.....If you want to stop buying china products.... A generation ago it was the "Made in Japan" label and now it is China. What most people don't understand is that the world is now more or less a village, a global village called planet Earth. As China or any other country prospers, it's people demand a higher standard of living and will no longer work all day for a bowl of rice. In a few decades or less, other people willing to work all day for a bowl of rice will take the place of China. Overall, it will no longer matter where on planet Earth the components of a product comes from. Even today already, a complex product like a computer has parts and materials from all over the planet.
...Don't you think that the era of rule by religious conviction is long over?....
Apparently not in parts of the world that send out people that will kill themselves and others by flying airplanes into buildings.
When I was young, "Made in Japan" was a derisive phrase. The world is increasingly a village and goods will be produced by those people willing to work for the least amount of money. At the moment this is China, but who knows who it will be in the future?
For all the money that the United States has spent on crime and war, we could have such trains from coast-to-coast and from Canada to Mexico.
....Right now, OS X allows free, open development,...
But that doesn't mean that Apple could not extend the iTunes app store as an OPTION to their Macs and any possible upcoming tablet. If they did that, Apple users would have a guaranteed virus free source of paid and free programs from the Internet. They could extend the normal MacOS X operating system to work with all 100,000+ apps in their store. Users that wanted to take the chance to install dodgy software in their Macs would still be able to do so.
will be increasingly irrelevant. There are more standard ways, such as HTML 5, that have no problem with video on the iPhone. As more devices become popular that don't have flash, webmasters will make sure that these devices can properly display video of their webpage. Whenever a proprietary technologies are replaced by equally good open standards, we all win.
...we still have a hugely crappy Bluray... The crappiest thing about Blu-Ray is the price of both the players and the discs. The draconian DRM doesn't help its popularity either. It doesn't make the crap that Hollywood has been turning out lately any better. The fact that you can see the quality of the shave on the actors doesn't warrant paying all that extra money. These are some of the reasons why Apple, even though Stevie is on Disney's board, still doesn't sell a computer with a Blu-Ray drive. Apple is a high-priced brand, but even they don't see the value proposition of Blu-Ray.
....I don't like it.... Why? Is it because you can't or don't want to afford their products? I just got a Mac Mini with one TB (two 500G). It runs unlimited Leopard Server and is connected to our 47 inch LCD TV. AFAIK, nobody else sells anything remotely like this.
PS.. Did you have a nice holiday? I wish you a happy new year!
...The point is that a tiger is not a lion.. But they are both large cats, the cat kind. The biblical "kind" does not necessarily correspond to what humans have called species or other scientific classifications. It does however represent a distinct category of lifeforms which does not interbreed with other categories.
(...It *is* observation...) This is not true! Nobody was there to observe it, except for God. The fossil record shows no transitions between the various lifeforms, but instead shows the sudden appearance of new kinds of creatures. The theory of evolution does not predict the sudden appearance of entirely new kinds of life.
(...they have succeeded in the lab...) in making more bacteria of the same kind. These may have new capabilities, just as dachshunds have capabilities that German shepherds don't have, but they were still basically the same kind of bacteria, just as German shepherds and dachshunds are still only dogs.
(....simply didn't have enough hard parts...) Which are not at all necessary to form fossils. There are fossils of snails , worms and jellyfish and all kinds of other creatures that are totally soft. These showed up suddenly in the Cambrian explosion, a geological microsecond of time. Exactly how does the fossil record show that men came from monkeys and birds came from reptiles?
(...Evolution takes millions of years...) Like I have said many times before, time is the magic and last refuge of any evolutionist. Because evolution cannot be demonstrated or observed today, that "millions of years" excuse is always, without fail, used to defend evolution.
(...The 747 for example, like most other intelligent designed things in the world, doesn't feature a way to reproduce itself...) That is because the human brain, in fact life itself, even a single cell, is orders of magnitude more complex than any 747 airplane. Human designers have yet to come up with a self reproducing machine, especially one using very elementary parts.
(... When did he do it (6000 years ago, 3.5 billion years ago, etc)...) What difference does it make whether it was 6000 years ago or billions of years? The God I believe in is eternal, outside of time. He created time itself. His Word, the Bible, was not given to us by him to give us a science lesson. He left that for us to figure out on our own. However, I will give you a clue. To measure time, you need a clock. The clocks available to us tick at different rates, depending on which force controls its motion. Gravity and the electric force are the only two forces or interactions which are available to us for timekeeping. We assume, we believe by faith, that neither of these forces have ever changed, thus affecting clocks based on it.
