As a person involved in Molecular Biology I must say that putting out "Evolution does not say humans involved from monekys" is actually not perfectly true. The theory posits that humans and extant monkeys/apes share a common ancestor; however, that common ancestor would look very much like a monkey, and would likely be classified as one as well.

The claims by Creationists about lack of a "missing link" are also untrue. Most paleontologists don't expect to find one "missing link", few enough organisms are ever fossilized as it is. However we do have a range of fossil remains from species that appear to show the progression and divergence of the two lines. Molecular comparisons of DNA sequences is also highly telling as far as linking the two lines together with an evolutionary history.

SideshowRaheem: Nitpicker alert - the moist pellets the hares eat do not go from the stomach to the mouth. They are excreted from the anus and eaten again.

I'm translating from hebrew to english as best as I can as well as using different commentators

but you get the gist of it

Tatsuma: Again, no. And Joseph wasn't the father. G-d supposedly was. Doesn't work that way.

Moshiach isn't supposed to be of divine heritage. Lineage, also, was tracked from the mother in judaism

Fundamental difference in how the theology evolved Tat... see again your getting personal in it.

Step back a bit and just observe how the religions have evolved over the years.. even Judaism has changed quite a bit since the days of Moses, and the supposed coming of the false Mesiah has had a lot to do with that.

And no.. Lineage for the puposes of prophecy (IE who got to be freaking king) was tracked from the Father. Adam to Noah to Abraham to David to Joseph.

IdBeCrazyIf: Joseph was from house david.

According to the NT, he's not only from house David, but his descendance from David went through completely different lines of wildly different lengths.

I still want to know...

Until God created the heavens... God was homeless? You know that would be a tough (life) existence because he had nobody to bum change from... (LIGHTBULB) he created dinosaurs but then quickly realized they never had money so he made man!

(I still like Persnickety's comment)

Creationism does not belong in schools.

/and thats that
//sorry, I am silly

Helpful hint: when your "mathematical or logical argument" contradicts observed reality, chances are there is a mistake in your math or logic.

Glad to see we're in agreement.

I work for the Church of England, so I'm getting a kick out of you people who think you know what you are talking about.

entropic_existence: The theory posits that humans and extant monkeys/apes share a common ancestor; however, that common ancestor would look very much like a monkey, and would likely be classified as one as well.


The first person I thought of is James Brown. I am reasonably sure he has all the answers. If you ask him at the right moment he might even share his wisdom on the subject.

Tatsuma: Lineage, also, was tracked from the mother in judaism

No, ethnicity is tracked from the mother, lineage is tracked form the father. Your mother determines if you are Jewish, your father determines if your are Cohenim.

Sloth_DC: No, ethnicity is tracked from the mother, lineage is tracked form the father. Your mother determines if you are Jewish, your father determines if your are Cohenim.

argh, yeah, I should be paying attention.. I knew that.

I should get some sleep, actually, I haven't slept since yesterday. Too many days without sleep

I think that's my call to leave

Just a point which I've picked up on in skimming over the thread:

Many of you have said that creationism has no place in a Science classroom. But as you can see from the article, in England
The National Curriculum Online website says for science at Key Stage 4 (GCSE level): "Students should be taught how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence (for example Darwin's theory of evolution)."

Classes should also cover "ways in which scientific work may be affected by the context in which it takes place (for example, social, historical, moral, spiritual), and how these contexts may affect whether or not ideas are accepted."

I'd just like everyone to note that teaching people about creationism in science classrooms (and about evolution in religious classrooms) in the UK correlates with--if it doesn't cause, which I think it at the very least plays a part in--pretty much all of the UK accepting evolution.

Occam
As crawlspace just demonstrated, the creationist political movement is based entirely on the idea that Evolutionary science and Fundimentalist Atheism are one and the same. It's not, but clearly there's not a damn thing anyone can say to make them realize that.

Try me.

Explain how the very notions of evolutionary science and atheism DON'T dovetail into one another where creation is concerned. Context is everything, no?

What self-respecting evolution zealot out there is a practicing Christian or professes a belief in God? Remember, I said zealot, you know, like most 20-something farkers. There may be pockets of religious moderates out there, but I'm referring to hard-line evolutionists.

Reveilled I have a feeling that that quote is talking about the schools in the UK that are public but actually run by the church. They have a mix of public schools there between the two, the ones run by the church do teach creationism in the school but seperate. Not 100% sure though.

