Evolution, Science, Faith - Lightning rod by leadb

Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
ive heard the argument before, and i just disagree.. no matter how many times it is restated and re-worded. what youre saying, in essence, is that there is no evidence to suggest design. i would argue that ID scientists reach some different conclusions, many times using the same data. and they are not biblical Creationists, by their own acknowledgment. they have their own indications of design, which is intriguing if anyone cares to do some objective research. personally i dont ignore the philosophical ramifications, that seems to be a mistake logically, since what we perceive to be reality is probably a lot more complicated. in the end, its a matter of whether or not we recognize what we are seeing or not, and i think youd agree

Not Biblical Creationists? The only differences between ID "Scientists" and creationists are that 1) ID adherents are non-specific enough about the nature of the "Designer", that it isn't necesarily a "God" doing the creating... Just someone with the right prerequisites for the job. And 2) They attempt to make it look like they are being scientific by looking through microscopes and saying, "Hmmmm... That is crazy-complex... Hey, look, I found some evidence!"

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't care if people want to teach ID in school as a philisophical elective. Hell, go ahead and throw traditional creationist dogma in there too, if you want. But my entire point was not to say that Creationism/ID are wrong... Just that they are two seperate things from scientific study.

ID, no matter how you dress it up, is more a matter of opinion than solid, tangible evidence. And that is as it should be because ID is a personal Philisophical theory that deals with miraculous and godlike acts. And until science advances to the point of being able to observe the creation of the universe, ID will remain a non-scientific theory.

[img]

[/img]

"I refuse to submit,
To the god you say is kind.
I know what's right, and it is time,
It's time to fight, and free our minds!

Our spirits were forged in snow and ice,
To bend like steel forged over fire.
We were not made to bend like reed,
Or to turn the other cheek!"

- from the song "Thousand Years of Opression" by Amon Amarth

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 9:12 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
they have their own indications of design, which is intriguing if anyone cares to do some objective research.

Are you talking about specified complexity? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specified_complexity if the criticism on that page isn't enough then try here: http://www.talkorigins.org/design/faqs/nfl/

EDIT: Objective research is indeed a good idea

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 9:31 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Moses himself wrote that seven days was a significant period of time because God created everything in six days, and rested on the seventh, thereby establishing our 'week'.

I thought that was a Sumerian invention.
---------------------------

WHY does The Economist appear every seventh day? The answer is because we, like you, still regulate our lives by a septimal law that Mesopotamian star-gazers framed, and local warlords imposed, more than 40 centuries ago. Our weekdays and weekends and weeks off, our dress-down Fridays, hectic Saturday nights, Sundays sacred or profane, and Monday-morning blues all have their origin in something that happened around 2350BC.

To the Sumerians, ultimately, we owe not only the week but also the 60-minute hour Sargon I, King of Akkad, having conquered Ur and the other cities of Sumeria, then instituted a seven-day week, the first to be recorded. Ur was probably using weeks, less formally, long before Sargon came marching in. The Sumerians were great innovators in matters of time. It is to them, ultimately, that we owe not only the week but also the 60-minute hour. Such things came easily to people who based their maths not on a decimal system but on a sexagesimal one.

Why were these clever chaps, who went for 60 because it is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30, fascinated by stubbornly indivisible seven? In ancient Egypt and ancient China, “weeks” of ten days were long in use—much more understandable, as people have ten fingers to count on, not seven. (And yet you have to wonder, if the Pharaohs' long week was intended to drive their workforce harder, whether it provoked the Exodus?) Above all, why should the Sumerian system have not merely endured but become an almost universal conqueror? Ur's posterity now sways regions Sargon never knew. Its lead has been slavishly followed by Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Hindus ancient and modern, Muslims and most of the present inhabitants of Europe and the Americas. Even China surrendered a good thousand years ago. The year, the day and (not quite so obviously) the month are natural divisions of time. The week is an oddity. The moon's four phases are a near miss, but still a misfit, for weeks. You will be in trouble (like H.G. Wells's “The Man Who Could Work Miracles”) if you try to make the moon perform every 28 days, instead of its usual 29½ and a bit.

The Sumerians had a better reason for their septimalism. They worshipped seven gods whom they could see in the sky. Reverently, they named the days of their week for these seven heavenly bodies. So do most of us today. Greeks, Slavs, and many Jews and Muslims, although loyal to Ur's seven-day week, have shaken off its planet-gods; but a great majority of Christians and of Hindus, and virtually all “unbelievers”, still pay their respects daily to the Sumerian seven— under changed names, of course. For the Sumerians themselves, seven was a very special number. They conceived of a seven-branched Tree of Life, and of seven heavens, that were passed to Babylon and symbolised there in seven-tiered ziggurats, or hanging gardens. Sumeria's Gilgamesh epic describes the rite of passage through which Enkidu the ape-man became human, thanks to the obliging Shamhat: While the two of them together were making love, He forgot the wild where he was born. For seven days and seven nights Enkidu was erect and coupled with Shamhat. In spite of all that, Ur's seventh day was not holy. On the contrary, it represented danger and darkness. It was risky to do anything at such a time. So it became a day of rest.

