Thanks

Participant

Hi Nick

Quote

You are tolerant like a good scientific nonbeliever? Then why are you here if you do not share our faith?

I’m not sure tolerance is a precondition for being a scientist, or an enthusiast for the scientific method. We are all on a continuum of ‘faith’. I am at the end where I do not base my life on faith, or even have any faith. What is the difference between the most devout and ‘blindly’ faithful and those who are the most reduced deists? I think the greatest diversity is not necessarily between me and the deist who thinks god kicked things off and has had no input since then. As for why I am here, please just read above, or one of the many other occasions on which I have bored you with those details.

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In which way does your participation show your belief in freedom of speech for others?

It is obviously not necessary to specifically stand up for the free speech of believers here. The only one limiting free speech is t8 and the contributors who have encouraged him to create a Boy Scouts section. You have to be suspicious of the quality of the material being discussed when some are excluded.

If this is a public forum, then you and I should both have the right to say what we think – to attack or support others’ ideas without attacking people personally. I can’t think of a way of demonstrating here that I do support the freedom of speech of believers. You will have to take an untrustworthy materialist heathen’s word for it! Life is far more interesting filled with those with crackpot ideas. The creationists bore though, as their arguments are old and well disposed of already.

Stuart

December 15, 2007 at 9:29 pm#74940

Participant

Hi Stu,
But they do have a sound basis for their belief and that is the bible which reveals the truth of God.
You admit your faith in science is not soundly based but on the shifting sands of the latest evidence?

December 15, 2007 at 9:32 pm#74942

Participant

Hi Nick

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New species have COME and gone? Really? COME?

Yes, really!

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Any evidence that one species has LED TO another?

Yes.

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Or is just another hopefully GUESS in building on sand your straw man theory?

Have you looked up the meaning of straw man yet, Nick?

Stuart

December 15, 2007 at 9:38 pm#74946

Participant

Hi Stu,
You have admiitted that evolution is only true until it can be disproven.
Yet you cling to it and present it as a glorious answer to life.
Which species became another and when?

December 17, 2007 at 1:06 am#74996

acertainchap

Participant

Evolution can be disproven. To think everything came from nothing is nothing short of an absurdity at the highest level.

December 17, 2007 at 2:28 am#75009

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 16 2007,08:26)

I am at the end where I do not base my life on faith, or even have any faith.

Let me finish the sentence.

“Except all things came from nothing. Nothing turned into something. But it is not faith.”

December 17, 2007 at 2:48 am#75016

acertainchap

Participant

I'm a little confused with that but I'll take your word for it, t8.

December 17, 2007 at 4:07 am#75058

david

Participant

Quote (Nick Hassan @ Dec. 15 2007,13:34)

Hi Stu,
psst.
Don't tell anyone but David believes only the JWs fulfill all these claims of righteousness.

Nick, no offence, but what is wrong with you?

You are the only one on here who randomly attacks me and frequently so, and never on the subject at hand. Why the attacks?

Please go to the JW thread and tell it to someone who cares. We're discussing evolution and you randomly attack me. You did that a couple days ago too. Why?

I did miss your presense, but at the same time, I got used to having actual conversations with people about actual subjects. I didn't miss your jabs and attacks. Please desist, or I'll have to have to press this issue.

david.

December 17, 2007 at 4:15 am#75061

Participant

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 16 2007,04:22)

I dont really understand what you mean, Kenrch.

My point is that there really is alot of evidence that implies evolution is real.

Do I personally know this “for sure”? No, I don't, but from my personal study of the subject it seems very much the case that evolution is most likely a fact.

It is only recently within the last few hundred years that “christians” have dogmatically insisted that the Genesis account is a linear and literal description of creation. Look into what past generations have believed about Genesis chapter 1.

Even before modern science came along past christians did NOT think Genesis was literal concerning HOW God made heaven and earth.

