Yeah, good point. The real reason wedding photographers use medium format is for the ability to make big enlargments. Big enlargements, and expensive equipment that justifies their high prices... are the two reasons wedding photographers use medium format. Big enlargments, price justification, and an almost fanatical devotion to Hasselblad... are the THREE reasons... Oh, I'll just come in again....
As best I can tell, not speaking Spanish, it's just a how-to to install the proprietary ATI drivers. I didn't see any comments about any particular games; of course, if I had I wouldn't have known whether they were good, bad, or indifferent.
$20 says you'll use your ATI card to play Unreal Tournament 2003
On Microsoft Windows, of course. 'Cuz last I heard, the ATI cards won't work for UT2003 on Linux. Mind you, this may have changed, and I speak not from experience as I still have a shitty Rage 128 in my machine (hey, it handles Q3 and RtCW fairly well).
I'm trying to decide between upgrading to a Radeon 8500 or a GF4-Ti4200, and I'm leaning toward the GF4 because I'd rather have a proprietary binary driver that works than an open-source one that doesn't. So if anyone has had a good experience running a Radeon 8500 under Linux (especially with UT2003 demo, either the open-source dri driver or ATI's binary release), please let me know.
A trillion bucks for a Diablo? Damn inflation - I remember when they were only a quarter million!
Or did you mean a trillion lire? That would make sense, the Lamborghini being Italian and all, but that's still $500 million, or 2000x more than I'd pay.
So when will the price of the lower end cameras start dropping? The 2.1MP cameras are still in the $400-$500 range around here.
Where is "around here"? My wife bought a 3.1MP Kodak DC4800 for $499 (before a $100 rebate) nearly two years ago. Hmm, looking at Yahoo shopping, they're still $470 or more, but that's 3.1MP, not 2.1 like you're looking at.
She wants her beautiful skin tone to show, not her crow's feet.
Exactly... it ought to be obvious that (most) wedding photographers aren't out for resolution, since the first thing they do after putting the lens on their camera is slap a soft-focus filter on the front.
I have always been an HP printer fan, having had an original DeskJet 500C, which gave way to a 6, 7, and recently a 9 series. Unfortunately, I saw the output of an Epson 785 and had to have it. It blew away the prints my HP made. I ended up getting the 820, since it's the same printer without the card reader.
The ink cartridges are a bit cheaper than the HP cartridges, and seem to hold more ink, the 6-color process makes photos look much better, and it has the ability to make borderless photos. For $99 (BEFORE the $20 Staples rebate) I don't think anything HP makes can touch it - and this is coming from a long-time HP fan, as I said before.
My daughter owes her existence to me (and my wife, obviously). We don't expect her to sing hymns to us, just an occasional "Thanks, Mom and Dad" when she's older will be quite fine.
Even if she fails to do that, we're not going to ground her for eternity in a furnace. And we're only fallible humans - an omnipotent, loving God should be even more tolerant and forgiving of our failure to thank Him.
Hinduism can embrace hedonism, likewise with Buddhism. Both can be seen as 'self worship' rather than Christianity or Judaism which seeks to deny self and give that self to the higher power = GOD.
You don't know much about Hinduism, do you? The goal of the Hindu is to become one with Brahman (the Ultimate Reality / God) and escape the cycle of rebirth. This is done by (surprise) denying the self, forsaking materialism, practicing dharma (righteousness).
I suppose we should ask some ancient Romans to be certain. I've always thought the "urine us" pronunciation would fit with Latin better than the "your anus" version, but I've heard the explanation you gave a couple times as well.
Oh, but it must be! It's Friday, this is always the day the editors save to post the article that will spark the debate. I missed Thursday, which is the day we forget how much we hate the MPAA/RIAA and drool over the latest piece of electronic wizardry from Sony.
It's a debate about whether science has explained life adequately.
Well, that's no debate. Any scientist worthy of the name will tell you the answer is no. Scientific theories are like underwear. They're used until they smell bad, then they're exchanged for a new pair. Wait, wrong analogy. Anyway, no scientific theory is every considered to be IT, the end of science. There is always a possibility that new evidence will disagree with it - at which point a new theory must be formulated, that not only explains the new evidence, but also explains why the old theory worked as well as it did.
