fundamentalists normally engage in quiet, one-on-one debates that actually generate useful dialogue. Media-whoring idiots courting controversy in public are normally fundamentalists.
"Would I be more correct (in your view) of saying anyone expressing their opinion is a religious fundamentalist?"
No. Anyone stating their opinions, thoughtfully engaging in dialogue and actually trying to persuade people are generally assumed to be non-fundamentalists. Anyone shouting from the rooftops and comdemning people to hell are normally fundamentalists.
At least, in the opinion of a non-religious person.
"It sure looks to me like you lumped yourself in with those who share this view."
Sorry - it sure looks like this to everyone, but I know this is not always the case. I'm saying "people who are loud and abrasive about their views on religion are normally X", and you're hearing "people who express any opinion on religion are X" - that's not what I said, and certainly not what I intended to convey.
"Also, to extend a little, why aren't the loud shouty militant homosexuals (for example) being criticized as much as the loud shouty religious types?"
I think it's probably a historical fluke, tied in with our current cultural outlook. Or perfectly justified karma, depending on how you look at it.
The church/religion-as-an-institution has historically been one of the greatest forces for judging people, and condemning people for personal choices. Historically, claiming (or citing) religion has given impeccable authority for whatever your agenda might be, whether you honestly believe it's What God Wants or you're just looking to make a lot of money and get laid a lot. Thus religion has become very strongly identified with repression and judgementalism.
These days homosexuality or alternative lifestyles are perfectly acceptable, and anyone who condemns them are looked-down-on as backward or reactionary.
Religion-as-an-institution has spent hundreds of years being what is now considered backward and reactionary, and although many churches or religions have quietly modernised and dropped the most offensive parts of their beliefs (and what does that imply about the sanctity of those beliefs?), the loudest and hardest-to-avoid "religious publicity" is now conducted by the lunatic fringe.
That's why religion comes in for more flack than (say) homosexuality - it's not acceptable to bash people for who they want to put their genitals inside, but it is acceptable (almost uniquely!) to look down on people for being judgemental and unaccepting of others.
Homosexuals (for example) have generally been persecuted, not the ones doing the persecuting. Now persecuting is taboo, ex-persecutors come in for the most flack. It's not difficult.
Is it fair? In some ways.
Is it fair that non-persecuting religious people get offended? No, which is why I suggested those handy substitutions so you don't get offended by sentiments that aren't aimed at you personally.
OTOH, is it hugely unfair that given innocent homosexuals/pagans/whoever were tortured, ruined or burned at the stake by religion-as-an-institution, now religious people occasionally have to put up with a few sarky comments on a forum? That's a harder case to make.
"Anytime religion comes up on slashdot, we see these arguments wh
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
I agree with you about the marriage itself, however I think you made a technical mistake in the follinging:
there are far more marriages than there are Christians in the world.
(1) Approximately 30% of the population of the world is Christian.
(2) Each TWO marries persons only counts for ONE marriage (I suspect you missed this halving factor).
For your statement to be true you would need "far more" than 60% of the world population to be married. In the US less than 50% of the population is married... it possible many other countries have a higher marriage rate among adults than the US, but it is also a fact that most countries have a larger (inherently unmarried) youth percentage than the US.
There are probably somewhat more Christians than marriages.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Human evolution has not stopped or slowed. You touched on the answer in your last post without generalizing it:
:[
I'm noticing a propensity for the cute-but-stupid to breed a lot faster than anyone else
Evolution still fully applies to humans, it's merely the selection forces that are radically changed. A man-made enviornment is still an enviornment. Nearsightedness and farsightedness for example are no longer signifigant handicaps, but now theer are new evolutionary selections such as survival-relevant driving skills.
Alcohol and cocaine and herion and other available drugs in the enviornment introduce complex new evolutionary selection factors. On one hand addiction and overdose are obvious negative selection forces, on the other hand the use of intoxicatants itself signifigantly increases the "unplanned" reproduction rate.
Examining the radical shift and new nature of human evolutionary selection factors is an area ripe for several hundred PhD theses.
As you touch on, there now appears to be a very disturbing negative correlation between intelligence and reproductive rate
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.