Creation

[M.Dancer]

Hate to quibble, but we do share a common ancestor with monkeys, it's just a helluva lot further back. For that matter, we share a common ancestor with tomatoes... but that's wayyyyyy back.

Feel free to quibble....we share an ancestor of both monkeys and apes....but monkeys diverged from that line, so in fact we are not evolved from monkeys.

I wasn't clear in that

[ToadBrother]

Feel free to quibble....we share an ancestor of both monkeys and apes....but monkeys diverged from that line, so in fact we are not evolved from monkeys.

I wasn't clear in that

Ah, you're a cladist!

[GostHacked]

I would say that especially atheists have a high value of life. The religious, on the other hand, are ever ready to murder others if they think their magical imaginary friend told them to.

The high value comes from the understanding that this is the only life we have. So live in the moment, love your fellow man, treat them with respect, understand and cherish differences and celebrate the similarities. I don't go pushing atheism on others, as long as others don't push their religion on me. Live and let live, right? Do unto others as you would have done to you, is a very awesome phrase which speaks a lot of truth no matter who said it. If you are going to be an asshat, you are going to get treated like an asshat because of they way you treat others.

But Tim comes at a time in these conversations where Betsy has eseentially given up and cannot continue the conversation anymore.

Right... because the bible says all these perverts whom God destroyed were, in actuality, really just innocent and saintly folks that God was just killing for sport. Yep, that's in Leviticus somewhere.

Can you say for certain they were perverts? I can use the line the religious use when talking about creationism vrs evolutuion.

Where you there?

No. None of us were. If you believe in god, then you believe in the devil. The ying and yang. Which boggles the mind really, because believing in one sky-god is one thing, but believing in two opposing sky-gods really hurts my brain. Personally I think that humans can be good and bad, as we have seen throughout history. We are not all 100% innocent, never have been and never will be. The supernatural allows people to shove our sins and wrongdoings on the sky-god. Unlike me, I own all my mistakes and can never shove them onto anyone else let alone a sky-god. I have to live and learn by them, if I don't then that is a problem.

That's why we build prisons, just for you: the law, after all, exists for criminals. Contrawise, if you believe in God and Heaven, then nothing on earth or of men frightens you - not the Law nor its prisons.

I don't believe in a heaven or hell, and men do not frighten me. The law does not frighten me. It is those who pervert the law for their gains I kind of fear, but that is only a fear because the rest of the people are railroaded by fear to tow a certain line of thinking.

That's true liberty, a liberty that never offends the law nor fears the plots and terrors of evil men.

I don't think you quite grasp what true liberty is. If you did, you would not be spewing out this stuff.

Those who do not believe in heaven or hell fear all these things, for they imagine that there is nothing beyond this life, and therefore prize and covet their short, miserable lives as being precious and of infinite worth, and like cattle are herded and manipulated with the trivial dainties of benefits and the threat of cruel punishments or even the deprivation of their quaint deserts.

My life may be short in the grand cosmic scale of things, but it is far from miserable. I have a great family that I can turn to for support when needed. I have turned to them, and they have not dissapointed me.

Must make it all the more easy to believe you are descended from a monkey ; after all, you and him share so much in common ; namely, nothing to look forward to or live for except the occasional satisfaction of a fleeting pleasure.

If it makes it easier for you to believe in a sky-god (or two opposing sky-gods), then all the power to you. It if works for you, then go for it. The one thing that changed in my life, is that I stopped playing the victim, and depending on others to make my life better. I did that about 10 years ago now, and it was a struggle, but life is so much better because I initiated the change.

I've used the line 'God helps those who help themsleves'. So maybe you should take that first step and help yourself.

[Tilter]

That's why we build prisons, just for you: the law, after all, exists for criminals. Contrawise, if you believe in God and Heaven, then nothing on earth or of men frightens you - not the Law nor its prisons.

Tell ya what timmy--- don't commit any felonious crimes because there are MANY reasons for anyone to fear

the Law nor its prisons

whether you believe in God, heaven or not. There are a lot of people in there who make Beelzebub look tame and if you should happen to fall foul of the law you don't fear, make sure you bring a bum pillow with you.