All theories in science have been refined, modified, or replaced at some point, and our current theories of origins of life will be modified and refined to fit new evidence as well. If the creationists want mainstream science to take their views seriously, all they have to do is provide evidence that shows the earth to be 6000 years young, or proves that the elapsed time from the first ray of light in the universe to the first human walking the earth was five days.
I can't even imagine what kind of evidence you would be talking about.
Neither can I, but that doesn't exuse creation scientists from the burden of proof. They are the ones whose theories disagree with the whole of mainstream science. Ok, asking for proof of God might be a bit unfair, but if they want Creationism taught as science, some real evidence of things like the Flood or a 6,000-year old Earth should be forthcoming.
Now, I guess you would consider the notion that evolution was guided by something as a creationist argument. It's not obvious that believing that it all came about by random processes [and yes thanks, I do understand natural selection, mutation, crossover etc] is less extraordinary a hypothesis than the notion of a form of guided evolution.
(Jedi mind trick) I am not the evolutionist you are looking for.;) Actually, I don't have a bit of a problem with the idea that evolution was guided, in fact my beliefs lean that direction. I just don't believe that whatever guidance occured took the form of miracles or violations of the laws of nature (by that I mean the real laws of nature, not our current understanding of them which is admittedly imcomplete).
Obviously, if I'm right, there'd be no way to prove that God did it - there would be a scientific explanation of every event in evolutionary history. But I think He wants it that way. Just look at the lecture He gave Thomas the Apostle about seeing and believing.
I recommend you read "Not by chance" by Dr. Lee Spetner. He is not some wooly thinking bible bashing hick, he has a Phd in physics from MIT and has worked in biophysics for decades.
Thanks, I will check it out. It sounds like a big improvement over the Chick garbage someone linked to earlier!
Actually, I used the Shift key. And, I closed my <i> tag.
Hundreds of years ago, prior to the discovery of viruses and other invisible realities, I'm sure there were those who believed in things that were invisible that were causing these diseases in their communities, but they could not prove it. They didn't have the means. I'm sure many of these people were laughed at. Today we respect them.
We respect them not because they believed in invisible things that happened to be real, but because they sought out and eventually obtained evidence that those things existed. In the process, they created "miracles" of science like vaccines and antibiotics. Had they simply wasted their lives telling everyone "Believe in my tiny invisible germs or you'll die - no, I don't have proof, but they must exist, otherwise how would we get sick?" we would not have respect for them, despite the fact that they turned out to be right.
It has taken man long enough to discover some of the invisible realities, and just think, these are only created things. How much more complex our Creator must be! Praise God, and God Bless America.
I'm guessing you think you're replying to an atheist, I hope it doesn't disappoint you that I agree that our Creator is mighty complex. I believe that He and His creation are far too complex to have been properly described by the nomadic hunter-gatherers of dozens of centuries ago. They are also too complex to be fully comprehended by the scientists of the 21st century, but every discovery gives us a slightly clearer picture.
Advances in the scientific understanding of nature should give believers a greater appreciation of His wisdom, rather than scaring them witless because it happens to disagree with what the Sumerians believed about creation centuries before the Bible was written down.
While that may be part of the confusion, it doesn't entirely explain the issue to which I was referring. The two lineages of Lamech are similar enough to be referring to the same person, yet different enough to cast serious doubts on the accuracy of the writers. And since Lamech is Noah's daddy, whether he is descended from Seth or from Cain seems quite important - are we all descendants of the world's first murderer, or are we not?
From Genesis 4: 17 Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.
From Genesis 5 (edited for brevity): 6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father [2] of Enosh. 9 When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan. 12 When Kenan had lived 70 years, he became the father of Mahalalel. 15 When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he became the father of Jared. 18 When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch. 21 When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. 25 When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech.
i.e. Seth -> Enosh -> Kenan -> Mahalalel -> Jared -> Enoch -> Methuselah -> Lamech
Note the similarity of "Enoch-Irad-Mehujael" vs "Mahalel-Jared-Enoch" - possibly the same grandpa, dad, and son, mispronounced and reversed in order. Reverse the order of the three, confuse Kenan with Cain, and it makes sense. But, if this kind of mistake is made when there were still very few people on Earth to keep straight, what kind of errors must be in the "Begats" as the population expands after the flood?