Ever since the time when Abraham trekked westward from Ur, Mesopotamian influences had helped to form Hebrew traditions. The Jews got the story of the Flood from Sumeria. They got the seven-day-week idea early enough to use it in the account of the Creation given in Genesis. But there may have been some garbling in the transmission. The Sumerians would not have depicted the Creator as just sitting back, satisfied, on the seventh day; to them, he would seem to have stopped work, wisely, because anything attempted on that day must end in tears. The week reached India from Mesopotamia more than 2,000 years ago, in time to get into some of the Hindu scriptures. But the Hindus' creation stories were far more complex than Hebrew ones. They never accepted a Sabbath; their scriptural references to the week, as in the Brahmavaivarta Purana, were almost casual: When Brahma had fashioned this universe, he placed his seed in Savitri, his best wife. When she was ready to give birth, she bore the year, the month, the days of the week, the seven Pleiades. The Hindus were keen sky-watchers and sometimes keen septimalists. They had noted the Pleiades (Krttikas). Noting also the Great Bear's seven stars, they identified them with the Seven Sages who survived the Flood, combined these starry sevens, and made the Pleiades the wives of the Sages. Yet, in their absorbent way, they happily adopted the seven planet-gods who arrived with the original Sumerian week. And, in their retentive way, they held on to them. In modern Hindi, as in ancient Sanskrit, the planets we call Mars and Mercury are Mangal and Budh. The days called Tuesday and Wednesday in English, and mardi and mercredi in French, are Mangalvar and Budhvar.Elsewhere, new names have been showered on the old gods and their planets. Yet, to an astonishing extent, they have retained their identities—and kept their places in the order of the days of the week.

Enter Ishtar and Venus
The first recorded change came when the Sumerian week-system was transposed into the Semitic language spoken in the Babylonian empire. The day-names used in Babylon around 700BC (running as if from our Sunday to our Saturday) were: Shamash (Sun), Sin (Moon), Nergal (god of war), Nabu (god of scribes), Marduk (supreme god), Ishtar (goddess of love) and Ninurta (god of farming). They had simply replaced their Sumerian predecessors; for example, Ishtar had succeeded Inanna both as a planet and as the presiding deity of love. The seven-day system has leapt blithely from one religious base to another, from Ur of the Chaldees to Israel, to Islam.

By the time the Romans had adopted the system, the planet-gods wore names more familiar to us: (in the same order) Sol, Luna, Mars, Mercurius, Jupiter, Venus, Saturnus. But their identities remained almost intact. The name-chain Inanna-Ishtar-Astarte-Aphrodite had led to Venus. Nergal lived on in Mars. Aptly, the god of scribes had mutated into the heavenly messenger, Mercurius. In English and the other Germanic languages, Mars, Mercurius, Jupiter and Venus were, in time, renamed in honour of Teutonic gods. From Tiw, Woden, Thor and Freya came the names of our weekdays from Tuesday to Friday. Even so, the chain remained unbroken. Although English Wednesday and Scandinavian Onsdag salute the god Woden or Odin, this came about only because he was identified with Mercurius. Similarly, the love-goddess Freya took the place of Venus—and her place in the weekly sequence. Among Europe's Romance and Celtic languages, the Ur-idea of naming days from planet-gods is obvious. Mercurius is as recognisable in the French mercredi as in Romanian Mercuri or Welsh Mercher. The Slav languages, however, taking a lead from Greek, prefer numbering systems. (Five, in Russian, is pyat; Friday is Pyatnitsa. In Greek, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are Deutera, Triti and Tetarti; i.e., second, third and fourth.) Saturnus, alone among the planet-gods, resisted Germanisation.

And Saturday was “different” from other weekdays long before the two-day weekend developed. In ancient Rome it became somewhat inauspicious. Then it was, for a time, the Sabbath, both for Jews and for many early Christians. It is still Sabato in Italian, Sabado in Spanish, Sobota or Subota in the Slav languages. Over the naming of Sunday some confusion has crept in, for which Constantine the Great is much to blame. In 321AD, when he ordered the cities of his empire to rest on this day, his edict was related to the sun, rather than to Christianity. Three centuries earlier, Augustus had officially recognised the week, with its Sumerian-style planet-gods. Dies solis, the sun's day, was mildly auspicious, but only the Christians made it really special as their day for congregational prayer, linked with the Resurrection and called the Lord's Day. Constantine chose to boost that day while invoking not Christ but the Unconquered Sun (the emperor himself, at that point, saw the two deities as one). He thereby gratified Christians without offending sun-worshippers. So it was a shrewd move, at the time.