(...Why did you create so much empty space for no reason?...) Aren't you making at least two assumptions here? First of all, how do you know there is no reason for having all the so-called empty space? Second, we know today that there is no such thing as what you call empty space. Space is filled with unbelievable amounts of energy that has been given the name of zero point energy. If you want to know more about it, just go to the ever so friendly Google.
(...How do you explain that an all knowing creator has managed to let so many bugs slip into his construction...) Humans tend to believe, because of our extremely short existence here, that things were always pretty much the way they are today. In his manual for living, the Bible, he gives us a few indications that this is not the case. There have been at least two stark discontinuities he tells us about. In the biblical creation account, we find the repeated phrase: "it was very good". That is obviously no longer the case. Scientists can certainly tell that things are no longer ideal or perfect.
(...If you think God did it, care to elaborate on a few questions?...) Man was originally given complete dominion over the earth. We are given a hint of the scope of this dominion in
...Species in general are man made classification... That of course is true, but they are still limits to what is generally called evolution. You may be able to mate the lion and a tiger, but not a horse and a hippopotamus to get a horsapottamous or whatever.
(...Small changes over millions or even billions of years lead to big changes..) That is part of Evolutionary Theory that has never and can never be observationally or experimentally verified. Time, lots of time, immense quantities of time is what evolutionists always resort to when their theories cannot be verified by observation.
Scientists have desperately tried for decades now already to experimentally make evolution happen. They do this by raising thousands or even millions of generations of rapidly multiplying organisms. Experiment and observations with bacteria and fruit flies show that evolution into new kinds of creatures just does not happen. A given kind of bacteria always remain bacteria of that kind and fruit flies have always remained fruit flies.
That is the fact. Experimental, real science, does give and always has given evidence that evolution of one kind of creature into another does not happen today.
(...fossile evidence...) Have you ever heard of something called The Cambrian Explosion? How the fossil record shows a SUDDEN explosive increase in the number and diversity of fossilized organisms? Is that evidence for creation done quickly or slow evolution over millions of years?
(...If Evolution where so completly wrong...) Some aspects of evolution are not wrong at all, but the teaching that birds come from reptiles and men come from monkeys is absurd. Such evolution does not happen today and it cannot be shown to have happened in the past either.
However, Darwin was right when he observed the beaks of finches changing according to what kind of seeds were available. You can call that evolution if you want to, but I prefer to call it adaptation.
(...Which alternative theory do you suggest that explains all the observations?...) I believe in an intelligent Creator God, all powerful and all knowing, who designed the universe and the laws by which it operates. Just as human laws which govern our lives all the came from intelligent (well sometimes at least) minds, so too did the natural laws come from the mind of God. My faith is small, but it is big enough to believe in such a God. My faith is however not big enough to believe something like the human brain or a 747 airplane can come into existence without careful thought and planning.
Re:For most users, cloud storage is more secure
on
Security In the Ether
·
· Score: 1
.....But it is wrong to assume that data is secure just because it is stored locally...
However, a government cannot get it your data as easily without you knowing about it. That may not matter to many people, but it is important to some.
....it has lead to the evolution of abilities not present in the original E.coli strand....
That is absolutely true, but the bacteria were still E. coli and always will be. I call that adaptation. Never, has any the laboratory experimentation produced a coccus or spirochete bacteria from an E. coli bacteria. A dachshund can do things a German Shepherd can't, but they are still both dogs.
Living things are very adaptable, but that does not prove evolution. The evolution I am thinking of is the nonsense that teaches that birds were once reptiles or that men come from monkeys or apes. That simply does not happen and has never been demonstrated or observed to happen. Such teaching is pure rubbish, not worthy of the label of science.
...For instance, Humans and dogs have both been observed to evolve into single-celled organisms,...
Oh really, where do you get this off the wall information? If that were true I would call that devolution.
(...of your devaluing of math and logic...) Math and logic must be the servants of science, not its master. Whatever is inferred through their services must eventually be corroborated by observation and experiment. By and unto themselves they are not science.
(...solid logic support the theory of evolution...) Yes they do, but not a shred of observational or experimental evidence. Nobody has ever seen it happen or made it happen.
