WIP

How carefully do you read, before responding to a post? I'm still trying to figure out how you conflate satellites in geosynchronous orbit with aliens!

What makes ID especially confusing for creationists and evolutionists is that the leaders of this movement itself aren't even singing from the same hymnal! William Dembski, the mathematician who tries to create information theories to prove irreducible complexities in evolution -- believes that the basic "kinds" of life were created, so that puts him pretty much in the same camp as other creationists, most of whom accept the fact that mutation and forces of natural selection make small evolutionary changes. On the other hand, Michael Behe, the guy who created this movement, is a theistic evolutionist, since he has stated several times since writing "Darwin's Black Box," that he accepts common origins of life: "I believe the evidence strongly supports common descent" (p.176). In his review of the book, biologist Gert Korthof notes that Behe avoids expanding on that point, unlike the other prominent theistic evolutionists: Behe did not bother to present the evidence for common descent. Is he interested at all in the evidence for common descent? Does he know or understand the evidence? Behe does not seem to realise the consequences of his statement. Common descent of life means that all life is descended from the first form of life. Common descent of life means that all life on Earth is physically, historically and genetically connected. It is one unbroken chain of ancestors and descendants. Common descent of life means that there is only one tree of life. Common descent of life means that gaps in the fossil record are gaps in the record, and not in the tree of life. Common descent of life means that whatever the mechanism, every organism inherited its genes and all its so-called 'irreducibly complex' systems from the previous generation and so on until first life. Every intervention would be a violation of common descent. Behe accepts that evolution occurred and accepts common descent, however he thinks that evolution was 'guided by God' (15). That makes him a theistic evolutionist. However, Behe does not give a rigorous definition of 'guided evolution', so I don't know whether 'guided evolution' is the same as 'supernatural intervention' or contradicting common descent. http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/korthof8.htm As Korthof points out, an ID proponent like Michael Behe, is presenting a theory loaded with internal contradictions, whose only value is to create confusion -- since most of the creationists who cite his work, do not even realize that he is making a muted argument for evolution, not creation!

I seen all of the "proofs" from prophecy over the years! The claimed prophecies that have been verified are taken from sources like the Book of Daniel, which was actually written during the Maccabean revolt against Ptolemy, not during the captivity in Babylon as claimed by the author. The end time prophecies that were supposed to accompany the overthrow of the Ptolemaic Greek Dynasty were obviously not fulfilled. The prophet's vision of the future became clouded when he was trying to prophecy actual events that hadn't occured during his time.

If you're proposing that God has a covenant with Israel, could you explain why he allowed half of the world's Jewish population to be exterminated by the Nazis, without lifting an ethereal finger to stop the genocide? A more likely explanation is that the pogroms and other hostile practices that persecuted against Jews, enabled them to remain a tightknit, cohesive community in Europe. Many American Jewish leaders worry about that the open acceptance of Jews in America has led to assimilation through mixed marriages and a decline in interest in maintaining demanding rituals and observances that their gentile friends do not have to observe. Acceptance, rather than persecution, is the greater enemy of religious and ethnic minority groups!

So! He was also the first person to propose putting communications satellites in geosynchronous orbits, back in 1946. But I guess you know more about science than he did!

Then why are you pretending to debate this subject? Your mind is already made up, and no evidence would convince you otherwise. You are projecting your own neuroses onto others! I do not live by faith, and I never said that evolution disproved God. I am an atheist for many other reasons explained elsewhere. OUTLINE PREDICTION 17: FUNCTIONAL MOLECULAR EVIDENCE—PROTEIN FUNCTIONAL REDUNDANCY And he doesn't answer the question of why the amino acid sequences would follow a pattern expected by common origins. Theobold pointed out that there were enough possible combinations to give each organism a unique cytochrome c, and even more surprising, all animals tested so far, have been able to use any version of the Cytochrome C protein for metabolic functions -- so only one version would have got the job done for every plant and animal. It is even more damning to the theory of individual creations that one universal cytochrome c wasn't used. The creator could have used between one and 10^93 different types of Cytochrome C, and yet he just by coincidence decided to follow the phylogenetic pattern that would be expected if life evolved from a common ancestor. Does he have any reason for this speculation, or why, even if the genes that code Cytochrome C were making other proteins, why this should mean that they would follow the phylogenetic tree of life? So we end up with humans and chimpanzees sharing the same cytochrome c, while other mammals are different by 10 amino acids. A more distant related life form -- Candida Krusei yeast differs by 51 amino acids. The rest of the plants and animals analyzed follow expectations of common morphology -- and that's just some sort of coincidence to creationists? Again, if he's theorizing that the cytochrome c genes may be needed to code other proteins, why should that matter? Why should they have to follow a pattern expected if life came from a common origin, rather than exhibiting distinctly separate characteristics of independently created plants and animals? So, what has he got for explaining endogneous retroviruses? God just decided to add viral codes to animal genomes!