But it left the naming of the day in schism. In its Germanic versions it is now strictly the Sun's day (Sonntag, Zonday, etc). But it is given to the Lord (Latin dominus, Greek kyrios) in Romance languages (Domingo, Domenica, dimanche) and Greek (Kyriaki), and the Celts are split, Welsh Dydd Sul confronting Gaelic De Domhnaic. Most striking of all Sunday's names is the Russian Voskresenye (“Resurrection”), which endured through long years of imposed atheism.

Do not imagine that Sumeria's week and its day-names have never faced any challenges
The French Revolution brought in a ten-day “week” whose days were, literally, numbered (the experiment lasted, officially, for 12 years, but never really took). As soon as the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917 they tried, but failed, to imitate the French revolutionaries (or the Pharaohs?). Later, for 11 years starting in 1929, Stalin imposed first five-day and then six-day weeks on the Soviet Union. The elimination of Sunday, with its strong religious associations, was one purpose of his experiments. They all failed, abjectly. Warned by this, the communist regimes established in other countries after 1945 did not even try to tamper with the Ur-old seven-day week.

Today
Sumeria's 4,400-year-old feat of cultural imperialism is triumphantly intact and more assured of universal acceptance than ever. How can this be explained? Seven is a thoroughly awkward number. It gives us a year of 52 weeks (another awkward number), plus the annoying extra one or two days which force us to keep buying new calendars. The seven-day system's ability to challenge and, in time, overlay all others has always rested on its religious inspiration, not on its practical value. It has leapt blithely from one religious base to another, from Ur of the Chaldees to Israel, then on to Christendom, to Islam. It infiltrated the Roman empire before Christianity and reached India many centuries before the first Muslim invaders. European colonisers spread it through the Americas, but in the Old World, wherever Hindu or Muslim influences had penetrated, even the earliest European explorers found it was there before them. Today, most of the human race takes it for granted that their activities are recorded in weeks. There are two groups: those who feel that the week has real religious significance and that there is something holy about one day in seven, and those who have no such feeling. In neither group will you find many people who know how the week came into existence, or came to matter. “Men of old” knew. They could read it in the heavens. In a song of great antiquity like “Green grow the rushes O”, it was natural, perhaps unavoidable, to include the line “Seven for the seven stars in the sky”. They are all still there: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn. We may send out spacecraft to ring them round, but we ourselves are still held in the hebdomadal grip of the Seven.

www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/week.htm

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 9:38 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
I'm saying that religious concepts like 'god' are entities in their own right. To the extent that believers maintain a cohesive understanding of their god, that god exists and effects its will upon the world through the actions of its followers. These gods have evolved efficient means of reproduction and react negatively to attempts to remove them from their hosts. They're very much living entities.

You're speaking of memes then?

Quote:
meme A unit of cultural information that represents a basic idea that can be transferred from one individual to another, and subjected to MUTATION, CROSSOVER, and ADAPTATION.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 9:44 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
You're speaking of memes then?

Yup, pretty much. But in a very specific context. Uber-memes maybe?

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 9:45 AM

double post

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 10:07 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Or, in the case of the seven-day week: Ur-memes!

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 10:19 AM

ANTIMASON

Quote:
posted by Signym- The Jews got the story of the Flood from Sumeria. They got the seven-day-week idea early enough to use it in the account of the Creation given in Genesis.

that really depends on how you look at it... i know thats the secular view anyways. i dont happen to believe these were just 'stories', so i take a more collective view of these global "myths". to begin, the flood story is almost universal, so that certainly wasnt restricted to a single geographical location.. apparently this was widely reported. the difference between the Sumerians, and Abraham and the early Israelites, is that they didnt worship the Ananaki as gods, they worshipped the Creator of everything. the sumerian gods virtually overlay with the fallen angels of the bible; no contradiction, just told from the perspective of Yahwehs followers, instead of Enki or Enlil. the Sumerians may have been the first to worship the wrong gods, but it doesnt neccessarily mean they first established those beliefs. Abraham and the Israelites didnt plaguerize this history, they merely told it from the perspective of the eternal Creator, rather then imperfect fallen entities. if you read the book of Jasher(i believe), Abraham makes it clear that this was his reason for leaving Ur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 10:24 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Oh dear - SignyM, if PJ reads this it'll be all over.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 10:35 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

So you're saying that the Sumerians took the notion of a seven-day week from the Hebrews? (who worshipped Elohim BTW not Yaweh.)

Or are you saying that BOTH of these religions refer to the same event, which is the creation? (Which means that you do not think evolution occurred because there is no way a creation myth can survive intact starting with one-celled organisms.)