(...but it was never able to explain very much...) Science is not about conjectural explanations or speculations, but about solid experimentation and observation. Nobody has ever, in any shape or form proved evolution in the laboratory or in the field.
(...One merely has to look and think...) Exactly right, one has to merely look at a human eyeball or a 747 airplane and come to the correct LOGICAL conclusion that neither one is a product of chance, but of intelligent design.
...at least one set of steps by which evolution could have produced a complex organ such as an eye....
Speculation about how something could be or could not be is not science. Science is and always has been about observation, measurement and experimentation. If it cannot be observed, it is not science, but doctrinaire belief.
It is OK to speculate, but such speculation should not be foisted off as scientific truth. Hollywood creations such as Star Trek and Star Wars are a lot of fun, but everybody knows that these things are made up stories, not scientific truth.
Evolutionary religion has hijacked the label "science" or scientific by which it tries to foist itself off as truth on scientifically ignorant people. It is the belief in the magic of time and chance held by the high priests of the evolutionary religion, who are unwilling to be humbly submitted to an all powerful, intelligent, eternal, transcendent Creator God.
....scientists don't understand how it could have arisen by chance....
Could have, might have, maybe by chance, are all speculations of believing minds, but they are not science. Real science, not pseudoscience, is observation and experimentation, not idle mental exercise or mathematical gymnastics. If it cannot be shown by repeated experiment and observation, it is idle speculation akin to religion.
Nobody has ever observed or even made anything evolve, involving entirely new structures. Hundreds of millions of generations of E. coli have still only produced more E. coli and not even some other kind of bacteria, let alone a more complex multi-celled organism. Countless generations of fruit flies have similarly produced nothing but fruit flies. Dogs have made nothing but dogs, cats have made nothing but cats and birds produce only more birds. This is observed and experimental FACT, not religious or evolutionary dogma. Living things reproduce after their kind, just as it is written in Scripture. This is not speculation, but what we observe and experience every day.
Evolutionists generally get around experimentally and observationally verified facts by putting forth the mechanism of vast ages of time. Time and chance are the magic ingredients, that are both used to foist the evolutionary fairytale on scientifically ignorant people.
The Christian doctrine that an intelligent, transcendent God is behind all of creation also cannot be proven or refuted by the scientific method. The assertion that Mount Rushmore or Stonehenge are intelligent human creations rather than a natural rock formations cannot be refuted or corroborated by the scientific method either.
....things start simple, and get more complex over time...
There are two things that have to be put into a system, in order for that to take place. First there has to be an input of energy. That's the easy part, because systems can get plenty of that from the sun. But, besides energy, you also have to supply additional information if you want something simple to turn into something more complex. Where does that information come from?
When you tidy up the chaos of your room or apartment, you supply muscle energy, but you also supply information as to where to put stuff.
...Here Richard Dawkins explains exactly for the evolution of the eyeball...
Anybody can explain anything on paper, but that does not make it so. Science is about observation and experimentation, neither of which have ever been done by him or anyone else to show that this explanation is even remotely close to being correct. All it is is a big imaginative conjecture.
...The are issues with evolutionary theory...
Shhh, don't point out that the faith of evolution violates well established laws of nature. On/. all that will do is get you modded down to the lowest numbers possible. I don't believe in the religion of evolution either, but we are in the minority here.
....Are you sure? I'd be willing to wager that over a couple of thousand generations or so, with the correct breeding practices, one could create something very Elephant or Cow-like.....
Scientists have experimented for decades now with simpler species, such as E. coli and fruit flies. All they have ever managed to do up until now is to produce more E. coli and fruit flies respectively. So far at least, experimental science says you would lose that bet.
....entirely new species are not only possible, but inevitable....
That is totally false, because only the opposite has ever been demonstrated. Scientists have produced millions of generations of E. coli, but all that ever happened is more E. coli. They have produced thousands of generations of fruit flies, but all that came out of it is always more fruit flies.
...when a nuclear weapon is finally used on a major city....
Do you really think that the kind of people that fly airplanes into buildings, to kill themselves and thousands of others, would hesitate for one second to use nukes if they have them? It is inevitable that they WILL have them someday, maybe sooner than anybody thinks.
...that was kept in check by the threat of nukes....