"The 4 quadrant corners of the Earth sphere rotate as a quad spiraling helix - thus creating 4 simultaneous days per each rotation and 4 simultaneous years per 1 orbit around Sun. Greenwich day is of stupidity."
I mean, what could be clearer than that?
Um, a brick wall? Or maybe ten thousand gallons of chocolate ice cream?
What about Lamech, who in different chapters is the descendant of either Cain or Seth, and a different number of generations down the line? The discrepancy would only amount to maybe a couple hundred years in the age of the earth, but if the writers of Genesis couldn't get such simple facts straight, why do we suppose anything else is 100% accurate in the Bible? And where the heck did Cain and Seth find their wives, anyway?
One might also point out that there is nothing that connects the Garden of Eden story to the sixth or seventh day of Genesis chapter 1. For all we know thousands or millions of years had passed between chapters 1 and 2.
What if you're both wrong and only the followers of the Church of Sub-Genius go to Heaven? Then at least the Atheist did whatever he wanted in life, but you wasted a bunch of time obeying the "rules", and now you're both suffering for the rest of eternity.
Or what if the Atheist ends up in Heaven because he worked hard to make the world better, and you fry in Hell for spending too much time reading the Bible and not enough time being like Christ? Note - I'm using "you" in the generic sense, not specifically you, netphilter.
My point is that, none of us can really know what awaits us on the other side of death, and given the infinite number of possibilities, no religion should claim that its path is a "no-brainer".
Oh boy another wonderful/. creationist-vs-evolutionist debate!
The experiment produced only about half the amino acids that are necessary for life. But, there is no reason to doubt that the other amio acids can be similarly produced by non-miraculous means.
Non-organic reactions always produce left-handed and right-handed molecules in (roughly) equal amounts. However, only left-handed amino acids can be used in living cells. Actually, as far as we can tell, life could exist using all right-handed amino acids also. It's quite possible that both types of life existed for a brief time, but one out-competed the other very early in earth's history.
The experiment succeeded in producing amino acids, but scientists have never been able to produce any more complex organic molecules in the lab. No DNA (not even fragments), no RNA, and certainly no proteins. Current scientific thinking on the origin of life tends toward the idea that the earliest self-replicating molecules were simple peptides, chains of perhaps a couple dozen amino acids. Given that a lab experiment can form a bunch of amino acids in a few weeks, it's not that farfetched to imagine a chain of 30 or so to be spontaneously generated throughout the oceans of earth in a number of years.
Organic molecules tend to break down over time. This process is accelarated by water (didn't life supposedly form in the ocean?) and heat. Last I heard, RNA is thought to have first been formed on catalytic clay substrates. But why would creation "scientists" bother to check the current theories when attacking straw men is so much easier?
No matter how many creationists point out their supposed "holes" in the mainstream scientific theories on the origins of life, they always fail to produce the one thing that would end the debate forever: ONE IOTA of SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that GOD EXISTS and that HE CREATED LIFE.
Until such time as this first piece of evidence is seen, why should the scientific community be expected to constantly defend the whole of mainstream geology, astronomy, and biology against attacks by creationists who have NO evidence supporting their own "theories", which are all based on a creation story the ancient Hebrews borrowed from the Sumerians and some unverifiable genealogies?
Slashdot Mirror
How could you forget his singing career? "Gonna let her in, mmm mmm...."
What a dork. Oh, and let's not forget his classic performances in Welcome Back Kotter.
Yeah, good point. The real reason wedding photographers use medium format is for the ability to make big enlargments. Big enlargements, and expensive equipment that justifies their high prices... are the two reasons wedding photographers use medium format. Big enlargments, price justification, and an almost fanatical devotion to Hasselblad... are the THREE reasons... Oh, I'll just come in again....
As best I can tell, not speaking Spanish, it's just a how-to to install the proprietary ATI drivers. I didn't see any comments about any particular games; of course, if I had I wouldn't have known whether they were good, bad, or indifferent.