Although come to think of it, if humans were not created until AFTER everything else, how did we "learn" about it? You have to make a lot of suppositions about that part, which is not detailed in the Bible.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 11:12 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
to begin, the flood story is almost universal

And yet there is very little overlap in the stories, the number of survivors, the length of time, the cause, all different, almost like they were talking about large numbers of local floods instead of one global flood...

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 11:32 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

And... I gotta admit my knowledge of the Bible is pretty sketchy, but... didn't everyone die in the Biblical flood? Except Noah and his family, of course. So whence came all the non-believers?

OOC, did Noah take fishes on-board? What about whales? Mosquitoes? Did he feed the lions with the rabbits, which prolly bred like...er, well... bunnies?

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 1:51 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
And... I gotta admit my knowledge of the Bible is pretty sketchy, but... didn't everyone die in the Biblical flood? Except Noah and his family, of course. So whence came all the non-believers?

They were tempted by Satan in the guise of Mohammed, Buddha, whoever it was that wrote the Bhagavad Gita(sp?), and Charles Darwin of course.

Quote:
OOC, did Noah take fishes on-board? What about whales? Mosquitoes? Did he feed the lions with the rabbits, which prolly bred like...er, well... bunnies?

There's some fun stuff in here: http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-flood.html

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 4:38 PM

ANTIMASON

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
So you're saying that the Sumerians took the notion of a seven-day week from the Hebrews?

what do you mean by "notion" exactly(is this in dispute)? God established the "week"(month year and Zodiac), and the Sumerians record themselves that they were taught this knowledge by their 'gods'. i would say corrupted however, since the bible says in Genesis 6 that the fallen angels left their domain, the heavens, to interfere with mankind. this interference is what prefaced the flood in both cultures, but for different reasons. the sumerians were punished because they were too noisy, Noah records it as an indifference to morality

Quote:
Or are you saying that BOTH of these religions refer to the same event, which is the creation?

the differences in the stories i believe can be attributed to perspective, and which culture is telling the story. the difference is, the Sumerian gods didnt create the universe, they are clearly finite.

Quote:
(Which means that you do not think evolution occurred because there is no way a creation myth can survive intact starting with one-celled organisms.)

i believe we were created uniquely, yes. i dont disagree that a species is programmed to evolve within its archetype though

Quote:
Although come to think of it, if humans were not created until AFTER everything else, how did we "learn" about it? You have to make a lot of suppositions about that part, which is not detailed in the Bible.

this is why i dont discount global 'god' myths, i think they all tell a similar story. what separates the abrahamic beliefs is the acknowledgement of the Creator of everything, and a prophesied messiah sent to redeem mankind. and thats where christianity becomes relevant to me, because i do believe Jesus was the Son of God

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 4:47 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
i dont disagree that a species is programmed to evolve within its archetype though

I keep hearing this argument coming out of the ID movement. What does it mean? If you're acknowledging the process of evolution, how do you make a distinction between evolving 'within' or 'outside' of its archetype? How does evolution recognize this boundary?

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 5:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
i dont disagree that a species is programmed to evolve within its archetype though

I keep hearing this argument coming out of the ID movement. What does it mean?

It means that they can't deny that evolution happens but they want to limit the damage that that admission requires by pretending that there's a barrier to speciation (the development of new species).

Quote:
If you're acknowledging the process of evolution, how do you make a distinction between evolving 'within' or 'outside' of its archetype?

http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB901_1.html
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH350.html
They believe that animals can be classified into groups called "kinds" which are immutable, a creature from one "kind" cannot become part of a different "kind". "Kind" has a different definition depending on who you are talking to but is usually somewhere around the species level, thus they believe that macroevolution (the development of new species) is impossible. Of course since macroevolution has been observed:
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB901.html
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910_1.html
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
that argument kind of falls apart.

Quote:
How does evolution recognize this boundary?

There is no such boundary.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 5:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
what do you mean by "notion" exactly(is this in dispute)? God established the "week"(month year and Zodiac), and the Sumerians record themselves that they were taught this knowledge by their 'gods'.

Some say the seven day week originated with the Sumerians; other say with the Hebrews. But most of this is supposition, because we don’t really know for certain when or where the seven day week originated, and it’s possible that it pre-dates any of these cultures. As far as history goes (and my knowledge of it), the earliest known implementation of a seven day week was by Sargon the Great of Akkad in c. 24th c. BCE, who was not Sumerian, but did conquer Sumer. The Akkadians were Semitic, which means they were related to the Hebrews not the Sumerians. Now the assumption is that the Sumerians were using the seven-day week prior to that, which could the case, but history is what is it is, and what we know is that it was the Semitic culture, not the Sumerian one, that came up with the seven day week.

There is also a common argument that the biblical flood is retelling of a Sumerian story. Personally, I doubt this too. There’s too much difference between the two stories, for me to believe that they are the same story although they may have even influenced one another. They may be portraying the same event, but I don’t think one is a copy of the other.