The doctrine of MAD only works if both sides have an about equal value on human life. A terrorist enemy that promises 72 virgins or whatever to somebody willing to kill themselves while they kill others, MAD loses its deterrent value. Despite the communist atheistic doctrines, both sides in the Cold War had a deep Christian tradition going back many centuries. Part of that tradition is the sanctity of life. If, or rather when a radical doctrinaire government, such as Iran gets a hold of nukes, the doctrine of MAD will no longer work, if these terrible weapons make it possible to totally destroy a hated enemy. People willing to fly airliners into buildings, will have no second thoughts about using nuclear weapons on their enemies. When the terrorists get control over weapons of mass destruction, the prophecies Jesus Christ about the most terrible time to ever be on planet Earth will be fulfilled.
...which is when the electricity is most likely to fail...
It is amazing how electricity in our area is restored quickly most of the time. Only one time in the last 20 years has the power been out for a week. Mostly, it is restored within hours, but still it is awfully inconvenient, because being on a well, we soon run out of water. A wood stove will at least keep the living room warm however. We were able to obtain an old army surplus diesel generator that can put out 30Kw. It is very noisy, but it keeps the entire 4000 ft. ranch house, the water system and the workshop building powered up.
...why colder seas are more productive than warmer seas...
I agree, that this is true of animals who breathe oxygen dissolved in the water, but it is not necessarily true of plant life which "breathe" in CO2.
My main point in this whole discussion was that before or while the fossil fuels were formed, all of the CO2 was in the atmosphere and the whole planet was considerably warmer. All of life, especially plantlife, was unimaginably prolific.
This whole global warming propaganda is primarily designed to accomplish at least two political things. One of them is a socialistic/communistic system to transfer wealth from the haves to the have-nots and the other is to eventually help usher in a one world governmental system which at some point in the future which will be run by a cruel dictator who will make Hitler and Stalin seem like saints in comparison. The whole Hitler scenario was a sneak preview of the future, except that it will be worldwide.
...I don't know about you but I prefer a temperature around 70 F myself. 90 F is just too damn hot for my taste...
Ha, I'd definitely agree with you there, but I suspect that is because we are used to it and our bodies accustomed to the lower temperature. The ideal temperature range for life I was talking about is not what individual organisms have adapted to, such as polar bears and gorillas, but the range of temperature where the chemical/biolgical life processes are most active. It is the extremely narrow temperature range found in all warm-blooded creatures. Polar bears are actually do quite well in a any zoo. Life in general adopts more readily to warmth than cold.
(...That happened to Mars just because of it's low gravity...) You certainly are correct about the considerably lower gravity of Mars not being strong enough to hold onto much atmosphere or water vapor. A rather narrow range in the strength of the planet's gravity is one of the many parameters that must be correct for there to be life, especially intelligent life. The gravity on Mars is just a little too small to hold onto enough oxygen, nitrogen and especially water vapor. It is also a little too far away from the sun for warmer temperatures in which most life forms thrive.
(....If you buried a carcass and it lay undisturbed for a million years it would become fossilized....) Come now, you know that isn't true. We bury bodies all the time and they decay, that is they get broken down by micro organisms until nothing recognizable remains. To make a fossil or fossil fuel, the organic remains have to be sterilized and buried in such a manner as to exclude oxygen. Peat bogs are only found in relatively cold places, where microorganisms can break the organic matter down only very slowly. You don't find any peat bogs in the tropics.
(...Every year humpback whales...) Could it be that they have adapted their lifestyle and food supply to that which is available in the colder oceans? The tropical oceans are teeming with life, just not the kind of stuff that humpbacks like to or have to adapted to eat.
(...The real conversion to fossil fuels largely takes place deep underground.... That is another mystery, how these things came to be so deep underground. Of course, before something can be buried, it has to exist above the ground. Only a sudden catastrophe can accomplish both the sterilization and deep burial of the immense quantities of organic matter, that became fossil fuels under the heat and pressure. If all the plant and animal life on Earth today were suddenly buried today, it would result only in a small fraction of the fossil fuels still underground. All of plants and animals that made the fossils and fossil fuels must have been buried alive very suddenly. They could not have died and been buried over time, slowly, because then the microorganisms which also existed at that time, would have broken down the dead plants and animals into their constituent elements.
I must say, that I really appreciate being able to discuss these things in a rational way without name-calling and personal attacks. It seems that that sort of thing is getting increasingly rare on Slashdot. Thank you.
Slashdot Mirror
.....If you want to stop buying china products....