I'm not sure if any theologians have taken a look at the metaverse theories that cosmologists are moving towards. If God created a metaverse with a near infinite number of universes being born, ageing and dying, that would make this God even more remote from the creation. On the other hand, if each universe has its own separate and unique God, it bears an eerie similarity to the Biocosm Theory of James Gardner -- that advanced, intelligent life forms could be creating bio-friendly universes. Arthur C. Clarke once said that a sufficiently advanced civilization would appear to be godlike to us. One catch though -- the advanced alien creators of universes would be deistic gods, since they would not be able to enter the new universes that they seeded, and instead would be permanently cut off from interacting or learing about their new creations. Any intelligent creatures that evolved in the new universes would be left wondering about the hiddeness of God.

If you're offended, too bad! Your "evidence" consists of anti-evolution claims from your creationist websites mixed in with attacks on the character of Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins. To you, this somehow constitutes as evidence for creation. I asked you at least five times to explain the data from examinations of endogenous retroviruses and the ubiquitous protein - Cytochrome C, using creation or intelligent design theory, and you dodged the question each time with something totally unrelated. If you're going to advocate a hypothesis that claims major animal groups were designed and created separately, then you have to find a plausible explanation for those and other results that lead 99.9999999% of biologists to conclude that all life on Earth - including plants, animals, eukaryote and archaea bacteria, all came from a common origin. The theory of evolution displaced creationism in the scientific world, over 150 years ago. Trying to return to the old creation theory means explaining how it could provide a better explanation for the data gathered by biologists, archaeologists and palenontologists over the years. The reason your sources don't bother trying to build a theory of creationism, and instead devote all of their attention to attacking the theory of evolution and by association - the scientific community, is because they are opposed to science and all learning that challenges the authenticity of their literal interpretations of ancient mythology. Your heroes want to lead the way back to a new dark age....just as they did after the fall of the Roman Empire.

.....and he could do this by merely putting crosses and bible quotes on his reports? That says a mouthful about Bush's capacity to be a competent chief executive! And your can of whupass is costing billions per month with no end in sight.......well, actually it will come to an end one way or another, because the U.S. is going to end up so far in debt that it will have no choice other than scaling back the empire. ??? It's no different than when an airplane crashes! Investigators want to sift through the wreckage to put together the picture of how the disaster took place.

Assuming that the Bush aides aren't lying: why did Rummy put pictures of crosses and bible quotes on the reports he was sending to the President? A plain cover with a title page could have done the job.

