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Wind In My Hair
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Post by Wind In My Hair » Thu, 10 Nov 2005 3:09 pm

sapphire wrote:Hey now, wait a minute! You all got your fair share of yakking. If I remembercorrectly, I was later being accused of being too quiet! Get a little honest here and people pounce on ya. Not fair! :(
in sapphire's defence, i have never in my life heard even one teeny weeny squeak out of her! :P :lol:

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Post by sapphire » Thu, 10 Nov 2005 3:32 pm

Ha ha, you're on a roll, aren't you? Cheeky one!
It's not getting any smarter out there. You have to come to terms with stupidity, and make it work for you.

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Post by Wind In My Hair » Thu, 10 Nov 2005 4:48 pm

sapphire wrote:Ha ha, you're on a roll, aren't you? Cheeky one!
who me? :-#

well stop winking at me then! it brings the cheek out of me... :P

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Post by Bubbles » Thu, 10 Nov 2005 6:29 pm

Hi MHB

Sorry hon, got it wrong I guess. I skimmed and got the quick impression that because you said 'no accounts yet for gaps in the fossil record' or words to that effect that you were giving room to the theory.

Apologies.

All I say is that this is the deathknell of scientific advancement for nations.

Sure, teach all the different kinds of religion, or beliefs you want, but if science is held back then we do ourselves no favours.

Do not crossover beliefs from one discipline to another if those beliefs lead to the stagnation and death of the other.

Yes, there should be 'curbs' to experimentation in scientific advance, but we have to keep questing, just to know what's out there.

It may very well be God at the end of it, but if that is the case surely He would have wanted us to find him at the end of the search, using the magnificent brains He gave us, and not be stopped a short way down the line by the views of the minority?

Yes, yes, now peeps will say I bend the subject to use it to how I would like the outcome to be, but isn't that what everyone does? Another manifest fact that God gave us reasoning brains.

Anyway Mary, sorry about that. Obviously I was given a brain which needs to quieten and read ALL the facts, not just pop off a line here and there!

Bubbs.
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Post by Mary Hatch Bailey » Thu, 10 Nov 2005 6:46 pm

Bubbles wrote:Hi MHB

Sorry hon, got it wrong I guess. I skimmed and got the quick impression that because you said 'no accounts yet for gaps in the fossil record' or words to that effect that you were giving room to the theory.

Apologies.

All I say is that this is the deathknell of scientific advancement for nations.

Sure, teach all the different kinds of religion, or beliefs you want, but if science is held back then we do ourselves no favours.

Do not crossover beliefs from one discipline to another if those beliefs lead to the stagnation and death of the other.

Yes, there should be 'curbs' to experimentation in scientific advance, but we have to keep questing, just to know what's out there.

It may very well be God at the end of it, but if that is the case surely He would have wanted us to find him at the end of the search, using the magnificent brains He gave us, and not be stopped a short way down the line by the views of the minority?

Yes, yes, now peeps will say I bend the subject to use it to how I would like the outcome to be, but isn't that what everyone does? Another manifest fact that God gave us reasoning brains.

Anyway Mary, sorry about that. Obviously I was given a brain which needs to quieten and read ALL the facts, not just pop off a line here and there!

Bubbs.
Thanks Bubbs, always the Lady :)

Here's the thing, keeping stem cell research and such out of it for a while -- evolution is being taught for the first time in many American schools. That is a good thing. I don't think it's fair to assume scientific research will come to a grinding halt, and please put it in perspective -- you are hearing about these cases because they are news worthy, therefore unusual.

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Post by Bubbles » Thu, 10 Nov 2005 7:01 pm

Yes Mary, it's true, we only hear the tip of the iceberg because, as you say, it's newsworthy.

However, just because it's still a novelty subject and therefore gets much press space does not mean that the subject itself is not worthy of our condemnation, if that is what we deem to be the case.

It is so emotive a subject, and such an important one, that this will catch fire very quickly and you'll get people who will jump onto the bandwagon, pushing this to places it should not quickly go.

Before long this will be massively followed and different states will be legislating right, left and centre, I bet you.

Religious movements in general are much more to the fore in the US than say, Europe, so you have powerful sides to the question.

Whether this leads the world to believe we are Godless in Europe, I'm not sure, but the Church, in any shape or form has always held great sway over it's followers, and in the US it's seeing a great revival, so yes, this matter could very well be the cause of great change to different areas of secular life if the majority of lawmakers within it decide to follow one way of thinking.


It just needs lengthy discussion of the calm kind is all I think.

Bubbs.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas.

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Interesting

Post by ringo100 » Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:00 pm

As for gaps in evolution, I don't believe there is a credible scientist that will argue against evolution or even neo-Darwinism. I have searched but I can’t find a scientific paper that even questions the main principles.

Maybe the belief in God/Gods and evolution are not mutually exclusive but certainly, the belief in evolution and not the belief in neo-Darwinism is mutually exclusive.

Whether at some point in time a God/Gods pushed the button, we do not know.

What we do know is that from within the 1st second of the big bang, there is no need for a God/Gods and God/Gods have seemingly played no further part.