A generation ago it was the "Made in Japan" label and now it is China. What most people don't understand is that the world is now more or less a village, a global village called planet Earth. As China or any other country prospers, it's people demand a higher standard of living and will no longer work all day for a bowl of rice. In a few decades or less, other people willing to work all day for a bowl of rice will take the place of China. Overall, it will no longer matter where on planet Earth the components of a product comes from. Even today already, a complex product like a computer has parts and materials from all over the planet.
...Don't you think that the era of rule by religious conviction is long over?....
Apparently not in parts of the world that send out people that will kill themselves and others by flying airplanes into buildings.
When I was young, "Made in Japan" was a derisive phrase. The world is increasingly a village and goods will be produced by those people willing to work for the least amount of money. At the moment this is China, but who knows who it will be in the future?
For all the money that the United States has spent on crime and war, we could have such trains from coast-to-coast and from Canada to Mexico.
....how it will make my life worth living....
It's really sad, if your life is not worth living now, but depends on the release of a cool technological gadget.
....Right now, OS X allows free, open development,...
But that doesn't mean that Apple could not extend the iTunes app store as an OPTION to their Macs and any possible upcoming tablet. If they did that, Apple users would have a guaranteed virus free source of paid and free programs from the Internet. They could extend the normal MacOS X operating system to work with all 100,000+ apps in their store. Users that wanted to take the chance to install dodgy software in their Macs would still be able to do so.
.... not having flash...
will be increasingly irrelevant. There are more standard ways, such as HTML 5, that have no problem with video on the iPhone. As more devices become popular that don't have flash, webmasters will make sure that these devices can properly display video of their webpage. Whenever a proprietary technologies are replaced by equally good open standards, we all win.
...we still have a hugely crappy Bluray...
The crappiest thing about Blu-Ray is the price of both the players and the discs. The draconian DRM doesn't help its popularity either. It doesn't make the crap that Hollywood has been turning out lately any better. The fact that you can see the quality of the shave on the actors doesn't warrant paying all that extra money. These are some of the reasons why Apple, even though Stevie is on Disney's board, still doesn't sell a computer with a Blu-Ray drive. Apple is a high-priced brand, but even they don't see the value proposition of Blu-Ray.
....I don't like it....
Why? Is it because you can't or don't want to afford their products? I just got a Mac Mini with one TB (two 500G). It runs unlimited Leopard Server and is connected to our 47 inch LCD TV. AFAIK, nobody else sells anything remotely like this.
PS.. Did you have a nice holiday? I wish you a happy new year!
...The point is that a tiger is not a lion ..
But they are both large cats, the cat kind. The biblical "kind" does not necessarily correspond to what humans have called species or other scientific classifications. It does however represent a distinct category of lifeforms which does not interbreed with other categories.
(...It *is* observation...)
This is not true! Nobody was there to observe it, except for God. The fossil record shows no transitions between the various lifeforms, but instead shows the sudden appearance of new kinds of creatures. The theory of evolution does not predict the sudden appearance of entirely new kinds of life.
(...they have succeeded in the lab...)
in making more bacteria of the same kind. These may have new capabilities, just as dachshunds have capabilities that German shepherds don't have, but they were still basically the same kind of bacteria, just as German shepherds and dachshunds are still only dogs.
(....simply didn't have enough hard parts ...)
Which are not at all necessary to form fossils. There are fossils of snails , worms and jellyfish and all kinds of other creatures that are totally soft. These showed up suddenly in the Cambrian explosion, a geological microsecond of time. Exactly how does the fossil record show that men came from monkeys and birds came from reptiles?
(...Evolution takes millions of years...)
Like I have said many times before, time is the magic and last refuge of any evolutionist. Because evolution cannot be demonstrated or observed today, that "millions of years" excuse is always, without fail, used to defend evolution.
(...The 747 for example, like most other intelligent designed things in the world, doesn't feature a way to reproduce itself...)
That is because the human brain, in fact life itself, even a single cell, is orders of magnitude more complex than any 747 airplane. Human designers have yet to come up with a self reproducing machine, especially one using very elementary parts.
(... When did he do it (6000 years ago, 3.5 billion years ago, etc)...) What difference does it make whether it was 6000 years ago or billions of years? The God I believe in is eternal, outside of time. He created time itself. His Word, the Bible, was not given to us by him to give us a science lesson. He left that for us to figure out on our own. However, I will give you a clue. To measure time, you need a clock. The clocks available to us tick at different rates, depending on which force controls its motion. Gravity and the electric force are the only two forces or interactions which are available to us for timekeeping. We assume, we believe by faith, that neither of these forces have ever changed, thus affecting clocks based on it.