Read the early church fathers from Justin Martyr and Origen all the way through history up until Augustine and then even onward towards Martin Luther. MOST OF HISTORIES CHRISTIAN APOLOGIST NEVER BELIEVED GENESIS DESCRIBED LITERALLY HOW THINGS WERE MADE.

We are drawing a line that doesn't even need to exist!!!

The last 100 years of Christianity has created a strange backlash against science. Why? In my opinion, not because science is not compatable with Faith but because of the Fear of a “model” being introduced that could possibly exclude a need for a God whether in actuality or just perceived.

Like all theories Morningstar, Evolution has some fact and some imagination.

Variation within species is fact. Changing to adjust to an ecosystem is fact.

But the cosmos coming from nothing is plain ridiculous. It may or may not be part of that theory, but many perhaps most of the proponents usually use the theory to disprove God.

But they cannot do it. They make a whole lot of assumptions and say this and that, but they are often arrogant.

As for your forefathers being apes that lived in trees in Africa. Well let's just say that these guys have big imaginations and lot's of faith in their own understanding.

They have no proof, but they prefer to be apes than recognise that we are made in God's image. That is how much they don't want to acknowledge God.

But scripture contains references that the wicked are like animals in that they cannot reason and they let instinct take over.

But we are expected to not act like animals but utilize that which God has given us that makes us his image.

Also denying that we are apes and only apes, doesn't mean that we believe that God made the earth in the time it takes the earth to revolve 6 times.

People think that there are always 2 options to things. In this case:

6 earth day period for the creation
evolution
What if they are both wrong?

December 17, 2007 at 8:25 am#75074

Participant

Hi t8

I thought I would interlope in on your post addressed to Morningstar.

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Variation within species is fact. Changing to adjust to an ecosystem is fact.

Therefore evolution is fact.

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But the cosmos coming from nothing is plain ridiculous. It may or may not be part of that theory, but many perhaps most of the proponents usually use the theory to disprove God.

Please tell us what on earth this has to do with evolution by natural selection. Nick, if you are reading, the above is an example of a strawman.

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But they cannot do it. They make a whole lot of assumptions and say this and that, but they are often arrogant.

What has arrogance got to do with it (notwithstanding the immense arrogance of a christian who might tell a friend that he will burn in hell for not following the christian club rules)?

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As for your forefathers being apes that lived in trees in Africa. Well let's just say that these guys have big imaginations and lot's of faith in their own understanding.

And fossils. And DNA, especially the mitochondrial kind. And radioisotope dating. And comparative morphology. And biochemistry.

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They have no proof, but they prefer to be apes than recognise that we are made in God's image. That is how much they don't want to acknowledge God.

Fossils. DNA. No Theory of Divine Fingerpointing, either. A sad failure of the inventive human brain to come up with even the most remote divinical explanation.

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But scripture contains references that the wicked are like animals in that they cannot reason and they let instinct take over.

And the scriptures show immense biological ignorance. Like the bit about the ostrich being careless with its offspring. Or defining the bat as a bird species. As for making a human adult from another human’s rib…

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But we are expected to not act like animals but utilize that which God has given us that makes us his image.

We are animals. Don’t you remember the way that the creationist Linneus classified you and me?

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Also denying that we are apes and only apes, doesn't mean that we believe that God made the earth in the time it takes the earth to revolve 6 times.

Is this a scientific argument or a special pleading against the facts of reality?

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People think that there are always 2 options to things. In this case:
6 earth day period for the creation
evolution
What if they are both wrong?

We already know the first one and its variations are wrong. I suppose the only reason to believe the scientific account it is that all the evidence points to that and none to creationism, or any other creationist myth. Still the human brain has an enormous capacity to avoid seeing the bleeding obvious, which in this case is a big pile of fossils that increasingly show gradual speciation with extinction, over hundreds of millions to billions of years.
I think a solid creationist explanation for the trends observed in the fossil record and in comparative DNA is long overdue. Are you capable of presenting it, or shall we call the creationist’s bluff?