We know God/Gods did not create the Earth, we know it/they did not create humans. Maybe God/Gods triggered the big bang; but that’s something we’ll probably never know.

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Catholic church links

Post by ringo100 » Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:41 pm

Thanks for the links on the Catholic Church's views on evolution and Darwin. But, please tell me this is not the official view of the Church because then I really would say the Catholic Church and Science are directly opposed.

It was very interesting and very good at quoting out of context and picking small obscure holes in Darwinism. A bit like the smoking industry who could always dig up an 85 year old, 100 a day smoker as evidence that smoking does not cause lung cancer.

The best bit was he kept saying the Church believes in evolution but not in natural selection, but failed to say the mechanism of how their “evolution”

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Re: Interesting

Post by Mary Hatch Bailey » Fri, 11 Nov 2005 8:12 am

ringo100 wrote:What we do know is that from within the 1st second of the big bang, there is no need for a God/Gods and God/Gods have seemingly played no further part.

We know God/Gods did not create the Earth, we know it/they did not create humans. Maybe God/Gods triggered the big bang; but that’s something we’ll probably never know.
Aahhh, Ringo, this makes me sad, this definitive language. Do you have any concept at all at sheer statistical inprobabilities that have brought you to this place, here and now?

We may know the mechanics of how the universe was created, but this -- in my mind -- could never preclude the idea of a divine spark. How else can you explain that as humans we are 99% identical to chimpanzees?

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Post by T2K » Fri, 11 Nov 2005 2:51 pm

After teaching us all about evolution, natural selection, etc I remember my 7th grade science teacher (a very devout Baptist) telling us not to worry, that these were just the methods god chose to make the world. Sounded fishy then, sounds even more so now. But, I've never been religious at all. Still, if that's what they want to believe then fine.

The real nutjobs can't accept even that though because they have calculate the age of the earth from the bible - at about 7000 years or something like that!

I notice in news stories in the US how often people use religious references. Things like "but God had other plans for me I guess" when they have a close call with death or "he's in a better place now, the Lord called him home" when someone dies. I guess when you have such a religious country, these kind of educational debates are bound to happen, people take these things VERY seriously.

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We are all just chimps

Post by ringo100 » Fri, 11 Nov 2005 6:01 pm

I agree we are 99% the same as a chimp, but we also have 80%+ of the same genes as a piece of grass.

This is a statistic that is thrown around as if to put down evolution when in fact it supports Neo-Darwinism's gradual change concept. In fact, Chimps are highly intelligent, can master language, form complex social groups and can produce basic tools; they are happy, sad, jealous, inquisitive. In fact when you compare the similarities between a chimp a human and another life form say a tulip, I’m surprised we are only 99% the same.

One point on the fossil record as being a hole in Darwinism, this is total: upside-down; back to front logic. The fossil record may not categorically prove neo-Darwinism but it does not at all, in anyway, disprove it.

If we are logical and think about the total number of organisms that have lived on earth since the beginning of life, maybe a 10 trillion trillion (probably many, many more than this) now think of the fossil record discovered to date < 1 billion (probably not more than a million). So of the organisms that have lived on earth we have a fossil record of say 0.000000000000001% of them. Is it any wonder that we haven’t found a complete step by-step transition from one species to another. The limited fossil record available gives huge support to evolution and to Darwinism.

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Re: We are all just chimps

Post by Wind In My Hair » Fri, 11 Nov 2005 6:04 pm

ringo100 wrote:The fossil record may not categorically prove neo-Darwinism but it does not at all, in anyway, disprove it.
and this is something i find hard to understand about anti-religionists. by that same logic, science may not categorically prove god but it does not at all, in any way, disprove it/him/her.

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improbable outcomes

Post by ringo100 » Fri, 11 Nov 2005 6:13 pm

The statistical improbabilities of what? Of life, humans? With billions and billions of suns and even more planets, it is probable that life and other intelligent creates inhabit millions of other planets.

It is not improbable at all; I think given the right building blocks: a planet, not too hot, not too cold, water and 6 billion years, I could have a good crack at creating life. And once started and left alone for say 3 billion years those basic survival machines would turn into big intelligent survival machines that would have some notion that they are special and the only one out there.

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Post by Bubbles » Fri, 11 Nov 2005 6:14 pm

It's that 1% which makes us the 'glorious' beings we are. Whoever or whatever made it, let's be glad.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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Post by Strong Eagle » Fri, 11 Nov 2005 7:24 pm

I like the Buddhist perspective. It's not that we were created by God, it is that we ARE God... we are a manifestation of the unmanifested.

Personally, I think that evolution is incomplete. It does a great job explaining the natural selection part of things, a less good job of the evolutionary changes that have occurred so that they could be naturally selected.

So, you might say that I think there is something larger (the unmanifested, Spirit... whatever you wish to call it) that is us and us it... there is only the one... in physical form and unmanifested. And from this perspective, I believe something larger guides the process... we guide the process... we being every physical thing.

But the problem with intelligent design is that some Christians want to use the idea to prove up their version of a blue eyed, bearded, "big guy" sitting in a throne, sending down pronouncements via clay tablets and "sons".

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