I've got a couple of questions regarding your post, cheezus. Since your post was modded "troll" rather than "funny," I'll assume you were serious. Of course, humor is harder to recognize in pure text messages, so feel free to correct this assumption if necessary.
(1) What is the connection between your subject line and your statements? Do you feel that the measurement of distance is wildly inaccurate and thus the astrophysicists responsible are incompetent?
(2) Or is it that you believe that the theories we have on planetary formation are wildly inaccurate and thus the astrophysicists responsible for them are incompetent?
(3) About this suspicion you have about astrophysicists: what else do you have to support this contention? Are all astrophysicists just pulling our collective leg, or are some of them honest? If so, which ones and how do you know?
Well, 2001: A Space Odyssey comes to mind for me, although I guess one could easily argue that 2001 is not an adaptation of Childhood's End, but an original screenplay with a couple of elements lifted from the short story. And I guess it's a short story instead of a novel too.
As another poster noted, 2001 wasn't based on Clarke's Childhood's End, but did have its roots in Clarke's short story The Sentinel. Additionally, the movie 2001 wasn't an adaptation of the book 2001 so much as the other way around. As I understand it, both were produced more or less concurrently, though the idea for the movie was first. Finally, Clarke and Kubrick worked together on producing the movie, so the difference between their stories is relatively small.
Anyway, Sagan's Contact is another decent book-to-movie adapation. There were several changes in the movie from the book that I think made the movie worse, especially those that affected the themes of both stories. Despite these negative changes, the movie was watchable and didn't "rape and pillage" the original story.
Before Tyreth gets around to outlining what he sees as fundamental problems with the darwinist model, first he should get around to defining the "darwinist model." I ask because creationists will often attempt to attack evolution as though it were another religion: through quoting scripture, appealing to authorities who agree with them (even when it's clear that these authorities endorse creationism due to religious and not scientific reasons), dismissing the vast number of authorities who do not agree with them as being atheists or secularists or materialists, invoking vague moral arguments (e.g. Evolution was responsible for fascism, communism, liberal views on sex), and attempting to discredit the founder (e.g. Darwin recanted on his death-bed).
However, what creationists must realize is that simply attempting to refer to "evolutionism" or "Darwinism" doesn't fly since the founder of a theory is not intimately tied to the accuracy of that theory. Now, scientists will refer to views like "neo-Darwinism" but do so to differentiate one view of evolution from another, not to refer to all evolutionary theories and mechanisms.
If you're going to arbitrarly declare that zygotes should have the rights of a fully grown human being despite lacking a central nervous system, you might as well claim that those "unborn babies" still in the haploid stage of human development also warrant those rights.
So why don't right-to-lifers declare that a "holocaust of the unborn" is happening every time a virile male doesn't fertilize an egg? It would certainly be consistent with their rhetoric about "Roe vs. Wade" making murder legal.
The version I played was written in 1982 and was a port for the IBM PC. It had a bug that prevented one from loading a saved game. This was one of its greatest features in my opinion. Every time you played it you had to start from scratch and because there were so many random elements in the game no game was ever the same.
I must disagree with this assessment. In the many times I played Rogue, sometimes I would get all the way to dungeon level 15 before being killed by a monster, sometimes I would repeatedly fall down traps from the beginning so that I had no chance against the monsters I eventually ran into. In both cases, I would play the game the same way, meaning that when I died, it wasn't because of anything I could have prevented, but rather it was pure chance that killed me. This would tend to kill any chance of celebration when I got far--after all, it wasn't that I played especially well, just that I had gotten lucky. This is not to say that it didn't pay to have some knowledge of the monsters' abilities and what potions could do to you, but it was never a deciding factor. How many times did I die simply because the last five dungeon levels didn't have any food? It was absolutely frustrating, not challenging.
Eventually I got tired of dying over and over because the game didn't generate levels that were survivable, and just wrote a batch file that would copy my savegame file before loading (and destroying) it. Thereafter, the game never carried that same sense of tension, but it also lacked the frustration of unavoidable deaths. This was a tradeoff I am happy with.
5,000 or however many years ago, there wasn't the distinction between freshwater and saltwater fish, but that over the last 5,000 years of natural selection, you ended up with fish that can only survive in fresh water and fish that can only survive in salt water.
Except such a change would almost certainly be enough to ensure that the evolved population would be unable to breed with the original population, if for no other reason than the two would not be able to meet to breed. That would be speciation, and thus macro-evolution. What's more, it wouldn't be as though a new species or two evolved, it would be every water-dwelling species! I would think that this would leave significant genetic evidence.
The argument is that the the seismic activity that led to the breakup of the continents and the formation of the large mountain ranges took place at the end of the flood,
The energies required to move so much of the Earth around in a few days or weeks rather than eons would liquefy the surface. Of course, sticky problems such as this is where creationists will generally invoke another ad-hoc miracle.
