well, debates are contentious by nature and are to create an artificial weight one way or another though.

the engenuous premise is constraining.

perhaps the elbow room sought is a distraction.

Although, discredtiting the weight of an arguement always leads to another.....

Here, pithy, pithy, pithy,,, wherefore art thou O' Pithy?


I saw a picture of a bird with the head of a dog last night.

I think I was having a nightmare...not sure.

...probably another war in JSH World

Eljay,

When it looks like a dead rat, smells like a dead rat, and taste like a dead rat, it still doesn't absolutely imply that it IS a dead rat, but chances are darn good that it is.

The whole evolution vs creation 'rat', is a total fabrication of 'fundamentallist' source. It is their 'strawman' of choice!!!

Ironically, from a fundamental standpoint, evolution has nothing to do with religion. There is 'NO LINK', as the fundamentalists would say in their invented and self-referential world of coded language.

The scientific community has not an iota of 'applied attention', or 'applied concern' around anything religious.

And that is important to state and acknowledge. Last time I checked, I didn't see anything scientific addressing biblical contradictions of scientific 'notions'. This kind of dishonest mental convolutions are not of the sceintific domain. Science has nothing to with religion whatsoever, and religion should likewise leave the field of science alone.

But reality is not quite as simple as that.

Throughout the history of religions, the tug of war between 'fundamental' and 'liberal' factions has raged, as though it were in the DNA of religious doctrine and dogma.

As a simple but effective picture of the two clans, Sophists in one period, and Pharisees in another, were the 'fundies' of the day, while Socrates and Jesus were the liberals of those respective periods. Of course, as it has been throughout religious history, both Socrates and Jesus were 'judged' and 'condemented' as heretics for what was 'judged' as contradictory views to the 'learned' doctrine of the day.

In spite of their legendary obstusiveness, even 'Sophists' and 'Pharisees' have EVOLVED', questionnably so, but evolved nonetheless.

Today, the 'fundies' have their origins in the Protestant/Separatist Church. More than any other religious movement, the current day versions of 'old time fundies', are Prostestant fundamentalists, with almost as many doctines as there are individual practicing fundamentalism.

The deeply engrained 'separating' and 'protesting' reflexes are the distinctive trademarks of current day 'fundies': "... I will protest everything which doesn't agree with my interpretation of the 'WORD', and if that is not enough, I will separate myself from the contradicting human source...", you can almost hear their circular mantra.

They will separate themselves from any theology, church doctrine, Pope (of course), bishops, priests, etc. They are each charged with deriving their own personnal 'theology' from reading a book, which their dogma says, is the word of God, and is ,ERROR FREE'.

Given this delusional and explosive dogmatic cocktail, the beginning of the century saw the accidental birth of what was to become one of the 'fundies' most 'obsessive-compulsive' delusional modern battle, summed-up in 5 seemingly dangerous, life threatening words to them: THE ORIGINS OF THE SPECIES!!!

I kow, I know, '... how can 'the origins of the species' constitute a threath to anyone...?', I hear some off you asking.

It can't!!!

The origins of the species, much like innumerable other questions raised by human beings since the beginning of times, whether they be from a philosophical, scientific, or plain healthy curiosity angle, doesn't and couldn't threaten anyone.

Raising questions, and exploring life for partial answers and knowledge, has never been in the past, and will never be in the future, a life threatening activity, quite to the contrary, it is life giving.

Unless...

... one subscribes to a parrallel endoctrination, which in a most convoluted and perverse (in the sense of distorted) manner, orders one to 'destroy' anyone whom, or anything which contradicts one's personal interpretation of the one's personnal belief that the word of a book is one's TRUTH, but more over, THE ONLY TRUTH!!!

For this very special category of US protestantism fundamentalist believers, if anything in the universe were to reveal their 'word for word reality' of the bible, for the myth that it is, they have it, that their lives would in fact be shattered. Bible inerrancy, and the manner in which religious fundamentalists have made it their sole mission in life is the only 'fundamental' question in this otherwise false debate.

So Eljay, the reason I and other non-fundamentalist independent thinkers, whether devout Christians, whether from other religions or faiths, or atheists, are not answering the questions you and your friends are concertingly asking (not very subtle) in the past several posts, is that it is a false (dishonest) question, inside a false (dishonest) debate, based on a false (dishonest) founding premise.

