Darwin's theory

Vivisectus

The Corinthian wrote: »

Why is speed an issue if the distance between two points is zero, after all?

Hahah not yet it isn't, for all practical purposes

The Corinthian

Vivisectus wrote: »

Hahah not yet it isn't, for all practical purposes

Every bit as practical as traveling at the speed of light currently.

Brian Shanahan

Oranage2 wrote: »

Also another thing I don't get from this theory is why isn't there any life on planets close to us since if the big bang happened then surely planets in close proximity should have similar conditions and life forms.

How the hell did you come up with this particular assertion? What you've just said is so meaningless and absurd that there is no real response any sensible person could give you.

Anyways here's an attempt:
1) The big bang has nothing to do with life, except in the indirect way of happening in such a way that ensures there's some place for life to live on.
2) The planets are only in close proximity in relative terms. There are still millions of miles between us and Venus. It only looks close because space is so vast.
3) The other planets are not, as far as we know, in an orbit around Sol to engender life, though there are scientific speculations about the viability of some forms of life (mostly at bacterial level) around some of the moons of Jupiter (Europa mainly, like in some of Arthur C. Clarke's novels).
4) Evolution doesn't always pan out the same way, especially when you are talking about planets with such massively different compositions (for example take a look at Venus some time), so even if life existed on all the other planets, you would expect them to be radically different than here on earth, to suit the radically different environments they would exist in.

J C

MrPudding wrote: »

I hope you didn't post that to bolster your case. She is clearly a fcuking idiot that simply refuses to accept or acknowledge anything that goes against her religious world view.

Actually JC, I know this has been brought up before, are you a woman? Is that actually you in the video?

MrP

Its not me ... I'm a man and a scientist and Wendy is neither.

She is a very articulate, knowledgeable and competent lady ... and while Richard Dawkins started out interviewing Wendy ... he ended up being interviewed by her!!!

Here is the whole amazing interview ...

.

It was a respectful and civil exchange of views and opinions ... exactly what I would have expected from Prof Dawkins as the undoubted gentleman that he is and from Wendy Wright as the lady that she also undoubtedly is.

Prof Dawkins is somebody I greatly admire ... I have read all his books ... and I find him to be a very good and entertaining writer ... sometimes controversial ... but always interesting.

J C

MrPudding wrote: »

Yes, it's kind of funny that one of the arguments for her wanting to promote the idea that we are created is that she wants humans to be treated with respect and dignity. Unless you are gay if in need if abortion, that is.

MrP

... and if you're gay or pregnant ... you should also be treated with respect and dignity.

J C

Gintonious wrote: »

Isn't she in prison or had a restraining order put against her for doing stuff outside abortion clinics?

Why would anyone trying to build up the position of creationism show this video? This woman isn't a scientist or a very nice person for that matter.

She isn't in prison and she wasn't named in any injunction ... but was still arrested for simply praying on the far side of the street from an abortion clinic. She was sentenced to six months in jail ... which was overturned on appeal to a higher court ... and this all happened in 1991 ... while the interview with Richard Dawkins took place 18 years later in 2009.

She actually covers this in the interview with Richard Dawkins here:-

Pherekydes

J C wrote: »

... and if you're gay ... you should also be treated with respect and dignity as well.

That's not what the Bible says...

J C

Pherekydes wrote: »

That's not what the Bible says...

Jesus said honour the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind ... and love your neighbour as yourself.:)

J C

Here is a fascinating exchange between Prof Dawkins and Ben Stein

Pherekydes

J C wrote: »

Jesus said honour the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind ... and love your neighbour as yourself.:)

That doesn't address the point.

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death ; their blood shall be upon them.

Stone rape victims:

23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.

It's in your Bible. It's the word of your god.

J C

Pherekydes wrote: »

That doesn't address the point.



Stone rape victims:



It's in your Bible. It's the word of your god.

This is Israelite Law as recorded in the Bible.
Christians are under grace ... and are not under Israelite Law.:)

Love one another as I have loved you, is Jesus command to His Church

Pherekydes

J C wrote: »

Love one another as I have loved you, is Jesus command to His Church

You keep coming up with this waffle. Jesus cursed a fig tree. Because it was out of season.

Saganist

Pherekydes wrote: »

You keep coming up with this waffle. Jesus cursed a fig tree. Because it was out of season.

Don't bite.

He's a troll.

floggg

J C wrote: »

This is Israelite Law as recorded in the Bible.
Christians are under grace ... and are not under Israelite Law.:)

Love one another as I have loved you, is Jesus command to His Church

But is it the word of God? It's in the bible isn't it?

If if it is, why does he think it's ok to stone Israeli rape victims?

And how does he feel about non-Christian gentiles?

Do Palestinians get a pass on the stoning/Slavery thing? They aren't necessarily Israeli but they do live in "Israel" and they certainly aren't Jews.

Care to answer any of the serious gaping holes pointed out in your dodgy math?