Smarshmallow: The correct analogy would be to say that there are a million monkeys, working for billions of years, and every time that they create a single working sentence, it's saved. New changes are only kept if those changes add to some storyline, with working grammar, etc. The end product would be a book, some book.

This is true.

As an interesting tidbit, the "Shakespeare monkey typewriter experiment" or whatever the hell it's called acheived 24 letters from "The Second Part of King Henry IV" after 2.7*10^39 monkey-years.

Relatively short passage. Translating that from 26 possible letters to 2 base pairs (aren't there only 2 base pairs?) that's 244,831,349 "monkey-years" for a particular base pair sequence 24 pairs long. Granted, things would progress quicker than one monkey tapping one key every second.

Now, I have absolutely no idea what percentage of base pair sequences are likely to happen, and what percentage of base pair sequences in any given species in any given chromosome in any given position are conducive to life... and what percentage of those sequences are conducive to life that can reproduce, and what percentage of those sequences are conducive to life that survives. I believe that the presence of base pair sequences on a particular chromosome produces different results from the same base pair on a different chromosome... and of course you have to count position within a chromosome, order with other sequences within a chromosome, and of course genes are of all sorts of different lenghts... *head spins*

It's obscenely more complicated (albeit in different ways) than typing out Shakespeare.

Aaaaanyway. The point of this stupid example I think can even be appreciated by atheists. Sure, we all know life is really complex but I don't think most people appreciate just how complex things are.

crawlspace: What self-respecting evolution zealot out there is a practicing Christian or professes a belief in God? Remember, I said zealot, you know, like most 20-something farkers. There may be pockets of religious moderates out there, but I'm referring to hard-line evolutionists.

As far as scientists go the two are completely seperate. There are evolutionary biologists out there who believe in God. They accept the theory of evolution but that doesn't impact their religious convictions. The Only opposition between evolution and religion is concernign strict and literal interpretations of the creation as laid out in genesis.

FEAR ME!

crawlspace: What self-respecting evolution zealot out there is a practicing Christian or professes a belief in God?

well. there's me.
zealotry is a relative term, but i am a scientist, and an Xtian, all wrapped into one sexy body.

wjllope: zealotry is a relative term, but i am a scientist, and an Xtian, all wrapped into one sexy body.

*clicks on profile*
*clicks on website in profile*
*disappointed*

elchip: Sure, we all know life is really complex but I don't think most people appreciate just how complex things are.

We're with you to that point - but complexity does not imply a creator. In fact, it argues against it - a properly designed product is always simpler than an undesigned product. In short, complexity is an argument against Creation.

crawlspace
What self-respecting evolution zealot out there is a practicing Christian or professes a belief in God? Remember, I said zealot, you know, like most 20-something farkers. There may be pockets of religious moderates out there, but I'm referring to hard-line evolutionists.

Ken Miller.

elchip: *disappointed*

i said my body - i have a face only my mama loves. ;-)

elchip: Relatively short passage. Translating that from 26 possible letters to 2 base pairs (aren't there only 2 base pairs?) that's 244,831,349 "monkey-years" for a particular base pair sequence 24 pairs long. Granted, things would progress quicker than one monkey tapping one key every second.

There may be only two pairing combinations among the four bases but you only look at one strand of DNA as coding, thus there are four possible bases you can work with as far as your alphabet goes. We use base pairs as a unit of measure mostly in Molecular Biology in order to give how long a strand of double stranded DNA is. Of course we also use it when refering to single stranged DNA and RNA too out of habit even though there are no base pairs in single stranded nucleotide sequences.

wjllope: i said my body - i have a face only my mama loves. ;-)


I think he was hoping you were a farkette.

Sloth_DC: We're with you to that point - but complexity does not imply a creator. In fact, it argues against it - a properly designed product is always simpler than an undesigned product. In short, complexity is an argument against Creation.

Yup.

FlashHarry: One's based on observed scientific principles and one is based on superstition. By that logic, the theory that the universe was shat out of the anus of a giant toad should be taught right alongside. It's only fair, after all...

That's how the good ole FSM originated.

Mike_Bolton
FEAR ME!

Ha! Because, you know, people are arrested for praying all the time. You just never hear about it because of the liberal media conspiracy.

entropic_existence: I think he was hoping you were a farkette.

Is it wrong of me to automatically click on the profile of Farkers who I suspect as being Farkettes, to evaluate their hotness?

