Girl saying the tsunami in Japan is an answer to her prayers.

First:

Actually i suppose this should be more like read the other one i was talking about lol.. sorry. Mathew 10 is exactly what you're saying. He was preparing his disciples for the oncoming hatred they were about to get. But 34-39 was a reference to Micah 7: 1-7 which was talking about crumbling relationships among the Jews of that time and of putting trust in God.

Second: Leviticus was written by man for man. God wrote none of this, they were not his commands. They are the early Jewish laws that they themselves created and kept as a way to show obedience to God. They were a covenant between the Jews and God. The only commands from God were the 10 commandments. Seeing as #1 I'm not Jewish and #2 Jesus death/resurrection is the new covenant and basically nullified the old Jewish Laws (Leviticus) I'm not to follow them. I suppose I could if I wanted to, but it bears no importance

 

Which ten commandments? The first set listed in Exodus, or the second set listed in Exodus? Or maybe the other set of commandments in Deuteronomy? Maybe some of the other commandments laid out throughout the bible... This is something you should be clear about, as it is the word of your god, right?

Now, to the nitty gritty: I'm going newest to oldest, so bear with me as I read back through the thread to where I left off...

No, not really. I understand you're simplifying here, but this is going a bit far, as it does somewhat give the impression that a hairless baby was brought to this earth via a monkey (as hippoz likes to put it). More to the point, it was certainly a very gradual progression upwards for our species (and the others that evolved alongside), gradually getting more and more upright as our hands were found to best be used as grasping and manipulative tools. A classic descent of man poster will show this idea well, if simply. The way I've seen it best postulated is that our ancient ancestors found manipulating their world to be far more advantageous to running on all fours, which put pressure on the development of more dexterous appendages. The only way to further the development of our hands was if we furthered the development of bipedal locomotion, of which all simian species are at least partially capable of anyway (and quite a few other quadrupedal animals are able to get some balance on two legs as well). One drives the other in a positive feedback loop, which is something quite often observed in biological systems, and is quite fascinating to study.


The following quotes in italics are all courtesy of thehippoz.

on the other stuff.. I own a couple of parakeets- and the female grooms herself in the mirror every morning.. omg she must be as smart as me!

Degrees of separation. Not everything is black and white, but more a shade of grey. The parakeet has a sense of self, and has proven to be quite adept at learning new traits not specifically well suited to natural survival and at problem solving. Neither of these facts mean that it would be able to hold the attention of a large group of collage students in a maths lecture (well, with the way our schools are going you never know...), but nevertheless it is a sign of intelligence of the same sort as we have, just not developed in the same way as we are. I don't mean to say that in the classic probability thought experiment we should replace the thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters with parakeets, just that they're smart little birds, and this shouldn't be overlooked in a conversation about development of intelligence in primates.

the traits under that scenario- let's say you create a clone.. if the clone is totally dependent on external events to shape his beliefs, two clones would never come out exactly the same and it would be hard to conclude a unique soul exists unless you cloned maybe a total psychopath who would be easy to diagnose

I know it's been said a few times already, but take a quick wiki over to monozygotic twinning. Truly interesting stuff going on there, which should satiate every desire you have to clone somebody - they've even come up with a way to form monozygotic twins artificially! Wondrous.

that's basically what evolution is though.. the additions and subtraction of key parts of dna to adapt to different circumstances.. it doesn't explain how we recently attained, I should say the 'higher abilities' we have today.. I asked my girl about this and she thinks I'm wasting my time, so it didn't go very far

You've proved time and again that you are right in the last part, that you are wasting your time in pushing for your religio-centric belief system. We feel that a system of built-in allowances for failure and repeatability are key, whereas unwavering ignorance and defiance of all facts and reality is somewhat of an off-putting concept.

it doesn't help that genetics shows we go back to one.. what really happened..