[betsy]

I agree with you. My daughter and I were watching the "prince of Egypt" (the animation...although that is the book that Demille's 10 Commandments was based on)...

So we come to the plagues...ande the final plague where all the 1st born of egypt die..and she asks me why would god kill all the children who had nothing to do with Pharaoh...and I told her in language an 8 year old would understand.. I said because god is a murderer and is not nice and it is only a story.

ha-ha-ha. Unbelieveable. <shaking head>

You could've at least set aside your extremism and explained to your child about religion - what the "Prince of Egypt" is based on.....then inject your own personal opinion.

So, have you both watched the fairy tale, "Frog Prince" yet? Lo, watch your child....she could be kissing every frog she meets.

[betsy]

It's surprising and disappointing seeing a few members - one in particular - whom I thought to be sensible based on some of his intelligent posts I've read in the past, to bring himself to the level of just purely "neener-neener" rebuttal.

It's hard to imagine that this bitter hatred - yes I sense a tinge of bitterness - is caused only by what he read in the Bible.

[ToadBrother]

It's surprising and disappointing seeing a few members - one in particular - whom I thought to be sensible based on some of his intelligent posts I've read in the past, to bring himself to the level of just purely "neener-neener" rebuttal.

It's hard to imagine that this bitter hatred - yes I sense a tinge of bitterness - is caused only by what he read in the Bible.

Talk about cheap taunts. What are you, nine years old?

[bloodyminded]

Congratulations. Not only did you miss the point of "the story" and fed your daughter a deadly batch of vicious lies, but you followed up by even demonstrating its rationale by actively assisting in ushering your daughter to eternal hellfire. Rest assured, your daughter was up a long time that night considering the weight, meaning and significance of it all.

God destroyed the Egyptians' bodies, but you murder your own daughter's soul.

Personally, I consider this sort of thing to be real line-crossing. No matter how fiery and contentious a debate gets, we should leave one another's families out of the equation.

I strongly doubt M. Dancer is concerned in the least about his daughter burning in hellfire; but that doesn't mean it's okay for you to say it.

[bloodyminded]

Is there something wrong with Hebrew school?

Yes, by definition. It's not Christian, and so is a pack of lies from top to bottom.

[bloodyminded]

ha-ha-ha. Unbelieveable. <shaking head>

You could've at least set aside your extremism and explained to your child about religion - what the "Prince of Egypt" is based on.....then inject your own personal opinion.

Exactly. A father has no place in giving his daughter his personal opinion, particularly when it contradicts the authority of The Prince of Egypt.

[bloodyminded]

It's surprising and disappointing seeing a few members - one in particular - whom I thought to be sensible based on some of his intelligent posts I've read in the past, to bring himself to the level of just purely "neener-neener" rebuttal.

In an interesting coincidence, I had thought a certain poster foolish and mean, but have lately come to appreciate him a little better. Small world, eh?

[betsy]

Must make it all the more easy to believe you are descended from a monkey ; after all, you and him share so much in common ; namely, nothing to look forward to or live for except the occasional satisfaction of a fleeting pleasure.

...or more correctly, hominids.

Apes, hominids and man share common ancestors....but we share none with monkeys

WHOA there, M Dancer! Live Science doesn't agree with you!

Furthermore, Timothy17 seems to understand you more than you understand yourself.

Article: Monkey DNA Points to Common Human Ancestor

Charles Q. Choi

Date: 12 April 2007 Time: 10:01 AM ET

The new analysis of the rhesus monkey genome, conducted by an international consortium of more than 170 scientists, also reveals that humans and the macaques share about 93 percent of their DNA. By comparison, humans and chimpanzees share about 98 to 99 percent of their DNA.

http://www.livescience.com/1411-monkey-dna-points-common-human-ancestor.html

What a terribly confused bunch!

Edited April 9, 2011 by betsy

[betsy]

Whoever sez the world's gone to the dogs is dead wrong!

