Attn: Tear Apart Evolution In This Thread!

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

Evolution is based on mutation of an existing organism


Mutations Are Typically Harmful, Sometimes Neutral and Are Rare
Creationists and even many evolutionists immediately pointed out that all observed mutations whether laboratory induced or occurring naturally have typically been harmful, or in some cases neutral. Mutations are typically a copying error or mistake, which cause things like disease or monstrosities and put the organism at a disadvantage. In addition, mutations have been discovered to be an extremely rare event since genes have built in functions to stabilize and resist change. So in other words, mutations are rarely seen and when they do occur, they they do not bring out an advantage to any living thing. Evolutionists like to use examples of beneficial mutations in antibiotic resistance to bacteria, or in mutation of the tomato for example, though none of these types of mutations are relevant to any ideas about one kind of creature changing into another. One kind of creature changing into another via beneficial mutation has simply NEVER been shown.

For evolutionists to state that many favorable, random mutations have occurred is completely unfounded. Mutations simply cannot be the cause for evolution into new, healthy, more complex living organisms. Again, many evolutionists simply state this fact is not true, when proof is everywhere. These evolutionists are simply in denial.

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Claim CB101:

Most mutations are harmful, so the overall effect of mutations is harmful. Source:

Morris, Henry M. 1985. Scientific Creationism. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 55-57.
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here? Brooklyn, NY, pg. 100.
Response:

1. Most mutations are neutral. Nachman and Crowell estimate around 3 deleterious mutations out of 175 per generation in humans (2000). Of those that have significant effect, most are harmful, but a significant fraction are beneficial. The harmful mutations do not survive long, and the beneficial mutations survive much longer, so when you consider only surviving mutations, most are beneficial.
2. Beneficial mutations are commonly observed. They are common enough to be problems in the cases of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing organisms and pesticide resistance in agricultural pests (e.g., Newcomb et al. 1997; these are not merely selection of pre-existing variation.) They can be repeatedly observed in laboratory populations (Wichman et al. 1999). Other examples include the following:
   
   • Mutations have given bacteria the ability to degrade nylon (Prijambada et al. 1995).
   • Plant breeders have used mutation breeding to induce mutations and select the beneficial ones (FAO/IAEA 1977).
   • Certain mutations in humans confer resistance to AIDS (Dean et al. 1996; Sullivan et al. 2001) or to heart disease (Long 1994; Weisgraber et al. 1983).
   • A mutation in humans makes bones strong (Boyden et al. 2002).
   • Transposons are common, especially in plants, and help to provide beneficial diversity (Moffat 2000).
   • In vitro mutation and selection can be used to evolve substantially improved function of RNA molecules, such as a ribozyme (Wright and Joyce 1997).
3. Whether a mutation is beneficial or not depends on environment. A mutation that helps the organism in one circumstance could harm it in another. When the environment changes, variations that once were counteradaptive suddenly become favored. Since environments are constantly changing, variation helps populations survive, even if some of those variations do not do as well as others. When beneficial mutations occur in a changed environment, they generally sweep through the population rapidly (Elena et al. 1996).
4. High mutation rates are advantageous in some environments. Hypermutable strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa are found more commonly in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, where antibiotics and other stresses increase selection pressure and variability, than in patients without cystic fibrosis (Oliver et al. 2000).
5. Note that the existence of any beneficial mutations is a falsification of the young-earth creationism model (Morris 1985, 13)

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Originally Posted by MannyIsGod

Feel free to stop your fluff posting and read the post above which completely kills your idea's on thermodynamics.

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I'm not freakin' going through your link. I didn't even open it. :lol

Post something substantial without posting a link and I'll consider it.

Why does this topic get everyone so riled up?

Have we not evolved enough to have civil discussions?

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

Apparently lots of holes Manny.


FOSSIL AND FOSSIL FUEL FORMATION
Evolutionists like to tell us that at least thousands of years are needed to form the fossils and fuels (such as coal and oil) that we find today. However, objects must be buried rapidly in order to fossilize. This, bearing also in mind the billions of fossils and fossil fuels buried around the world, seems to indicate a worldwide catastrophe. None other than, you guessed it, Noah's flood.
Ken Ham, director of the Australia-based Creation Science Foundation, presents some interesting facts in seminars which he gives. Oil can now be made in a few minutes in a laboratory. Black coal can also be formed at an astonishing rate. Ham also has in his overlay presentation a photograph of a fossilized miner's hat, about fifty years old. All that is necessary for fossilization is quick burial and the right conditions, not thousands of years.

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Claim CC361.1:

Oil and coal can form rapidly. Their formation is more a matter of heat and pressure than of time. Millions of years are not necessary to account for them. Source:

Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 109-110.
Response:

1. Coal deposits show evidence of a history. Most coals are found in sedimentary rocks deposited in flood plains. They often contain stream channels, roots, and soil horizons. Long time may not be necessary to form the coal itself, but it is necessary to account for the context where coal is found.

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It's all in the post, why would you need to go to the link? I provide the links so that people can see my reference and judge the credibility of it.

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

I'm not freakin' going through your link. I didn't even open it. :lol

Post something substantial without posting a link and I'll consider it.

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:lmao

evolution?....lalalalal I can't hear you lalalala!!

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

I'm not freakin' going through your link. I didn't even open it. :lol

Post something substantial without posting a link and I'll consider it.

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:lol

Where do you think all this shit he's posting is coming from? I'm sure Manny's a smart guy, but he's not making this up as he goes along.

In regards to helium:

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Claim CE001:
The radioactive decay of several elements produces helium, which migrates to the atmosphere. There is too little helium in the atmosphere to account for the amount that would have been produced in 4.5 billion years. Escape of helium into space is not sufficient to account for the lack.
Source:
Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 150-151.
Response:

1. Helium is a very light atom, and some of the helium in the upper atmosphere can reach escape velocity simply via its temperature. Thermal escape of helium alone is not enough to account for its scarcity in the atmosphere, but helium in the atmosphere also gets ionized and follows the earth's magnetic field lines. When ion outflow is considered, the escape of helium from the atmosphere balances its production from radioactive elements (Lie-Svendsen and Rees 1996).

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A collection of responses to the Creationists claims is found here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

In regards to Ocean sediments:

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Claim CD220:
At current rates of erosion, only thirty million years are needed to account for all the sediments in the ocean. If the earth were as ancient as is claimed, there should be more sediments.
Source:
Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 155-156.
Response:

1. The thickness of sediment in the oceans varies, and it is consistent with the age of the ocean floor. The thickness is zero at the mid-Atlantic Ridge, where new ocean crust is forming, and there is about 150 million years' worth of sediment at the continental margins. The average age of the ocean floor is younger than the earth due to subduction at some plate margins and formation of new crust at others.

2. The age of the ocean floor can be determined in various ways -- measured via radiometric dating, estimated from the measured rate of seafloor spreading as a result of plate tectonics, and estimated from the ocean depth that predicted from the sea floor sinking as it cools. All these measurements are consistent, and all fit with sediment thickness.

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On the subject of oil field pressure:

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Claim CD231:
The high pressures found in oil and gas wells are proof of a young earth. If the earth were old, the pressures would have bled off by now.
Source:
Hovind, Kent, n.d. Universe is not "billions of years" old. http://www.drdino.com/QandA/index.js...ofYearsOld.jsp
Response:

1. The high pressures show that the oil and gas are trapped by rock impermeable enough to hold such reservoirs for many millions of years. If the assumptions (young earth and leaky rocks) behind the claim were true, the pressures never would have built up in the first place.

2. A geological event which could cause oil and gas to migrate into a reservoir could have occurred relatively recently. Even if the oil field is young, that does not mean the oil, much less the earth, is young.

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In regards to meteors and meteorites

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The observed rate of cosmic dust influx should have produced a layer 182 feet thick over the entire surface of the earth if the earth were 5 billion years old. The distinctive nickel and iron content of the dust should make it easy to detect.
Source:
Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 151-152.
Response:

1. The observed rates used in Morris's calculation are based on dust collected in the atmosphere; this measurement was contaminated by dust from the earth. More recent measurements of cosmic dust influx measured from satellites give an influx rate about 1 percent as large, corresponding to a layer 66 cm thick at most over 4.5 billion years (Kyte and Wasson 1986). An even more recent study of iridium and platinum in a Greenland ice core yields an estimate of only about 14 kilotons per year of meteoric dust during the Holocene, compared with the figure of 14 million tons per year that Morris used (Gabrielli et al. 2004).

Claim CD111:
Meteorites are never found in deeper strata.
Source:
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 27.
Response:

1. Several meteorites have been found, in strata from Precambrian to Miocene (Matson 1994; Schmitz et al. 1997). There is evidence that a major asteroid disruption event about 500 million years ago caused an increase in meteor rates during the mid-Ordovician; more than forty mid-Ordovician fossil meteorites were found in one Ordovician limestone quarry (Schmitz et al. 2003). In addition, many impact craters and other evidence of impacts have been found.