Nope, as I've already pointed out: genetics shows the path backwards towards one prodigious female living in Africa a couple hundred thousand years ago, but that's about it. The only one pushing such an imbecilic idea as what you've put forth is you. Nobody in their right mind would say that we all came from one genetic source that looked kinda like us. I don't really know how else to say this, but: your basic misunderstandings of reality offend me, dearly.

there's also prayer that can be pretty powerful..

I'm going to agree on this, surprisingly enough. Studies have shown that prayer can be quite effective in the recovery process - provided the patient explicitly knows about the prayer, and presumably believes that it will be beneficial. However, in that same study it was shown that just telling somebody that they're being prayed for (even if they weren't) was equally as effective. So while I am sorry to hear about your pappy going through a tough time like that, don't sully his recovery, or him, by saying that you had a hand it in.

I'm not saying I'm closed off that we are evolved monkeys..

Once again with the monkeys...While I'm glad you're open and all (or so you say), I just wanted to state once again that: we're not monkeys, k?

the face on mars turned out to be a cloud monster...

Nope, wrong again, chief. Was shadows on a hill - no clouds, no monsters. Though either would have been cool.

You said it yourself. The only way your line of argument would make sense is if you've absolutely no understanding of the scientific process, nor who scientists are or what they did to be in the positions they're in. By your logic, if I get my doctorate in philosophy and state that AIDS is only spreadable by homosexual men, then my opinion is a perfectly valid, medical opinion? This isn't even an argument, it's just garbage and should only be considered as such.


A final word to Kayin: It's nice to see faith take so many varied forms, in so many varied individuals, I just wish more would take such an open and honest perspective as you. However, I feel as though you've only proved my point: that religious dogma and theocratic bigots will abound and quite easily take advantage of, and manipulate those within their reach of influence. Organised religion (just like any other organisation) has many downfalls easily exploited by the few, but personal faith can have rewards for those that require it, or use it as a tool to define themselves. I still don't feel that there are no evils associated with personal faith, however, as thinking within the context of a creator "of the gaps" can be perfectly fine, one must strive never to let it define your work, or your research within a scientific field of inquiry, as filling the gaps with anything but researched, reasoned, tested and falsifiable theories will only ever lead to the perpetual continuation of the gaps. This is why we've had the concept of evolution bouncing around for over two thousand years, but yet have only taken it seriously for less than a tenth of that. Or why we missed the curvature of the horizon for several millennia more before that.

 

I was actually going to joke about there being a couple sets too! lol. The one in Deuteronomy is the same as the final one in Exodus. I say final because there was a previous set of stone tablets that was broken when Moses came down from the mountain and saw his people worshipping an idol. That first set of tablets had the 10 commandments along with ordinances of how they were to be as a people and various laws which they were to follow.

Also.. why do you keep insisting that I don't understand the scientific process? It's pretty damn simple and easy to understand. Seriously, have a look. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#Elements_of_scientific_method. On top of that my point was that they were respectable scientists who believed in creation. Quite a few of the scientists on that list were biologists, and had done their own research on the subject. Let's also be very clear while we're at it, and this isn't a support for either or.. but, just because someone has a PhD doesn't make them smart, respectable, or even that their opinions matter. Respect is earned and the scientists mentioned were respected by the scientific community , they were extremely intelligent, and their observations, research, and opinions carried some weight.

If you ever do get a PhD in anything I doubt you'd be making claims with no way to back them up. Besides, are you trying to imply that philosophy is a science? Science is a philosophy, but not the other way around. Congrats if you get a PhD in Philosophy but I'm sorry, that won't make you a scientist.

 

Sorry about that, tiredness had kicked in so I wasn't thinking particularly straight, sorry for the misunderstanding, but i meant that it happened over a long timescale, I just completely missed that out in my post

Carbon dating is usually accurate to less than 1%, so even something 50,000 years old can be dated between 49500 and 50500 years, but even this is a stretch as often I see things which have been dated with an accuracy of more than 0.5%, which I would say is very accurate tbh

 

People keep mentioning it because you keep making comments that suggest you don't properly understand it.