Faith is faith. Fact is fact.

Faith has nothing to do with fact, and fact has nothing to do with faith. And that way it is!!!

It doesn't matter how many more centuries 'fundies' keep imposing this (word for word) 'bible inerrancy' fallacious incestuous mental confusion on the world, it will always remain a fallacious foundation and premise.

Dress a pig in a 'tux' as much as you will, it will always be a pig.

God and faith, are something very distinct from fundamentalist doctrine. US Protestant Fundamentalism is a severe and dangerous thorn in the side of the Christian world in particular and the world in general.

well all i want to know is why it takes three threads to say:if you believe the theory of evolution then you are going to hell?
God gave us brains and the tools to use them.i doubt he would want us to sit around and not use them,not question,not wonder.
i believe evolution and God can exist hand in hand.Do you actually think the ancient folk who wrote the bible had any concept of millions of years?do you think any of them were actually there at the beginning?where was the written documentation of the Creation derived from?inquiring minds would like to know.

Hell is not the destination for opinions and positions in a debate of polarities and theoretical inquisitions.

Nor is heaven excluded from enquiring minds that benefit from the lessons learned from ancestors.

Heaven and Hell are destinations for spiritual equities and iniquitties, respectively.

Where the soul finds itself, there it is.

Very Pirandellan, don't you think?


Luigi Pirandello is an oft overlooked inquisitve contemporary of Charles Darwin and Dwight Moody.

Although, continents apart, they did not all agree, either.


OOPS! I did it again....

no actually they can't you either believe that you evolved from a tadpole or you believe that God the Creator created all. The reason behind this is that if evolution were true then God would be a lie, jesus, Moses, John Paul....all of it......

Well once again.......you have read the Bible...there was only one flood and God promised Noah that he would never do that again.......It was a covenant with Noah never to broken as promised by God.....

i would love to see the from a tadpole theory..a wee bit of over simplification...

I'm on your boat. it floats

I stll like my boards, though.

me too!!!

anybody?

VOILA!!!!!

I love your latest post. Definitive in your observations, but alarming to me as to what and whom you believe.

Please take a moment in your leisure to click on the number of my post as found on my avatar here in this reply and please yourself to peruse my deseminate offering of the partial quote of Genesis 6: 1-4. and let me know if it collides with your conclusions.

I'm quite concerned that you may be playing both sides of the fence as a hedge.

If not, it appears so and is very unclear still as to what or whom you believe and what the source of your beliefs really is or are or was originally.

I'm overwhelmed with this sudden concern some of you have for the exact nature of my personnal beliefs.

'feral', 'winnie', 'eljay', and 'wouldee', as if on cue, are all asking the same question.

Did JSH provide you people with a conference room to share 'fundie game plan and tactics'???

Maybe I should just be honored to have been elected the 'fundie target du jour', but instead, I find your juvenile fascist approach somewhat disconcerting.

If after everything I have posted in the past 8 months, you pretend to be 'alarmed', or puzzled as to the individual I am, and the principles and values which inspire me, there is nothing I could add here that could dissipate your show of bad faith.

Shake yourselves up 'team fundie', I love you all, but you've been losing all credibility lately. And that's a shame!

I can only speak to my own interest, my friend, and that is to know you better.




by the way, I've been here at JSH for 7 weeks and only recently met your acquaintance, and that meeting too was harsh for me to embrace.

VOILA!!!

I cannot help but think that most of the time you are on a mission to define the project entitled,

" The Apologetics of Voileazur "

and in so doing, have engendered your own skepticism of your teachings.


We may be the mirror which displays the image that you project.