You seem a bit frightened, t8, that Morningstar has a brain of his own to think with.

Stuart

December 17, 2007 at 9:09 pm#75142

Participant

Hi Stu,
You cannot perceive that God could make woman from man?
We do not rely on your limited perceptions. It is written.

December 18, 2007 at 1:50 am#75187

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 17 2007,19:25)

Therefore evolution is fact.

Not so fast.

Evolution contains some fact, just as the Trinity doctrine contains some fact.

Even Lamarch's theory of evolution contains some fact.

But most theories rely on imagination interspersed with some facts. Sometimes the stretch of imagination is beyond logic and reason though.

If all the facts were wrong regarding a theory, I don't think anyone would give it any attention.

Most deceptions are successful when they contain some truth.

December 18, 2007 at 1:59 am#75191

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 17 2007,19:25)

You seem a bit frightened, t8, that Morningstar has a brain of his own to think with.

Way off Stu.

Try again.

God gave us brains to think with. If Morningstar uses his brain, then great.

If I am frightened by anything, it is in how you cannot use your brain to understand that from nothing is nothing.

Instead you have sidestepped all reality and say that nothing created everything. Like I said before, show me how this works, so I can start creating things out of nothing for myself.

I even offered you 10% of the million dollars I plan to create out of nothing with your theory.

Tell you what, I will up the amount to 20%.

Still silent?

December 18, 2007 at 2:01 am#75194

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 17 2007,19:25)

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Also denying that we are apes and only apes, doesn't mean that we believe that God made the earth in the time it takes the earth to revolve 6 times.

Is this a scientific argument or a special pleading against the facts of reality?

Try reading it again.

I know that I can act like an animal when I want, but I can also rise above that.

Can you?

Or does your theory force you to be an animal only.

See that word “only”. I used it in my original sentence.

December 18, 2007 at 6:55 am#75247

Participant

Quote (Nick Hassan @ Dec. 18 2007,08:09)

Hi Stu,
You cannot perceive that God could make woman from man?
We do not rely on your limited perceptions. It is written.

This is very boring, me giving an insight into the amazing world of reality and you coming up with mythology against it because you have given yourself no choice. Do you not view the world as an astonishing place to be explored with an open mind? In my opinion 'it is written' is the last bastion of the ignorant medieval mind, not an association I would have thought you would welcome.

Stuart

December 18, 2007 at 7:39 am#75252

Participant

Hi Stu,
You say it cannot be based on the shifting winds of science as your evidence?
You are not the judge of truth according to your myopic view.
Others see further and deeper.

December 18, 2007 at 7:58 am#75256

Participant

Hi t8

Stu:Therefore evolution is fact.

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Not so fast. Evolution contains some fact, just as the Trinity doctrine contains some fact.

What single fact does the supposed trinity contain? That of being controversial? There is no fact worth knowing about the christian mythology of 3≥1. Evolution is a fact. The events described by that word have happened in full.
You may as well deny that volcanoes exist or earthquakes happen.

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Even Lamarch's theory of evolution contains some fact.

The fact of evolution is explained by the Theory of Natural Selection. Lamarckian evolution is wrong because, notwithstanding the natural mutation rate, parents do not pass on traits that they have accumulated during their lifetimes, at least certainly not in the way Lamarck described. Heredity is entirely genetic.

Give me one fact explained by Lamarckian Evolution, that is not better explained by Darwinian evolution.

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But most theories rely on imagination interspersed with some facts. Sometimes the stretch of imagination is beyond logic and reason though. If all the facts were wrong regarding a theory, I don't think anyone would give it any attention. Most deceptions are successful when they contain some truth.

Hypotheses rely on imagination. Theories rely on evidence, as you say, facts. Certainly an hypothesis can stretch beyond reason, but a theory doesn’t, by definition. Deceptions may contain truth, but a theory will die, or be quickly updated if even one single fact is not explained by it.