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Joch, I have a question for you, and I mean absolutely no disrespect. When reading these results of scientific studies done in the modern era that support the evolutionary theory, do you think the scientists are wrong, or that God made everything the way it is for a reason, and we're not supposed to understand?

I'm just curious, because this same argument, albeit in a more primitive form, was debated by Plato in Book VII of the Republic.

Not to butt in, but I believe the part..the God made everything the way it is for a reason, and we're not supposed to understand but then again I believe that God gave us, well not necessarily me, the ability to think and reason.

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Originally posted by MannyIsGod
Claim CC361.1:

Oil and coal can form rapidly. Their formation is more a matter of heat and pressure than of time. Millions of years are not necessary to account for them. Source:

Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 109-110.
Response:

Coal deposits show evidence of a history. Most coals are found in sedimentary rocks deposited in flood plains. They often contain stream channels, roots, and soil horizons. Long time may not be necessary to form the coal itself, but it is necessary to account for the context where coal is found.

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Lengthy but quite informative.

FOSSILS WHICH ARE THE PRESERVATION JUST THE CARBON ('CARBONIZATION' = COAL)

"This is the third way listed by Professor Miller whereby fossil remains can be preserved, having reference to the formation especially of coal, in which the hydrogen and oxygen largely disappear from the organic remains, leaving only the carbon but often also leaving the original structure beautifully preserved. The coal deposits of the world are of course tremendous in magnitude, with the exact amount quite uncertain, but somewhere around 7 trillion tons.

'About all we really know about coal reserves is that there appears to be lots of coal in the world... Instead of 7 trillion tons, there may be double that. On the other hand, there may be less than half that.'...

[Eugene Ayres and Charles A. Scarlott: Energy Sources: the Wealth of the World (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1952), p. 53]

...Coal is the end product of the metamorphism of tremendous quantities of plant remains under the action of temperature, pressure and [evolutionists' claim: ages of] time. Coal has been found throughout the geologic column and in all parts of the world, even in Antartica. Many coal fields contain great numbers of coal-bearing strata, interbedded with strata of other materials, each coal seam having a thickness which may vary from a few inches to several feet. And each foot of coal must represent many feet - just how many, no one knows - of plant remains, so that the coal measures testify of the former existence of almost unimaginably massive accumulations of buried plants.

Coal geologists have long been divided into two camps, those favoring the autochthonous (growth-in-place) theory of coal origin and those favoring the allochthonous (transportation and deposition) theory [which is consistent with the Noahic Flood]. Consistent uniformitarianism, of course, tends to favor the former and attempts to picture the coal-forming [growth in place theory] process in terms of modern peat deposits forming under swamplands, such as in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia. The great thickness of the coal beds is accounted for on this theory by assuming a continuous subsidence [= a subsiding: a sinking of vegetation to the 'bottom'] of the land more or less keeping up with the slow accumulation of plant remains. The interbedded strata of non-carbonaceous deposits [= inorganic material] are [again] explained by [assuming] alternating marine transgressions [i.e., periodic local flooding] and resulting periods of sediment deposition...

[But it has been well established that interbedding of this sort with many undisturbed and uniform demarcation seams cannot be attributed to sequential and long periods of time which would erode and break up those seams but rather - to one short period of time]

...A wide variety of types of these intervening sediments have been noted and attempts made to explain them in terms of 'cyclothems' or recurring cycles of deposition of different kinds of materials corresponding to the different stages of marine transgression and regression....

If the autochthonous [growth in place] theory of coal bed is correct, it is testimony to quite a marvelous sequence of circumstances. One or two or three coal seams formed by alternate stages of swamp growth, peat accumulation, marine transgression and emergence, etc., might be believable, but the assertion that this cycle was repeated scores of times in the same spot, over a period of perhaps millions of years, is not so easy to accept....

This theory, which is purportedly uniformitarian in essence, is actually anything but that, as there is no modern parallel for any of its major features. The peat-bog theory constitutes a very weak attempt to identify a modern parallel, but it will hardly suffice....

...there is no actual evidence that peat is now being transformed into coal anywhere in the world....

As a matter of fact, except for uniformist preconceptions, it would seem that the actual physical evidence of the coal beds strongly favors the theory that the plant accumulations had been washed into place. The coal seams are almost universally found in stratified deposits. The non-carbonaceous sediments intervening between the coal seams are always said to have been water-borne and deposited. The great thickness of some seams and the great numbers of seams in a given locality also constitute prima facie evidence of rapid and cyclic currents carrying and depositing heavy burdens of organic material...

Space precludes further discussion or the question of coal formation, although many more evidences could be marshalled in favor of the allochthonous [transportation and deposition] theory, such as the frequent splitting of coal seams into two or more independent seams, the many fossil trunks that have been found extending through two or more seams, the 'coal balls' of matted and exceptionally well-preserved fossils, the great boulders often found in coal beds, the frequent grading of coal seams into stratified layers of shale or other sedimentary rock, etc....

Regardless of the exact manner in which coal was formed, it is quite certain that there is nothing corresponding to it taking place in the world today. This is one of the most important of all types of geologic formations and one on which much of our supposed geologic history been based. Nevertheless, the fundamental axiom of uniformity, that the present is the key to the past, completely fails to account for the phenomena..."

[pp. 175-176]

"Another amazing find was reported many years ago, that of a fossilized human skull in the coal measures. the outstanding authority on coal geology, Otto Stutzer, says concerning this mysterious fossil:

'In the coal collection in the Mining Academy in Freiberg [Stutzer was Professor of Geology and Mineralogy in the School of Mines at Freiberg, in Saxony], there is a puzzling human skull composed of brown coal and manganiferous and phosphatic limonite, but its source is not known. This skull was described by Karsten and Dechen in 1842.

[Otto Stutzer: Geology of Coal (Transl. by A. C. Noe, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1940), p. 271]

The coal was presumably Tertiary in age but at any rate is supposed to have far antedated the first appearance of man. The evidence again seems mostly to have been ignored, although it has been suggested that someone must have carved the skull!"

v) 'FOSSILS WHICH ARE THE PRESERVATION OF JUST THE ORIGINAL FORM IN CASTS OR MOLDS

[pp. 165-166]

"This is another means of fossil preservation, whereby the original organic substance entombed in the sediments dissolves away, either leaving a cavity having the form of the original organism, or else being replaced by some sort of mineral water which is then cast into the form of the original organism. Once again this sort of preservation requires sudden or catastrophic burial, followed by rather rapid cementation of the surrounding sediments, in order for the mold to be preserved. The remains at the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, entombed by volcanic materials, offer an excellent illustration of this type of fossilization. The principle of uniformity again fails to provide modern examples of this type of process except in terms of intense aqueous or volcanic action..."

vi) PETRIFIED FOSSILS

"This process is similar to that of the formation of a mold and subsequent cast in that it consists of detailed replacement of the organic material by mineral water, usually brought about by the action of underground water. The famous petrified forests of the Yellowstone Park region and of Arizona are familiar examples of this process. The exact details of the process of petrifaction are not known, although the usual associations of petrified wood and other materials indicate that volcanic action has been a contributing factor. The petrified forest of Arizona, as well as other regions, also shows action of subsequent flood waters as a probable agent of deposition of the materials in their present location. In any case, some sort of catastrophic agent is again necessary for at least the burial of the materials before the agencies of petrification can begin their work...."

http://www.biblestudymanuals.net/k33b.htm

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Originally Posted by j-6

Joch, I have a question for you, and I mean absolutely no disrespect. When reading these results of scientific studies done in the modern era that support the evolutionary theory, do you think the scientists are wrong, or that God made everything the way it is for a reason, and we're not supposed to understand?

I'm just curious, because this same argument, albeit in a more primitive form, was debated by Plato in Book VII of the Republic.

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Let me first say that the debate in this thread has been alluded to by some as being "uncivilized" but I don't see it that way. I enjoy exchanging information and an occasional taunt or jab, it's all in good fun and at times educational, at least to me.

And now on to your question

I am convinced that there is a God and believe whole-heartedly in the innerancy of the Bible. I was raised in a Christian home where my Dad had a full-time job and was (not now actively preaching from a pulpit) an ordained minister. I was taught evolution in school and never considered it to be meant as excluding God as my creator because it wasn't presented in that way or if it was it did not have that effect.
I do believe that the scientists that support evolution to the exclusion of God are absolutely incorrect. I don't know how familiar you are with Scripture but there are some which directly address you question of us not being able to understand things. All taken from Corinthinans.


25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,


And one more:
11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known

These to me suggest that God made thngs for a reason and that we do not and will not fully understand his creative process. At least not on this side of heaven.

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Originally Posted by JoeChalupa

Not to butt in, but I believe the part..the God made everything the way it is for a reason, and we're not supposed to understand but then again I believe that God gave us, well not necessarily me, the ability to think and reason.

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The fact that we (those who believe in God) cannot comprehend how He has always existed; never had a beggining shows we're not supposed to understand everything.