Oh boy, now we'll see the price of banana go up!

Edited April 9, 2011 by betsy

[betsy]

In an interesting coincidence, I had thought a certain poster foolish and mean, but have lately come to appreciate him a little better. Small world, eh?

I guess we're not talking about the same guy. This one's still mean. And now I see, also foolish.

Edited April 9, 2011 by betsy

[GostHacked]

WHOA there, M Dancer! Live Science doesn't agree with you!

Furthermore, Timothy17 seems to understand you more than you understand yourself.

http://www.livescience.com/1411-monkey-dna-points-common-human-ancestor.html

What a terribly confused bunch!

It's only confusing if you don't understand it. 'It' being science that is. It's also confusing when you have a closed mind. It's also confusing if you can't read.

Edited April 9, 2011 by GostHacked

[betsy]

Evolution-wise, you're stumped. Beginning of the universe, you're stumped.

It's all guessworks from your corner.

Intelligent Design, however deals with both areas you're stumped with.

“Since you seem to dismiss Antony Flew because he is a philosopher rather than a scientist, let's discuss a scientist.

Gerald Schroeder is a scientist with a Ph.D. from MIT--one of our countries most prestigious scientific institutions. Here are some execrpts from one of his books (note: he's not writing here for scientists but so average readers can understand):

"When a specific protein is needed by a cell, a chemical messenger is sent from the outer cell, through a pore in the nuclear membrane, into the nucleus. How the messenger knows to go to the nucleus remains a mystery. This messenger finds the needed chromosome (one of the twenty-three pairs), locks onto that chromosome, and moves along, nucleotide by nucleotide, until it comes to the specific sequence of bases that marks the beginning of the gene that codes for the desired protein.

At this stage, the signaling molecule changes shape, and in doing so allows—or causes—and enzyme called DNA-dependent RNA polymerase (I’ll call it RNA-P) to join the action.

The RNA-P opens the helix, reads each nucleotide base, selects the correct complementary base from among the four types floating in the intracellular slurry, concurrently selects…the molecules that make up the spine of the lengthening strand of mRNA being manufactured, trailing behind the RNA-P, joins the just-selected base to the spine, takes the portion of DNA that has just been read and reseals it to the parallel DNA strand which it was separated, opens the portion of DNA to be read next, reads it, and continues the juggling act til it reaches a coded stop order…And RNA-P does this manufacturing at fifty bases a second…Keep in mind,

this entire sequence is performed by molecules reading molecules, molecules selecting molecules, molecules walking along with other molecules.

Don’t project too much brain power or body power into this system. It’s not little people in there. It’s simply molecules that somehow seem to act like little knowledgeable people, as if they had a wisdom of their own. Which they do (192-199).

This is only one small part of a much more complicated process that takes place in what was once called the “simple cell.” At one time scientists used to imagine that, given enough time (billions of years) simple cells could evolve by themselves purely by chance or natural selection. The kicker here is that “it all developed so very rapidly, almost simultaneously with the appearance of liquid water on earth. We have absolutely phenomenal complexity,not after billions of years of evolution, but at the very beginning of the entire process (193-194)!"

End Schroeder quote.

http://philophil.blogspot.com/2008/01/antony-flew-richard-dawkins-and-gerald.html

Gerald L. Schroeder is an Orthodox Jewish author and lecturer at Aish HaTorah's Discovery Seminar, Essentials and Fellowships programs and Executive Learning Center,[1] who focuses on what he perceives to be an inherent relationship between science and spirituality

Schroeder received his BSc in 1959, his MSc in 1961, and his Ph.D. in nuclear physics and earth and planetary sciences in 1965, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[2] He worked five years on the staff of the MIT physics department. He was a member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Schroeder

Edited April 9, 2011 by betsy

[WIP]

They're whole worldview centres on literal interpretation of scripture. They can't help it, because for them, their whole religious faith is tied directly to the Bible being literally true. To be forced to contemplate the idea that Genesis may not in fact be a literally true sequence of events is to basically deny their religious beliefs entire.