Well, 700 Club propaganda aside, Jefferson was also aware of the problems with theocracy in Europe and the abuses caused by the early theocratic colonial governments. It doesn't matter whether he thought Jesus was a nice guy, he used his influence to keep religion out of government, even opposing military and congressional chaplains. The U.S. Constitution was deliberately written as a godless document; and that hasn't escaped the notice of religious leaders over the ages, who tried four times to have Christian amendments added to the Constitution to correct that oversight by Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers. The Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 contained a clause where he specifically expressed the point that the new nation was not a "Christian nation: ARTICLE 11. As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tripoli1.htm Too bad the conservative talkingheads on radio and FoxNews didn't cover this when they took history class in their Christian academies! Jefferson, Patrick Henry and others, cooled their revolutionary rhetoric later on though, after they saw how badly idealistic revolutionaries can go bad when the French Revolution devolved into the Reign of Terror. They also had to incrementally increase the role they envisioned for the Federal Government because of the gridlocks between competing state governments early on. Do a search term for "theonomy" and choose any source you like to see how the Christian Reconstructionist Movement that is trying to take over mainstream churches from within, views life in an ideal Christian nation. For a quick bullet-point definition of this movement: Dominionism & Dominion Theology are derived from Genesis 1:26 of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament): "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'" (NIV) Most Christians interpret this verse as meaning that God gave mankind dominion over the animal kingdom. Dominion theologians believe that that this verse commands Christians to bring all societies, around the world, under the rule of the Word of God. Theonomy (Greek for "God's Law") includes the concept that "God’s revealed standing laws are a reflection of His immutable moral character and, as such, are absolute in the sense of being nonarbitrary, objective, universal, and established in advance of particular circumstances (thus applicable to general types of moral situations)." 6,7 Thus, each of the 613 laws given to Moses and recorded in the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Hebrew Scriptures) are binding on people of all nations, cultures, and religions forever, except for those laws which have been specifically rescinded or modified by further revelation. Christian Reconstructionism arose out of conservative Presbyterianism in the early 1970's. Followers believe "that every area dominated by sin must be 'reconstructed' in terms of the Bible." 1 http://www.religioustolerance.org/reconstr.htm further: Christian Reconstructionism A version of Dominion Theology that is a relatively extreme aspect of the Christian Right and effectively theocratic. It is chiefly an American movement spelled out by Armenian-American R. J. Rushdoony (1916-2001) in the 1960's and 1970's and calls for a nation's laws and society to be based on the Ten Commandments as applied through the interpretations of a religious elite to everyday situations; necessarily, it rejects democracy and any form of secular political philosophy as an ideal foundation for government. Christian Reconstructionism's ideal society would include the elimination of public schools, the denial of full citizenship to non-Christians, and the death penalty for adultery, performing or having an abortion, blasphemy, homosexuality, heresy, and even persistant rebelliousness against ones parents, with the definitions of these terms and offenses being crafted by the religious elite. http://www.religiousrightwatch.com/2006/10...tian_recon.html and: Invitation to a Stoning Getting cozy with theocrats http://www.reason.com/news/show/30789.html They are largely a stealth movement, with two of the largest publishers of Christian education material for homeschooling. They are teaching the next generation of Christian fundamentalists, so over time, the apocalyptic "Left Behind" philosophy of waiting for Jesus to come back and fix things, will be replaced with a Dominionist strategy of creating Christian government: Christian Reconstructionism's ultimate moment may or may not arrive; however it has had tremendous influence as a catalyst for an historic shift in American religion and politics. Christian colleges and bookstores are full of Reconstructionist material. The proliferation of this material and influence is likely to continue. Christian Reconstructionism is largely an underground, underestimated movement of ideas, the rippling surface of which is the political movement known as the Christian Right. http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre4.html

Consider that, according to Thomas Jefferson, the U.S.A. was founded with the intention of putting a "wall of separation" between church and state, so that religion and politics could not be combined together as they were under European governments. And consider that all of the Christian Right groups are actively trying to destroy that separation and make the U.S. a Christian nation. I'm not up on the latest news from Israel, but over the last 30 years there has been a steady increase in power and influence of the Orthodox community. They are pushing religion into their politics and a lot of secular Jews have left the country as it becomes more and more religiously orthodox. And that's why I don't care for the "at least we're better than those Muslims" arguments; we are looking at a snapshot of conditions as they exist now, and we have to consider how both fundamentalist Jews and Christians want to create their own theocracies that would look remarkably like the Muslim versions (including public stonings) if their dreams came true.

Read the GQ article. To me it's a case of "no honour among thieves," I don't care which side wins; it's just fascinating watching them playing the blame game, and the secondary implication that a highly religious leader can be duped by a conniving aide who uses his religious beliefs to influence his actions.

I probably don't understand it well enough to be afraid of it; and the implications of Dark Energy means we live in a universe that will fly apart and cease to exist...after a hundred billion years or so. In the cyclic universe and other M-theory based metaverse theories, it's the expanded, dying universes that provide the energy for the formation of new universes when their branes collide with each other. All of the existing cosmology theories (including Eternal Inflation that has developed from the Big Bang Model) which are being developed these days require a metaverse backdrop with new universes being born, expanding and then dying after they have cooled down and reached a critical minimum density. So, a universe has a life cycle! But then so does everything in a universe including us and any other complex life forms. BTW fundamentalist theologians such as Plantinga, Richard Swinburne and William Lane Craig, have not warmed to the idea that our universe is not a one off event, and that there are many others. Likely because the implications are that a god who creates a metaverse has an even larger creation to look after. It's hard enough accepting a concept that we are somehow special in the eyes of a creator, from what we understand of this universe. If there are countless other universes, it becomes even more ludicrous to view the human race and Planet Earth as the number one concern of the creator.