This just in:
+++++
"Open Science Thread
by DarkSyde
Sat Nov 24, 2007 at 04:06:45 AM PST

You remember that short, powerful, incredibly moving animation called The Inner Life of a Cell? Well, turns out the Creationist Lobby liked it also. So guess what they did? According to ERV who tells me she has investigated this ugly episode complete with plants in the audience, someone from the Discovery Institute got a hold of the video, stripped the original credits, relabeled it with creationist propaganda, and began showing it at creationist revival meetings as if it were their own work. She has posted what is purported to be the original and plagiarized versions side by side:

It is one thing to correct Michael Behe (some structure guy) with zero HIV-1 research experience on HIV-1 evolution. But considering the sheer number of DI 'fellows' who are lawyers, and the fact I’m just a biology student with zero experience in law... I found it rather strange that I caught something the DI lawyers evidently had no problem with ...see the rest

I have no doubt some people could watch that video and see the handiwork of God or Allah or Buddha, etc. Others such as myself might interpret it as an elegant testimony to the power of unguided natural selection operating over trillions of generations. No matter what one’s personal religious beliefs or doubts, we all might be so moved with the beauty captured therein that tears well up in our eyes. But whether you’re a young earth biblical literalist, an old earth creationist, a theistic evolutionist, or a secular skeptic, there is one thing we can all agree on: Stealing is wrong and those who steal are to be punished. It remains to be seen how the grassroots creationist movement will punish the thieves in their midst.""
++++++++

This text came from www.dailykos.com

+++++++


-Kerry O.

Thanks for sharing that Kerry.

There is no excuse for plaigerizing (sic) someones body of work and trying to share it in any compromised way.

It cheapens even the message and dilutes its value.

Glad you brought it up.

I, for one, am disgusted by the very same thing.

speaking of cells heres some MORE proof of evolution,: germs becoming tolerant to the vaccines we r killing them with , of course im not sure feralcat n friends have accepted the whole "germs cause disease" thing,

From another thread was this quote


I found this on http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1420897

"What is a population bottleneck?
A population bottleneck is a severe reduction in population size for any given species which reduces the genetic diversity of that species.
Now given the amount of time human beings have existed on this planet there should be a reasonably wide range of genetic variation, yet human DNA is remarkably uniform throughout the world. Hence it is concluded that at some point in the past, the human species suffered its own population bottleneck, a dramatic decline in population caused by some unspecified natural disaster.1
For example, Lynn Jorde and Henry Harpending 2 from the University of Utah have studied the patterns of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) within the human population and have concluded that it is consistent with a dramatic reduction in population size at some point in our past, which they calculate occurred roughly 70-80,000 years ago when the human population was reduced to as few as 5 or 10,000 individuals.
Volcanoes and supervolcanoes
A normal volcano is formed by a column of magma rising from deep within the Earth, erupting on the surface and hardening in layers down the sides, forming the familiar cone-shaped mountain.
A supervolcano is formed when the magma, instead of breaking through the surface, pools beneath the surface melting the crust to form more magma and forms a depression in the ground. A vast reservoir of molten rock is formed, trapping volcanic gases which gradually build up colossal pressures over thousands of years. When supervolcanoes erupt they do so on a grand scale; on the volcanic explosivity index that goes from one to eight, they rate the full eight.
The Toba eruption
Now this is all theory, as no living human has ever witnessed a supervolcanic eruption, but it is believed that the last supervolcano to erupt was at Toba in Sumatra, the biggest volcanic eruption the world had ever seen, 10,000 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption, blowing a big 100 kilometres by 60 kilometres hole in the earth that is now known as Lake Toba.
It blasted vast clouds of ash across the world and released a large quantity of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. The global temperature dropped by a full five degrees centigrades, sufficient to cause the summers to freeze in Europe and to create a global volcanic winter (cf nuclear winter).
And when did this happen? 74,000 years ago, right within the 70 to 80,000 year time frame that messrs Jorde and Harpending believe that the human population bottleneck occured.
Hence the conclusion; around 74,000 years ago Toba erupted and created a volcanic winter so severe that it almost wiped out the entire human population on the planet. As it was humankind was reduced to a mere 5 or 10,000 souls and only just about managed to cling onto life."