As far as evolution goes, it’s entirely possible that a creator did create the current set of species through some progressive process or set in motion some initial conditions that would ultimately produce the current species through what we now recognize as evolution. There’s no inherent conflict between these two ideas. And while speciation has been said to have occurred by evolutionists, there has never been a scientific record of any speciation occurring on the level that macroevolution requires, nor do evolutionists contend that such a record could possible exist since it would require, according to evolution theory, prohibitively long time periods.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 6:09 PM

Whichever. I have a hard time caring about this issue lately. It only becomes a problem when we start voting on what we are going to teach our children. I don't feel education should be a government institution, so the point is moot from my point of view.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 8:11 PM

ANTIMASON

Quote:
fredgiblet- It means that they can't deny that evolution happens but they want to limit the damage that that admission requires by pretending that there's a barrier to speciation (the development of new species).

pretend lol? wheres your fossil evidence? if the process of evolution accounts for the existence of all life, it should be conclusive by now in the fossil record. but i dont see that, i see specific archetypes, with little to no deviance. show me any missing links of a species, at any point between its current status and its alleged microbial stages? thats a few hundred million years worth of evolution, so where is it? at this moment in history, it sounds more like certain people "pretending" to know millions of years of speculative biology

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 4:56 AM

KANEMAN

"I, Pencil" is written in the first person from the point of view of an Eberhard Faber pencil. The pencil details the complexity of its own creation, listing its components (cedar, lacquer, graphite, ferrule, factice, pumice, wax, glue) and the numerous people involved, down to the sweeper in the factory and the lighthouse keeper guiding the shipment into port.

"There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work."

"Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree."

"The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed." -wikipedia

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 5:26 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Whichever. I have a hard time caring about this issue lately. It only becomes a problem when we start voting on what we are going to teach our children. I don't feel education should be a government institution, so the point is moot from my point of view.

Just curious; would you simply abolish public education?

====
Please vote for Firefly: http://richlabonte.net/tvvote/index.html

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 7:13 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by leadb:
Just curious; would you simply abolish public education?

Pretty much. Beyond a basic competency in civics, the government has no business dictating how we educate our children.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 8:41 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
pretend lol? wheres your fossil evidence? if the process of evolution accounts for the existence of all life, it should be conclusive by now in the fossil record. but i dont see that, i see specific archetypes, with little to no deviance. show me any missing links of a species, at any point between its current status and its alleged microbial stages? thats a few hundred million years worth of evolution, so where is it? at this moment in history, it sounds more like certain people "pretending" to know millions of years of speculative biology

Where's the fossil evidence? Well, look at Blue whales. To this day, they have vestigial bone structures designed for legs (not fins), present in no creature that has been an exclusively sea-borne creature for the last few hundred million years. The farther back in the fossil record for blue whales you go, the larger and more practical these bones get, until you get to a point when they are essentially enourmous mamilian salamanders. Whales went from being massive land-borne creatures, to being exclusively sea-based animals.

[img]

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 8:45 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Antimason, FredG

"And yet there is very little overlap in the stories, the number of survivors, the length of time, the cause, all different, almost like they were talking about large numbers of local floods instead of one global flood..."

So far as I know the Australian Aborigines and Native Americans have no flood myth, nor do the Mahabharata or Ramayana (two basic texts of Hinduism). Tao as a philosophy doesn't have creation myths so there is no flood mentioned.

There is some thought that the small piece of land separating the Mediterranean Sea and the area that is now the Black sea was at some point breached, and the Mediterranean poured in, leading to 'flood' myths in the cultures of the area.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 8:49 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
Quote:
fredgiblet- It means that they can't deny that evolution happens but they want to limit the damage that that admission requires by pretending that there's a barrier to speciation (the development of new species).

pretend lol? wheres your fossil evidence? if the process of evolution accounts for the existence of all life, it should be conclusive by now in the fossil record.

1. Fossils don't form on command, fossilization is quite rare. The example I heard was of the passenger pigeon, there used to be millions if not billions of passenger pigeons just a couple centuries ago, now they are extinct, try and find a fossil passenger pigeon.
2. That being said there are millions of fossils, all fitting into a nested hierarchy exactly as common descent predicts.
3. You want a perfect, smooth continuum of fossils, that's not what exists because it's not what should exist, the speed and direction of evolution is not uniform and hasn't been expected to be uniform for a very long time. Evolution causes species to adapt to their environment, once a certain level of adaptation is achieved it becomes more expensive then it is worth to continue adapting and a sort of evolutionary stasis is achieved. When a shift in environment or a novel mutation occurs that breaks the stasis evolution will cause the species to adapt rapidly to the new environment before returning to stasis. Most fossils will be found in the stasis plateaus rather then the change periods since the vast majority of creatures will have been born and died during the stasis instead of the period of rapid change.
4. The fossil record is conclusive enough for some of the most skeptical people in the world, scientists. Your inability to accept this due to dogmatism is not a fault of lack of evidence, if we had the fossils of every creature that ever lived you would still simply say "not good enough", or pick a new complaint without admitting error.