$20 says you'll use your ATI card to play Unreal Tournament 2003
On Microsoft Windows, of course. 'Cuz last I heard, the ATI cards won't work for UT2003 on Linux. Mind you, this may have changed, and I speak not from experience as I still have a shitty Rage 128 in my machine (hey, it handles Q3 and RtCW fairly well).
I'm trying to decide between upgrading to a Radeon 8500 or a GF4-Ti4200, and I'm leaning toward the GF4 because I'd rather have a proprietary binary driver that works than an open-source one that doesn't. So if anyone has had a good experience running a Radeon 8500 under Linux (especially with UT2003 demo, either the open-source dri driver or ATI's binary release), please let me know.
or $999,999,999,999.00 on a Lamborghini Diablo
A trillion bucks for a Diablo? Damn inflation - I remember when they were only a quarter million!
Or did you mean a trillion lire? That would make sense, the Lamborghini being Italian and all, but that's still $500 million, or 2000x more than I'd pay.
The apropriate comparison to Lexus within Ford would probably be Lincoln, not Jaguar.
As soon as I saw the subject line "Ebay" in this thread, I knew someone would post the infamous teapot.... yech.
So when will the price of the lower end cameras start dropping? The 2.1MP cameras are still in the $400-$500 range around here.
Where is "around here"? My wife bought a 3.1MP Kodak DC4800 for $499 (before a $100 rebate) nearly two years ago. Hmm, looking at Yahoo shopping, they're still $470 or more, but that's 3.1MP, not 2.1 like you're looking at.
She wants her beautiful skin tone to show, not her crow's feet.
Exactly... it ought to be obvious that (most) wedding photographers aren't out for resolution, since the first thing they do after putting the lens on their camera is slap a soft-focus filter on the front.
I'd rather buy a PCChips or Acer product instead. Much more reliable support, that's for sure!
Please tell me you didn't just type "Acer" and "reliable support" in the same paragraph. Does... not... compute....
I'm going to hold you personlly responsible for the therapy I will need after reading that.
I have always been an HP printer fan, having had an original DeskJet 500C, which gave way to a 6, 7, and recently a 9 series. Unfortunately, I saw the output of an Epson 785 and had to have it. It blew away the prints my HP made. I ended up getting the 820, since it's the same printer without the card reader.
The ink cartridges are a bit cheaper than the HP cartridges, and seem to hold more ink, the 6-color process makes photos look much better, and it has the ability to make borderless photos. For $99 (BEFORE the $20 Staples rebate) I don't think anything HP makes can touch it - and this is coming from a long-time HP fan, as I said before.
Yes, but one day they'll make a mod chip with a nail so big it will destroy them all!
My daughter owes her existence to me (and my wife, obviously). We don't expect her to sing hymns to us, just an occasional "Thanks, Mom and Dad" when she's older will be quite fine.
Even if she fails to do that, we're not going to ground her for eternity in a furnace. And we're only fallible humans - an omnipotent, loving God should be even more tolerant and forgiving of our failure to thank Him.
Hinduism can embrace hedonism, likewise with Buddhism. Both can be seen as 'self worship' rather than Christianity or Judaism which seeks to deny self and give that self to the higher power = GOD.
You don't know much about Hinduism, do you? The goal of the Hindu is to become one with Brahman (the Ultimate Reality / God) and escape the cycle of rebirth. This is done by (surprise) denying the self, forsaking materialism, practicing dharma (righteousness).
Hinduism is one of the oldest religions of the world and Vedas were written around 1200 BC.
According to Western scholars. Hindus themselves date it to as early as 3500 BC, some even go as far as 12,000 BC.
Maybe she's a goaltender on a women's hockey team?
I suppose we should ask some ancient Romans to be certain. I've always thought the "urine us" pronunciation would fit with Latin better than the "your anus" version, but I've heard the explanation you gave a couple times as well.
Fnord. All hail Discordia!
Or were you joking?
This isn't an evolutionist/creationist debate.