Squeedily Spooch

J C wrote: »

This is Israelite Law as recorded in the Bible.
Christians are under grace ... and are not under Israelite Law.:)

Love one another as I have loved you, is Jesus command to His Church

So as a non Christian, I have nothing to worry about as your rules don't apply to me.

Thanks for clearing that up

Pherekydes

Squeedily Spooch wrote: »

So as a non Christian, I have nothing to worry about as your rules don't apply to me.

Thanks for clearing that up

Jesus loves everyone and we are all saved, donchano? Except when he doesn't.

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

So there you have it. 33 years, 2000 years' ago. A pretty small window to be saved. God is such a fcuker.

housetypeb

The Sword of the Gospel
34"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35"For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW;…

That jasus fcuker shure talked a lot of ****e, in my humble opinion.

Vivisectus

Its not me ... I'm a man and a scientist

So far you seem to be a fairly typical creation scientist, judging from your posts. But those always need some extra qualifying as I have seen a lot of them with diplomas issued from some Christian University run out of a shack in New Mexico. You keep claiming to be a scientist: so what is your field? What are your credentials? Can you back up your claim?

As a scientist, are you not a little embarrassed to invoke Dembski, according to whose probability bound NO evolution can happen, while you yourself clearly said that some evolution has occurred since the fall and the flood?

Vivisectus

Vivisectus wrote: »

That is actually not that complicated. The mistake that Dembski makes is assuming that to get from one sequence to another requires the entire genome to be disassembled and then re-assembled randomly. But this is simply not what happens.

What does happen is that the original sequence is copied and multiplied, with some mistakes in it. Some of these mistakes are bad and cause death. Others cause reduced fitness, and will be selected against. Still others will be neutral and have no effect on fitness. A rare few improve fitness and get favored by selection.

Improvements that take a small amount of steps will happen earlier, and then fix themselves in the population. Bigger steps will often be dependent on neutral intermediate steps: the number of evolutionary avenues possible is not limitless.

If you model a 300 position, 20 option string of acids, and set a mutation rate of 1 in 100 and a spawn rate of 10, and then set some combinations as lethal, some as neutral, and some as beneficial, and apply selective pressure to weed out lethal ones (0 survivial chance), and increase the offspring for beneficial ones, we can see that while it takes thousands of generations and lots of organisms to get to the beneficial ones, but it DOES happen.

Anyway - I answered your challenge. I can show you the modelling in Evj if you want - it is hardly rocket science. As a scientist you are surely reviewing your opinion now in light of this fresh evidence?

Canis Lupus

Vivisectus wrote: »

As a scientist you are surely reviewing your opinion now in light of this fresh evidence?

No he won't... the guy has been posting smiley faces and different coloured posts that sort of but not quite answer questions followed by periods of absence only for him to return ignoring anything that was put to him but posting more vague dodging responses with smiley faces and different coloured text for years.

What's most unbelievable is that people still try to engage him.

PopePalpatine

Canis Lupus wrote: »

No he won't... the guy has been posting smiley faces and different coloured posts that sort of but not quite answer questions followed by periods of absence only for him to return ignoring anything that was put to him but posting more vague dodging responses with smiley faces and different coloured text for years.

What's most unbelievable is that people still try to engage him.

I think the Simpsons explained it best with their song "Just Don't Look" from one of the Treehouse of Horror specials.

Squeedily Spooch

Vivisectus wrote: »

So far you seem to be a fairly typical creation scientist, judging from your posts. But those always need some extra qualifying as I have seen a lot of them with diplomas issued from some Christian University run out of a shack in New Mexico. You keep claiming to be a scientist: so what is your field? What are your credentials? Can you back up your claim?

As a scientist, are you not a little embarrassed to invoke Dembski, according to whose probability bound NO evolution can happen, while you yourself clearly said that some evolution has occurred since the fall and the flood?

He won't for fear of being "outed" as a creationist, which any scientist worth their salt would never be. More bs really.

Vivisectus

Aha the plot thickens

Good god I do love a good kook. You just cannot make this stuff up.

floggg

Vivisectus wrote: »

Aha the plot thickens

Good god I do love a good kook. You just cannot make this stuff up.

I thought he was.....?

Vivisectus

Ok, I just cannot make this stuff up. There is something just... wonderful about the sheer creativity behind it.

Brian Shanahan

Oranage2 wrote: »

I want argue with you but doesn't earth being the perfect size, tilt, composition etc just sound to perfect to be possible?

No. Life arose by adapting to the prevailing conditions. Who's to say that a Nitrogen-Ammonia atmosphere is incapable of supporting life, albeit radically different to life here, for example? And you've also to remember that Earth's atmosphere and conditions were radically different when life got started, for one thing free Oxygen concentration in the atmosphere was much lower (link), and there were many other differences too. So actually what has happened is that life first arose from prevailing conditions and adapting to them, then as it got more complicated it adapted the atmosphere around it (chiefly by producing more free Oxygen), making life more easy to produce and diversify. A virtuous circle to be exact.

We simply know far too little about the universe to even speculate how life would look like off Earth (and even at that there are areas where we've discovered life radically different than what we previously would have imagined, frequently in places where we didn't believe it was possible for lifeforms to survive in {e.g. underwater volcano vents}).