Hi wyly! You see, this thread, which was created to discuss why many Canadians have been convinced by creationist literature to doubt the accepted theory of evolution. It started drifting off topic, like most threads do, but then benny and betsy hijacked it. Benny, for the purpose of promoting his guru - some guy named Zizek, who looks like he doesn't grasp the concept of personal hygiene, based on his appearance on his Youtube clips; and betsy - perhaps because starting two other threads attacking the personal character and qualities of Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins are just not enough! The people who want to push religious interpretations on science just can't grasp the concept of Methodological Naturalism. It's fine to believe in supernatural events and personalities, which by their very definition, are placed in a realm where they cannot be tested objectively -- but that fact alone means that they should be regarded as personal subjective beliefs until some creationist or believer in souls, faith-healing etc. can figure out a method to test them. It's not that these claims have been suppressed, as their advocates contend, it's just that they should not be accepted as viable theories until they can make testable predictions explaining natural phenomena that can be repeated. Since they seem to have no confidence of proving their claims with empirical, observable, and/or measurable evidence, they resort to the fallback position - attacking the existing theories that are used to explain the evidence. The result is an increase in ignorance, and a growing population of incredulous boobs who can be led to believe any claim their trusted authorities make.

I went through this a couple of weeks ago when one of my wife's religious friends payed a visit and decided to try to convert me again. When Christians or any believers in transcendent gods that are separate and apart from their creation, ask how it could all happen without God, they are claiming that everything that exists has to have a cause........except for God of course! But, if there is God, I could ask "why is there God instead of nothing?" Why does God get a special pass from needing an explanation? But how do we really imagine nothing? Even empty space is in a constant flux with virtual particles popping into existence and annihilating each other, disappearing back into the quantum foam without any cause. If two particles can appear uncaused, why not a universe also appearing uncaused from a fluctuation in false vacuum energy? Existence is not more difficult to explain by the laws of physics than non-existence. Nothingness is not a natural state in a universe where virtual particles appear and disappear, so for a physicist, explaining nothingness is as problematic, if not more, than explaining how a universe comes into being. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mar...tic/vacuum.html

Yes, but I didn't read the report cited by blogger Greg Mankiw until now. My first impression is that a study that measures happiness and satisfaction is trying to measure subjective feelings from the self-reports given by subjects answering questionaires. These are not tangible quantities that can be independently measured like economic data, crime statistics or unemployment; so right off the start I got my skeptical hat on when someone presents this sort of data as being proof of some point that they are trying to make! Did you notice that the studies cited in the linked report showed a decline in happiness of both men and women? So why just highlight the unhappiness of women? Ever since the feminist movement began, there has always been a regular stream of horror stories, claiming that the freedoms provided when women entered the workforce en mass, will ultimately ruin women's lives....their biological clocks will run out while they have been advancing up the career ladder and tell women they'll die childless for delaying marriage........ and if they don't find a husband by 30 they'll never get married......and on and on and on. I couldn't help noticing that a couple of conservative bloggers that linked the study, were using it as part of an argument that the government is creating social disharmony by performing too many roles that were once done by the family. So could the story be just another part of the stealth strategy behind the family values campaign -- women will have to migrate back to their domestic roles of looking after the family as further cuts in government services are made.....and that would serve the interests of the fiscal conservatives and the religious right!

Because it is off topic in the first place! Abortion has nothing to do with the story cooked up by former Bush aides that Donald Rumsfeld used religious imagery to dupe their boss into declaring war on Iraq.