Is it even wronger since I'm not single?

elchip: Is it wrong of me to automatically click on the profile of Farkers who I suspect as being Farkettes, to evaluate their hotness?

Is it even wronger since I'm not single?

I wasn't implying it was wrong :) I did the same thing

entropic_existence: I have a feeling that that quote is talking about the schools in the UK that are public but actually run by the church. They have a mix of public schools there between the two, the ones run by the church do teach creationism in the school but seperate. Not 100% sure though.

The UK has a very different perspective on seperation of Church and state, and secular education. I'm not sure what the specific differences are, or what common practice is. I do know they use Church run schools for primary education in areas where there are no 'secularized' schools. You don't get the same level of seperation that you do over here. The Church in England is a 'state' church. How far that extends into goverment/civic life - I'm not sure of. Whoever the monarch is, is the 'defender of the faith', and the Arbhbishop of Canterbury is the leader of the Church in England. In Scotland - you get the Church of Scotland. I think the Welsh did away with their own church a while ago.

elchip: Is it wrong of me to automatically click on the profile of Farkers who I suspect as being Farkettes,

you guys should've seen me in yesterday's asymmetric breast thread. the web counters were spinning off their rockers i tells ya

entropic_existence: I have a feeling that that quote is talking about the schools in the UK that are public but actually run by the church. They have a mix of public schools there between the two, the ones run by the church do teach creationism in the school but seperate. Not 100% sure though.

Nope. It's talking about the GCSE course in all schools in England. National Curriculum and all that. We get similar stuff in Scotland in our science classes.

Remember kids, early Israeli religion (what many religions, like Christianity, stems from) was not monotheistic but was polytheistic and henotheistic. (Yahweh and Asherah, Mazdaism and Zarathustrianism, etc)

I dunno what the point of me typing that was....

improvius: Ha! Because, you know, people are arrested for praying all the time. You just never hear about it because of the liberal media conspiracy.

Persecution:


Not Persecution:

faethe: The UK has a very different perspective on seperation of Church and state, and secular education. I'm not sure what the specific differences are, or what common practice is. I do know they use Church run schools for primary education in areas where there are no 'secularized' schools. You don't get the same level of seperation that you do over here. The Church in England is a 'state' church. How far that extends into goverment/civic life - I'm not sure of. Whoever the monarch is, is the 'defender of the faith', and the Arbhbishop of Canterbury is the leader of the Church in England. In Scotland - you get the Church of Scotland. I think the Welsh did away with their own church a while ago.

Yea, I don't fit into the "over here" either. I'm canadian and our seperation is by habit and convention but isn't mandated by our constitution. No state Church like the Church of England but follow a similar guidelines which I think has basically become that religion is personal, keep it out of politics and policy as much as possible.

crawlspace: What self-respecting evolution zealot out there is a practicing Christian or professes a belief in God?

Does this guy count?

Bevets!!! Sign my shirt!

Honestly, I think Bevets may just be a little on the extreme side, but I'll be damned if I don't jump into every one of these threads just to see if he shows up.

I want to state upfront that I think establishments are at fault for all the problems in this argument. Established structures and organizations of religion have loyalties to the "facts" of the world as they see it. The scientific community has a built in method by which it can grow and change (dare I say evolve) as the observations change. Some religious thinkers have learned from this example and willingly modify their understanding of their god's reality as is pragmatically necessary.
I by no means ascribe to any religious doctrine, but ill present a possible compromise that is actually a compromise.
What if: Many years ago, some thinker had a flash of thought in which he was presented with a view of his reality being created or engineered by a force/god/underlying logical construct. He immediately tried to describe this creation as best he could, using the intellectual components afforded to his currently primitive mind. "Underlying logical construct" became anthropomorphized as "God". Flash foreword in time to the writing of the testaments in the beginning sounds like a good place to start, god that indescribable base component of logic created engineered/set into motion yadda yadda the heavens space and its stuff and the earth this hunk of iron, nickel, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc etc
You describe your world in terms of what you can understand. It seems logical enough to conclude that if the earth IS, then it was CREATED. It seems also logical to say that if it was created, there was a creator. I personally believe that this god (creator) character could just as easily be the cosmos itself, not a human-esque entity that is independent of the cosmos. Evolution is not incompatible with the creationist text, only with the creationists belief of what that text means. God as I see it is the nursery in which the cosmos is. (and not that it is important to this discussion; I believe that the god of reality is really best represented as logic itself, not the logic we use, but a greater logic that has our logic as a component).
The idea that life is so complex that it needed some kind of being to guide it is an exercise in narrow thinking. Consider that the being (logic) that guided evolution was the rules of physics/chemistry/probability and not a human like consciousness and you can maybe see how science IS creationism, just not the established paradigm of what creationism is. The big problem here is that people want science to be wrong and religion to be right, or vice versa.
As for the stuff in the bible about god speaking to people, if god is logic, then perhaps the stuff people attribute to god is really the logical result of chemical and physical conditions present in their brains. The conclusions may be born of logical processes, but are by no means required to be logical themselves.

