| Learn to live with uncertainty. It gives you great strength, and you will never be shaken again. |
I like that jgnat, that's gonna be my personal 'quote of the month'.
skeptic2
JoinedPosts by skeptic2
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10
What advice would you give newbies?
by BlackSwan of Memphis inok well, i started thinking.... when i was new here i made a lot of mistakes.
i'm sure i'm not the only one.. in fact, i think i'll got out on a limb and say, i still make mistakes .
one of the things i wish i would have 'known' then was there are so many personalities on discussion boards, let alone one where there are alot of injured souls and alot of questioning people, that it helps to be forgiving and understanding.
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skeptic2
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original sin and evolution creationists
by BlackSwan of Memphis inok i've been trying to understand this.... there are a good number of christians out there who most definitely believe that god used evolution as a means of creating us.
for instance, i am pretty sure that the catholic church accepts this idea.. if man came about by evolution, how does sin come into play?
at what point did man sin and how does the story of adam and eve fit into this picture?.
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skeptic2
I asked it if I should buy lotto tickets and it said yes and so I did and I won $5. And I only spent $10 in tickets -
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original sin and evolution creationists
by BlackSwan of Memphis inok i've been trying to understand this.... there are a good number of christians out there who most definitely believe that god used evolution as a means of creating us.
for instance, i am pretty sure that the catholic church accepts this idea.. if man came about by evolution, how does sin come into play?
at what point did man sin and how does the story of adam and eve fit into this picture?.
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skeptic2
For anything beyond the reach of scientific enquiry, the magic 8 ball is as good as it gets!
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36
original sin and evolution creationists
by BlackSwan of Memphis inok i've been trying to understand this.... there are a good number of christians out there who most definitely believe that god used evolution as a means of creating us.
for instance, i am pretty sure that the catholic church accepts this idea.. if man came about by evolution, how does sin come into play?
at what point did man sin and how does the story of adam and eve fit into this picture?.
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skeptic2
Good and bad, morals etc - in evolutionary terms, these would appear at the same point our ancestors became self-aware, the understanding that there is another mind like yours behind that other face. Self-awareness is the first step to empathy, the ability to put yourself in another person's shoes. I guess at that point our ancestors had the capability to apply your labels of 'good' and 'bad' relatively to the situations they experienced.
Our ancestors that were self-aware and capable of empathy obviously had the edge over their relations who did not possess these genes.
I dont see why the question is more difficult to answer from an evolutionary viewpoint, at least we have a framework to approach the question from within. From an anti-evolution creationist standpoint, the question is where did your God get the concept of good and bad from?
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DID FOSSILS MAKE YOU DOUBT?
by badboy indid/does discovery of new fossils make you/or those around you doubt the creation version of things?
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skeptic2
GREENDAWN:
If you want to know more about whale evolution and transitional fossils, you might want to look into these species:
If you want to know about human evolution over the last 3 million years and transitional fossils, you might want to look into these species (ignore modern chimpanzee skull at the start), fossils are in date order from 3 million year old B:
- (A) Pan troglodytes, chimpanzee, modern
- (B) Australopithecus africanus, STS 5, 2.6 My
- (C) Australopithecus africanus, STS 71, 2.5 My
- (D) Homo habilis, KNM-ER 1813, 1.9 My
- (E) Homo habilis, OH24, 1.8 My
- (F) Homo rudolfensis, KNM-ER 1470, 1.8 My
- (G) Homo erectus, Dmanisi cranium D2700, 1.75 My
- (H) Homo ergaster (early H. erectus), KNM-ER 3733, 1.75 My
- (I) Homo heidelbergensis, "Rhodesia man," 300,000 - 125,000 y
- (J) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Ferrassie 1, 70,000 y
- (K) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Chappelle-aux-Saints, 60,000 y
- (L) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Le Moustier, 45,000 y
- (M) Homo sapiens sapiens, Cro-Magnon I, 30,000 y
- (N) Homo sapiens sapiens, modern
Although I assume in your view, these species parachuted onto the earth fully formed and immediately went about their business?
In addition ALL mainstream Christian religions oppose evolution and the fossil record actually disproves the evolution theory by failing to provide any of the millions of conjectured inbetween species that bridge the gap between relatively similar species that are actually present in the fossil record, alas in it we find species appearing suddenly and fully formed without evolutionary ancestors. Here the creationists are not misleading anyone.
Yes they are, please see above for just two species. What you have said is an outright lie. As bad as the Awake dinosaurs article which stated that dinoaurs were unrelated to species coming before or after - this was also an outright lie.
It will be a big day when the evolutionists find a reptilian scale in the process of becoming a feather or the species that bridge the gap between a wolf like creature (ancestor of the whale) and the fish like creature that is the whale. It's a massive transformation in anatomy don't you think? A wolf becoming a fish, long after a fish decided to become a wolf.
Please see earlier posts and links.
As for a 20 million in one chance that's nothing compared to the odds of life developing out of inanimate matter.
What is the probability of your God appearing out of inanimate matter, or even no matter, as it must have? But it happened eh? You of all people should have the least trouble with the probabilities of abiogenesis, which in fact cannot be calculated in any meaningful way. But we dont need to calculate it in a meaningful way. We just know that it did happen, because we ae here. If you believe a sky-god came down and started life, thats up to you, but that is much less likely (by an infinite factor) than the simple chemical reactions we can assume started the process.