(...Why did you create so much empty space for no reason?...)
Aren't you making at least two assumptions here? First of all, how do you know there is no reason for having all the so-called empty space? Second, we know today that there is no such thing as what you call empty space. Space is filled with unbelievable amounts of energy that has been given the name of zero point energy. If you want to know more about it, just go to the ever so friendly Google.
(...How do you explain that an all knowing creator has managed to let so many bugs slip into his construction...)
Humans tend to believe, because of our extremely short existence here, that things were always pretty much the way they are today. In his manual for living, the Bible, he gives us a few indications that this is not the case. There have been at least two stark discontinuities he tells us about. In the biblical creation account, we find the repeated phrase: "it was very good". That is obviously no longer the case. Scientists can certainly tell that things are no longer ideal or perfect.
(...If you think God did it, care to elaborate on a few questions?...)
Man was originally given complete dominion over the earth. We are given a hint of the scope of this dominion in
...Species in general are man made classification...
That of course is true, but they are still limits to what is generally called evolution. You may be able to mate the lion and a tiger, but not a horse and a hippopotamus to get a horsapottamous or whatever.
(...Small changes over millions or even billions of years lead to big changes..)
That is part of Evolutionary Theory that has never and can never be observationally or experimentally verified. Time, lots of time, immense quantities of time is what evolutionists always resort to when their theories cannot be verified by observation.
Scientists have desperately tried for decades now already to experimentally make evolution happen. They do this by raising thousands or even millions of generations of rapidly multiplying organisms. Experiment and observations with bacteria and fruit flies show that evolution into new kinds of creatures just does not happen. A given kind of bacteria always remain bacteria of that kind and fruit flies have always remained fruit flies.
That is the fact. Experimental, real science, does give and always has given evidence that evolution of one kind of creature into another does not happen today.
(...fossile evidence...)
Have you ever heard of something called The Cambrian Explosion? How the fossil record shows a SUDDEN explosive increase in the number and diversity of fossilized organisms? Is that evidence for creation done quickly or slow evolution over millions of years?
(...If Evolution where so completly wrong...)
Some aspects of evolution are not wrong at all, but the teaching that birds come from reptiles and men come from monkeys is absurd. Such evolution does not happen today and it cannot be shown to have happened in the past either.
However, Darwin was right when he observed the beaks of finches changing according to what kind of seeds were available. You can call that evolution if you want to, but I prefer to call it adaptation.
(...Which alternative theory do you suggest that explains all the observations?...)
I believe in an intelligent Creator God, all powerful and all knowing, who designed the universe and the laws by which it operates. Just as human laws which govern our lives all the came from intelligent (well sometimes at least) minds, so too did the natural laws come from the mind of God. My faith is small, but it is big enough to believe in such a God. My faith is however not big enough to believe something like the human brain or a 747 airplane can come into existence without careful thought and planning.
.....But it is wrong to assume that data is secure just because it is stored locally...
However, a government cannot get it your data as easily without you knowing about it. That may not matter to many people, but it is important to some.
....it has lead to the evolution of abilities not present in the original E.coli strand....
That is absolutely true, but the bacteria were still E. coli and always will be. I call that adaptation. Never, has any the laboratory experimentation produced a coccus or spirochete bacteria from an E. coli bacteria. A dachshund can do things a German Shepherd can't, but they are still both dogs.
Living things are very adaptable, but that does not prove evolution. The evolution I am thinking of is the nonsense that teaches that birds were once reptiles or that men come from monkeys or apes. That simply does not happen and has never been demonstrated or observed to happen. Such teaching is pure rubbish, not worthy of the label of science.
...For instance, Humans and dogs have both been observed to evolve into single-celled organisms,...
Oh really, where do you get this off the wall information? If that were true I would call that devolution.
(...of your devaluing of math and logic...)
Math and logic must be the servants of science, not its master. Whatever is inferred through their services must eventually be corroborated by observation and experiment. By and unto themselves they are not science.
(...solid logic support the theory of evolution...)
Yes they do, but not a shred of observational or experimental evidence. Nobody has ever seen it happen or made it happen.
(...but it was never able to explain very much...)