And like Robert Jastrow said once, in the divine act of creation, God is not observed nor has any witnesses... He has no obligation to explain things to us.

So God made evolution.

Smart guy.

i'd like someone to explain how all these animals evolved into other animals and shit like i've been told, i don't buy that shit at all

i've heard shit like they evolved to adapt to the environment. right....
i am sure while they are fucking they send messages to their sperm so it will create a different being to better adapt
if not what? a mutation, and that mutated animal figured out it was better suited and just keep creating more mutated animals. for all these animals to keep these crazy mutations far fetched. this is just some of the shit i have heard

Henry Wu: You are saying that a group of animals, entirely composed of females, will breed?

Ian Malcolm: No, I am merely stating that uhh... life finds a way.

Jurassic Park had a FAT hole in the book and the movie they never really explained how female Dinosaurs were turning into male...........

Anyways, what about all the different animal similiarties?

Dogs and Wolves
Cats and Lions/tigers/panthers/jaguars/cheetahs/sabertooth tiger etc.......
Ducks and Chickens
Lizards and Reptiles/Dinosaurs/Birds
Humans and Monkeys/Apes/Chimps

Could it be somewhere along the chain that these animals could have a common ancestor that evolved into the beings they were today?

When a new speicies start how do they?
Take a look at it this way..... What came first the Chicken or the Egg? Niether it was a product of evoultion......

clearly both sides in this debate are hypocrites

More problems with the theory of evolution:

1. The Big Bang theory is based on solid data and would show that the Universe had a finite beginning in time (about 15 billion years ago) - before that it didn't exist. How did everything come out of something that didn't exist, if there is no God?

2. Some argue that the earth is 4 billion years old. This is not enough time for evolution to have happened. The rate of mutations likely to be helpful is not large enough to explain the development of all things, especially the first cell from non-living chemicals. Some scientists can see this and have therefore postulated that life originated somewhere else (not on earth) and came to earth by something called panspermia. In this way, they put the problem back, but the solution to the problem of life's origin remains still unknown. See Reasons to Believe for more information on Creation and Time and the astronomical evidence for God's existence.

2. No model has ever succesfully been given for the evolution of the first biological cell from random chemical reactions over a long period of time. Just as a mousetrap that misses just one part has no use, so the majority of bio-chemical mechanisms in nature would not work if just one of their component parts were missing (waiting to be evolved). Then how would blind chance ever favor these incredibly improbable PARTIAL inventions? It would surely destroy them.

What we are being asked to believe is that random processes generate real information in the genetic code. Using this logic, enough nuclear accidents would lead to great improvements in the human race. Even Microsoft Windows 95 with all its faults was not the result of random events (though some might contest that!). How much less the human DNA code?

3. The fossil record speaks against classical Darwinian evolution, not in its favour. Where are all the transitional fossils? There should be billions of them in the earth if random processes led to major changes in species. Why don't we find them? (Hint: they never existed). Punctuated equilibrium, the "hopeful monster" theory and other similar ones just show how bankrupt the theory of evolution really is. You don't need evidence for a theory that by overwhelming political pressure is assumed to be true. Anything will do. As Hitler said, if you repeat a really big lie often enough many will believe it. Propaganda, dogmatic assertion by experts who all assume that other experts outside their field have proved the theory - these are the true keys to evolution's popularity.

Some Biological Problems of the Natural Selection Theory - Dr. Jerry Bergman
4. If any of the constants of physics were just a little different, Life would be impossible for many reasons. But why do the laws of physics exist? And why are these constants just right for the existence of life? Has someone "monkeyed with the constants of physics" to make life possible?

5. All the so-called "missing links" between apes and man are either frauds or pure speculations based on very scanty "evidence". The earth should be replete with them if millions of small changes between man and ape account for the evolution of man from apes.

6. Some creatures, like the honey bee, just can't be accounted for by the theory of natural selection, since the honey bees themselves don't pass on genetic information.

http://www.christian-faith.com/html/...inism_debunked

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Originally Posted by JoeChalupa

Why does this topic get everyone so riled up?

Have we not evolved enough to have civil discussions?

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No.

Joch, it has been said in the scriptures that Moses was asked to bring down a feast from heaven then the pagans would believe in him. Moses did that now.....If you were able to show some sign which you can't and no one can then I'll believe you, right now science has been able to show more facts and data.

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Originally Posted by E20

Joch, it has been said in the scriptures that Moses was asked to bring down a feast from heaven then the pagans would believe in him. Moses did that now.....If you were able to show some sign which you can't and no one can then I'll believe you, right now science has been able to show more facts and data.

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I'm not at all bothered by those that are strict evolutionists other than the fact that what I believe has eternal ramifications for all. No one can force me to adhere to the flawed theory of evolution and no one can be forced to believe in Creationism by intelligent design.

No one decides for anyone else. Evolution or Creationism, Heaven or Hell for eternity. Freedom to choose.

Unless people are absolutely sure that God doesn't exist and there is no chance of eternity in Heaven or Hell and they personally don't care one way or the other, then they at least should inform their families and friends to explore both possibilities.

I'd hate to be one of those in Hell who are being sought out by their loved ones in Hell perhaps with tears streaming down their face, screaming at them when they find them; "Why, why didn't you tell me?"

Unless you're sure beyond a shadow of a doubt, that possibility could become a reality. To scoff at this would shows total disregard for them.

Parents fighting for their childrens rights in School

Parents of some schoolchildren in Cobb County, Georgia are in a huff over warning labels that have been placed on science textbooks in that school district. The labels read "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

They were placed on books two years ago after more than 2,000 parents complained that the schools were teaching Darwinian evolution as fact, ignoring evidence that is critical of evolution as well as the competing theory of intelligent design.

Michael Manely, an ACLU lawyer who is representing the pro-evolution parents in a lawsuit, illustrates the over-the-top reaction to the warning labels by accusing the school board of "doing more than accommodating religion. They are promoting religious dogma to all students."

This is certainly not the first textbook controversy regarding the evolution versus intelligent design debate. Such controversies have stirred elsewhere, although the circumstances in most cases are similar. Parents are simply asking that evolution be taught as a theory -- not as a set of proven facts -- and that Darwinism be presented side-by-side with counter-evidence and/or intelligent design theory.

The idea is that students should be allowed to weigh the evidence of competing theories themselves. It's called "critical thinking," and is normally encouraged in scientific disciplines, Darwinian evolution being one of the few exceptions.

A CBS poll released on November 22 showed that more than half of all Americans do not believe in human evolution. Only 13% of those polled believe that God was not involved in the process. Breaking it down, 47% of Kerry voters believe God created humans as we are now, compared with 67% of Bush voters. Furthermore, more than half the Kerry voters -- and two-thirds of all those polled -- want creation taught alongside evolution. Predictably, belief in evolution is greatest among those with more education and among those who attend religious services rarely or not at all.

Darwinism's dirty little secret is that it is science's equivalent of the pyramid scheme in finance. Evolution, which argues that life on Earth began and has evolved through a complicated process of random events and genetic mutation, has never been observed. Therefore, the empirical evidence normally required to validate scientific theory has never been gathered. The fossil records Darwinists typically cite as proof are filled with missing gaps that are only explained by piling theory on top of theory. At the base of this pyramid, where a collection of credible evidence should exist, there is only more theory.

To illustrate this point, I have listed five questions I've always wanted to ask Darwinists. These questions are answered very simply under the intelligent design explanation of our origins. The task isn't quite as simple for evolutionists, because they view our origins through the prism of science, and science, which is nothing more than man's understanding of the physical world around him, cannot explain the origins of the universe and life on earth. If Darwinists were to answer the following questions honestly, they too would have to concede that something quite supernatural occurred at our genesis -- an admission for which Darwinism has made no room.

Question #1: The big-bang theory typically cited by Darwinists states that all matter in the universe once existed as a single super-sphere which at some point exploded, its fragments coalescing into the stars, planets, and other celestial objects we observe today. If this is true, which random process created that original super-sphere out of nothing?

Question #2: How did the human race evolve from single-cell organisms, such as amoebae, and become randomly separated into two equally-populated genders which are mutually attracted to each other? Furthermore, how is it that only females are uniquely equipped to bear and nourish offspring?

Question #3: Gravity is an invisible, non-magnetic attraction between two physical objects. It's what keeps the Earth in a nearly symmetrical orbit around the sun, and prevents us here on Earth from flying off into space. Please explain how gravity came into being without an intelligent designer.

Question #4: Which random processes produced the human brain? This complex organ is not only capable of the computer-like functions of logic, memory, and computation, but also such emotions as love, hate, joy, and fear, which artificial intelligence engineers have heretofore been unable to duplicate in laboratories.

Question #5: If evolution is the fact-laden, open-and-shut, slam-dunk case Darwinists make it out to be, what's the harm in placing it side-by-side with intelligent design? If indeed Darwinism is above reproach, then the facts should easily tilt the scales in its favor. But they don't.

