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Darwin Among the Believers (theory of evolution crucial for many fields)
Tech Central Station ^ | 07/22/2005 | Frederick Turner

Posted on 07/22/2005 4:46:53 AM PDT by Nicholas Conradin

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To: Ichneumon
15. Your car battery? Is it dead or alive?

By keeping to one definition of the word 'alive' and you may have your answer.
381 posted on 07/26/2005 5:28:01 AM PDT by Stark_GOP
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To: Stark_GOP
15. Your car battery? Is it dead or alive? By keeping to one definition of the word 'alive' and you may have your answer.

Your inability to actually address the questions is duly noted.

Heck, your inability to give a grammatically coherent response is duly noted as well.

382 posted on 07/26/2005 7:00:09 AM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: Ichneumon

Testy, testy.
I was just having a little fun with ya.

I was simply pointing out that the definition of life is dependent upon the object in question.

The definition of life for a virus is different than life for a human.


383 posted on 07/26/2005 7:21:33 AM PDT by Stark_GOP
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To: Stark_GOP

And He very well could have made the world in six days, and it still could be consistent with evolution. Let me know if you want to know how this could be. It's a pretty involved explanation. (It has to do with relativity and big bang cosmology, and it is difficult to comprehend since it's one of those results of science that flies in the face of intuition and common sense.)


384 posted on 07/26/2005 9:47:02 AM PDT by stremba
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To: Stark_GOP

BTW, I thought it was in GENESIS that it states that God created the world in six days, not Exodus.


385 posted on 07/26/2005 9:47:48 AM PDT by stremba
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To: Ichneumon
The child knows the difference because he intuitively understands that things regarding life are beyond mans science & ablitlty to quantify or qualify those things or even to prove or disprove those things.
386 posted on 07/26/2005 9:52:53 AM PDT by chariotdriver (I was not using taglines before it was cool to do so)
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To: hopespringseternal

It is absolutely not a niggling little detail. When you say "humans are descended from chimps" you are led directly to the question of why then aren't new "races" of humans being born to chimps today? You also mislead people into thinking that the common ancestor of both humans and modern chimps was some extinct creature that was "chimplike", rather than one having both features similar to those of modern chimps and modern humans. It is actually from the study of such "niggling little details" that you handwave away that much of the mountainous volume of evidence for evolution is found.


387 posted on 07/26/2005 10:01:58 AM PDT by stremba
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To: stremba

Refer to post #380.


388 posted on 07/26/2005 10:03:00 AM PDT by Stark_GOP
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To: ColoCdn

The difference is now that Prof. Protsch's work has been shown (by evolutionists, BTW, not creationists) to be fraudulent, you won't see his work being used as evidence in favor of evolution. When a creationists "work" is shown to be fraudulent (also usually by evolutionists, not creationists), you will usually see it pop up again and again in these debates in support of creationism.


389 posted on 07/26/2005 10:11:19 AM PDT by stremba
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To: hopespringseternal

ape is correct, since modern chimps and modern humans are both classified as apes. Monkey and chimp are not correct classifications for the latest common ancestor of humans and chimps. Monkeys diverged much earlier and chimps were one branch that diverged from this ancestor, so calling it a chimp is not correct. The devil is in the details, and it does nothing for your credibility or for that of anyone else to continue to use incorrect terminology after it's been pointed out to them that they have been using incorrect terms.


390 posted on 07/26/2005 10:13:54 AM PDT by stremba
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To: Sloth

Speaking strictly in terms of what the theory of evolution actually says, and not the opinions and beliefs espoused by some individual evolutionists, where exactly is the assertion that there is no intelligent designer in the theory of evolution? Much is made, erroneously, of the formulation that evolution occurs via RANDOM mutation and natural selection, but the mutations need not be random (and very well may not be even in the absence of a designer; nonrandom biochemical and biophysical processes might in principle be used to predict what mutations are likely to occur.) Randomness of mutations is not an important or inherent feature of the theory of evolution. Evolution works just as well with nonrandom mutations which undergo natural selection. Heck, with an intelligent enough designer, the selection need not even be natural; a designer might very well tailor the environment to favor the variants that he wants to favor. In either case, evolution as an explanation of the diversity of life still holds.


391 posted on 07/26/2005 10:25:09 AM PDT by stremba
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To: ColoCdn

Again, it wasn't as if the scientific community knew that Protsch's work was fraudulent and then waited 30 years to punish him. Nobody, (other than Protsch, and possibly some of the people working with him and complicit in the fraud) knew that his work was fraudulent. If someone is murdered and 30 years later a murderer is caught and punished, is this evidence that the criminal justice system doesn't work? Hopefully you see the difference here. Harrub's "work' is known by all to be fraudulent. Yet creationists still cite it in debates with evolutionists.


392 posted on 07/26/2005 10:29:24 AM PDT by stremba
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To: johnnyb_61820

First of all, there have been some pre-cambrian fossils found, so the universal common ancestry of cambrian creatures does have some physical evidence to fall back on.