Science is not about conjectural explanations or speculations, but about solid experimentation and observation. Nobody has ever, in any shape or form proved evolution in the laboratory or in the field.
(...One merely has to look and think...)
Exactly right, one has to merely look at a human eyeball or a 747 airplane and come to the correct LOGICAL conclusion that neither one is a product of chance, but of intelligent design.
...at least one set of steps by which evolution could have produced a complex organ such as an eye....
Speculation about how something could be or could not be is not science. Science is and always has been about observation, measurement and experimentation. If it cannot be observed, it is not science, but doctrinaire belief.
It is OK to speculate, but such speculation should not be foisted off as scientific truth. Hollywood creations such as Star Trek and Star Wars are a lot of fun, but everybody knows that these things are made up stories, not scientific truth.
Evolutionary religion has hijacked the label "science" or scientific by which it tries to foist itself off as truth on scientifically ignorant people. It is the belief in the magic of time and chance held by the high priests of the evolutionary religion, who are unwilling to be humbly submitted to an all powerful, intelligent, eternal, transcendent Creator God.
....scientists don't understand how it could have arisen by chance....
Could have, might have, maybe by chance, are all speculations of believing minds, but they are not science. Real science, not pseudoscience, is observation and experimentation, not idle mental exercise or mathematical gymnastics. If it cannot be shown by repeated experiment and observation, it is idle speculation akin to religion.
Nobody has ever observed or even made anything evolve, involving entirely new structures. Hundreds of millions of generations of E. coli have still only produced more E. coli and not even some other kind of bacteria, let alone a more complex multi-celled organism. Countless generations of fruit flies have similarly produced nothing but fruit flies. Dogs have made nothing but dogs, cats have made nothing but cats and birds produce only more birds. This is observed and experimental FACT, not religious or evolutionary dogma. Living things reproduce after their kind, just as it is written in Scripture. This is not speculation, but what we observe and experience every day.
Evolutionists generally get around experimentally and observationally verified facts by putting forth the mechanism of vast ages of time. Time and chance are the magic ingredients, that are both used to foist the evolutionary fairytale on scientifically ignorant people.
The Christian doctrine that an intelligent, transcendent God is behind all of creation also cannot be proven or refuted by the scientific method. The assertion that Mount Rushmore or Stonehenge are intelligent human creations rather than a natural rock formations cannot be refuted or corroborated by the scientific method either.
....things start simple, and get more complex over time...
There are two things that have to be put into a system, in order for that to take place. First there has to be an input of energy. That's the easy part, because systems can get plenty of that from the sun. But, besides energy, you also have to supply additional information if you want something simple to turn into something more complex. Where does that information come from?
When you tidy up the chaos of your room or apartment, you supply muscle energy, but you also supply information as to where to put stuff.
...Here Richard Dawkins explains exactly for the evolution of the eyeball...
Anybody can explain anything on paper, but that does not make it so. Science is about observation and experimentation, neither of which have ever been done by him or anyone else to show that this explanation is even remotely close to being correct. All it is is a big imaginative conjecture.
....One of the points of evolution is that there are no clear cut boundaries between species. ...
So then let me see you or anyone produce cats from dogs or birds from alligators. What a crock of shit!
...The are issues with evolutionary theory... /. all that will do is get you modded down to the lowest numbers possible. I don't believe in the religion of evolution either, but we are in the minority here.
Shhh, don't point out that the faith of evolution violates well established laws of nature. On
....Are you sure? I'd be willing to wager that over a couple of thousand generations or so, with the correct breeding practices, one could create something very Elephant or Cow-like.....
Scientists have experimented for decades now with simpler species, such as E. coli and fruit flies. All they have ever managed to do up until now is to produce more E. coli and fruit flies respectively. So far at least, experimental science says you would lose that bet.
....entirely new species are not only possible, but inevitable....
That is totally false, because only the opposite has ever been demonstrated. Scientists have produced millions of generations of E. coli, but all that ever happened is more E. coli. They have produced thousands of generations of fruit flies, but all that came out of it is always more fruit flies.
...when a nuclear weapon is finally used on a major city....
Do you really think that the kind of people that fly airplanes into buildings, to kill themselves and thousands of others, would hesitate for one second to use nukes if they have them? It is inevitable that they WILL have them someday, maybe sooner than anybody thinks.
...that was kept in check by the threat of nukes....
