Evolutionary Science-v- Creationism

[tw]

[Continued from previous post]
In the meantime, I am not putting words into any one person's mouth. Religious extremists are not Onyxcougar. But some religious peers of Onyxcougar would repeatedly and outrightly subvert other religions to promote the ‘power and glory’ of their righteous religion. Then they are called ‘good’? That other religion called ‘evil’? Again I must quote Pat Robertson on his 700 Club

A man who marries outside of his religion inherits the devil for a father-in-law.

That promotes hate. That is how one religion must subvert another. It demands religious segregation. How evil as demonstrated in stories from Kahlil Gibran - the great religious poet and story teller of early 1900 Lebanon. Pat Robertson promotes principles contrary to what the United States is base upon and the stories of Gibran. And yet Pat Robertson represents what right wing religious extremists would attempt to do to America. No different than promoting racial hatred. Still Pat Robertson is considered a benchmark of ‘good’ religion?

There is no place for religion in politics, science, education, etc other than as a lesson of history. Why? The act of religion is and must remain a relationship between you and your god. No one else has any right to subvert or deny you the right to practice your religion. Furthermore, no one religion has the right to impose their beliefs on other people.

It is a new principle discovered by the science of law - 1000+ years after the bible was created. Religion has no place in law, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, etc. If that religion is your religion, then it has rules by which you live. If the religion is credible, then it also does not impose itself on others not of that religion. IOW a true Christian would never have tried to force a Christian democracy on an Islamic people. Once we called the Crusades evil examples of a perverted religion. Religion should never tell a Buddhist that he could not drive on the Sabbath. Or that a woman can fly a plane but not drive a car. And yet many religions are so "scrupulous conformity" as to also impose themselves on other. That is simply not acceptable because mankind has learned so much more about religious principles since the bible.

One of "god's laws" that was discovered by more of god's prophets - including the founders of this nation - is the freedom of religion. Freedom of religion means a relationship between you and your god unimpeded by any other AND that your religion and its beliefs are not imposed on others. Where in the bible are such principles taught? You can find concepts from which these principles are derived. This science of social order used principles even found in an early science book - such as the bible.

There is no soundbyte response to describe the principles of, relationships to others, and the evil justified by religion. Religion was a good science in its time. Since then, mankind has learned so much and moved on. So much that this posting had to be shortened – extensively.

[tw]

Originally Posted by OnyxCougar

Although I'm not sure of your usage of the word "prophet" here, I can agree with the idea here.
...
Newest bibles? Last I checked there was a group of writings that was agreed upon a couple hundred years or so ago, and that was then termed "the Bible". Full stop. Your statement is based upon the flawed premise that the Bible is a textbook of science, which (for the third time) it's not.
...
Please explain how having will, opinions and love is pathetic or limited.
...
I don't believe my God chose George Bush. Bush may think that, some fundies may think that, I don't. So please refrain from linking me to your religio-political overgeneralizations.
...
Again (4th time) the bible is not a science book. That's YOUR straw man. Also, the bible doesn't say "nothing more need be learned". So please, stop making these ridiculous statements.
...
I'm hardly a religious extremist. And evolution as it relates to origion of man is not science. It's guesswork. And it shouldn't be taught in school any more than creationist origins should.
...
I disagree. First, the bible (specifically the old testament) is the cornerstone and foundation of Christian, Judaism and Islamic faiths. Within it are timeless concepts that will never be obsolete, as much as you wish they were. Granted, there are some things (like stoning people) that western society considers obsolete now, but the western justice system was based off of Christian laws and punishments within the bible. We don't stone people now, we imprison them. And as we have seen, imprisonment isnt much of a deterrant, is it? But that's another thread entirely....
...
So you agree it's also got history in it. History that has never been DISproven. We may not be able to prove all the history, but what secular history we can verify time and time again agrees with biblical history. So since it hasn't been DISproven, why not believe it all? Again, another thread, but definitely a product of the EvCvID debate.
...
Perhaps back in the day that was true. Now, many scientists learn science in an attempt to prove god doesn't exist, and to get other people to doubt god as well. What's the best way to do this? "Prove" that the primary and fundamental statement "In the beginning God created" is wrong, by advancing this UNPROVABLE notion that man evolved from primordial soup. If the Bible is wrong, then you can't trust any of it, and therefore, the foundation of 3 of the world's major religions is GONE. That's why this is such an important issue to Christians, indeed, it should be a major issue to Muslims and Jews. The theory of Evolution as it relates to origin of man is completely opposite of the bible. And you have to take a stand. Do you believe in the word of God or fallible man? Both theories are equally unprovable, and therefore, religious in nature, and should NOT be taught in school.
...
Tee, you are the ONLY person who I've ever met (virtually or otherwise) that thinks emotion is a bad thing, or limiting, or pathetic.
...
Again, I'm not so sure of your use of "prophets" here.
...
A scientist could be called a prophet, by def. 4, but I would say that "god's prophets" would be more apt to lift god up, so to speak, as opposed to many scientists, who try to tear him down.
...
Jesus used parables. And it was obvious when he used them because the style of writing changed and he SAID he was using a parable.
...
You need to define what a fact is and figure out if a fact is a fact all the time, or if a fact is a fact only after a certain time. Please be consistant on when a fact is a fact. Until then, I'm ignoring your Kerry-ish argument about facts.
...
Firstly, "worship the bible" is not something that people are supposed to be doing. Those who use the bible as a foundation for their faith are supposed to "worship" God (by whatever name each faith might use).

