Religious any?

[Lord Elevation]

The Dark Ages bit has no reason to be there. The Christian Right seems like a better fit. But it's still pretty clever.

[crispncrunchy]

Luv ya work elevation

[RE Virus]

Evolution is not chance! A mutation occurs by genetic faults, that's about the chanciest bit. If a mutation occurs that causes a bird to not grow wings and thus can't feed itself or escape a predator then that bird is less likely to reproduce its DNA, meaning that the mutation disappears from the gene pool of the species. That is NOT chance, it is a self regulating system. Conversely if a mutation does aid the survival of a particular organism (and consequently it reproduces more offspring) the mutated genes will quickly spread through the gene pool. Many mutations are dormant for many generations as they have little effect on the survival of a particular organism until some environmental condition changes

You bring up some great points there. I don't see what you mean when you say this process is not due to chance. But if there are no mutations causing wings to grow, the birds might die off eventually. A few flightless birds exist (which would be in the process of growing able wings), and a great many would be extinct. Hence you must factor in the (unimaginably many) extinct birds throughout time when using probability theory.

Let's look at the underlying processes of this already complex and improbable process of growing wings, though. How do proteins and aminoacids manage to form immensely complex DNA sequences? How did these systems come into being? This is far more improbable than birds growing wings, even without taking into account the birds that died out due to unsucessful mutations. I hope you see what I mean here. A process like growing wings thru mutations is simple compared to the processes of life itself. It comes down to the origins of life again.

(such as we will be able to observe over the new 100 years as this globe warms up).

Don't put too much faith into that, please. I'll give you a tidbit: did you know that scientists predicted a "new Ice Age" in the 1970's? And a hint: check the temperature of Mars.

Yes the probability of a successful mutation is very small, but it happens and once it occurs it spreads very quickly through the gene pool. There is even less probability that Gods exists..but statistically he could possibly exist.

That's not a good argument against the existence of God(s). In logic, there's a 0% chance that God(s) exists; in faith, there's a 100% chance. God = faith != logic. You must separate faith from logic. I realized this after long arguments with religious folks.

Oh and another thing that you need to understand - we did not evolve from apes, we both evolved from a common ancestor - the apes are our genetic cousins.

Yeah, I guess this common ancestor isn't technically an ape, my bad. He would look much more like an ape than a human, though.

The writer doesn't know what he is talking about by his own admission. If he was an evolutionary biologist and could disprove the theory with hard facts AND provide an alternative theory also supported by hard facts then I would listen.

You don't have to provide an alternative theory to disprove or contest an established theory... That's like saying: "Tell me exactly how 9/11 happened or I will continue to believe the official conspiracy theory".

After he says he really has no clue about biology he then has the stupid guile to say that the scientists have no clue. Scientists are the only people who are trying to turn "no clue" into understanding. Religion just tries to keep us clueless. And when someone comes up with a thought out and factual argument, the creationist (ID) camp dogmatically jump up and down claiming that the scientist is dogmatic.

I agree with this; they are trying to turn "no clue" into understanding, and I applaud them for that. However, the argument is that it's something so complex with so many unknowns that pretending to know the answer is preposterous. And we know how wrong scientists and thinkers have been in the past.

Before you provide anymore fallacy arguments, read some evolutionary books (not 1000 word articles stripped off the Web, but real books). I suggest you start with Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan's - Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors since it isn't to technical (but you probably won't because they're Jews and you're a card carrying anti-Semite), second you should read Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene followed by The Blind Watchmaker. Finally you might read what I'm reading now, Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism.

I would love to, if I had the time. I have more important (and at least equally interesting) books to read.

Virus I just looked at the wing.tv website you lifted the article from, it is another one of your beloved anti-Semite racist sites, with ads for books with titles like "Satan: Prince of this World" "Codex Magica" a handbook on Freemasonry or "The Synagogue of Satan" to name a few.

Show me one thing that is racist or anti-Semitic on that website. Come on, I expected more from you. Not only is the charge false, but it's a fallacy (guilt by association) to judge an article by the website it's hosted on.

'Codex Magica' is a very interesting book by Texe Marrs about symbolism and hidden messages; it has nothing to do with magic, if that's what you're thinking. 'The Synagogue of Satan' is how Jews are referred to in the Book of Revelation (see Rev. 2:9 or 3:9), and the book with that title is a timeline of the history of the House of Rothschild. I'm not familiar with 'Satan: Prince of this World', but I doubt it has anything to do with what you might be thinking.

For those interested, the site promotes the publications of Sisyphus Press and there is plenty said to debunk the site here http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/06/320531.shtml.

Can you be a bit more specific?