The doctrine of MAD only works if both sides have an about equal value on human life. A terrorist enemy that promises 72 virgins or whatever to somebody willing to kill themselves while they kill others, MAD loses its deterrent value. Despite the communist atheistic doctrines, both sides in the Cold War had a deep Christian tradition going back many centuries. Part of that tradition is the sanctity of life. If, or rather when a radical doctrinaire government, such as Iran gets a hold of nukes, the doctrine of MAD will no longer work, if these terrible weapons make it possible to totally destroy a hated enemy. People willing to fly airliners into buildings, will have no second thoughts about using nuclear weapons on their enemies. When the terrorists get control over weapons of mass destruction, the prophecies Jesus Christ about the most terrible time to ever be on planet Earth will be fulfilled.
...which is when the electricity is most likely to fail...
It is amazing how electricity in our area is restored quickly most of the time. Only one time in the last 20 years has the power been out for a week. Mostly, it is restored within hours, but still it is awfully inconvenient, because being on a well, we soon run out of water. A wood stove will at least keep the living room warm however. We were able to obtain an old army surplus diesel generator that can put out 30Kw. It is very noisy, but it keeps the entire 4000 ft. ranch house, the water system and the workshop building powered up.
...why colder seas are more productive than warmer seas...
I agree, that this is true of animals who breathe oxygen dissolved in the water, but it is not necessarily true of plant life which "breathe" in CO2.
My main point in this whole discussion was that before or while the fossil fuels were formed, all of the CO2 was in the atmosphere and the whole planet was considerably warmer. All of life, especially plantlife, was unimaginably prolific.
This whole global warming propaganda is primarily designed to accomplish at least two political things. One of them is a socialistic/communistic system to transfer wealth from the haves to the have-nots and the other is to eventually help usher in a one world governmental system which at some point in the future which will be run by a cruel dictator who will make Hitler and Stalin seem like saints in comparison. The whole Hitler scenario was a sneak preview of the future, except that it will be worldwide.
...I don't know about you but I prefer a temperature around 70 F myself. 90 F is just too damn hot for my taste...
Ha, I'd definitely agree with you there, but I suspect that is because we are used to it and our bodies accustomed to the lower temperature. The ideal temperature range for life I was talking about is not what individual organisms have adapted to, such as polar bears and gorillas, but the range of temperature where the chemical/biolgical life processes are most active. It is the extremely narrow temperature range found in all warm-blooded creatures. Polar bears are actually do quite well in a any zoo. Life in general adopts more readily to warmth than cold.
(...That happened to Mars just because of it's low gravity ...)
You certainly are correct about the considerably lower gravity of Mars not being strong enough to hold onto much atmosphere or water vapor. A rather narrow range in the strength of the planet's gravity is one of the many parameters that must be correct for there to be life, especially intelligent life. The gravity on Mars is just a little too small to hold onto enough oxygen, nitrogen and especially water vapor. It is also a little too far away from the sun for warmer temperatures in which most life forms thrive.
(....If you buried a carcass and it lay undisturbed for a million years it would become fossilized....)
Come now, you know that isn't true. We bury bodies all the time and they decay, that is they get broken down by micro organisms until nothing recognizable remains. To make a fossil or fossil fuel, the organic remains have to be sterilized and buried in such a manner as to exclude oxygen. Peat bogs are only found in relatively cold places, where microorganisms can break the organic matter down only very slowly. You don't find any peat bogs in the tropics.
(...Every year humpback whales...)
Could it be that they have adapted their lifestyle and food supply to that which is available in the colder oceans? The tropical oceans are teeming with life, just not the kind of stuff that humpbacks like to or have to adapted to eat.
(...The real conversion to fossil fuels largely takes place deep underground ....
That is another mystery, how these things came to be so deep underground. Of course, before something can be buried, it has to exist above the ground. Only a sudden catastrophe can accomplish both the sterilization and deep burial of the immense quantities of organic matter, that became fossil fuels under the heat and pressure. If all the plant and animal life on Earth today were suddenly buried today, it would result only in a small fraction of the fossil fuels still underground. All of plants and animals that made the fossils and fossil fuels must have been buried alive very suddenly. They could not have died and been buried over time, slowly, because then the microorganisms which also existed at that time, would have broken down the dead plants and animals into their constituent elements.
I must say, that I really appreciate being able to discuss these things in a rational way without name-calling and personal attacks. It seems that that sort of thing is getting increasingly rare on Slashdot. Thank you.