That's why those hostile to Christianity, or at least intelligent design, must protect evolution by censoring counter-evidence and counter-theory. Darwinism is a fraud -- a crutch, if you will -- which its advocates use in order to explain our origins without having to admit there is a God.

Evolutionists ridicule the idea of intelligent design as being the product of a primitive, flat earth-type religious dogma. Ironically, and despite the self-proclaimed "science" label that Darwinists have assigned to their belief system, it requires far more religious faith to believe in evolution than the creation story described in Genesis.

Just to let you know Joch, I too am religous. I believe in God etc......

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Originally Posted by E20

Just to let you know Joch, I too am religous. I believe in God etc......

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Good, the message was general in nature, not specific to you.

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

Unless people are absolutely sure that God doesn't exist and there is no chance of eternity in Heaven or Hell and they personally don't care one way or the other, then they at least owe it to their families and friends to explore both possibilities.

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Pascal's wager.

" then they at least owe it to their families and friends to explore both possibilities."

why?

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Originally Posted by boutons

" then they at least owe it to their families and friends to explore both possibilities."

why?

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should have been written "should inform their families and friends" to explore both possibilities"

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Originally Posted by smeagol

Pascal's wager.

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Hello smeagol,

Never heard that term before. Looked it up and will respond to it if need be.

Thanks

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

washingtonpost.com

Verbatim: Noodle This, Kansas

Sunday, August 28, 2005; B05

There's been no lack of commentary since the Kansas State Board of Education began debating whether to teach "intelligent design" alongside evolution in the public schools. One of the more unusual submissions to the board came from Bobby Henderson, a 24-year-old graduate of Oregon State University with a degree in physics. Eliciting no immediate response, Henderson posted his letter on the Internet in June. It soon attracted a large audience: Henderson said last week that the Web site has gotten more than 14.5 million hits and was currently getting 750,000 a day. He has since received e-mails from three Kansas education board members, which are posted -- along with scores of others -- on Henderson's site,http://www.venganza.org(named, for reasons that will become clear below, after a Spanish pirate ship).

==========================

Open Letter to Kansas School Board

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I'm writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I'm sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but [is] instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don't understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.

I'm sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don't.

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to hear our views and beliefs. I hope I was able to convey the importance of teaching this theory to your students. We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiting your response, and hope dearly that no legal action will need to be taken. I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

Sincerely Yours,

Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen.

P.S. I have included an artistic drawing of Him creating a mountain, trees, and a midget. Remember, we are all His creatures.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Originally Posted by E20

The Church said that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun was a gift from God. Galileo proposed the Sun was the center and other planets orbited it and so did the Earth. The Church charged him with heresy. He went to Rome to defend his beliefs and then later took back everything he said. Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino personally handed Galileo an admonition enjoining him to neither advocate nor teach Copernican astronomy, because it was contrary to the accepted understanding of the Holy Scriptures.

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No No No No No.

Please do your research before you decide to keep spreading bigoted false histories.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06342b.htm

The New York Times

August 28, 2005

Show Me the Science

By DANIEL C. DENNETT

Blue Hill, Me.

PRESIDENT BUSH, announcing this month that he was in favor of teaching about "intelligent design" in the schools, said, "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought." A couple of weeks later, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, made the same point. Teaching both intelligent design and evolution "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone," Mr. Frist said. "I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."

Is "intelligent design" a legitimate school of scientific thought? Is there something to it, or have these people been taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science? Wouldn't such a hoax be impossible? No. Here's how it has been done.

First, imagine how easy it would be for a determined band of naysayers to shake the world's confidence in quantum physics - how weird it is! - or Einsteinian relativity. In spite of a century of instruction and popularization by physicists, few people ever really get their heads around the concepts involved. Most people eventually cobble together a justification for accepting the assurances of the experts: "Well, they pretty much agree with one another, and they claim that it is their understanding of these strange topics that allows them to harness atomic energy, and to make transistors and lasers, which certainly do work..."

Fortunately for physicists, there is no powerful motivation for such a band of mischief-makers to form. They don't have to spend much time persuading people that quantum physics and Einsteinian relativity really have been established beyond all reasonable doubt.

With evolution, however, it is different. The fundamental scientific idea of evolution by natural selection is not just mind-boggling; natural selection, by executing God's traditional task of designing and creating all creatures great and small, also seems to deny one of the best reasons we have for believing in God. So there is plenty of motivation for resisting the assurances of the biologists. Nobody is immune to wishful thinking. It takes scientific discipline to protect ourselves from our own credulity, but we've also found ingenious ways to fool ourselves and others. Some of the methods used to exploit these urges are easy to analyze; others take a little more unpacking.

A creationist pamphlet sent to me some years ago had an amusing page in it, purporting to be part of a simple questionnaire:

Test Two

Do you know of any building that didn't have a builder? [YES] [NO]

Do you know of any painting that didn't have a painter? [YES] [NO]

Do you know of any car that didn't have a maker? [YES] [NO]

If you answered YES for any of the above, give details:

Take that, you Darwinians! The presumed embarrassment of the test-taker when faced with this task perfectly expresses the incredulity many people feel when they confront Darwin's great idea. It seems obvious, doesn't it, that there couldn't be any designs without designers, any such creations without a creator.

Well, yes - until you look at what contemporary biology has demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt: that natural selection - the process in which reproducing entities must compete for finite resources and thereby engage in a tournament of blind trial and error from which improvements automatically emerge - has the power to generate breathtakingly ingenious designs.

Take the development of the eye, which has been one of the favorite challenges of creationists. How on earth, they ask, could that engineering marvel be produced by a series of small, unplanned steps? Only an intelligent designer could have created such a brilliant arrangement of a shape-shifting lens, an aperture-adjusting iris, a light-sensitive image surface of exquisite sensitivity, all housed in a sphere that can shift its aim in a hundredth of a second and send megabytes of information to the visual cortex every second for years on end.

But as we learn more and more about the history of the genes involved, and how they work - all the way back to their predecessor genes in the sightless bacteria from which multicelled animals evolved more than a half-billion years ago - we can begin to tell the story of how photosensitive spots gradually turned into light-sensitive craters that could detect the rough direction from which light came, and then gradually acquired their lenses, improving their information-gathering capacities all the while.

We can't yet say what all the details of this process were, but real eyes representative of all the intermediate stages can be found, dotted around the animal kingdom, and we have detailed computer models to demonstrate that the creative process works just as the theory says.

All it takes is a rare accident that gives one lucky animal a mutation that improves its vision over that of its siblings; if this helps it have more offspring than its rivals, this gives evolution an opportunity to raise the bar and ratchet up the design of the eye by one mindless step. And since these lucky improvements accumulate - this was Darwin's insight - eyes can automatically get better and better and better, without any intelligent designer.

Brilliant as the design of the eye is, it betrays its origin with a tell-tale flaw: the retina is inside out. The nerve fibers that carry the signals from the eye's rods and cones (which sense light and color) lie on top of them, and have to plunge through a large hole in the retina to get to the brain, creating the blind spot. No intelligent designer would put such a clumsy arrangement in a camcorder, and this is just one of hundreds of accidents frozen in evolutionary history that confirm the mindlessness of the historical process.

If you still find Test Two compelling, a sort of cognitive illusion that you can feel even as you discount it, you are like just about everybody else in the world; the idea that natural selection has the power to generate such sophisticated designs is deeply counterintuitive. Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA, once jokingly credited his colleague Leslie Orgel with "Orgel's Second Rule": Evolution is cleverer than you are. Evolutionary biologists are often startled by the power of natural selection to "discover" an "ingenious" solution to a design problem posed in the lab.

This observation lets us address a slightly more sophisticated version of the cognitive illusion presented by Test Two. When evolutionists like Crick marvel at the cleverness of the process of natural selection they are not acknowledging intelligent design. The designs found in nature are nothing short of brilliant, but the process of design that generates them is utterly lacking in intelligence of its own.

Intelligent design advocates, however, exploit the ambiguity between process and product that is built into the word "design." For them, the presence of a finished product (a fully evolved eye, for instance) is evidence of an intelligent design process. But this tempting conclusion is just what evolutionary biology has shown to be mistaken.

Yes, eyes are for seeing, but these and all the other purposes in the natural world can be generated by processes that are themselves without purposes and without intelligence. This is hard to understand, but so is the idea that colored objects in the world are composed of atoms that are not themselves colored, and that heat is not made of tiny hot things.

The focus on intelligent design has, paradoxically, obscured something else: genuine scientific controversies about evolution that abound. In just about every field there are challenges to one established theory or another. The legitimate way to stir up such a storm is to come up with an alternative theory that makes a prediction that is crisply denied by the reigning theory - but that turns out to be true, or that explains something that has been baffling defenders of the status quo, or that unifies two distant theories at the cost of some element of the currently accepted view.

To date, the proponents of intelligent design have not produced anything like that. No experiments with results that challenge any mainstream biological understanding. No observations from the fossil record or genomics or biogeography or comparative anatomy that undermine standard evolutionary thinking.

