Sad Christmas Story

Stephen M. Zumbo wrote:
Avian flu is not evolution of one species into another!

It's painfully obvious your understanding of evolution is
flawed and you haven't even bothered to visit the site:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

so it's a waste of everyone's time to discuss the matter
with you until you educate yourself. Have a Happy New Year.

Mij Adyaw wrote:
I know several intelligent folks at Fermi Lab that have PhDs and believe in
ID. Your statement is therefore incorrect and without basis in facts.


Now there's a seriously effective argument from the simpleton top-poster.

Greg

--
"Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late
The battles we fought were long and hard
Just not to be consumed by rock and roll" - The Mekons

Davoud wrote:
John Savard:

I believe a *few* things myself.

I believe that consciousness is a real phenomenon. Partly, that is
because I myself am conscious. If consciousness _were_ an "illusion", as
some have claimed, exactly who is it that is perceiving the illusion?
Not only is it real, but it is something we haven't yet explained; we
don't know how either matter, or energy, or pattern can be conscious.


I would imagine that yours is the majority view. I don't know if
consciousness is real or simulated. Simulated by what? I don't know.
Ourselves, maybe? A simulation simulating itself? I do know that there
are serious thinkers -- not the kind of fringe scientists who are
testifying against evolution -- who wonder if the entire universe might
be an illusion or a simulation. That to me is a surreal idea, and I
love the surreal, in art and in art's imitator, life.


I believe that right and wrong are real pre-existing things, and like
the laws of mathematics and logic, what _is_ right is not something we
can decide for ourselves to suit our own convenience.


I don't think it's that simple. I think that the concept of right and
wrong, moral and immoral, evolved along with homo sapiens because good
behaviour provided an evolutionary advantage. At a certain point in our
evolution, however (quite a few thousand years ago) we achieved a level
of intellectual development at which we could make conscious, often
arbitrary, decisions about right-wrong and moral-immoral to suit our
own purposes. Our judgements on right and wrong are often laughably
wrong (if that makes sense). In 2001 bad people launched a heinous and
cowardly attack on our country, killing over 3,000 people. We went to
war, spent billions, and killed (so far) over 35,000 people ourselves
in the name of fighting these bad people. Yet over 400,000 Americans
are killed by tobacco products each year (CDC, Univ. of Penn.) at a
cost of $150 billion (lost productivity, health care) and another
42,000 (D.O.T.) are killed in automobile accidents. That's 110 9/11's
per annum. Where's the war on tobacco and auto accidents!?


But that's about as far as I go into "religion". Nature, though with
much beauty, is uncaring and unethical. It does not value what is right
for thinking beings to value.


This is the hardest concept for people to grasp. Personally I am
stimulated by the idea that we're on our own, that the universe doesn't
care one whit about us. There is, I think ample evidence for this on
earth, where we believe that the laws of nature are the same as in the
rest of the universe.

Yet I'm not an atheist. Nearly everyone I know who describes himself as
an atheist is an evangelist for atheism with an ax to grind -- is
trying to prove the unprovable as much as the religious fundamentalist.
Stephen Hawking falls into this category, as do some of the denizens of
SAA

My own belief, to the extent that it can be put into words, appeared on
this web page of mine http://www.davidillig.com/roofsthatopen.shtml
[Our Creator is] "...the Great Goddess That Created Everything and then
Promptly Left for Parts Unknown." I wasn't entirely joking. I'm told
that some people call this "Deism," but I'm really not up on all these
terms and their meanings.

Davoud


Thoughtful post. I am frequently surprised by how much we tend to agree
on many fundamentals but disagree on their implications. One of the
nicest aspects of life is that we can never really know, you know? Our
inability to prove ourselves and our existence is one of the reasons why
I suspect that we are more than the sum of our parts.

You oughtta read Voltair, if you haven't already. He came to many of
your conclusions. There's a story (perhaps apocryphal) that an
extraordinarily beautiful sunrise caused him to blurt out a profession
of faith in the creator of such grandeur. He is said to have exclaimed,
"I believe! I believe!... As to Madame and her son, however, that is
another matter."

Warmest,
Chris
(Not a Deist)

You're a brick wall. All the group members should realize that the
requests for data which you creationoid types routinely request and are
duly deluged with (pun intended) will in turn be duly ignored or
discounted regardless of their unassailable scientific qualities.
Why don't you stop posting this on a science news group. Stick to
astronomy and have a Merry Christmas.

Shawn

Shawn,

I enjoy amateur astronomy and reading the observational posts here. I
didn't start this thread. I responded to this thread because I strongly
disagree with the evolutionary viewpoint that is pervasive in science today,
for the specific reasons I have mentioned in previous posts. I especially
strongly disagree with the unproven assumptions at the bottom of the
evolutionary view summed up in the statement, "The present is the key to the
past," quoting the father of uniformatarianism, James Hutton and Charles
Lyell. Is it not true, if the present is NOT the key to the past (which is
what the Bible indicates by saying "God finished the work of
creation...ended all the work He had done." Genesis 2:2-4. and by causing a
worldwide flood which would have catastrophic consequences and totally
change the Earth systems.), then the evolutionary view is NOT unassailable
and should be challenged. Scientists who hold the creationist view are
trying to understand what is seen in the Universe today when matter and
energy are only conserved not created, while admitting to the assumption
that God didn't lie when gave us the story of creation in Genesis 1-3, and
other aspects of science alluded to in Scripture.