Secondly, I reject that if one believes in the bible that they cannot learn. And I do NOT promote hate of gays. I don't promote hate of anyone. That was a completely out of hand and inflammatory statement. And made to ilicit an emotional response. Be careful, Tee.
...
Last I checked, gods chosen people are the Israelites. And those are Jews. So you're saying Jews promote hate? huh?

First, not all whose religion is tightly tied to the bible are religious extremists. Furthermore, just because George Jr is 'god's chosen president' does not mean that it is the belief of all or any devout Christians. In fact George Jr is only god's chosen president because HE believes it. It is HIS religion and HIS religious belief. It demonstrates that George Jr worships a limited and flawed god. A god with gross human deficiencies such as choice and preference - and therefore a limited god - a pagan god.

Prophet - innovator. Someone who discovers more of god's laws. Someone who cannot exist hundreds of years later if only the bible is correct. Someone who advances mankind by adding or correcting principles long since expanded and corrected from the original bible.

It would be illogical to say that a flaw in the bible makes the entire bible flawed. It was a good book in its time just like all science books. We ignore what was wrong, use what works, write a new book, and advance mankind. From the bible have been spawned many new and better books such as geometry and Darwinism.

Despite what your religion may teach, mankind has been correcting, upgradings, and expanding on the bible and other early works; including the Quran. Using principles taught by the nuns with big sticks - they are all inspired words only from god? Nonsense. They are nothing more than men trying to understand a massive concept we call god. Conventional myopic religions fear to understand that mankind has long since moved beyond the original bible. We have learned more and wrote new versions. We have a whole Dewey Decimal system for corrections and updates that man has since made.

IOW the god as taught in those conventional and myopic religions is nothing more than an extension of human wants, need, and emotions. If a god has a chosen person (ie George Jr), then his god is a limited creation with human traits. And that god probably worships his god. That god would be as pagan as the Greek and Roman gods. After all, even those gods chose sides in war and had human emotions such as perference. Those gods had their favored 'good' people. Why did those gods not just eliminate the enemy themselves if those gods were so powerful? Damning logical question that Socrates asked.

A real god is far more infinite. He has no limits such as will, love, or 'choosen people'. Jesus was as much a son of god as is everyone else. Those who think otherwise need a pagan concept to comprehend something that is too infinite. BTW the concept of infinity also did not exist in biblical times.

No problem. Everyone must have some way of dealing with a concept so infinite. Just as long as they don't use beliefs to subvert other's lives. Again, a fundamental principle that made America so great. Religion is nothing more than a relationship between you and your god. It must not affect others against their will.

Bottom line - no matter what your religion says, mine has move long beyond its early and flawed "The Bible" - as we learn more of god's laws. My religion is not stagnant like fundamentalist Christians, conservative Jew, or 'Muslim Brotherhood' Muslim. Unlike those religions, mine promotes tolerance. Mine says god is something to keep learning more about. God does not 'talk' to choosen people. God is what science is about.

I have no problem with those who would worship the same old and flawed books. Religion in a most conservative and conventional sense is to believe something blindly as if nothing better, smarter, improved, or more accurate can exist. Fine. Just don't impose those religious beliefs on my life or my peers - as the previously quoted Pat Robertson would advocate to the destruction of America.

When I say 'worship the bible', it means blindly believe god as defined only in their 'perspective interpretation' of that bible. If they were worshipping god, then they knew the bible is nothing more than an early and flawed attempt to explain god. A limited god is created by 'worshipping the bible' rather than learning of a larger and more infinite god. Biblical word. Flawed. A good early attempt. Something quite limited using parables. If something so limited becomes the total foundation of a religion, then clearly that religion is just another pagan religion. Fundamental christians routinely discuss things that are too limited to be anything more than a pagan god. Damning fact. If a god has love, will, or his 'chosen people', then that god is limited - a classic pagan god with the same human traits (flaws) found in Greek and Roman gods.