Instead, the proponents of intelligent design use a ploy that works something like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist's work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a "controversy" to teach.

Note that the trick is content-free. You can use it on any topic. "Smith's work in geology supports my argument that the earth is flat," you say, misrepresenting Smith's work. When Smith responds with a denunciation of your misuse of her work, you respond, saying something like: "See what a controversy we have here? Professor Smith and I are locked in a titanic scientific debate. We should teach the controversy in the classrooms." And here is the delicious part: you can often exploit the very technicality of the issues to your own advantage, counting on most of us to miss the point in all the difficult details.

William Dembski, one of the most vocal supporters of intelligent design, notes that he provoked Thomas Schneider, a biologist, into a response that Dr. Dembski characterizes as "some hair-splitting that could only look ridiculous to outsider observers." What looks to scientists - and is - a knockout objection by Dr. Schneider is portrayed to most everyone else as ridiculous hair-splitting.

In short, no science. Indeed, no intelligent design hypothesis has even been ventured as a rival explanation of any biological phenomenon. This might seem surprising to people who think that intelligent design competes directly with the hypothesis of non-intelligent design by natural selection. But saying, as intelligent design proponents do, "You haven't explained everything yet," is not a competing hypothesis. Evolutionary biology certainly hasn't explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn't yet tried to explain anything.

To formulate a competing hypothesis, you have to get down in the trenches and offer details that have testable implications. So far, intelligent design proponents have conveniently sidestepped that requirement, claiming that they have no specifics in mind about who or what the intelligent designer might be.

To see this shortcoming in relief, consider an imaginary hypothesis of intelligent design that could explain the emergence of human beings on this planet:

About six million years ago, intelligent genetic engineers from another galaxy visited Earth and decided that it would be a more interesting planet if there was a language-using, religion-forming species on it, so they sequestered some primates and genetically re-engineered them to give them the language instinct, and enlarged frontal lobes for planning and reflection. It worked.

If some version of this hypothesis were true, it could explain how and why human beings differ from their nearest relatives, and it would disconfirm the competing evolutionary hypotheses that are being pursued.

We'd still have the problem of how these intelligent genetic engineers came to exist on their home planet, but we can safely ignore that complication for the time being, since there is not the slightest shred of evidence in favor of this hypothesis.

But here is something the intelligent design community is reluctant to discuss: no other intelligent-design hypothesis has anything more going for it. In fact, my farfetched hypothesis has the advantage of being testable in principle: we could compare the human and chimpanzee genomes, looking for unmistakable signs of tampering by these genetic engineers from another galaxy. Finding some sort of user's manual neatly embedded in the apparently functionless "junk DNA" that makes up most of the human genome would be a Nobel Prize-winning coup for the intelligent design gang, but if they are looking at all, they haven't come up with anything to report.

It's worth pointing out that there are plenty of substantive scientific controversies in biology that are not yet in the textbooks or the classrooms. The scientific participants in these arguments vie for acceptance among the relevant expert communities in peer-reviewed journals, and the writers and editors of textbooks grapple with judgments about which findings have risen to the level of acceptance - not yet truth - to make them worth serious consideration by undergraduates and high school students.

SO get in line, intelligent designers. Get in line behind the hypothesis that life started on Mars and was blown here by a cosmic impact. Get in line behind the aquatic ape hypothesis, the gestural origin of language hypothesis and the theory that singing came before language, to mention just a few of the enticing hypotheses that are actively defended but still insufficiently supported by hard facts.

The Discovery Institute, the conservative organization that has helped to put intelligent design on the map, complains that its members face hostility from the established scientific journals. But establishment hostility is not the real hurdle to intelligent design. If intelligent design were a scientific idea whose time had come, young scientists would be dashing around their labs, vying to win the Nobel Prizes that surely are in store for anybody who can overturn any significant proposition of contemporary evolutionary biology.

Remember cold fusion? The establishment was incredibly hostile to that hypothesis, but scientists around the world rushed to their labs in the effort to explore the idea, in hopes of sharing in the glory if it turned out to be true.

Instead of spending more than $1 million a year on publishing books and articles for non-scientists and on other public relations efforts, the Discovery Institute should finance its own peer-reviewed electronic journal. This way, the organization could live up to its self-professed image: the doughty defenders of brave iconoclasts bucking the establishment.

For now, though, the theory they are promoting is exactly what George Gilder, a long-time affiliate of the Discovery Institute, has said it is: "Intelligent design itself does not have any content."

Since there is no content, there is no "controversy" to teach about in biology class. But here is a good topic for a high school course on current events and politics: Is intelligent design a hoax? And if so, how was it perpetrated?

Daniel C. Dennett, a professor of philosophy at Tufts University, is the author of "Freedom Evolves" and "Darwin's Dangerous Idea."

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...s/20050829.gif

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

More problems with the theory of evolution:

1. The Big Bang theory...

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...has nothing to do with the theory of evolution. Strawman #1.

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2. Some argue that the earth is 4 billion years old. This is not enough time for evolution to have happened. The rate of mutations likely to be helpful is not large enough to explain the development of all things, especially the first cell from non-living chemicals...

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...which has nothing to do with the theory of evolution. Strawman #2.

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3. No model has ever succesfully been given for the evolution of the first biological cell from random chemical reactions over a long period of time...

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...which is unrelated to the theory of evolution. Strawman #3.

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3. The fossil record speaks against classical Darwinian evolution, not in its favour. Where are all the transitional fossils?

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Well, frankly, they are all over the place. This is sort of like the atheist who would ask for "evidence" of ancient biblical manuscripts in the original languages.

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Some Biological Problems of the Natural Selection Theory - Dr. Jerry Bergman
4. If any of the constants of physics were just a little different, Life would be impossible for many reasons. But why do the laws of physics exist? And why are these constants just right for the existence of life? Has someone "monkeyed with the constants of physics" to make life possible?

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Physics has nothing to do with the theory of evolution. Strawman #4.

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5. All the so-called "missing links" between apes and man are either frauds or pure speculations based on very scanty "evidence". The earth should be replete with them if millions of small changes between man and ape account for the evolution of man from apes.

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That last sentence is what one might call a "non sequitur."

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6. Some creatures, like the honey bee, just can't be accounted for by the theory of natural selection, since the honey bees themselves don't pass on genetic information.

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What exactly is the queen bee then?

I'm glad my faith is secure... otherwise, "evidence" like this might cause me to doubt it.

The theory of evolution is NOT some all-encompassing atheistic metaphysical explanation of the universe. It is a theory that describes the mechanism by which organisms diversify and specialize over time.

The theory of evolution does not disprove the existence of God. Nor does it disprove Christianity, nor does it disprove the Bible, nor does it disprove an inerrant Bible. All it disproves is the notion that the first two chapters of Genesis are historical prose. I would have thought that the style of writing would have made that clear anyway.

Biblical literalists don't even bat an eye at the obvious symbolism and poetic license in the Psalms and much of the prophetic writings in the Old Testament. To make the Gospels harmonize, you have to admit that writers take great liberties with chronology for the benefit of making theological points. There must be at least 100 topics that the inspired biblical writers took greater interest in than the traditional accounts of first things. And yet, so many Christians will expend so much energy making specious argument after specious argument to defend a very Western reading of Genesis 1 and 2 that flies in the face of everything textual critics know about the way the ancient Hebrews wrote.

This controversy just never seemed to make sense to me.

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Originally Posted by travis2

No No No No No.

Please do your research before you decide to keep spreading bigoted false histories.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06342b.htm

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I did do my research, from my History book;

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In 1633, the Italian scientist Galileo was put to trial by the Catholic Church for maintaining that the sun was the center of the universe and that the Earth moved around the sun. Galileo, who was sixty years old and in ill health, was kept waiting for two months before he was tried and found guilty of heresy (the holding of religous doctrines different from the official teachings of the church) and disobedience. Completely shattered by the experience, Galileo condemned his supposed errors: "With a sincere heart I curse and detest the said errors contrary to the Holy Church and I swear that I will nevermore in future say of assert anything that may give rise to a similar suspicion of me." Legend holds that when he left the trial room, Galileo muttered to himself: "And yet it does move!" (referring to the Earth).

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And how dare you call me a bigot!!!

Originally posted by jochhejaam : 1. The Big Bang theory is based on solid data and would show that the Universe had a finite beginning in time (about 15 billion years ago) - before that it didn't exist. How did everything come out of something that didn't exist, if there is no God?

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Originally posted by Extra Stout : .1. The Big Bang theory... .."has nothing to do with the theory of evolution". Strawman #1.

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Way to edit the information out of it's original context to fit your arguement. Evolution is not based on a beginning? And the question posed is how did everything come out of nothing? Poor response Stout.

Stout's Strawman #1 reasoning debunked .

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Originally Posted by E20

I did do my research, from my History book;



And how dare you call me a bigot!!!

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If that was your source then I apologize for the remark.