Lesson: Don't pick apart other people's comments when all you provide in return is a troll and even less information or reasoning than the original poster.
It's because Bush doesn't think that every life is precious. Bush & co.'s whole stem-cell ethical debate was never about the value of human life, nor did it factor in the possibility of saving human life through medical science. It was about control, same as every other "pro-life" argument used by the Religious Right.
If evolution was just some fairy tale, then why are there literal and figurative mountains of evidence for it? There is no other scientific theory that successfully explains biogeography, endogenous retroviruses, and anatomy. Creationism fails to even be a theory. Why would it be accepted by nearly every biologist and the vast majority of scientists? Surely you don't believe that there is some sort of vast conspiracy of scientists that has lasted more than a century that spans every field from astronomy to biology to geology. Is every scientist just stupid? Do you perhaps believe that you know more biology than every biologist combined, more astronomy than every astronomer combined, and more geology than every geolgist combined?
Please feel free to show us your calculations regarding abiogenesis--so far every creationist whom I've asked has either brought up with meaningless numbers unrelated to reality or simply run away. It's more than likely that your key point is nothing more than desperate wishing on your part. Furthermore, it's completely irrelevent to evolution. The fact that you conflate evolution with abiogenesis makes me rather doubt your claims to a full education regarding this subject. Ignorance isn't a crime, but when coupled with a creationist's overwhelming arrogance, it's difficult to take them seriously.
Your belief in the Bible is yours to hold, but don't pretend that it's anything but religion. Finally, just because you refuse to accept science because of your religious beliefs doesn't mean that the people who do accept science do so because of faith. In other words, kindly stop projecting.
We have evidence that Earth has been hit by asteroids before with devastating consequences. Furthermore, we know of numerous asteroids in the solar system. Therefore, the threat of asteroid impact is credible. We can be fairly sure that black holes exist, but the chances of encountering a solar-massed black hole is about the same as the chance of encountering a solar-massed star. We have no evidence for the existence of hostile aliens. Therefore, neither black holes nor Vogons are a credible threat.
At least in America, the First Amendment is there to stop another Spanish Inquisition.
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I've got a couple of questions regarding your post, cheezus. Since your post was modded "troll" rather than "funny," I'll assume you were serious. Of course, humor is harder to recognize in pure text messages, so feel free to correct this assumption if necessary.
(1) What is the connection between your subject line and your statements? Do you feel that the measurement of distance is wildly inaccurate and thus the astrophysicists responsible are incompetent?
(2) Or is it that you believe that the theories we have on planetary formation are wildly inaccurate and thus the astrophysicists responsible for them are incompetent?
(3) About this suspicion you have about astrophysicists: what else do you have to support this contention? Are all astrophysicists just pulling our collective leg, or are some of them honest? If so, which ones and how do you know?
Well, 2001: A Space Odyssey comes to mind for me, although I guess one could easily argue that 2001 is not an adaptation of Childhood's End, but an original screenplay with a couple of elements lifted from the short story. And I guess it's a short story instead of a novel too.
As another poster noted, 2001 wasn't based on Clarke's Childhood's End, but did have its roots in Clarke's short story The Sentinel. Additionally, the movie 2001 wasn't an adaptation of the book 2001 so much as the other way around. As I understand it, both were produced more or less concurrently, though the idea for the movie was first. Finally, Clarke and Kubrick worked together on producing the movie, so the difference between their stories is relatively small.
Anyway, Sagan's Contact is another decent book-to-movie adapation. There were several changes in the movie from the book that I think made the movie worse, especially those that affected the themes of both stories. Despite these negative changes, the movie was watchable and didn't "rape and pillage" the original story.
Before Tyreth gets around to outlining what he sees as fundamental problems with the darwinist model, first he should get around to defining the "darwinist model." I ask because creationists will often attempt to attack evolution as though it were another religion: through quoting scripture, appealing to authorities who agree with them (even when it's clear that these authorities endorse creationism due to religious and not scientific reasons), dismissing the vast number of authorities who do not agree with them as being atheists or secularists or materialists, invoking vague moral arguments (e.g. Evolution was responsible for fascism, communism, liberal views on sex), and attempting to discredit the founder (e.g. Darwin recanted on his death-bed).
However, what creationists must realize is that simply attempting to refer to "evolutionism" or "Darwinism" doesn't fly since the founder of a theory is not intimately tied to the accuracy of that theory. Now, scientists will refer to views like "neo-Darwinism" but do so to differentiate one view of evolution from another, not to refer to all evolutionary theories and mechanisms.
Because, what? You say so?
If you're going to arbitrarly declare that zygotes should have the rights of a fully grown human being despite lacking a central nervous system, you might as well claim that those "unborn babies" still in the haploid stage of human development also warrant those rights.