While the older names on the list you provided were, and still are, respected by the scientific community for the work they did I'm not sure that honour still extends to the more contemporary names you mentioned. They certainly aren't respected by the scientific community for their claims about creationism and their observations, research and opinions about creationism and evolution don't carry any weight whatsoever.

I am still however interested as to how it is that your present a list of names of supposedly respected scientists and claim their observations, research, and opinions carried some weight when you don't even accept some of their claims as being correct. You said earlier that you accept that the age of the Earth is around about 4.5 billion years which is a view that flies in the face of a good number of the names you mentioned who were young earth creationists. Why is it you feel their claims on evolution are worthy of merit but not their claims on the age of the Earth?

That's exactly what the recent names on your list of scientists do. They make claims with no way to back them up because there is no evidence out there to back them up.

 

I went though nearly all of your names that you provided in post #220, it contained only 1 biologist who actually did work in the 20th century. The remaining members on that list either never published and thus my school's database does not contain their information and Google was unable to come up with other sources, or they where not biologist and thus never even did research in biology.

You might want to actually take your own advice. Some of the men on your list (I am speaking exclusively of the 20th century names here) actually did make great contributions to their fields of engineering or chemistry but they were not world renowned for their knowledge of biology. And some of your names, they are remembered only because they liked suing others, people like Gentry and Morris.

Sure, their are quacks everywhere and people's opinions should not be judged based on their name and if they had a PhD.



I hope to highlight this shortcoming that you have with this handy webcomic, it is the simplest way that I can show you your problem since you seem to be under the assumption that a scientific argument consists of posting the names of other people who agree with you.

 

Hmm this discussion seems to be going in circles and not really getting us anywhere, in fact I'm beginning to feel this is a waste of time. I'm going to throw out a couple of quotes for people to think about and withdraw.

If you're determined to fumble around in the dark and not use the brain that you believe your God (or Gods) gave you that's fine as long as you don't try and drag others down to your level. Luckily in the UK we're doing pretty well at getting rid of religion, according to the British Social Attitudes Survey we're now up to 50% of the public as having no religion.

 

So, let me get this straight...The bible is the word of god, written by the hand of man...unless it's:

Dated and just a bit weird these days in which case it's the word of man, or
Outdated because your god, the eternal truth, changed his mind?

Frankly, if I thought my eternal ass was on the line I'd be following all the laws of my holy book, just incase something was lost in transation...you've heard that expression, right? Ofcourse you have, afterall it was the same god that "confounded the languages of all the earth"

And with that in mind, why was JC monolingual? Surely he'd be aware that, having previously confounded mankinds ability to communicate effectively he should translate himself so that noone's eternal soul is disadvantaged through arbitrary geographic or temporal distribution (languages, afterall, evolve).

Sorry, I find christian mental gymnastics to be extremely entertaining.

 

look at the number of generations your talking about.. if people lived a rough 40 year average- 100 thousand years is nothing

cut that in half for overlap and your looking at roughly 5000 generations between the first till now.. that's discounting that we don't have recorded history during that time- that came much later

nothing really to be offended about.. from what I understood, it was much more recent than that- but I'm not a geneticist

I know they've found we are a unique branch..

and richard dawkins.. really? isn't he a drunk who makes his money peddling books.. he's entertaining and I know he believes what he says- it's just, heard he likes the bottle.. and being a former drunk myself, he's using that to mask his doubts

 

Homo Sapiens (humans as we know them) is about 400000 to 250000 years old. That is about 16000 to 10000 generations a generation being 25 years --the average age at which a human reproduces. In the olden days however that may have been closer to 20, so all this is a conservative estimate). Before that there were 5 to 7 million years of evolution separating apes from hominids --200000 to 350000 generations. By comparison: Jesus was 80 generations ago.