;) Actually, I don't have a bit of a problem with the idea that evolution was guided, in fact my beliefs lean that direction. I just don't believe that whatever guidance occured took the form of miracles or violations of the laws of nature (by that I mean the real laws of nature, not our current understanding of them which is admittedly imcomplete).
Oh, but it must be! It's Friday, this is always the day the editors save to post the article that will spark the debate. I missed Thursday, which is the day we forget how much we hate the MPAA/RIAA and drool over the latest piece of electronic wizardry from Sony.
It's a debate about whether science has explained life adequately.
Well, that's no debate. Any scientist worthy of the name will tell you the answer is no. Scientific theories are like underwear. They're used until they smell bad, then they're exchanged for a new pair. Wait, wrong analogy. Anyway, no scientific theory is every considered to be IT, the end of science. There is always a possibility that new evidence will disagree with it - at which point a new theory must be formulated, that not only explains the new evidence, but also explains why the old theory worked as well as it did.
All theories in science have been refined, modified, or replaced at some point, and our current theories of origins of life will be modified and refined to fit new evidence as well. If the creationists want mainstream science to take their views seriously, all they have to do is provide evidence that shows the earth to be 6000 years young, or proves that the elapsed time from the first ray of light in the universe to the first human walking the earth was five days.
I can't even imagine what kind of evidence you would be talking about.
Neither can I, but that doesn't exuse creation scientists from the burden of proof. They are the ones whose theories disagree with the whole of mainstream science. Ok, asking for proof of God might be a bit unfair, but if they want Creationism taught as science, some real evidence of things like the Flood or a 6,000-year old Earth should be forthcoming.
Now, I guess you would consider the notion that evolution was guided by something as a creationist argument. It's not obvious that believing that it all came about by random processes [and yes thanks, I do understand natural selection, mutation, crossover etc] is less extraordinary a hypothesis than the notion of a form of guided evolution.
(Jedi mind trick) I am not the evolutionist you are looking for.
Obviously, if I'm right, there'd be no way to prove that God did it - there would be a scientific explanation of every event in evolutionary history. But I think He wants it that way. Just look at the lecture He gave Thomas the Apostle about seeing and believing.
I recommend you read "Not by chance" by Dr. Lee Spetner. He is not some wooly thinking bible bashing hick, he has a Phd in physics from MIT and has worked in biophysics for decades.
Thanks, I will check it out. It sounds like a big improvement over the Chick garbage someone linked to earlier!
Oh no, you found THE CAPS LOCK KEY!
Actually, I used the Shift key. And, I closed my <i> tag.
Hundreds of years ago, prior to the discovery of viruses and other invisible realities, I'm sure there were those who believed in things that were invisible that were causing these diseases in their communities, but they could not prove it. They didn't have the means. I'm sure many of these people were laughed at. Today we respect them.
We respect them not because they believed in invisible things that happened to be real, but because they sought out and eventually obtained evidence that those things existed. In the process, they created "miracles" of science like vaccines and antibiotics. Had they simply wasted their lives telling everyone "Believe in my tiny invisible germs or you'll die - no, I don't have proof, but they must exist, otherwise how would we get sick?" we would not have respect for them, despite the fact that they turned out to be right.
It has taken man long enough to discover some of the invisible realities, and just think, these are only created things. How much more complex our Creator must be! Praise God, and God Bless America.
I'm guessing you think you're replying to an atheist, I hope it doesn't disappoint you that I agree that our Creator is mighty complex. I believe that He and His creation are far too complex to have been properly described by the nomadic hunter-gatherers of dozens of centuries ago. They are also too complex to be fully comprehended by the scientists of the 21st century, but every discovery gives us a slightly clearer picture.
Advances in the scientific understanding of nature should give believers a greater appreciation of His wisdom, rather than scaring them witless because it happens to disagree with what the Sumerians believed about creation centuries before the Bible was written down.
While that may be part of the confusion, it doesn't entirely explain the issue to which I was referring. The two lineages of Lamech are similar enough to be referring to the same person, yet different enough to cast serious doubts on the accuracy of the writers. And since Lamech is Noah's daddy, whether he is descended from Seth or from Cain seems quite important - are we all descendants of the world's first murderer, or are we not?