Quote:
but i dont see that, i see specific archetypes, with little to no deviance.

Let's take the example of cats and dogs. Why aren't cats evolving into dog-like creatures? Because it would counter productive. Cats are ambush hunters, dogs are endurance hunters, changing between the two would require a large amount of alteration to the body structures. This would be detrimental in the short term as it would make them worse ambush hunters while they still fail as endurance hunters, and then if they made it to the point where they were functional endurance hunters they have to compete with dogs who have already specialized as endurance hunters. At no point during the change it is advantageous so it doesn't happen. If it became advantageous it would happen (assuming that cats survived long enough to adapt). You are saying that since changes like that DON'T happen that they CAN'T which isn't true, the only barrier to a change like that is lack of benefit. In other words you are pretending that there is a barrier where none exists.

Quote:
show me any missing links of a species, at any point between its current status and its alleged microbial stages?

Once again you want a smooth gradual fossil record, such a record only exists in a perfect world, in the real world fossilization is rare, finding fossils isn't easy, digging them up isn't easy, classifying them sometimes isn't easy. But we do have several well documented transitions, such as the transition of whales from land animals to sea animals (I'd call that an "archetype" switch).

Quote:
thats a few hundred million years worth of evolution, so where is it?

The vast majority of it was destroyed before it had the chance to fossilize, most of what did fossilize is still buried, much of what's been dug up is sitting in drawers waiting to be looked at by paleontologists, some of what has been looked at by paleontologists is too fragmented to come to a conclusion. However, the fossil record is constantly being improved, and every new fossil found reinforces common descent.

At the same time, taking the fossil record that we have, combining it with the genetic, biochemical and morphological evidence for common descent and adding the common descent we see from the observed instances of macroevolution in recorded history and a very compelling case is made, much more compelling then the "evidence" for Intelligent Design.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 8:51 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

AntiMason,
I KNOW we've had this discussion before and I went to great lengths to find a website that details the transition fossil record of land animal to whale. If I find it now will you promise to look at it and never bring this point up again? I don't want to waste my time in a futile effort.

Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
pretend lol? wheres your fossil evidence? if the process of evolution accounts for the existence of all life, it should be conclusive by now in the fossil record. but i dont see that, i see specific archetypes, with little to no deviance. show me any missing links of a species, at any point between its current status and its alleged microbial stages? thats a few hundred million years worth of evolution, so where is it? at this moment in history, it sounds more like certain people "pretending" to know millions of years of speculative biology

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 9:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
...the government has no business dictating how we educate our children.
B]

Unless you are teaching your children to be terrorists or dangerous fanatics. In that case, the government, as the representative body for every citizen, has every right to intervene. The best solution would probably be exiling the parents as undesirables, and if the children choose to stay, allow them to live with a normal foster family with similar, if less radical beliefs as their parents to ease the transition.

Personally, if we could find a decent justification, I would advocate exiling fanatics now. If you would be willing to kill non-combatants for a personal belief, then you shouldn't be allowed to live in our country.

[img] [/img]

"I refuse to submit,
To the god you say is kind.
I know what's right, and it is time,
It's time to fight, and free our minds!

Our spirits were forged in snow and ice,
To bend like steel forged over fire.
We were not made to bend like reed,
Or to turn the other cheek!"

- from the song "Thousand Years of Opression" by Amon Amarth

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 9:20 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"I would advocate exiling fanatics now."

In the name of moderation ? It seems counterproductive.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 9:25 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
this is why i dont discount global 'god' myths, i think they all tell a similar story. what separates the abrahamic beliefs is the acknowledgement of the Creator of everything, and a prophesied messiah sent to redeem mankind. and thats where christianity becomes relevant to me, because i do believe Jesus was the Son of God

Wha...? That in no way answers my question. If god, or gods, or God, created everything else first, and THEN man, how did humans (I don't care where) come to know about something that happened BEFORE humanity was even on the scene? Did the gods, or god, or God tell them about it shortly afterwards? And if you believe it was the "one true God" that created everyone- heathens included- what happened to "the story" that it should have changed so much? Or do you believe that God kept yakking with the Hebrews long after He stopped yakking with the others, and kept his "chosen people" on the correct path and let everyone else go hang?

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 9:28 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
There is some thought that the small piece of land separating the Mediterranean Sea and the area that is now the Black sea was at some point breached, and the Mediterranean poured in, leading to 'flood' myths in the cultures of the area.

Oh pshaw! That's too much like history! It MUST have been a miracle!

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 9:47 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Reaverman:
Unless you are teaching your children to be terrorists or dangerous fanatics.

Sure, makes sense.

Quote:
Personally, if we could find a decent justification, I would advocate exiling fanatics now.