Various ice ages thinned the human gene pool out considerably. The human species hung on by its fingernails in several periods, with its entire worldwide population being as small as only 15000 individuals about 70000 years ago (for comparison: as many people as live in a small village). So yes, a "mitochondrial Eve", a small group of related women (not a single one!) being our common ancestor is not unlikely at all. There weren't many people left alive for the current 6+ billion to come from.

 

This is the reason for the Jeremy Kyle show, amongst other things.

 

Could someone explain why people make a big deal out of mitochondrial eve? By definition there has to be one. Why the fuss?

 

Look up some basic terms about genetics and maybe you'll grasp how red hair can happen. here's a list:
Genotype
Phenotype (crucial difference between the two)
Dominant
Recessive
Mutation

Then some of it might start to make more sense. but then again, you probably won't, and you'll just try to ridicule what others say without understanding, although I have to admit that most of the time I can't understand you, it just seeems like gibberish. (Pro tip: a little punctuation goes a long way and will make you at least seem more capable of forming a cogent argument). You try to make others look ridiculous, yet only do it to yourself.

 

Not really. Humans multiplied, for sure, because each couple begat multiple children, who in turn begat multiple children and so on. Hence you think: one great-great-great-etc. mother and father were at the start of all these people.

But if you look at your family tree, you'll notice that you have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents etc. You are the result of the reproductive success of many ancestors. The reason why the population nevertheless has been growing, rather than shrinking, is that you share your (great-great-great-etc.)-grand-ancestors with other people --and the further you go back, the more people you share them with. You are bound to have cousins, and quite likely even siblings.

As such we are all an amalgam of many ancestors. It is not a given that we should all be able to be traced back to a few women, except for the population bottlenecks caused by various ice-ages.

 

hmm that's interesting.. so the bottleneck explains the limited genepool- have to look some of this up and see what kind of studies have been done

I always thought it was limited way beyond a few thousand- but the way you see it would make sense =] wonder if they've accounted for inbreeding though lol

well it makes sense to people who who've lived life outside of books.. my punctuation is a bad habit guess- back in hacking days it was a way to distinguish, kind of like what the masons do- like secret handshakes and signs xD

like we could see a phoney coming a mile away.. usually get in his rig but I see your point- this isn't a hacking forum..

 

Well, as PureSilver says:

(The Jeremy Kyle show is the UK equivalent of the Jerry Springer show, only worse. Jerry Springer does not take himself seriously. He does not do the whole sincere relationship counsellor act.)

 

It has to do with the disconnection between common words and terms used by science. When Creationists see a news headline that says, "scientists have dated Y-chromosomal Adam or Mitochondrial Eve," they see the words Adam and Eve and go, "aha, they scientists have proved Adam and Eve existed!" It is basically the same type of argument as 'it's just a theory'.



This leads me to my Creationist Response to Science Hypothesis (name is a work in progress):

When a group of people want to find justification for their faith, they will readily misinterpret discoveries that falsify their beliefs into proofs for their own faith.


This hypothesis also has a prediction that is falsifiable:

At some point in the future, scientist will come up with a concise Theory of Abiogenesis. This theory will be remarkable in that it will for the first time in history provide an explanation as to how a collection of carbon based molecules became imperfect self replicators. The expected response to this discovery by Creationists will not be, "OMG, I cant believe you found the missing link between life and non-life just like we've been asking in argument #23621," rather instead it will be, "OMG, scientists proved the Bible is 100% true since their new theory has 'genesis' in it's name!"

 

actually check this debate, it's creationist but give you an idea of how the bucktooths on the other end view things

http://www.biologos.org/blog/does-genetics-point-to-a-single-primal-couple/

they are just as hard headed as atheists really.. I think I'll stick with what works for me- cut out the questions I had racking my brain in my 20's.. leave that to you guys

thanks for the short paragraph nexxo.. instead of buttsecks monkey- we can upgrade it to buttsecks monkeys! and red hair ~~

 

I always was partial to gingers...

 

Was Jeremy Kyle ever the mayor of a large city? Expeirence matters, you know!

Me too