However, even lacking such physical evidence for common ancestry of cambrian flora and fauna, we do have physical evidence for the common ancestry of a large number of organisms that existed in the time after the cambrian era. If we can show that the evidence points toward the common ancestry of these organisms, we can extrapolate backward and conclude that the cambrian organisms also share a common ancestor. Such extrapolation is done all the time in science, no more so in evolution than in any other area of science. For example, we have determined the existence and the size of planets orbiting stars other than our own in the absence of a direct observation of such planets simply by observing the motion of the star itself.

How can we do so? Namely by extrapolating Newton's law of gravity to objects that we have never observed to obey it. We are fairly confident that, within the proper scope (ie. we're not too near a black hole and bodies don't have relative speeds approaching c), that Newton's law is valid for stars that are tens of light years away. We are confident because of the large amount of evidence we do have that Newton's law is valid in our local area of the universe. We extrapolate to unobserved territory with confidence when it comes to gravity, so why not do the same with evolution? Does this mean that our extrapolation is necessarily valid? No, but if you deny the ability of evolutionary biologists to extrapolate their observations, you should deny the ability of ALL scientists to do so, and science immediately becomes much less useful, and probably not worth pursuing.


393 posted on 07/26/2005 10:54:16 AM PDT by stremba
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To: Stark_GOP

Point taken, and my apologies for questioning. However, it's usually within the context of Genesis that the argument for a six day creation is made.


394 posted on 07/26/2005 11:03:30 AM PDT by stremba
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To: stremba
I humbly accept an apology when it is graciously offered. Even when it is not required.

Most people, myself included, mire themselves in the first couple chapters of Genesis without reading further.

Yes, the Hebrew word for day does have a lesser used definition meaning an age, epoch, or undetermined long period of time. I believe that the verse quoted solidifies the Biblical account as a literal six days.
395 posted on 07/26/2005 12:40:22 PM PDT by Stark_GOP
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To: Stark_GOP
Exodus 20:11 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)

For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Maybe you should actually read that chapter. This is the chapter where God is giving them the 10 commandments, not where he is creating the heavens and the earth. He is telling the creation story to them again for reference so that they will understand why he is commanding them to rest on the seventh day.

I've seen some bad bible misquotes on threads like these, but never one quite like yours. Wow.

396 posted on 07/26/2005 12:50:36 PM PDT by wyattearp (The best weapon to have in a gunfight is a shotgun - preferably from ambush.)
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To: wyattearp
Maybe you should actually read that chapter. This is the chapter where God is giving them the 10 commandments, not where he is creating the heavens and the earth. He is telling the creation story to them again for reference so that they will understand why he is commanding them to rest on the seventh day.

I've seen some bad bible misquotes on threads like these, but never one quite like yours. Wow.
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I have read it numerous times.
Yes, Moses is RETELLING the creation story to the children of Israel. How is it a misquote? The same event (creation) is being retold by the same person (Moses).
397 posted on 07/26/2005 1:04:53 PM PDT by Stark_GOP
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To: Stark_GOP
How is it a misquote?

Because you claimed that the story of creation is in Exodus. While Moses references the story of creation in Exodus to make a point in regards to the Commandment that requires the people to rest on the sabbath, the book of Exodus is not the source of the story.

If I write something that uses a reference to provide evidence for a point that I am trying to make, is it proper to then quote my quote of a reference as a reference as if it were the original source? You said 'the creation story in Exodus'. The creation story is not from Exodus, even though part of it is repeated in Exodus to emphasize a point.

I would like to make a correction. I actually have seen worse misquotes. That part of my statement was an exaggeration, and I apologize for that. Sometimes I need to actually read what I am about to post one last time before posting.

398 posted on 07/26/2005 2:00:12 PM PDT by wyattearp (The best weapon to have in a gunfight is a shotgun - preferably from ambush.)
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To: Frumious Bandersnatch
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

That's an easy one. The egg came first. Dinosaurs (and a host of other critters) were laying eggs long before chickens showed up.

399 posted on 07/26/2005 2:01:17 PM PDT by wyattearp (The best weapon to have in a gunfight is a shotgun - preferably from ambush.)
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To: wyattearp
Because you claimed that the story of creation is in Exodus. While Moses references the story of creation in Exodus to make a point in regards to the Commandment that requires the people to rest on the sabbath, the book of Exodus is not the source of the story.

If I write something that uses a reference to provide evidence for a point that I am trying to make, is it proper to then quote my quote of a reference as a reference as if it were the original source? You said 'the creation story in Exodus'. The creation story is not from Exodus, even though part of it is repeated in Exodus to emphasize a point.

I would like to make a correction. I actually have seen worse misquotes. That part of my statement was an exaggeration, and I apologize for that. Sometimes I need to actually read what I am about to post one last time before posting.
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It is not a misquote. The quote was taken directly from the KJV translation of the Bible. I am assuming that you meant to say that I took the quote out of context.
The full, original creation account is in the book of Genesis. The one verse that I cited was used as a reminder to the Hebrews about what God has done when Moses read the commandments. I never said that the verse in Exodus was 'the' creation story which everyone knows is in Genesis.

Moses is the original source alluding to a subject he previously wrote about in length in Genesis. He wrote both books.
400 posted on 07/27/2005 5:29:51 AM PDT by Stark_GOP
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