Anyway you're talking about abiogenesis (the origin of life) - which is entirely outside of the scope of evolutionary theory. Evolution has nothing to say about the origin of life, it is a well-tested explanation for how life on Earth got from that early starting point to now, based on all the evidence we have.
I'm sure that your misunderstandings of evolution would be quickly put to bed if you throw out your preconceptions and do a little research.
I think the outright lies of creationists (some of which we see above) must only exist because some Christians have realized that they can use this argument in order to further their political and monetary aspirations. I can't think of any other reason why people would be so disingenous, they can't all be so sorely misguided.
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DID FOSSILS MAKE YOU DOUBT?
by badboy indid/does discovery of new fossils make you/or those around you doubt the creation version of things?
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skeptic2
Hi restrangled, I posted these comments on another thread, but I think they are applicable here too:
I can only think that you don't fully understand what evolutionary theory says, because if you did, you'd see how beautifully simple and obvious it is.
Books I own that I'd recommend:
(human evolution)The Complete Idiot's Guide to Human Prehistory
(evolution in general)Evolution and the Myth of Creationism
Both are intended for the layman and provide good jumping off points for further research.The scientific community would be very interested to know your alternative hypothesis and the evidence you have for it, if you have one and you don't mind sharing it with us.
Evolutionary theory is a well-tested explanation of all known evidence (that being the definition of a theory). Therefore if you have new evidence that evolutionary theory cannot explain, or that your hypothesis explains better, and this can be indepedently verified, you will be personally responsible for advancing the state of scientific knowledge. -
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DID FOSSILS MAKE YOU DOUBT?
by badboy indid/does discovery of new fossils make you/or those around you doubt the creation version of things?
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skeptic2
Like chance phenomena such as the lottery, evolution is not driven towards a goal of producing a specific result in advance. It is guided towards some result by selective factors (and thus is not purely random), just as the lottery will result in a winner each time. But it is a mistake to calcaulate the odds "for humans evolving" (e.g. presuming the result) and then conclude that those are impossible odds for the event happening. To give another example, let's say a psychic is asked to guess exactly where you will be at 10:42:09am on September 22, 2007, e.g. exact geographical position in terms of millimeters and the exact position and stance of the body. Now, for a person to calculate that a year in advance would certainly be impossible odds (unless he or she kidnaps you or manipulates you to make it happen). But assuming that you are still alive and well in a year's time, it is 100% certain you will be somewhere at that moment in time. And wherever you end up being at 10:42:09am on that day, the odds would have been impossibly small that you would be there at that time. Good point.
It's like pulling a card from a deck.
Each card when pulled might think... these are magical thinking cards... "Wow! It was unlikely I would get pulled, there must be something special about me!"
Is the card right to think this? Of course not.
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DID FOSSILS MAKE YOU DOUBT?
by badboy indid/does discovery of new fossils make you/or those around you doubt the creation version of things?
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skeptic2
Carbon dating is only useful for objects up to 50,000 years old. You can see therefore that most fossils are not dated using carbon dating.
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3.3 million old girl ?
by oldflame inlondon (reuters) - a 3.3 million-year-old skeleton of the earliest child ever found shows the ancient ancestor of modern humans walked upright but may also have climbed trees, scientists said on wednesday.
they found the well-preserved remains of a three-year-old girl of the species australopithecus afarensis -- which includes the fossil skeleton known as "lucy" -- in the dikika area of ethiopia, 400 kms northeast of the capital addis ababa.. "it represents the earliest and most complete partial skeleton of a child ever found in the history of paeleoanthropology," said dr zeresenay alemseged, of the max planck institute for evolutionary anthropology in leipzig, germany.. the skull, torso and upper and lower limbs, including the hand, show both human and ape-like features.
the state of the ancient bones suggest she was buried in a flood which may also have caused her death.. the remains provide the first evidence of what babies of early human ancestors looked like.
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skeptic2
I mean C'mon I can't see how anyone could swallow that crap. The scientific community would be very interested to know your alternative hypothesis and the evidence you have for it, if you don't mind sharing it with us.
Evolutionary theory is a well-tested explanation of all known evidence (that being the definition of a theory). Therefore if you have new evidence that evolutionary theory cannot explain, or that your hypothesis explains better, and this can be indepently verified, you will be personally responsible for advancing the state of scientific knowledge.
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3.3 million old girl ?
by oldflame inlondon (reuters) - a 3.3 million-year-old skeleton of the earliest child ever found shows the ancient ancestor of modern humans walked upright but may also have climbed trees, scientists said on wednesday.
they found the well-preserved remains of a three-year-old girl of the species australopithecus afarensis -- which includes the fossil skeleton known as "lucy" -- in the dikika area of ethiopia, 400 kms northeast of the capital addis ababa.. "it represents the earliest and most complete partial skeleton of a child ever found in the history of paeleoanthropology," said dr zeresenay alemseged, of the max planck institute for evolutionary anthropology in leipzig, germany.. the skull, torso and upper and lower limbs, including the hand, show both human and ape-like features.
the state of the ancient bones suggest she was buried in a flood which may also have caused her death.. the remains provide the first evidence of what babies of early human ancestors looked like.
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skeptic2
I mean C'mon I can't see how anyone could swallow that crap. I can only think that you don't fully understand what evolutionary theory says, because if you did, you'd see how beautifully simple and obvious it is.
Books I own that I'd recommend:
(human evolution)The Complete Idiot's Guide to Human Prehistory
(evolution in general)Evolution and the Myth of Creationism
Both are intended for the layman and provide good jumping off points for further research.