That's a pretty extreme position. Are you sure that's what you want?

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 9:49 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Quote:
Originally posted by leadb:
Just curious; would you simply abolish public education?
Pretty much. Beyond a basic competency in civics, the government has no business dictating how we educate our children.

K. I tend to believe that it is important to require a decent education to be provided to children, even if a parent would neglect it. What would do for/with the occaision where a parent is 'too involved' with their drug use or other problems to concern themselves with the nature of their child's education, or even if it gets one?

On the contrary point, I have no objection to folks having some discression to have public school funding applied to various private school tuition options.

====
Please vote for Firefly: http://richlabonte.net/tvvote/index.html

BBC poll is still open, vote! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6517155.stm

Consider $5/year to support FFF: http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/pay/T39WWCGS4JYCV4

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 9:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Reaverman:
Personally, if we could find a decent justification, I would advocate exiling fanatics now. If you would be willing to kill non-combatants for a personal belief, then you shouldn't be allowed to live in our country.

I believe if this is setup, I get to be on the panel decides who is and is not a fanatic. And I've discussed this with the other panelists, and we have determined you will not be on the panel. Now, are you -still- sure this is a good idea?

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 10:02 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by leadb:
I tend to believe that it is important to require a decent education to be provided to children, even if a parent would neglect it.

Which leads me to ask, who decides what a 'decent education' is? How do you keep that decision from becoming political? In other words, how can you avoid the issue that's at the core of the ID debate?

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 10:22 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
[That's a pretty extreme position. Are you sure that's what you want?

If it would work, then yeah. But seeing as how no one would ever be able to agree on exactly what a fanatic is, and no one would be able to tell if someone was one unless they said or did something to indicate their fanatical leanings, It really wouldn't work right.

But, hey, a guy can dream, right?

[img]

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 12:54 PM

On the Deluge:
The deluge that inspired the biblical flood is thought to be a catastrophic sill collapse of the Black Sea. This is interesting because it suggests that Semitic peoples ranged as far as the Caucasus or that a Caucasian people migrated south and influenced Semitic peoples. So Noah might not have been a Hebrew, but someone from the Caucasus. It’s also interesting how the Bible history necessarily restarts after the Flood, suggesting that all of Genesis before the Flood could have been a product of a non-Semitic Caucus people or that the Semitic or some proto-Semitic people originated in the Caucasus or somewhere around the Black Sea and migrated to the Middle East following the deluge. Sort of like the Hurrian migration of the c. 3rd century. All speculation, but interesting.

However the Sumerian flood is probably a different deluge that occurred when the Mesopotamian flatlands flooded as a result of abrupt climate change about 8500 years ago, resulting in the modern day Persian Gulf. Persian Gulf was once dry land about 15000 year ago, and when the climate suddenly warmed over a period of decades ice melt flooded the then extant Persian Basin. Although this was not a catastrophic event like the sill collapse in the Black Sea, it likely occurred over about 50 years, which is plenty short enough for whole cities living in the Persian Basin to have watched their homes submerge. Sumerian culture was in the region before the Semitic culture and the Sumerian language is an isolate. The Sumerians, therefore, are the original Persian Gulf culture that probably existed in some form even before the Persian Gulf did, so it makes sense that they would have been the ones to record the event.

On Education:
Frankly, I’ve never really been a real big fan of public schools. They’re too susceptible to the political fad of the day, and frankly, they tend to suck, as far as education goes, particularly those in inner cities. My preference has always been for a voucher system that allows parents to send their children to private or public schools depending on the parent’s desires.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 1:23 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

With vouchers schools will have to compete for students. You might think this is not a bad thing, but in sports-dominated areas, it might mean athletics over academics; in conservative areas it might mean faith-based science. TALK ABOUT CATERING.

And on a personal note, if YOUR school stressed athletics and taught faith-based science, would you have gotten as far as you have?

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 1:31 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
And on a personal note, if YOUR school stressed athletics and taught faith-based science, would you have gotten as far as you have?

Private schools already compete for students, and most of them are not full of jocks and alter boys, rather they tend to produce a more highly educated student. And the high school I went to was an inner city school. The education I got in high school was essentially worthless.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 1:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
On Education:
My preference has always been for a voucher system that allows parents to send their children to private or public schools depending on the parent’s desires.

But if private schools are going to be a common option, you would need government regulation to an extent. I have been to a private school in Mexico, where there is no enforced regulations on private schools. Keep in mind, the school, Westhill Institute, is American owned and run, and caters to children of wealthy foreign executives, and kids whose parents work at a foreign Embassy in Mexico City. However, despite the massive amounts of money they rake in (12,000 dollars a year per student; there are about 700 students), the buildings are falling apart, most of the teachers are terrible, and the equipment issued is dilapidated at best. Why? Because there is nobody telling the owners of the school that they need to spend money on actually making it a decent school. So the owner simply takes the majority of the money not spent on employee salaries for herself, and the students end up with classroom conditions that are appalling by the standards of even the most cash-strapped U.S. public schools.