From Genesis 4: 17 Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.
i.e. Cain -> Enoch -> Irad -> Mehujael -> Methushael -> Lamech
From Genesis 5 (edited for brevity): 6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father [2] of Enosh. 9 When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan. 12 When Kenan had lived 70 years, he became the father of Mahalalel. 15 When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he became the father of Jared. 18 When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch. 21 When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. 25 When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech.
i.e. Seth -> Enosh -> Kenan -> Mahalalel -> Jared -> Enoch -> Methuselah -> Lamech
Note the similarity of "Enoch-Irad-Mehujael" vs "Mahalel-Jared-Enoch" - possibly the same grandpa, dad, and son, mispronounced and reversed in order. Reverse the order of the three, confuse Kenan with Cain, and it makes sense. But, if this kind of mistake is made when there were still very few people on Earth to keep straight, what kind of errors must be in the "Begats" as the population expands after the flood?
"The 4 quadrant corners of the Earth sphere rotate as a quad spiraling helix - thus creating
4 simultaneous days per each rotation and 4 simultaneous years per 1 orbit around Sun.
Greenwich day is of stupidity."
I mean, what could be clearer than that?
Um, a brick wall? Or maybe ten thousand gallons of chocolate ice cream?
What about Lamech, who in different chapters is the descendant of either Cain or Seth, and a different number of generations down the line? The discrepancy would only amount to maybe a couple hundred years in the age of the earth, but if the writers of Genesis couldn't get such simple facts straight, why do we suppose anything else is 100% accurate in the Bible? And where the heck did Cain and Seth find their wives, anyway?
One might also point out that there is nothing that connects the Garden of Eden story to the sixth or seventh day of Genesis chapter 1. For all we know thousands or millions of years had passed between chapters 1 and 2.
What if you're both wrong and only the followers of the Church of Sub-Genius go to Heaven? Then at least the Atheist did whatever he wanted in life, but you wasted a bunch of time obeying the "rules", and now you're both suffering for the rest of eternity.
Or what if the Atheist ends up in Heaven because he worked hard to make the world better, and you fry in Hell for spending too much time reading the Bible and not enough time being like Christ? Note - I'm using "you" in the generic sense, not specifically you, netphilter.
My point is that, none of us can really know what awaits us on the other side of death, and given the infinite number of possibilities, no religion should claim that its path is a "no-brainer".
Oh boy another wonderful /. creationist-vs-evolutionist debate!
The experiment produced only about half the amino acids that are necessary for life.
But, there is no reason to doubt that the other amio acids can be similarly produced by non-miraculous means.
Non-organic reactions always produce left-handed and right-handed molecules in (roughly) equal amounts. However, only left-handed amino acids can be used in living cells.
Actually, as far as we can tell, life could exist using all right-handed amino acids also. It's quite possible that both types of life existed for a brief time, but one out-competed the other very early in earth's history.
The experiment succeeded in producing amino acids, but scientists have never been able to produce any more complex organic molecules in the lab. No DNA (not even fragments), no RNA, and certainly no proteins.
Current scientific thinking on the origin of life tends toward the idea that the earliest self-replicating molecules were simple peptides, chains of perhaps a couple dozen amino acids. Given that a lab experiment can form a bunch of amino acids in a few weeks, it's not that farfetched to imagine a chain of 30 or so to be spontaneously generated throughout the oceans of earth in a number of years.
Organic molecules tend to break down over time. This process is accelarated by water (didn't life supposedly form in the ocean?) and heat.
Last I heard, RNA is thought to have first been formed on catalytic clay substrates. But why would creation "scientists" bother to check the current theories when attacking straw men is so much easier?
No matter how many creationists point out their supposed "holes" in the mainstream scientific theories on the origins of life, they always fail to produce the one thing that would end the debate forever: ONE IOTA of SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that GOD EXISTS and that HE CREATED LIFE.
Until such time as this first piece of evidence is seen, why should the scientific community be expected to constantly defend the whole of mainstream geology, astronomy, and biology against attacks by creationists who have NO evidence supporting their own "theories", which are all based on a creation story the ancient Hebrews borrowed from the Sumerians and some unverifiable genealogies?