But your source is not correct.

It's crap like that that perpetuates the "The Catholic Church Is Anti-Science" bullshit and I won't sit quietly and let people get away with it anymore.

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Way to edit the information out of it's original context to fit your arguement. Evolution is not based on a beginning?

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No, it isn't. The theory of evolution does not address the origins of life. It can go back to single-celled organisms, but it doesn't really explain how the first single-celled organisms formed. Abiogenesis is a different theory, and a weaker one.

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And the question posed is how did everything come out of nothing? Poor response Stout.

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The question of how everything comes out of nothing is indeed a good question, and one for which every time science sheds a little light, it only creates even more questions.

But that is not the theory of evolution. The scope of that theory is limited to the changes and diversity in organisms over time. It does not address the origins of life, much less the origins of the universe.

You are arguing against atheistic naturalism, not evolution. Atheistic naturalism states that there is no God, everything that is came about as a result of mere chance, and that naturalistic mechanisms which developed randomly can explain all observable phenomena in the universe.

Atheistic naturalism is not a scientific theory because it is not falsifiable. It is a philosophy. Followers often use the theory of evolution to argue their belief. They are really good at baiting Christians into arguing against the theory of evolution, which is among the strongest natural scientific theories, rather than arguing against athetistic naturalism, which isn't really that strong at all.

When Christians argue against evolution, they create a very strong case against their faith among uncoverted educated people. Not only must those people throw out the entire body of mainstream science to accept Christianity as it is presented to them, they must also ignore the reality of all the technology that has been developed based upon mainstream science.

They have to believe that everything we've developed with regard to everything from medicine to agriculture to energy is just lucky guesses because the entire foundation of knowledge those things come from is false.

It is as if you are telling them that Christianity says the sky is red, and you can't be a Christian unless you believe that, even though anyone with eyes can see the sky is blue.

That is not "faith." One can believe in things unseen, but that doesn't mean that one has to believe that this reality is a false one. Many a heresy has been born upon the notion that this reality is an illusion. God isn't trying to trick us.

It is very difficult to regain hold over the culture when the educated and professional classes are at best skeptical of your views. Christians wonder why the culture has been slipping through their fingers for 100 years, and I can assure you that the sorry state of the evangelical mind in this country is one of the reasons. There are far too few Lewises and Bonhoeffers and Barths right now in this country. Christians once upon a time were at the forefront of culture and knowledge. Now they lag the secular world by a century or more, and pat themselves on the back for their anti-intellectualism. I understand that the Bible says that a man's faith should be like that of a child, but I think that means one should trust God as a child trusts his father, not that one should go through life thinking like a 4-year-old.

The body of Christ wouldn't work well if it were entirely cerebral cortex, but neither does it work well without that part.

excellent posts Stout :tu

Jelly, you da man! :lol

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Originally Posted by boutons

Jelly, you da man! :lol

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no, I'm the :princess

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Originally Posted by Republicandestino

if any liberals want to believe that we came from monkeys go eat a bannana!

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funnily enough, I'm eating a banana right now.

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Originally Posted by Jelly

excellent posts Stout :tu

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Thanks. If only I were as benevolent as I am articulate. People tell me I am the most well-spoken evil person since Hitler.

I wish I were as articulate and as evil as you Stout. :spin

Excellent post!

jochhejaam <----covering eyes and ears. "lalalalalalala lalalalalala, I'm not listening." :lol j/k, that was for Jelly, (who is a female).

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Originally posted by Stout : When Christians argue against evolution, they create a very strong case against their faith among uncoverted educated people. Not only must those people throw out the entire body of mainstream science to accept Christianity as it is presented to them, they must also ignore the reality of all the technology that has been developed based upon mainstream science.

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Thats twisted Stout. I suppose if Christians presented the theory of evolution as the 11th Commandment "Thou shalt not believe in evolution" then it could have an effect on the responsiveness to Christianity, but they don't, and it doesn't.

Evolution itself is what's problematic regarding Christianity in that it denies the Genesis account of creation and has therefore pitted itself against Christianity, not the other way around. The "standard scientific theory" of evolution is "that `human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process. -Shermer-

"There are two forms of atheism: theoretical atheism, which claims there is not a God, and practical atheism, which does not actually deny that God exists but rather that God does not do anything that has any bearing on
human affairs". -Mautner-
Yet you state that Christians have erected the wall between the elite intellectuals and Christ? No Stout, it's obvious that they haven't. Christianity was around long before the atheistic/agnostic theory of evolution came into fruition so it's a blatant fabrication to suggest that the any anti-evolution influence against Christianity falls at the feet of Christians.


Evolutionists' suppression of the teaching of theism is atheistic
While atheism is not officially taught in public schools (e.g. in the USA), if God is omitted from accounts of origins, then students will take that as implying that God had no part in such origins which is effectively atheism. For the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that theism is religious, while its alternative is not, is anything but neutral . It is "as if in a debate the judge were to decide for the negative, not because its arguments were stronger but because the affirmative's arguments were ruled out of order"

http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones

After reading through this thread, I've come to the conclusion that jochhejaam > MFD. But that isn't saying much.

You may be getting fed up, Manny, but remember who you used to have to deal with.

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Originally Posted by LittleGeneral

After reading through this thread, I've come to the conclusion that jochhejaam > MFD. But that isn't saying much.

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No comparison. Pat Robertson > MFD

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Originally Posted by LittleGeneral

You may be getting fed up, Manny, but remember who you used to have to deal with.

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And us who have to deal with Manny? :lol

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

Evolution itself is what's problematic regarding Christianity in that it denies the Genesis account of creation and has therefore pitted itself against Christianity, not the other way around.

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Sorry. Not true. The majority of Christians (including myself) have no problem reconciling a Creator God with evolution.

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Originally Posted by travis2

Sorry. Not true. The majority of Christians (including myself) have no problem reconciling a Creator God with evolution.

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Originally posted by jochhejaam: I suppose if Christians presented the theory of evolution as the 11th Commandment "Thou shalt not believe in evolution" then it could have an effect on the responsiveness to Christianity, but they don't, and it doesn't.

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^^^^^^^I'm not sure how you came to your conclusion that I inferred that Christians can't reconcile evolution and God. Read it again travis.


Based on this post you missed the point of my post. I'm not sure how you interpreted my post to say that Christians cannot adhere to or consider the theory of evolution. That's not implied.
I strongly disagree with Stout's assertion that Christians who reject the theory of evolution have impaired the elitist intellectual from being able to accept Christianity.
If their so intelligent or intellectual then they would explore for themselves the tenets of Christianity and come to their own conclusions and not be swayed by Christians that don't buy into evolution. True? Of course it is.
Eternity with or without God will be determined by ones belief in God's plan of salvation for mankind, not by ones belief of disbelief in evolution.

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Originally Posted by travis2

Sorry. Not true. The majority of Christians (including myself) have no problem reconciling a Creator God with evolution.

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I have a problem with a theory that dismisses with disdain the intelligent design of all of creation by my God according to Genesis.
Evolutionists are exclusionary, not God. If they want to incorporate Intelligent Design into their theory fine, but until then, for me, they've set into action Murphy's Law that states "for every reaction there is an opposite and equal reaction". They don't believe in God's creationism, I don't believe in their unproven theory of evolution. God is their Creator, do you believe this or do you think He's a liar too? They're the ones that are unwilling to reconcile.

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

I have a problem with a theory that dismisses with disdain the intelligent design of all of creation by my God according to Genesis.
Evolutionists are exclusionary, not God. If they want to incorporate Intelligent Design into their theory fine, but until then, for me, they've set into action Murphy's Law that states "for every reaction there is an opposite and equal reaction". They don't believe in God's creationism, I don't believe in their unproven theory of evolution. God is their Creator, do you believe this or do you think He's a liar too? They're the ones that are unwilling to reconcile.

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Evolution is neutral on the subject. Some scientists choose to interpret the theory in that manner.

Personally...if creation happened exactly as Genesis states, in that order, 6000 years ago, then that makes God the liar. Not evolution.

The evidence for a "big bang" beginning for the universe (unrelated whatsoever to evolution) is damn near conclusive.

The evidence for a 4+ billion year old Earth and for evolution is also there. It is the absolute best explanation at this time for the data.

For God to create a 6000 year old earth, with everything as it is now...and with stars out there with distances that are obviously in the millions and billions of light-years...in other words, created to look like it's old when it's not...sorry, that makes God a liar. I refuse to believe that.

As Galileo is quoted as saying..."I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

^^^^^^^I'm not sure how you came to your conclusion that I inferred that Christians can't reconcile evolution and God. Read it again travis.

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I did. And if you look at the quote from you which I posted above...the implication is quite clear.

You are not talking about individual scientists. You are talking about the theory of evolution itself.

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Evolution itself is what's problematic regarding Christianity in that it denies the Genesis account of creation and has therefore pitted itself against Christianity, not the other way around.