In short, the conflict is not between science and creation, it is between the Scientific establishment and Creationist establishments.
/tried to keep it short
//forgive me if I jump around too much
///blames organized religion for everything wrong with the world

2006-03-21 02:47:58 PM improvius

Mike_Bolton
FEAR ME!

Ha! Because, you know, people are arrested for praying all the time. You just never hear about it because of the liberal media conspiracy.

I know! Ever since the war on christmas, they've been dissapearing by the groves!

/can only wish

FlashHarry
By that logic, the theory that the universe was shat out of the anus of a giant toad should be taught right alongside. It's only fair, after all...

No no... carried on the back of a giant tortoise, remember?

Until we put a stop to this attitude that religious beliefs deserve to be mollycoddled, we'll never get rid of the creationists.

I mean, I'm supposed to be respectful of people who hold the belief that a magic superguy in the clouds loves me and wants me to worship him and his son or else I go to Hell forever, yet ask those same believers to check their other ridiculous beliefs at the schoolroom door?

If an idea is true, than it should stand up to rigorous, intellectually honest scrutiny. If you can't defend your religious beliefs -- if you cry "Christian-bashing!" or "persecution!" every time someone points out the primitiveness and barbarity of the Christian dogma -- then you have no business demanding that evolution or natural selection or any other scientific concept go through a gauntlet of testability that your own beliefs cannot withstand.

entropic_existence: Yea, I don't fit into the "over here" either. I'm canadian and our seperation is by habit and convention but isn't mandated by our constitution. No state Church like the Church of England but follow a similar guidelines which I think has basically become that religion is personal, keep it out of politics and policy as much as possible.


That's what I was always taught in the Anglican church. Its rude to impose your religion on peoples you don't know because it assumes they have no religion, or philosophy of their own. Plus its two seperate things. I would argue that most Chistians don't like goverment in their religion or religion in their goverment. Having one thing involved in the other means one can influence the other, and that's just not 'on'. Well, that appears to be the case down here anyway. Its become such a bunch of nonsense I'm not sure if the issue of personal responsibility is even part of the debate anymore. I think it might be because we've only been at this whole "United States' thing for about 275 years and haven't had all the fun historical shiat most other countries have.

It's actually the second time this week I have heard from this guy, the first time was in the forward to this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310265746/qid=1139009129/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/1 04-3275259-8109532?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

He knows what's goin down

Razorwolf: No no... carried on the back of a giant tortoise, remember?

turtles. but what is that turtle standing on? its turtles all the way down.

RAmen.

faethe: The UK has a very different perspective on seperation of Church and state, and secular education. I'm not sure what the specific differences are, or what common practice is. I do know they use Church run schools for primary education in areas where there are no 'secularized' schools. You don't get the same level of seperation that you do over here. The Church in England is a 'state' church. How far that extends into goverment/civic life - I'm not sure of. Whoever the monarch is, is the 'defender of the faith', and the Arbhbishop of Canterbury is the leader of the Church in England. In Scotland - you get the Church of Scotland. I think the Welsh did away with their own church a while ago.

It doesn't go far into civic life. We have some bishops in parliament, but religion is an extremely private issue in British government, and in the words of one of the government's spin doctors "we don't do God". Recently, when talking about the war in Iraq, Tony Blair said that ultimately his concious would judge him "and, you know, umm, if you, believe in a higher power, then, err, god will judge me too." Paraphrased, of course, but it was said with unbelieveable difficulty and reluctance, upon which the media practically exploded because he said the "g"-word. Every news outlet in the country turned into The Sun for a day or two.

faethe: Its rude to impose your religion on peoples you don't know because it assumes they have no religion, or philosophy of their own.

you dumb heathen.
there's a special handshake. if you don't use it, they go missionary on you until you're saved.

;-)