So why don't right-to-lifers declare that a "holocaust of the unborn" is happening every time a virile male doesn't fertilize an egg? It would certainly be consistent with their rhetoric about "Roe vs. Wade" making murder legal.
The version I played was written in 1982 and was a port for the IBM PC. It had a bug that prevented one from loading a saved game. This was one of its greatest features in my opinion. Every time you played it you had to start from scratch and because there were so many random elements in the game no game was ever the same.
I must disagree with this assessment. In the many times I played Rogue, sometimes I would get all the way to dungeon level 15 before being killed by a monster, sometimes I would repeatedly fall down traps from the beginning so that I had no chance against the monsters I eventually ran into. In both cases, I would play the game the same way, meaning that when I died, it wasn't because of anything I could have prevented, but rather it was pure chance that killed me. This would tend to kill any chance of celebration when I got far--after all, it wasn't that I played especially well, just that I had gotten lucky. This is not to say that it didn't pay to have some knowledge of the monsters' abilities and what potions could do to you, but it was never a deciding factor. How many times did I die simply because the last five dungeon levels didn't have any food? It was absolutely frustrating, not challenging.
Eventually I got tired of dying over and over because the game didn't generate levels that were survivable, and just wrote a batch file that would copy my savegame file before loading (and destroying) it. Thereafter, the game never carried that same sense of tension, but it also lacked the frustration of unavoidable deaths. This was a tradeoff I am happy with.
5,000 or however many years ago, there wasn't the distinction between freshwater and saltwater fish, but that over the last 5,000 years of natural selection, you ended up with fish that can only survive in fresh water and fish that can only survive in salt water.
Except such a change would almost certainly be enough to ensure that the evolved population would be unable to breed with the original population, if for no other reason than the two would not be able to meet to breed. That would be speciation, and thus macro-evolution. What's more, it wouldn't be as though a new species or two evolved, it would be every water-dwelling species! I would think that this would leave significant genetic evidence.
The argument is that the the seismic activity that led to the breakup of the continents and the formation of the large mountain ranges took place at the end of the flood,
The energies required to move so much of the Earth around in a few days or weeks rather than eons would liquefy the surface. Of course, sticky problems such as this is where creationists will generally invoke another ad-hoc miracle.
We could spend days listing reasons why the ark as described in the story could never have existed.
Yet you provide not one single reason.
Come on! The Talk.Origins Archive is not that hard search through! Here's the specific FAQ you're looking for: Problems with a Global Flood. Or better yet, try Google's talk.origins archive for archived discussions.
Lesson: Don't pick apart other people's comments when all you provide in return is a troll and even less information or reasoning than the original poster.
My irony meter just exploded!
+1 Informative?!
Looks like ignatus' sig isn't just cynicism.
It's because Bush doesn't think that every life is precious. Bush & co.'s whole stem-cell ethical debate was never about the value of human life, nor did it factor in the possibility of saving human life through medical science. It was about control, same as every other "pro-life" argument used by the Religious Right.
If evolution was just some fairy tale, then why are there literal and figurative mountains of evidence for it? There is no other scientific theory that successfully explains biogeography, endogenous retroviruses, and anatomy. Creationism fails to even be a theory. Why would it be accepted by nearly every biologist and the vast majority of scientists? Surely you don't believe that there is some sort of vast conspiracy of scientists that has lasted more than a century that spans every field from astronomy to biology to geology. Is every scientist just stupid? Do you perhaps believe that you know more biology than every biologist combined, more astronomy than every astronomer combined, and more geology than every geolgist combined?
Please feel free to show us your calculations regarding abiogenesis--so far every creationist whom I've asked has either brought up with meaningless numbers unrelated to reality or simply run away. It's more than likely that your key point is nothing more than desperate wishing on your part. Furthermore, it's completely irrelevent to evolution. The fact that you conflate evolution with abiogenesis makes me rather doubt your claims to a full education regarding this subject. Ignorance isn't a crime, but when coupled with a creationist's overwhelming arrogance, it's difficult to take them seriously.
Your belief in the Bible is yours to hold, but don't pretend that it's anything but religion. Finally, just because you refuse to accept science because of your religious beliefs doesn't mean that the people who do accept science do so because of faith. In other words, kindly stop projecting.
We have evidence that Earth has been hit by asteroids before with devastating consequences. Furthermore, we know of numerous asteroids in the solar system. Therefore, the threat of asteroid impact is credible. We can be fairly sure that black holes exist, but the chances of encountering a solar-massed black hole is about the same as the chance of encountering a solar-massed star. We have no evidence for the existence of hostile aliens. Therefore, neither black holes nor Vogons are a credible threat.
At least in America, the First Amendment is there to stop another Spanish Inquisition.