Previously defined are examples of what a fact is. For example, to prove a fact, we must have both experimental evidence and underlying theory. Without both, a fact does not exist. This concept did not exist in biblical times as history teaches. A fact does not exist only because a lying president 'felt' there were weapons of mass destruction. Those who believed that 'feeling' to be fact were indeed using only emotion and easily subverted by propaganda. This same process is why many also believe 'their interpretation of the bible'.
[continued in following post]

[tw]

[continued from previous post]
I spent time in christian college libraries. Do they reflect what is taught? For example, there are no calculus books. How will one learn the principles on which mankind advances without an appreciation of calculus. Calculus is not in the bible. Calculus was from a "god's prophet" that biblical scholars must deny - Newton. Therefore calculus is not necessary? Library is empty and devoid of basic science. You tell me. How can America advance - continue to do what made America so great - when we have decided to protect our students from basic scientific principles. We would even deny them basic science such as Darwinism? Therefore we must also deny them another science called fractals and chaos? How many more sciences do we deny them before it is safe enough for them to learn? (Sound like an FCC that fears what we might hear on the radio?)

Do you suspect a great clash of hate in our future? I do. Because so many are being brainwashed by only one book - the bible - rather than learning from the so many books that came afterwords and corrected the bible. They let their emotions make their decisions rather than logic.

I don't call emotion a negative thing, nor limiting, nor pathetic. Emotion is the basis for so much human strength as I personally proved many times on a wrestling mat. I used emotion to be stronger. It was a logical decision. And when in a championship bout, we almost came to blows, my decision was due to a logical mind still controlling my emotions - that were clearly causing quite a commotion on that mat. Emotion also described as the good side of the force. When emotion replaces logic in making decisions - then we have the dark side.

Demonstrated in Star Wars (exclude the magic) is not so difficult to understand. I never said emotion is a bad thing. How emotion is used - if it overrides logic - then the human would be (by your definition) 'evil'. Emotion is something used by and must be always controlled by logic. It is one reason a child takes so long to be a fully functional adult. Emotion takes that long and is that difficult to tame, contain, and carefully utilize. In fact, I am shock that conventional religions don't teach this. But then the most conservative are also not teaching tolerance.

People with limited knowledge make good cannon fodder. They have less potential to be god's prophets. They are groomed to become soldiers (cannon fodder) for another Crusade - or torturers of another Spanish Inquisition. After all, was it not inside this Christian administration (at the highest levels of the George Jr presdiency) that torture was authorized? Of course it was. Remember nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition - a fundamenatal lesson from history about what blind religious beliefs can do. The Spanish Inquisition demonstrates the 'dark side' of emotion. Nobody thought religion could be the source of so much 'evil'. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. 'Evil' when the religion is too deeply rooted in emotion. Its called not learning anything beyond one flawed and early science book - the bible.

And yes, the bible was an early science book - because that was how limited science was in those days.

You may reject "that if one believes in the bible that they cannot learn." Sure they can learn. But they are not even provided the facts TO learn. Where are basic science and math principles being taught in those christian colleges? What is the most advanced math being taught there? Business math. I asked farther of these future ministers being educated there. They are taught math to balance checkbooks, calculate interest rates, etc. You tell me. This is a college education? We learned this stuff in high school. This is not college material. To learn, first facts and underlying theories of science must be made available. The process of proving facts is not magically inherited - it must be taught. No wonder they believe creationism. They don't even have basic lab sciences to learn how facts are deduced and proven. Therefore they easily confuse emotion with logical thought. Perfect if your life ambition is to be a propagandist. Exactly what military academies don't want which is why they teach engineering - science grounded in reality. I fear christian colleges may be manufacturing cannon fodder for Armageddon - worst case.

Defined in every post are examples of how facts are created AND why those principles did not exist in biblical times. This demonstrates why we will not agree. What you call guesswork is how science continues to advance mankind AND why creationism has long since been discredited along with spontaneous regeneration. It is not guesswork if one better appreciates how facts are created and justified. Fact must be based on fundamental and well proven science theory AND must be demonstrated in experimental evidence - including numbers. These concepts did not exist among the biblical authors nor their targeted audience. They were righting the best science of its time.

Where is basic science taught in fundamentalist religion? It is not. The bible teaches nothing about science principles demonstrated even by Socrates and not widely appreciated until the last 100 years.

[Torrere]

Holy shit. You just wrote three thousand, five hundred and twenty eight words in what was effectively one post. That is twenty thousand, eight hundred and nine characters and somewhere below 85 paragraphs.