St. Augustine warned against this, though the Catholic Church hasn't always listened (hence the Galileo debacle).

Some liberal theologians like Karen Armstrong, can make a rather compelling case that anti-science fundamentalism started with those Christian scientists of the Enlightenment, who wanted to prove the Christian God through science. Many church leaders were opposed to this sort of approach from the start, since having a high degree of objective evidence would eliminate the necessity for needing faith. But, I'm not sure if I can buy Armstrong's contention that the Church would have remained pro-science if it wasn't for Newton, Kepler, Francis Bacon, Descartes etc..

The Catholic Church has adapted to a lot of discovery from science in biology and cosmology, but they still would like to constrain science from exploring black boxes they want left undiscovered....as I gather from the previous Pope's comments that physicists and cosmologists should not attempt to discover what happened before the Big Bang....since that would be attempting to learn how God created the Universe. In a different time, it's easy to envision Stephen Hawking, Ed Witten, Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok, Sean Carroll, Alan Guth, Andre Linde....and I'm forgetting at least two other names I read about in recent years who are creating different sorts of multi-universe models. In Galileo's time, they might of all been burned at the stake for heresy! But, fortunately we live in an age when church authorities don't have the power of life and death over people...and I hope the fundamentalists are unsuccessful at trying to take us back to those days again.

[betsy]

Gerald Schroeder is a scientist with a Ph.D. from MIT--one of our countries most prestigious scientific institutions. Here are some execrpts from one of his books (note: he's not writing here for scientists but so average readers can understand):

"When a specific protein is needed by a cell, a chemical messenger is sent from the outer cell, through a pore in the nuclear membrane, into the nucleus. How the messenger knows to go to the nucleus remains a mystery. This messenger finds the needed chromosome (one of the twenty-three pairs), locks onto that chromosome, and moves along, nucleotide by nucleotide, until it comes to the specific sequence of bases that marks the beginning of the gene that codes for the desired protein.

At this stage, the signaling molecule changes shape, and in doing so allows—or causes—and enzyme called DNA-dependent RNA polymerase (I’ll call it RNA-P) to join the action.

The RNA-P opens the helix, reads each nucleotide base, selects the correct complementary base from among the four types floating in the intracellular slurry, concurrently selects…the molecules that make up the spine of the lengthening strand of mRNA being manufactured, trailing behind the RNA-P, joins the just-selected base to the spine, takes the portion of DNA that has just been read and reseals it to the parallel DNA strand which it was separated, opens the portion of DNA to be read next, reads it, and continues the juggling act til it reaches a coded stop order…And RNA-P does this manufacturing at fifty bases a second…Keep in mind,

this entire sequence is performed by molecules reading molecules, molecules selecting molecules, molecules walking along with other molecules.

Don’t project too much brain power or body power into this system. It’s not little people in there. It’s simply molecules that somehow seem to act like little knowledgeable people, as if they had a wisdom of their own. Which they do (192-199).

This is only one small part of a much more complicated process thattakes place in what was once called the “simple cell.” At one time scientists used to imagine that, given enough time (billions of years) simple cells could evolve by themselves purely by chance or natural selection. The kicker here is that “it all developed so very rapidly, almost simultaneously with the appearance of liquid water on earth. We have absolutely phenomenal complexity,not after billions of years of evolution, but at the very beginning of the entire process (193-194)!"

http://philophil.blogspot.com/2008/01/antony-flew-richard-dawkins-and-gerald.html

Antony Flew, an academic philosopher who promoted atheism for most of his adult life indicated that the fine-tuned universe arguments of Gerald Schroeder convinced him to become a deist.[8][9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Schroeder

Edited April 9, 2011 by betsy

[ToadBrother]

http://philophil.blogspot.com/2008/01/antony-flew-richard-dawkins-and-gerald.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Schroeder

And how would Flew or Schroeder explain ERVs?

[Tilter]

Let me get this straight.You think that someone invented hell in order to terrify people out of doing bad things, and this is a very silly idea .