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Evolution in no way denies the Genesis account of creation. It denies a very narrow, very Western, scientific reading of the Genesis account of creation. You are assuming not only that the Biblical writers of the Old Testament think the way Westerners do, but that God does as well.

That makes little sense, since he picked an Eastern nation to be his chosen people in the Old Testament through whom his truth would be revealed. You never even consider how the Jews communicate truth because Christianity has been dominated by Greek and Western thought nearly since its inception. Nearly all of the New Testament, save Matthew, James, and Revelation is written in the Greek way of thinking. Virtually none of the Old Testament is.

Basically what I'm saying is that you are reading Genesis totally wrong and coming up with ridiculous conclusions because of it, and so is pretty much every evangelical/fundamentalist Christian in the West. You are seeing God in your own image, rather than the other way around, and reaping error because of it.

Christians do not apply this strict a hermeneutic elsewhere in the Bible. When Caesar Augustus is described as the emperor of "all the world" in Luke's literal historical account, nobody reads that to say that Augustus was the emperor of China or the Americas. When Paul says that the gospel already has been preached to "all the world" in his pragmatic, frank, and literal epistles, nobody believes that the gospel had reached Polynesia by then.

When the Old Testament describes the heavens as a vault held up by pillars, nobody believes that it actually means that literally, especially since Isaiah confirms that the earth is a "circle."

But you among other Christians insist that Genesis 1 and 2 have to be taken absolutely literally, though the way it's written is obviously poetic. I guess you have to believe that a bat is a kind of bird, too, says Genesis 1 says that. I mean, the two chapters don't even match one another in their accounts of the creation of man. They're parallel accounts. Which one is right? In the Psalms and in the Proverbs, when that's seen, everyone says, "Oh, that's Hebrew poetic parallelism." But, oh no, seven-day creation and the young earth, that has to be literal.

Genesis pinpoints the location of the Garden of Eden. It is in the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in modern Iraq. It is guarded by seraphim which prevent humans from entering. Taken literally, shouldn't our troops have stumbled upon it by now? Oh, you mean it's not there? Where is it? Oh, you mean the earth and indeed the whole universe has been fundamentally altered by sin in a way that transcends our understanding? Then why are we being such sticklers about scientific details in the time prior to that?

I suppose there are other cases where evangelical/fundie Christians tie their brains in knots to maintain the reading they want out of the Bible. One big one is the contrast in chronology between Matthew and Luke. They describe the same events in a different order, sometimes years apart. Someone familiar with Eastern thought would figure Luke's chronology is more accurate, because Matthew as a Jew is prioritizing theology and the fulfillment of prophecy in his account. American evangelicals instead rationalize it away by deciding that Jesus must have done and said the exact same thing twice at different times.

But why does chronology matter to God? He exists outside time. He created time. He is not bound to the way we perceive it. We cannot take action that changes the past. God can, and the Bible testifies to that when it describes how Jesus absolved the sins of all the believers who came before his time on Earth.

Your perspective of God is too narrow. You read Genesis in terms of what your mind understands, and cannot fathom that the account could be written from God's perspective, and that the rules that apply to your experience do not apply to his. Have you considered taht the Bible conveys spiritual truth, not objective scientific truth to those who believe it, and that it could be communicated in ways that defy human logic? Why? Well, think about what God has to do -- he has to communicate his transcendent act of creation in the limited language of the limited minds of human beings. Of course it's not going to sound like the way we perceive it in the physical world.

Do you really believe that there is a spiritual dimension? Do you not understand that science is only a subset of truth, and that the scientists who worship it as the means to all knowledge are fools? All spiritual people understand this.

That's part of the truth that the Bible conveys, isn't it? Does it not say that God's ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts? Then, if the Bible is his inspired Word, why would we insist upon reading it in terms of our own ways and thoughts? Why do evangelicals decry the overreach of science, and yet read God's word with a scientific mind and not a spiritual one? Might one not know God better by getting that stronghold out of one's mind?

Think about how many other bits of theology are the same way. For example, take predestination versus freewill. From God's perspective, he elects those who will believe in him and be saved even before they come to believe in him. But from our perspective, it's the other way around -- people have the free will to hear the gospel and choose to be saved.

From God's perspective, salvation is instantaneous and assured. From man's perspective, he must persevere all his life in faith.

The Bible even says that we can learn about God from what has been created. Theologians call that "general revelation." The Bible is "special revelation." Western Christians maintain that the former must always be interpreted in terms of the latter, without ever considering that the latter can be interpreted in terms of the former.

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The "standard scientific theory" of evolution is "that `human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process. -Shermer-

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No "standard scientific theory" can deny the presence of God in any process. Any scholar who says otherwise is a liar. Period. Science by definition can only explain the physical world. God transcends the physical world.

I do not deny that atheists like to use evolution to deny the existence of God, because evolution does not require the intervention of a Creator. But neither does your drive to work today. You can explain exactly how you got from Point A to Point B without invoking God, even though the Bible clearly says it is God who watches over you and protects you. You can clearly explain how crops are grown and harvested, even though the Bible says it is God who provides your food.

Maybe you want to believe that God supernaturally intervened to create things rather than by doing so through natural mechanisms that he created. But that is up to you, and you have to deny the objective evidence around you to uphold that belief. Christianity as presented in the Bible does not require that belief. I can believe that God is responsible for gravity without believing that he has an invisible hand actually pushing me down towards the ground.

You are fighting for your own sectarian dogma. You are not fighting for Christianity as a whole.

Overall, what I'm saying is that the creation account of Genesis is absolutely true regardless of the differences between it and what science reveals, because Genesis is communicating a different and higher truth than natural science.

Genesis is metaphysical; science is physical.
Genesis is supernatural; science is natural.
Genesis is eternal; science is temporal.
Genesis is transcendant; science is concrete.

The two cannot conflict because their intersection is so small.

Nicely done, Stout..nicely done...

I agree with joch that completely omitting any discussion of God from the curriculum is not a neutral treatment, but rather one biased towards atheism.

I also acknowledge that atheists abuse science to hammer their beliefs on others, because to them, naturalism is the only truth, and they want to set the ground rules of debate based on that.

Given the prominent role of religion in so many aspects of human civilization, its culture and learning, just leaving that out of education is a disservice to students.

The First Amendment does not require such drastic steps, nor does the history of American jurisprudence prior to the rise of radical secularists. While it would be improper to indoctrinate students in a particular religion, neither is it proper to indoctrinate them against religion.

Where Christians fail in their fight is that their state of mind trails that of the secularists so badly that they always end up figthing on the secularists' terms, and don't even realize it. It's like a lot of other issues in politics --> whoever can frame the debate usually wins.

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Originally Posted by travis2

Nicely done, Stout..nicely done...

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Christians should simply note 1 Corinthians 13:2 before thinking I'm all wonderful.

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Overall, what I'm saying is that the creation account of Genesis is absolutely true regardless of the differences between it and what science reveals, because Genesis is communicating a different and higher truth than natural science.
Genesis is metaphysical; science is physical.
Genesis is supernatural; science is natural.
Genesis is eternal; science is temporal.
Genesis is transcendant; science is concrete.

The two cannot conflict because their intersection is so small.

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Originally Posted by Extra Stout

I agree with joch that completely omitting any discussion of God from the curriculum is not a neutral treatment, but rather one biased towards atheism.

I also acknowledge that atheists abuse science to hammer their beliefs on others, because to them, naturalism is the only truth, and they want to set the ground rules of debate based on that.

Given the prominent role of religion in so many aspects of human civilization, its culture and learning, just leaving that out of education is a disservice to students.

The First Amendment does not require such drastic steps, nor does the history of American jurisprudence prior to the rise of radical secularists. While it would be improper to indoctrinate students in a particular religion, neither is it proper to indoctrinate them against religion.

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Good explanation of these things, at least for me.
Thanks

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1 Corin 13 : 2
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

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[QUOTE]T

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Originally Posted by travis2

the evidence for a "big bang" beginning for the universe is damn near conclusive.

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Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory... Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

- Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

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Monday, August 29, 2005
The Big Bang Theory may have been disproved
The Big Bang Theory that has informed all of modern cosmology and science down to the origins of space, time, and life, has hit a major snag: it's probably all wrong. Thanks to observations by Halton Arp, the use of redshifting to determine distances between objects in space -- and the premise behind the Big Bang -- has proven to be incorrect. Having found supposedly distant quasars in front of nearby galaxies, the Big Bang may be snuffed out. http://www.haltonarp.com/


Overview:
You'd never know it from official news releases, but the Big Bang is broken and can't be fixed.
The Big Bang has lost its theoretical foundation, which was the Doppler interpretation of redshift (linking redshift to the stretching of light wavelengths as objects move away from us).
It is now known that, while almost all observed galaxies are redshifted, the Doppler interpretation of this shift does not provide a reliable measure of velocity or (indirectly) of distance.
Quasars, whose high redshift would place them at the outer edges of the visible universe, are in fact physically and energetically linked to nearby low-redshift active galaxies.
In the rise and fall of the Big Bang hypothesis no name looms with greater distinction than that of Halton Arp, the leading authority on peculiar galaxies.
For established science the greatest embarrassment could come from public realization that, for decades, astronomers suppressed the warning signs.
To his credit, Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan acknowledged the problem when he was writing Cosmos (published in 1980).
But in the following years the politically influential looked the other way, and the word quietly went out to science editors at major newspaper and news magazines that Arp had been fully answered and no more time was needed on the question.
While big bang theorists have cobbled together "explanations" for small-scale examples of the effect, the picture as a whole can only be illusory.
The failure of the Big Bang hypothesis could be the tipping point in the collapse of modern cosmology, with reverberations affecting all of the theoretical sciences.
Electric currents are required to sustain cosmic magnetic fields.
And now, everywhere we look we see magnetic fields at work: electricity is flowing across immense distances in space.