I really do hate this push for intelligent design. It's not that I seriously believe life happened completely randomly or that I am dogmatic with the scientific community. There are a lot of things that scientists are doing seriously wrong right now (particularly the global warming scare, among others). But the reason I hate this ID movement so much is that it is so intrinsically negative towards the pursuit of knowledge. It attempts to place a limit on the potential of human knowledge and screams at us that we will never be able to cross that line. That is about as destructive and unscientific a concept as I can think of.

Well, do you really think we will cross that line any time soon? I really doubt it, and we should recognize this limit, although we shouldn't stop researching, of course. When I saw that film I posted I didn't know that ID was so well-known in the US. I had never really heard of it before. I didn't know that religious movements were using ID to support their cause (though it's no surprise).

So when it comes to questions about the origin of species, and the origin of life, no, we don't really know. But we have a fairly good idea of what has happened here on this planet the past few million years (evolution), and our knowledge continues to grow. If everyone would just chill the fuck out and stop setting up fucking -ism camps (you're either an evolutionist or a creationist!!!), then maybe our knowledge of the universe could continue to grow a bit more smoothly.

Yep, I agree. I don't think tracing a common ancestor of all life is even remotely possible. And even if it was, there's still the question of exactly how that original organism came into being. I believe the theory of evolution does a good job explaining the most recent forms of life (perhaps going back a few million years), but it's called a theory for a reason. It's far from flawless.

Hey Re Virus, you've gone all silent. Is the pressure too much?

What pressure? Forgive me for not putting this site at the top of my list of priorities...

[doyle]

You don't have to provide an alternative theory to disprove or contest an established theory... That's like saying: "Tell me exactly how 9/11 happened or I will continue to believe the official conspiracy theory".

Don't be so smug, in science, you of course need to provide an alternate theory. Otherwise the current theory just needs more work or ammendments. Irreducible complexity isn't an issue, I'm not a microbiologist, but my sister is. She knows her stuff. Biology isn't something that can be explained so easily as you would wish RE Virus.

Science can't all be explained in layman's terms, I mean, why do people get degrees in four years when to you things can be explained in a 1 hour video.

[RE Virus]

I never said it was simple. Biological processes are very complex, and microbiology much moreso. The only simple thing is that we don't know the answers to the essential questions (the most important ones being the origin of life and the Universe). But sadly many scientits and cultists won't acknowledge this fact.

[doyle]

Origin of life - primordial soup (sure you can't prove it, but you can't even prove tides)

Origin of universe - big bang (same)

Questions? (sure we don't know what happened before that... the reason I'm a pantheist)

[crispncrunchy]

You bring up some great points there.

Thanks mate

A few flightless birds exist (which would be in the process of growing able wings), and a great many would be extinct.

All the known flightless birds (Ostriches, Kiwis, Emus etc) have dormant/muted wings that have evolved AWAY from flight. In the case of Ostriches and Emus they evolved legs and thus could run from predators. In the case of Kiwi birds they had no predators, with the arrival of Europeans they now have foxes and cats to contend with. In NZ they also had the Moa birds which were rendered extinct after the Maori people arrived. Why did the Moa become extinct and not the Kiwi? Because they were large and had a lot off meat, yummy for dinner. See http://www.kcc.org.nz/birds/extinct/moa.asp

Also there is the Dodo bird...for a brief summary see http://www.davidreilly.com/dodo/background.html

How do proteins and aminoacids manage to form immensely complex DNA sequences? How did these systems come into being?

Read the first few chapters of the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, he puts it together in digestible form, by describing the primordial soup. Biologists have managed to replicate this. There are other theories that provide versions of this theory. Notably one which postulates life began at the bottom of the ocean around hot volcanic vents.

I just when to find my copy of the Selfish Gene, but the wife has packed it off the our country house with the rest of her 10,000 book library. Hey Doyle does your sister have a copy? Maybe you can give us a distilled version?

And a hint: check the temperature of Mars.

Huh - what's this?

With "Climate Change" all I say to you is... if we don't do anything about it and it is real and the scientists are correct then we are fucked and Natural Selection will have its way with Humans and most of life ... an ugly situation. If we do something about it and we are wrong, what have we lost? Nothing.

So what would you prefer?

That's not a good argument against the existence of God(s). In logic, there's a 0% chance that God(s) exists; in faith, there's a 100% chance. God = faith != logic. You must separate faith from logic.

It was more of an aside comment, however logic says there is a very very small chance he does exist. His non-existence CANNOT be disproved but for me proof of his existence is much harder to logically prove.

I can't see where I'm not separating faith from logic.

Yeah, I guess this common ancestor isn't technically an ape, my bad. He would look much more like an ape than a human, though.

Agreed.