You're right. We should all sign a petition to the Minister of Justice to shut-down all the prisons, because scaring people out of doing bad things is just plain wrong and an obvious fraud to get people to behave in the way that the government wants them to. While we're at it, we better free that guy who murdered those women and took photographs of himself wearing their panties, just to show the world how in Canada we have progressed and advanced beyond simplistic and medieval forms of thinking, such as punishing criminals.

You think that someone invented hell in order to terrify people out of doing bad things, and this is a very silly idea

Why is it silly idea? It helps Billy Graham scam billions from the poor of the Christian population. Not too often do we see a Donald Trump pumping a mill into ANY preacher's fund be it for a new roof or a mission out somewhere where the meek suckers called missionaries are converting young war orphans to christianity so, at a later date, they can become martyrs when the local imam decides that the kid has committed too many heresies against another fraud--- Islam, and feels the convert is better off if half buried & then stoned into becoming a good muslim even tho he is now dead.

But, I digress.

We should all sign a petition to the Minister of Justice to shut-down all the prisons, because scaring people out of doing bad things is just plain wrong and an obvious fraud to get people to behave in the way that the government wants them to. While we're at it, we better free that guy who murdered those women and took photographs of himself wearing their panties, just to show the world how in Canada we have progressed and advanced beyond simplistic and medieval forms of thinking, such as punishing criminals.

Now timmy--- you are, in your religious fervor, becoming confused. Re-read and you will find that is completely NOT what I said. I said that the prison idea is there to make people afraid of committing crimes.

The problem with my thot here is that criminals have no true value of "self"

First, they think that the idea that some actions are "crimes" are wrong only for other people. For example. A rapist will do the crime without a thot of remorse---- but he will extract the highest form of revenge from a person who rapes his sister. He also knows (erroneously) while committing the crime that he is too smart to get caught--(re your example Williams) and has fear of jails ONLY when he is in one

If we were to eliminate prisons crime would be rampant to the point where existence for humans would be impossible and the world ownership would revert to the natural owners---- animals, including our

pre-evolutionary relatives, the apes, at which time the process known as evolution would re-continue to once again produce --- man, hopefully in a less aggressive form. This, because of nature's "survival of the fittest" rule would once more fail because without aggression there is no progress.

Edited April 10, 2011 by Tilter

[GostHacked]

But where are the missing links? Says Betsy.

They have yet to be discovered. Says many others.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/12/new-dinosaur-species-is-a-missing-link/?hpt=C2

This dinosaur provides a link between what paleontologists consider "early" and "later" dinosaurs. There's a gap in the fossil record between the oldest known dinosaurs, which walked or ran on their hind legs about 230 million years ago in Argentina and Brazil, and other predatory dinosaurs that lived much later. Daemonosaurus chauliodus helps fill in a blank in dinosaur history.

But that will never be enough for people with Betsy's unfortunate condition.

[ToadBrother]

But where are the missing links? Says Betsy.

They have yet to be discovered. Says many others.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/12/new-dinosaur-species-is-a-missing-link/?hpt=C2

But that will never be enough for people with Betsy's unfortunate condition.

The missing link claim is absurd anyways. We'll never have the entire fossil record, and we don't need it.

[GostHacked]

The missing link claim is absurd anyways. We'll never have the entire fossil record, and we don't need it.

But we do! That might be considered a gap that will bring down the whole 'house of cards'. Therefore God did it. /sarcasm.

I agree, we will never have the full record, but now and then we will find something fantastic that will fill in a gap here and there. Science is a work in progress knowing all the answers may not be found. To me this is the more logical approach to 'knowledge' than assuming all the answers are in a book that has been "purple-monkey-dishwasher'd" over the ages.

[cybercoma]

Simple. Support your claim. Cite. EXPLAIN.

I'm curious, why do you demand more of others than of yourself?

[cybercoma]

betsy, another thing I'm wondeirng about... are you an evolution denying creationist? They don't have to be mutually exclusive. There are many religious people that believe in evolution and God as creator. Do you actually deny evolution?