Finally what you are trying to argue here is a variation on the anthropic principle (in other branches of knowledge similar arguments are often called "Goldilocks" principles), which argues that even small changes in universal constants (e.g. speed of light, Planck constant) would rule out the possibility of stars forming, leading to life being impossible. Well more recent research seems to indicate that if one constant were different at universe formation then the most likely result would that all other constants would change in line with that one to leave the ratios constant, and star formation to be possible albeit under slightly different physical constraints. And anyway the anthropic principle to my mind has best been characterised as an "argument from lack of imagination", i.e. that just because we live in a specific universe where everything happened as it did, doesn't mean that our way is the only way.

Brian Shanahan

J C wrote: »

This is Israelite Law as recorded in the Bible.
Christians are under grace ... and are not under Israelite Law.:)

Love one another as I have loved you, is Jesus command to His Church

Matthew 5:17 puts the lie to this assertion:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

That passage clearly has Jesus talking about upholding the laws of the prophets not abolishing them. And you've also got to remember that at best the historical Jesus (I say at best because we have no evidence for the existence of Jesus, he could be as real as the Great Nuggan or Grand Nagus Zek) was an orthodox Jew, most probably of Phariseean or Sicarii tradition (the Sicarii were a subset of the Zealots, themselves an offshoot of the Pharisees, dedicated to freeing Iudea from Roman rule and restoring the Jewish theocracy), and had no intention of creating a new religion. It was Saul of Tarsus and his successers who on seeing the defeated and demoralised (yet still fanatical) followers of this Jesus decided to create a new religion from the ashes of a failed insurgent group, and thus christianity was born about 100 years after Jesus, and with very little relation to his original movement (as can be seen by the deep antagonism between the Paulines and the followers of James, brother of Jesus in the new testament).

Your apprehension of your own religion, as is common with your apprehension of science, is wrong, and badly so, because you are not intrested in investigating what you believe, but are just content to constantly and mindlessly mouth the untruths you have been told.

J C

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Matthew 5:17 puts the lie to this assertion:

Quote:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

That passage clearly has Jesus talking about upholding the laws of the prophets not abolishing them.

In the passage Jesus clearly states that He has come to fulfill the Law of God and the prophecies of the prophets.

The Church era is the era of God's grace, for those who freely ask for it ... and it started with the fulfillment of the Law and the prophets at the atoning death of Jesus on the cross.

... and God's justice (Law) continues to apply to those who don't,

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

And you've also got to remember that at best the historical Jesus (I say at best because we have no evidence for the existence of Jesus, he could be as real as the Great Nuggan or Grand Nagus Zek)

No evidence except the evidence of eyewitnesses recorded in the Gospels and all of the books of the New Testament ... as well as accounts from historians like Josephus and Thallus
https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/eastman_mark/messiah/sfm_ap2.cfm

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Jesus was an orthodox Jew, most probably of Phariseean or Sicarii tradition (the Sicarii were a subset of the Zealots, themselves an offshoot of the Pharisees, dedicated to freeing Iudea from Roman rule and restoring the Jewish theocracy), and had no intention of creating a new religion. It was Saul of Tarsus and his successers who on seeing the defeated and demoralised (yet still fanatical) followers of this Jesus decided to create a new religion from the ashes of a failed insurgent group, and thus christianity was born about 100 years after Jesus, and with very little relation to his original movement (as can be seen by the deep antagonism between the Paulines and the followers of James, brother of Jesus in the new testament).

Your apprehension of your own religion, as is common with your apprehension of science, is wrong, and badly so, because you are not intrested in investigating what you believe, but are just content to constantly and mindlessly mouth the untruths you have been told.

More unfounded shibboleths than I could shake a stick at!!!:)

Pherekydes

J C wrote: »

In the passage Jesus clearly states that He has come to fulfill the Law of God and the prophecies of the prophets.

You've missed Brian's point, again. Yes, Jesus was coming to uphold god's law. But god's law as laid down in the old testament, in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, amongst other places.

Roger Hassenforder

J C wrote: »

No evidence except the evidence of eyewitnesses recorded in the Gospels and all of the books of the New Testament ... as well as accounts from historians like Josephus and Thallus
https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/eastman_mark/messiah/sfm_ap2.cfm

unfortunately for JC and his ilk, there seem to be no (Jewish, Greek or Roman) writers/scribes/historians who lived in the middle east during the time of Jesus' ministry etc., that mention him.

The ones that did, and are frequently cited as non christian evidence for his existance, wrote well after his crucifixion, and were solely based on hearsay.
Josephus: born 37CE, antiquities written in 93CE. Testimonium Flavianum acknowledged to have been tampered with, even by Christian scholars...
Tacitus: born 64CE, mentioned a Jesus in 109CE...
Seutonius:born 69CE...

Philo Judaeus, a historian living in Jerusalem around this time doesn't even mention him.

So other than hearsay and third hand account, and the bible itself, there isnt really much to go on.