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…Instead you have sidestepped all reality and say that nothing created everything. Like I said before, show me how this works, so I can start creating things out of nothing for myself.

I have not said that nothing created everything. I challenge you to point to a single place I have written that. I have said several times that I don’t know, and that I may speculate that matter may arise in a similar way to the smallest particles that can be seen coming into and going out of existence all the time, but fundamentally I do not know what there was until a few microseconds after the big bang. Of course, I don’t have someone who knows everything to ask. Perhaps your Imaginary Friend will supply the mechanism to you and you could pass it on to the rest of us. You will need to know about baryon-antibaryion separation for the answer to mean anything, though.
Everytime you get into trouble on evolution you put up the beginning of the universe as a deflection. I think people are starting to see that you do not have even one single fact that contradicts evolutionary theory. You may sink the boot in when the honest scientific answer is that we’re not sure, but you don’t know either, and science says put up or shut up.

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I know that I can act like an animal when I want, but I can also rise above that.
That makes no difference to your biological classification. It is not the fact that you are an animal you are really objecting to, you have no scriptural reason to reject it. It is that your religion insists that you must be special. This is true and also false, depending on what point of view you take. Humans may be the only species of animal that invents supernatural beings and then claims for themselves a special place in the universe because of that invention. Perhaps it is because the realities of life are a bit daunting and there is comfort to be had in that. I think it is the comfort that comes from deluding oneself, the kind that a drunk finds in a bottle.

Or does your theory force you to be an animal only. See that word “only”. I used it in my original sentence.

What does being ‘ape and only ape’ mean? You are a great ape. That is a biological fact. Why is that a big deal?

From Wikipedia: The great apes are the members of the biological family Hominidae which includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans

From the Wikipedia pages of the various great apes:

Human: Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Mammalia, Order: Primates, Family: Hominidae,
Genus: Homo, Species: H. sapiens, Subspecies: H. s. sapiens

Chimpanzee: Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Mammalia, Order: Primates, Family: Hominidae,
Subfamily: Homininae, Tribe: Hominini, Subtribe: Panina, Genus: Pan

Bonobo: Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Mammalia, Order: Primates, Family: Hominidae,
Genus: Pan, Species: P. paniscus

Gorilla: Kingdom: Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Mammalia, Order: Primates, Family: Hominidae,
Subfamily: Homininae, Tribe, Gorillini, Genus: Gorilla

Orangutan: Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Mammalia, Order: Primates, Family: Hominidae, Subfamily: Ponginae, Genus: Pongo

The Linnaean classification for modern humans, with explanation of the description.:
 Domain: Eukaryota (organisms which have cells with a nucleus)
 Kingdom: Animalia (with eukaryotic cells having cell membrane but lacking cell wall, multicellular, heterotrophic)
 Phylum: Chordata (animals with a notochord, dorsal nerve cord, and pharyngeal gill slits, which may be vestigial)
 Subphylum: Vertebrata (possessing a backbone, which may be cartilaginous, to protect the dorsal nerve cord)
 Class: Mammalia (endothermic vertebrates with hair and mammary glands which, in females, secrete milk to nourish young)
 Subclass: Placentalia (giving birth to live young after a full internal gestation period)
 Order: Primates (collar bone, eyes face forward, grasping hands with fingers, and two types of teeth: incisors and molars)
 Family: Hominidae (upright posture, large brain, stereoscopic vision, flat face, hands and feet have different specializations)
 Genus: Homo (s-curved spine, “man”)
 Species: Homo sapiens (high forehead, well-developed chin, skull bones thin)

Apes share the Linnean description up to the family name hominidae. The difference as you know is 2% difference in DNA between us and our closest cousins chimpanzees (‘difference’ here has to be interpreted carefully). I don’t know what you look like t8, but I have an upright posture, a large brain, stereoscopic vision, a flat face (compared to our ancestor species) and hands and feet that have different specialisations.

Stuart

December 18, 2007 at 8:04 am#75260