Well here's something intersting: (just theory, but based of a few actual documented pieces of scientific information)

http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleo/bottleneck.html

The "Weak Garden of Eden" model for the origin and dispersal of modern humans posits a spread around 100,000 years ago followed by population bottlenecks. Then, around 50,000 years ago, a dramatic growth occurred in genetically isolated, small populations. In a 1998 article, Stanley Ambrose proposed an alternative hypothesis—a volcanic winter scenario—to explain recent human differentiation. The bottleneck was caused by a volcanic winter resulting from the super-eruption of Toba in Sumatra. If Ambrose's hypothesis is correct, modern human variations differentiated abruptly through founder effect, genetic drift, and adaptation to local environments after around 70,000 years ago.
Ambrose points out that the Out of Africa dispersal date of around 100,000 years ago fits the generally warm, humid last interglacial period, 130 -74,000 years ago. An impressive body of paleontological evidence shows an Afro-Arabian biotic community expanded northward during this period. Several such multi-species dispersals out of Africa have occurred during previous interglacial phases. He considers the variants of the Replacement model to be more accurate and realistic than the Multiregional models.
The number of DNA mutations within a population increases temporally. When a population has passed through a bottleneck, the mutation distribution evidences the bottleneck. DNA studies have identified a significant bottleneck (or bottlenecks) during the last glacial period.
The Multiple Dispersals model proposes a population bottleneck occurred when cold, dry climates isolated populations in Africa. Additional bottlenecks occurred through physical bottlenecks such as the Sinai Peninsula. The first dispersal of anatomically modern humans, to the Levant around 100,000 year ago, is evidenced by early modern human skeletons in the Near East. According to Ambrose, this first dispersal apparently failed to permanently establish modern humans outside of Africa. Genetic evidence shows that non-African populations can be divided into southern Australasian and northern Eurasian populations that divided 50-75,000 years ago.
In contrast, Ambrose's model proposes a scenario of a globally synchronous bottleneck. If bottlenecks were caused by the cold climate, duration was approximately 10,000 years with release 60,000 years ago. If the eruption of Toba alone caused the bottleneck, then release may have followed within a few decades of the volcanic winter 71,000 years ago, or the bottleneck could have lasted 1000 years, during the coldest portion of the Ice Age following the Toba eruption. In the bottleneck scenarios, more individuals survived in the African tropical refugia, resulting in the greatest genetic diversity survival in Africa.
Ambrose concludes that bottlenecks occurred among genetically isolated human populations because of a six-year long volcanic winter and subsequent hyper-cold millennium after the cataclysmic super-eruption of Toba. This volcanic winter played a role in recent human differentiation. The resultant combination of founder effects and genetic drift may account for low human genetic diversity as well as population differences associated with so-called races. The bottleneck hypothesis offers an explanation for why humans exhibit so little genetic variation, yet superficially appear diverse. It also affords an explanation for the apparent recent coalescence of mtDNA and African origins.

I found this one to be of interest also. Feel free to utilyze any of the links I offer, I might not post the entire article.

mtDNA and African origins.
The Human Origin Debate:
Recent African Genesis | Multiregional Evolution
July 2007: Mount Toba Eruption - Ancient Humans Unscathed, Study Claims


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6920.html
Hominid inbreeding left humans vulnerable to disease
• 12:48 25 January 2005
• NewScientist.com news service
• Will Knight

A lack of mates among human ancestors that lived million years ago has left modern humans more vulnerable to genetic disease, a new study suggests.

Researchers compared samples from the genomes of more than 1000 people with those of chimpanzees to see how much genetic mutation has occurred in the two species since they diverged from a common hominid ancestor, about six million years ago. They also made comparisons with another closely related pair of species, rats and mice.

They focused on portions of DNA close to protein-coding genes. These segments are thought to regulate the activation of these genes.

The researchers calculated that these stretches of human and chimp DNA contained approximately 140,000 non-advantageous mutations, higher than expected and well above the number of retained genetic mutations seen in rats and mice. The mutations occur naturally but make both chimps and humans more susceptible to diseases with a genetic basis, such as cancer.

Evolutionary bottleneck
The researchers believe the high rate of mutations is seen because the hominid ancestor to both species went through an evolutionary bottleneck, when its breeding population was


http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/16/7/1003?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=population+bottleneck&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

I got tired of trying to reply, so I found some ready made answers. Thought share them here.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=2

JOHN RENNIE
June 17, 2002
1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.
Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty -- above a mere hypothesis but below a law.

Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution -- or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter -- they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'"

The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.