You don't have to provide an alternative theory to disprove or contest an established theory... That's like saying: "Tell me exactly how 9/11 happened or I will continue to believe the official conspiracy theory".

Yes you do...and it doesn't have to be exact. A lot of progress in Science is about say that the old theory got this bit right but this other bit wrong and it works better with these modification. The reality is that 3 major theories still stand the test of time Newton's Laws, Darwin's evolution and Einstein's relativity. Now they are basically correct and scientists have been tiding them up ever since by collaboration. As you know I agree there is a lot of fishy stuff with 9/11 (especially the Pentagon hit), but I don't agree that it was done by the Zionists alone, the Christian Hawks are definitely part of the game too.

However, the argument is that it's something so complex with so many unknowns that pretending to know the answer is preposterous. And we know how wrong scientists and thinkers have been in the past.

Well if that's everyone's attitude then we won't get anywhere. We must keep trying to find the answer. Disagreeing with no valid argument is pointless. The reason we know that scientists and thinkers (philosophers) get things wrong is that other people have disproved their work and provided a better more proven/provable solution. It's about being positive not a knocker.

What pressure? Forgive me for not putting this site at the top of my list of priorities...

RE, that's Aussie humor for you, I was just playfully jabbing at you. Since you make so many posts (and long detailed ones) it has to be near the top of your priorities.

[doyle]

Actually nix that, we should be teaching spontaneous generation... that's the most logical.

[Lord Elevation]

How about some real news? Like...

Today a young man on acid realized that the earth is a single living organism, a floating oasis of life in a universe of empty space, that we, its inhabitants, are all one connected consciousness, that this life is only in its embryonic stage, and that it has not even begun to spread its seed. Here's Tom with the weather.

[doyle]

I don't think that really did Bill Hicks justice...

[MAC_and_cheese]

Well, I am bringing this back to life because I read a very interesting article:

It would be a fair assumption to think my own atheism rose as a result of being displeased with religion as a youngster, but it's not so black and white.

My brothers and I weren't raised either religious or non-religious and I think it's because our parents wanted us to make that decision ourselves. We were, however, sent to Sunday school (I quit when I was six because watching Space Ghost was more important) but I think our folks wanted us to(a) to hear some Bible stories and get some real experience of religion and (b) perhaps pick up some moral lessons. I can't recall many discussions about religion when we were living at home and we never went to church except if someone died or got married (except for my own wedding, which was in a herb garden ). There was Religious Instruction at primary school (as an actual class in a state school, but it was the early 80s and it didn't seem as strange to me as it would now). I think my parents purposely avoided pointing us towards church but didn't actively discourage us because, as I said, they wanted us to make our own decision on the matter. I really should thank them for that

As it happened, I chose to be religious until I was about 15, when I realised that my religion had basically the same core values as every other religion that I knew about, and that this was no coincidence - they were basic human values that transcended faith or culture and all the other stuff I was doing in the observance of Christianity was redundant (to me). I realised I could be a "good" person by just simply being a good person and following my moral compass. I also realised that my faith as a boy wasn't responsible for those morals (such as they were), rather the influence of my parents. I then reasoned that if I did behave myself and didn't steal or kill or do anything else I wasn't prepared to have happen to me, and still got sent to hell because I ate the wrong thing or wore the wrong hat, any insecure god who would do that wasn't worth worshipping anyway. I mean, why give me free will and then punish me for exercising it? Free will with conditions is not free will at all, it's the Vista EULA. On that point, god sounds more like a jealous lover than an all-loving super-being.

After thinking about it a while I realised that if there was a supernatural god who listened to our prayers and answered them, I didn't need to actually pray or do anything to acknowledge his existence because this god should know how I feel anyway. He shoudn't need me to go to church or do anything that's in his book because he should know how I feel and what I think about everything. In that respect, religious observance is pointless.

Following that, if there is some god who has a plan for everyone (as I hear from time to time from some people), then (again) there's no point in me praying or doing anything, because he's got his plan and I can't change it because I'm merely a cog in his pocketwatch. If he's already got a plan for everyone, why do I need to even think? In that respect I am irrelevant, my free will is bogus and god is way too involved in the project.

Then I realised that if god's just cool to let all his creations go their own way, do their own thing and not intervene at all, ever, because he's letting us use our free will, then religious observance is again redundant and he may as well not be there at all. But, then, what if he is there judging us and he's going to wait until we're dead and then send us to hell for doing the wrong thing while we were alive? Again ,he's just being malevolent by giving us enough rope to hang ourselves.