Ah yes, the Japanese Internment was a good lesson for people who have elevated terrorists to super-human abilities, to consider before they start shredding basic human rights. How things go in the U.S. will determine how things are in Canada over the near future. And besides that, I have a feeling that I can't prove, that we are at a pivotal point in U.S. history. If he fails to wind down the wars and causes a debt spiral that devalues the U.S. dollar, leading to inflation and a further collapse in the economy. It would be similar to the Weimar Republic.....and you recall who was voted in to fix that mess, right?

Or could it be that civil libertarians care about principles like rule of law and judicial fairness? All these years, we've had to listen to fundies blather on about how God gives them moral standards and us atheists are moral relativists, and now the reality is that the religious right have turned out to be the moral relativists, since they are willing to break all of their own rules to punish the enemy.

You have to prove intention to commit a crime. When the U.S. was acting under the authority of U.N. resolutions, and enforcing a No Fly Zone because of suspected war crimes against Kurds in the North, and Shias in the South, you would have some work to do to present a case that the U.S. was committing war crimes against Iraq. It's a false analogy to try to compare that situation with secret prisons and patterns of deliberate torture and abuse of detainees. I cannot say that they do not have a case; but their government had so much blood on their hands with deliberate collusion with death squads operated by their proxies in Bosnia, that they would have a hard time getting attention for their grievances. Although they did get recognition for Croatian war crimes during the ethnic cleansing of Eastern Croatia and Northern Bosnia. No, you can't just throw out lame accusations of baby killing any more than you can make groundless accusations about war crimes against Serbians. Until you have a legal definition of personhood, with personal rights, it's empty rhetoric.....but that's what conservatives are good at I suppose. So you only genuflect to the abortion issue to make the religious members of the conservative movement happy! I have been suspecting for awhile now that conservative leaders are also amoral, and only make noises about faith, prayer and sanctity of life, to keep the church people happy and doing the legwork for conservative political parties. Considering that abortions existed on the blackmarket for decades, I'm sure there are a lot of women who would take issue with it being an artificial right. Another cryptic message. What sort of "icing on the cake" are you talking about?

Of course not. But like him or hate him, Roosevelt was one of the few politicians who would push reforms he felt were badly needed, even if he had advisers and fellow party members trying to talk him out of it. It's not a lifetime appointment. And a drop in poll numbers will make it harder to get his agenda through Congress.....just like it was for Bush in his 2nd term.

Jim Hightower on Bush: "he was born on third base, and thinks he hit a triple!" George Bush killed that old line about governors having the executive experience to make great presidents! So what was the story down there in cowboyland, was Karl Rove and assorted flunkies doing his work for him on that job also? The only thing of note that I can find on his gubernatorial record is that he executed more people (152) than any other governor. That doesn't tell much about how he handled issues that affect daily life. I'd also like to know what the economic growth rate was during the Bush years, since any idiot can be successful if he's presiding over an economic boom (like being Premier of Alberta until recently), but becomes the source of blame if he can't turn the economy around...Schwarzenegger may have been a great governor, but he had the misfortune of taking over a sinking ship for example.

Many of us looking on the U.S. from outside were hoping that Obama would be the new FDR. Instead, he is turning into the new LBJ; and like Lyndon Johnson, his potential downfall will not be caused by conservatives and rightwing opposition; it will happen because the civil libertarians and the left in general do not share the authoritarian ethos of the conservatives, and their primary loyalty is to issues, not personalities! Many will withdraw support if he doesn't find a way out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and even more crucial - backing down on his campaign pledge of "making government accountable." Suppressing torture photos, refusing to investigate charges against key Bush Administration officials, and worst of all - keeping alive the concept of "Preventative Detention," or holding people in prison indefinitely because they either cannot be convicted because of torture, or fear that they'll commit terrorist attacks after they are released. Why have this option just for terrorism? Why wasn't O.J. put in preventative detention after the L.A. D.A.'s office botched the criminal trial against O.J. Simpson? But, that's another issue. Republican leaders take their base for granted all time, like Dubya did - starting new spending programs to build the "Permanent Republican Majority" and the right had little or nothing to say about his failures until they lost the fall election. That's because conservatives work on the authoritarian principle that demands loyalty to the leadership; liberals are anti-authoritarian, and a Democrat who take them for granted will suffer the same fate of LBJ -- especially if he can't end the war!

What was George's experience, aside from failing at every business venture that his old man set him up with, and being a sock puppet for Dick Cheney?