JOB 26:7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing.

I'm not an expert, but I'll keep trying to learn and present this view when
I can or think I should. I hope people will respond thoughtfully.

For now, I'm off to work for the day.

Steve

Chris.B writes:

Obsessive bottom-posting about top-posting may lead to being crushed
beneath an avalanche of posts ... namely those to which you responded
by bottom-posting obsessively about top-posting thereby undermining the
whole structure of newsgroup netiquette leading to a fatal collapse!

Greg

Now there's a seriously effective argument from the simpleton top-poster.

G.T. wrote

Now be NICE! ;-)

Stephen M. Zumbo wrote:

snip

which is
what the Bible indicates by saying "God finished the work of
creation...ended all the work He had done." Genesis 2:2-4. and by causing a
worldwide flood which would have catastrophic consequences and totally
change the Earth systems.

snip

God didn't lie when gave us the story of creation in Genesis 1-3, and
other aspects of science alluded to in Scripture.

This statement illustrates the gulf between science and blind faith.
Before making such a statement, a scientist would have to have ample
peer reviewed data to support each of the following:

God exist?
honest/liar?
s/he it?
story of creation?
aspects of science alluded to in scripture???

or a really big grant. :-)

The fundamentalist says it with absolute certainty and no evidence.

JOB 26:7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing.

Can we start calling it the "Holey Bible"? I just don't see how
biblical literalists keep from going insane. Then again maybe they don't.

Shawn

"Stephen M. Zumbo" wrote in
:


wrote in message
oups.com...
Stephen M. Zumbo wrote:
I used to believe in evolution, basically because in grade school and
high
school and college that's all I was taught. Because that's what is
displayed in museums as though it is a proven fact.

It would appear you were taught poorly. To learn what it really is:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

Thanks for the link. I'll take a look at more of it in future, but I
looked at their page on radiometric dating already, and I saw no answer
to the basic unproven assumption that the rate of decay has been
constant or started at a known amount and was never altered.

If the rate of decay was changed to account for a young earth i.e 6000
years versus 4.6 billion years. The decay rate would have had to have
averaged about 766,000 times the current rate. That would have meant the
rate of heat production in the Earth's interior was much too great to
account for the modern temperature profile. Where ever radioactive decay is
observed in the debris of distant type I supernova, the decay goes
completely by the book. How would stars like the Sun have possibly worked
if nuclear reactions were 766,000 times different (and remember that is the
average - no change at all has been noted since radioactivity was
discovered).

As far as evolution goes here are some good resources:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Whales:

http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/

Hominids:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/

Horses:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html

Transitional fossils:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

Tree of life project:

http://www.tolweb.org/tree/
http://www.tolweb.org/tree?group=Life_on_Earth

Klazmon.



SNIP

"Stephen M. Zumbo" wrote in
:


One quick and simple example that's affecting the world: avian flu.



Avian flu is not evolution of one species into another! It is exactly
what I said in my earlier post: variability within a type of living
thing: viruses.



http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

Klazmon.

On Mon, 26 Dec 2005 23:00:31 -0500, Davoud wrote, in
part:

That's 110 9/11's
per annum. Where's the war on tobacco and auto accidents!?

There *is* a war on auto accidents - we fight it as best we can, without
eliminating cars, because they are *useful* to us.

As for tobacco, to compare it to September 11, you would have to count
only deaths from second-hand smoke.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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Good post Steven. This group also needs the Christian perspective.

"Stephen M. Zumbo" wrote in message
...

You're a brick wall. All the group members should realize that the
requests for data which you creationoid types routinely request and are
duly deluged with (pun intended) will in turn be duly ignored or
discounted regardless of their unassailable scientific qualities.
Why don't you stop posting this on a science news group. Stick to
astronomy and have a Merry Christmas.

Shawn

Shawn,

I enjoy amateur astronomy and reading the observational posts here. I
didn't start this thread. I responded to this thread because I strongly
disagree with the evolutionary viewpoint that is pervasive in science
today,
for the specific reasons I have mentioned in previous posts. I especially
strongly disagree with the unproven assumptions at the bottom of the
evolutionary view summed up in the statement, "The present is the key to
the
past," quoting the father of uniformatarianism, James Hutton and Charles
Lyell. Is it not true, if the present is NOT the key to the past (which
is
what the Bible indicates by saying "God finished the work of
creation...ended all the work He had done." Genesis 2:2-4. and by causing
a
worldwide flood which would have catastrophic consequences and totally
change the Earth systems.), then the evolutionary view is NOT unassailable
and should be challenged. Scientists who hold the creationist view are
trying to understand what is seen in the Universe today when matter and
energy are only conserved not created, while admitting to the assumption
that God didn't lie when gave us the story of creation in Genesis 1-3, and
other aspects of science alluded to in Scripture.

JOB 26:7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing.

I'm not an expert, but I'll keep trying to learn and present this view
when
I can or think I should. I hope people will respond thoughtfully.

For now, I'm off to work for the day.

Steve