So I continued on this train of thought and took notice of what religion demands of people and what it gives them. Generally, I saw lots of scared people and lots of people looking forward to going to "a better place". I saw lots of people doing great things in the name of charity and goodwill, but I couldn't help myself - I questioned their motives. I questioned their "Christian values". Would they be being charitable and kind and helpful if they weren't religious or are they just racking up points for the afterlife? If religion had never entered their lives but their upbringing was exactly the same, would they still be kind and generous? I reasoned that they would and that their motives for helping other would in some ways be even purer because they were motivated entirely by concern for others and not in the least by promises of eternal bliss.

I also reasoned that due to god's human-like traits, especially in the old testament (which often resembled those of the vengeful, spiteful, jealous gods of ancient Greece, thanks Classical Studies ), I concluded that god was created in the image of man as a way of explaining some things that weren't explainable using the knowledge of the day (read just about any creation myth from any culture and parallels fly at you like gnats), as well as codifying & recording tribal laws and customs. Some developed into fully-fledged cultural manuals, describing in detail how to live from the moment you wake to the moment you sleep, what to eat, wear, who to marry and how etc (all no doubt influenced by local custom more than holy instruction). Some then developed (in some cases) as a way of exercising great control over very large numbers of people, often greater control than many kings, and gaining enormous wealth at the expense of the poorest of the faithful (the period of the Inquisition was very lucrative for the Vatican - appropriating the properties and wealth of "heretics" was big business).

So, an atheist I am. Entirely unconvinced of god's existence from a logical point of view, and on the other hand entirely convinced that religion itself is a purely man-made device, much as any table, book, microwave or other intelligently designed object or system. My current concern with religion is not so much that I'm a de-converted Christian (I have no regrets as it made me who I am), but that it has an unholy and undeserved influence on earthly human affairs in many nations, and that children are raised into religions without being given any choice in the matter (which is a whole other incredibly long post).

Thanks for bearing with me

I got it from another forum, I'll tell anyone about it if you are interested.

Very insightful...

[RE Virus]

^ Back to life? It was never dead...

With "Climate Change" all I say to you is... if we don't do anything about it and it is real and the scientists are correct then we are fucked and Natural Selection will have its way with Humans and most of life ... an ugly situation. If we do something about it and we are wrong, what have we lost? Nothing.

You lose time! It serves as a great distraction from the real issues, i.e., the war against Iran and Islam. (Debating the origins of life etc also serves as a distraction!)

As you know I agree there is a lot of fishy stuff with 9/11 (especially the Pentagon hit), but I don't agree that it was done by the Zionists alone, the Christian Hawks are definitely part of the game too.

Tell me who these "Christian Hawks" are. Give me the names of the "Christian Hawks" involved in 9/11.

Well if that's everyone's attitude then we won't get anywhere. We must keep trying to find the answer. Disagreeing with no valid argument is pointless. The reason we know that scientists and thinkers (philosophers) get things wrong is that other people have disproved their work and provided a better more proven/provable solution. It's about being positive not a knocker.

I agree that we shouldn't stop trying, but promoting incomplete theories as fact is not a good idea (not that creationism should be, either). From what I had heard/read about it, the ID idea seemed like a considerable alternative, but I didn't know this ID stuff was so closely associated with religion. Hell, I'll go with Darwin anytime rather than with "God did it".

[FlyingSumo]

Im a non-denomination christian...and I respect everyone equally regardless of what they believe in...

Ive seen a lot of blood shed in my life (and career) over religiion and beliefs and Ive come to the basic conclusion that religion to me is about love but life is about respect. Both are extremely important to me...

Therefore being ignorant to love or respect just makes me a hypocrite.

[doyle]

You should really put a shirt on

[Lord Elevation]

As long as you're not a liar or a thief, you done good in life.

[FlyingSumo]

Yeah what that Brotha said...

<----I love that smiley lol

[Lord Elevation]

[RE Virus]

But... but... but God killed bad people, and Satan killed good people! And who are we to question God's judgement, anyway?

[crispncrunchy]

Hey Elevation & RE Virus,

How did you guys work that one out??

[Lord Elevation]

I stumbled upon the picture, but it seems to be accurate enough to make its point.

Have you ever tried to read the Bible?

[MESS]

I reckon Sodom and Gamorah had quite a few casualties. Also, in the story of the ark, the entire population of the earth was killed. So yeah.

Of course, a retort to that picture would be that every person who was murdered ever was killed by someone manipulated by the evil of satan.

[Sajjetta]

Didnt God get noah to try and get every one on the ark but they woulnt because they didnt think it would flood?

[crispncrunchy]

Have you ever tried to read the Bible?

Not since I hit puberty

[MESS]

Didnt God get noah to try and get every one on the ark but they woulnt because they didnt think it would flood?

Nope. He wanted them to drown.

5 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

[RE Virus]