Originally Posted by tw

I spent time in christian college libraries. There are no calculus books.

And, yuck. Was that in Alabama?

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by wolf

Now, folks, how's about this little tidbit ... showed up in my mailbox courtesy of one of my right-wing mailing lists.

Famous Atheist Now Believes in God

He's 81, and he was an athiest.

1) It could very well be end of life desperation,

2) he was an athiest which requires just as much of a blind insistance in an absolute (religion) as any xtian, pagan, etc.

Where's the surprise?

[jinx]

Originally Posted by wolf

Now, folks, how's about this little tidbit ... showed up in my mailbox courtesy of one of my right-wing mailing lists.

Famous Atheist Now Believes in God

Reminds me of a few lines from China Doll;
Yesterday I begged you
before I hit the ground
All I leave behind me
is only what I found

William Camden, an antiquary and scholar who lived between 1551 and 1623, wrote in his Remains Concerning Britain:

Betwixt the stirrup and the ground, Mercy I ask'd; mercy I found.

These lines express the Christian concept that even in the split second as you fall dying from your horse, there is still time to repent, ask for mercy, and be given absolution.

[OnyxCougar]

I won't lie, I didn't even read TW's second set of posts. It's not that important to me.

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by OnyxCougar

I won't lie, I didn't even read TW's second set of posts. It's not that important to me.

It's worth the effort to copy and paste all of that stuff from other places but you won't read something that he actually took the time to compose and type?

[wolf]

Originally Posted by OnyxCougar

I won't lie, I didn't even read TW's second set of posts. It's not that important to me.

I suspect that you fear that it will cause you to question.

TW makes a lot of good, interesting, coherent points (that is my non-christian Christmas gift to you, tw ... nice series of posts).

[Torrere]

Originally Posted by OnyxCougar

There has NEVER been any record of information GAIN in any life form scientists have studied. Mutation and Speciation happen, but these involve LOSS or CORRUPTION of EXISTING material.

However --

Information GAIN certainly does occur. One example is gene duplication: occasionally, when DNA is passed from generation to generation, sequences of DNA are duplicated. Usually the duplicate information immediately follows the original information, but sometimes it moves to an entirely different location. Gene duplication is widely acccepted, and has been examined for over 30 years now. According to this article published in 2001 in Science,

Observations from the genomic databases for several eukaryotic species suggest that duplicate genes arise at a very high rate, on average 0.01 per gene per million years.

This page is a good starting point for looking into gene duplication and explains it reasonably well for the laity.

One of the interesting experiments concerned depriving cells which normally required glucose of glucose and providing them instead with another sugar, xylose.

Cells from the chemostat were analysed and found to have gained multiple copies of genes responsible for an early stage in glucose metabolism. These additional genes occured as tandem repeats, a section of DNA repeated a number of times over in sequence.

In this situation multiple copies were advantageous because the gene responsible for glucose break down was not 100% specific for glucose. The enzyme had a weak side specificity for xylose. By amplifying the gene, that is having multiple copies, enough of the enzyme was produced to metabolise xylose.

In case you require extra special evidence, this paper, entitled "Multiple Duplications of Yeast Hexose Transport Genes in Response to Selection in a Glucose-Limited Environment" describes the preceding experiment (or a verification of it).

We analyzed a population of baker’s yeast that underwent 450 generations of glucose-limited growth. Relative to the strain used as the inoculum, the predominant cell type at the end of this experiment sustains growth at significantly lower steady-state glucose concentrations and
demonstrates markedly enhanced cell yield per mole glucose, significantly enhanced high-affinity glucose transport, and greater relative fitness in pairwise competition.

Not only was information gained [information was duplicated and hence there was more overall information], but the extra information was an improvement over the information existing at the beginning of the experiment.

[Troubleshooter]

If we have all of these works from Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Xenophon, etc., guys who predate Jesus by hundreds of years, why are there no writings directly attributable to his own hand?

[Griff]

Don't we know Aristotle through Plato or am I misundermembering Philo 101.

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by Griff

Don't we know Aristotle through Plato or am I misundermembering Philo 101.

I just picked a few as they fell out of my head.

My question is in regards to them writing and being preserved over a time that goes back before the alleged Jesus and Jesus popping up and leaving nothing.

[Griff]

My point being that we only know the "alleged" Aristotle because Plato wrote his stuff down. There is really no doubt that Jesus existed. Everything else about him is open for debate.

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by Griff

My point being that we only know the "alleged" Aristotle because Plato wrote his stuff down. There is really no doubt that Jesus existed. Everything else about him is open for debate.

Oh, that, yeah, Plato wrote about Socrates. That's why he wasn't in the list.