So, unless you get rid of schools altogether in favor of home-schooling (which brings up a whole other bag of problems), you would need government interference to help your kids get a decent education.

[img]

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 1:51 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Reaverman:
But if private schools are going to be a common option, you would need government regulation to an extent. I have been to a private school in Mexico, where there is no enforced regulations on private schools. Keep in mind, the school, Westhill Institute, is American owned and run, and caters to children of wealthy foreign executives, and kids whose parents work at a foreign Embassy in Mexico City. However, despite the massive amounts of money they rake in (12,000 dollars a year per student; there are about 700 students), the buildings are falling apart, most of the teachers are terrible, and the equipment issued is dilapidated at best. Why? Because there is nobody telling the owners of the school that they need to spend money on actually making it a decent school. So the owner simply takes the majority of the money not spent on employee salaries for herself, and the students end up with classroom conditions that are appalling by the standards of even the most cash-strapped U.S. public schools.

Well, that’s sad for you, but that’s not the typical private school in the US. And I don’t know what you define as “government interference,” but most private schools in the US operate with little or no government policies. As far as government policies are concerned, I’ve never advocated for the complete elimination of government policies.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 2:12 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"Private schools already compete for students, and most of them are not full of jocks and alter boys"

There are a few well-known elite academic private schools, and then there are a number of religious ones (not necessarily Catholic).

"And the high school I went to was an inner city school. The education I got in high school was essentially worthless."

Did it get you into college? If it did then it did well by you.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 2:12 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Reaverman:
But if private schools are going to be a common option, you would need government regulation to an extent.

I don't buy this at all. The notion that the government has a more pressing interest in the education of my children than I do is particularly offensive. It reminds me of a bumper sticker a friend of mine had (which was obviously a jab at James Dobson). It read "Focus on your own damned family."

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 2:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Did it get you into college? If it did then it did well by you.

My kids both dropped out in junior high, and they're both in college.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 2:15 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Then they got enough by that time. It must have been very efficient ! What a great school system !

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 5:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
I don't buy this at all. The notion that the government has a more pressing interest in the education of my children than I do is particularly offensive.

I'm sure that notion is offensive to a lot of people, but the sad fact is, the vast majority of parents are nowhere near qualified to teach a child, even their own (now, not knowing you very well, I can't say if this applies to you or not, though judging by what you said about your kids dropping out of middle school and still making it to college, I think its safe to assume that you are one of the few who can do a decent job of it). I met a twenty-eight year old woman once who was taken out of school by her mother when she was nine, and homescholed from then on. At twenty-eight, she had the intelligence level of a ten-year-old (granted, her mother was a psychotic Jehovah's Witness who believed any science beyond the medieval level was Satan's work, but she illustrates the extreme of how bad homeschooling can be).

If every parent on the planet simultaneously started homescholing their kids, within three to four generations, we could be back to the early industrial revolution in terms of technological advancement, because there wouldn't be enough parents that were specialists to maintain our level of technology. And even if there were, all we would do is freeze our society as it is. Parents would only be able to train their kids in-depth on the subjects that they know about in-depth. There would be no more social mobility. Now, you could fix this problem by seeking out the specialists in fields that your kids are interested in and have THEM teach your kids... But wait, don't they call that, *gasp* public education!?

I say that if you want to homeschool your kids, you should have to prove to a college that you can teach up to college level. If you can't, well, too bad. Children shouldn't be denied a proper education because of the ignorance of their families.

[img]

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 5:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Quote:
Originally posted by leadb:
I tend to believe that it is important to require a decent education to be provided to children, even if a parent would neglect it.
Which leads me to ask, who decides what a 'decent education' is? How do you keep that decision from becoming political? In other words, how can you avoid the issue that's at the core of the ID debate?

I don't know about where you live, but a parent around here doesn't like what is taught in the public schools (and thus cares enough to act), they can either homeschool or private. In fact, my daughter was homeschooled for a year (not a deemed lack in the school system per se, but it was not meeting her needs for various reasons (long story)). So, to be frank, if you feel that your local school district, using parent input, is unable to provide a decent education, then don't put up with it, do what you feel is right. In the mean time, I'd have to guess the public schools are either meeting most of the needs most of the time; however, I will grant that some districts are in serious trouble. As far as ID goes, if you want to teach your kid religion, teach him religion. If 'standard evolution' isn't your cup of tea, then pull your kid from the public schools.

====
Please vote for Firefly: http://richlabonte.net/tvvote/index.html

BBC poll is still open, vote! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6517155.stm

Consider $5/year to support FFF: http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/pay/T39WWCGS4JYCV4

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 6:19 PM