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Originally Posted by talkorigins.org

Incidentally, the American astronomer Halton Arp has hypothesised in many papers over the last several decades that redshift is not actually a function of speed of recession due to the expansion of the Universe - that low-redshift galaxies and high-redshift quasars which appear close together as seen from Earth are physically connected by gaseous bridges, which is obviously an impossibility if the quasars are billions of light-years further way However, it has been shown that Arp's bridges are almost certainly nothing more than either photographic artifacts or statistical anomalies (e.g. Sharp 1985, 1986; Newman & Terzian 1995; Wehrle et al. 1997; Hardcastle et al. 1998; Crawford et al. 1999; Hardcastle 2000).

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Next...

Arp's theories are interesting.

In some ways, the "dark matter" and "dark energy" of modern cosmology could be analogous to the tortuous paths of the planets and other heavenly bodies that geocentrists theorized.

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Originally Posted by travis2

Next...

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Don't dismiss Arp's theories so quickly. Ever hear of the "Fingers of God?"

It's a phenomenon that when galaxy clusters are mapped based upon the assumption that redshift=distance, they all form elongated V's that point at Earth. It doesn't mean that the universe actually is shaped like long fingers pointing back at us.

It either means there's a problem with the assumption "redshift=distance," or that somehow the gravity of the galaxy cluster screws with its redshift.

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Originally Posted by Extra Stout

Don't dismiss Arp's theories so quickly. Ever hear of the "Fingers of God?"

It's a phenomenon that when galaxy clusters are mapped based upon the assumption that redshift=distance, they all form elongated V's that point at Earth. It doesn't mean that the universe actually is shaped like long fingers pointing back at us.

It means there's a problem with the assumption "redshift=distance."

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Stout, I don't have to dismiss them quickly. The astronomical community has dismissed them after much study.

There are many articles and discussions on this.

He's a lone wolf in this one.

Travis the way you handle yourself in regards to your religion never fails to impress.

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Originally Posted by travis2

Personally...if creation happened exactly as Genesis states, in that order, 6000 years ago, then that makes God the liar. Not evolution.


For God to create a 6000 year old earth, with everything as it is now...and with stars out there with distances that are obviously in the millions and billions of light-years...in other words, created to look like it's old when it's not...sorry, that makes God a liar.

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^^^Let me know how your confrontation with God turns out.


Your arrogance lends great credence to the verses found in Romans;

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator

Let God be true, and every man a liar.
"So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge."

(see sig.)

It's funny how "Creations" like jochhejaam love to quote scientists out of context. Reminds me of tactics used by Holocaust deniers and other select groups...

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Originally Posted by travis2

I don't have to dismiss them quickly. The astronomical community has dismissed them after much study.
He's a lone wolf in this one.

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Being the "lone wolf" means being wrong? That's asisine and he's actually not the lone wolf (read attached article) so either retract that false notion or be branded a liar by your own erroneous statement.

Dismissing years of research by Arp amounts to suppression of evidence that refutes the findings of those that are resistant to new discovery. Also known as blackballing.


Unpublished Review of
Halton Arp Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations 2003, Apeiron, Quebec

Seldom can so much theory have hinged upon an observation.

Halton Arp's new book, reviewed here by N Kollerstrom, features a paradigm-shattering colour photo of this galaxy plus quasar.
(For picture and more on this article visit http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...ontroversy.htm )

The photograph was taken by David Strange, a Dorset amateur astronomer, clearly showing ( figure opposite) the 'luminous bridge' between them .

Does this picture reveal the secret of the universe, that galaxies bud to form quasars of higher redshift?




A recent Astronomy & Astrophysics report, based on observations at La Palma, has endorsed the notion that a galaxy (NGC 7603) and its nearby companion of very different redshift, are physically linked: it is its "authors" found 'the most impressive case of a system of anomalous redshifts discovered so far' 1. As early as 1971 Fred Hoyle described this galaxy plus companion as 'The case where it is hardest to deny the evidence 2' - and the evidence here concerns what one might call a 'forbidden link,' impossible within modern cosmology: then in 1983 Hoyle alluded to 'the manifest fact that NGC 7603 is connected to its satellite3 ' Is this indeed a manifest fact, or is it a mere error in perception as modern cosmology would have it? Do the new observational data comprise a crucial experiment, and if so what implications would there be? For an answer this we turn to the theories and the new book of Mr Halton Arp.

If one views the form of a spiral galaxy, it can appear more as having unfolded out from a centre, rather than having condensed inwards from homogeneous matter in space. That antithesis does quite well express the contrast between Arp's views, and current cosmological theories. We have become conditioned to the idea of black holes at galactic centres, as a logical consequence and end-result of the Big Bang. Let's try instead to envisage Arp's view, of galactic centres as white holes, from which the matter of galaxies has emerged. Creation, out of nothing?


Sir Fred Hoyle - Sir Fred Hoyle (June 24, 1915 – August 20, 2001) was a British astronomer, notable for a number of his theories that run counter to current astronomical opinion, He spent most of his working life at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, and was director of the institute for a number of years.

Hoyle's View
Hoyle always supported Arp - as Dr Jane Gregory, who is composing a biography of Fred Hoyle, explained to me. Jane works in the same department as me (the STS Dept at UCL) and told me how she had an interview with Sir Fred before he died: he kept showing her images of the filaments linking galaxies to adjacent quasars). This was clearly expressed in his 1983 The Quasar Controversy Resolved as well as in his last (posthumous) book co-authored with the eminent cosmologists Burbidge and Narlikar: A Different Approach to Cosmology: From a static Universe through the Big Bang towards Reality. Hoyle coined the term 'Big Bang' in 1950, in a derisive and skeptical sense, and his last title politely informs the reader of its erroneous nature. Through this book Arp is cast as the heroic pioneer, e.g. concerning how astronomers terminated his profession of astronomy in America in the early 1980s: 'Thus, Arp was the subject of one of the most clear-cut and successful attempts in modern times to block research which it was felt, correctly, would be revolutionary in its impact if it were to be adopted 8'. The authors endorses Arp's argument, e.g.: 'It is clear that over the past 20 years a great deal of evidence has been found which shows that many QSOs [quasi-stellar objects = quasars] with large redshifts are physically associated with galaxies having much smaller redshifts 9. The closure of his US career was surely beneficial, inasmuch as it resulted in Arp moving to Berlin's Max Plank Astrophysics Institute, with its new, X-ray telescope. He could re-examine objects he had earlier viewed through an optical telescope at the X-ray wavelength, as revealed their most energetic parts.

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...ontroversy.htm
(excellent article)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

^^^Let me know how your confrontation with God turns out.


Your arrogance lends great credence to the verses found in Romans;

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator

Let God be true, and every man a liar.
"So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge."

(see sig.)

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So now you are accusing me of not believing and worshipping God? Who's the arrogant one?

It always amazes me that there are "Christians" out there who's sole purpose in life is to be an asshole to anyone who doesn't believe exactly as they do.

Sorry. I am comfortable in my theology and in my cosmology. I have no need to put God in a little box. I can let Him be whatever He is.

And I don't need to brand as heretics anyone who doesn't believe as I do.

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Originally Posted by jochhejaam

Being the "lone wolf" means being wrong? That's asisine and he's actually not the lone wolf (read attached article) so either retract that false notion or be branded a liar by your own erroneous statement.

Dismissing years of research by Arp amounts to suppression of evidence that refutes the findings of those that are resistant to new discovery. Also known as blackballing.


Unpublished Review of
Halton Arp Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations 2003, Apeiron, Quebec

Seldom can so much theory have hinged upon an observation.

Halton Arp's new book, reviewed here by N Kollerstrom, features a paradigm-shattering colour photo of this galaxy plus quasar.
(For picture and more on this article visit http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...ontroversy.htm )

The photograph was taken by David Strange, a Dorset amateur astronomer, clearly showing ( figure opposite) the 'luminous bridge' between them .

Does this picture reveal the secret of the universe, that galaxies bud to form quasars of higher redshift?




A recent Astronomy & Astrophysics report, based on observations at La Palma, has endorsed the notion that a galaxy (NGC 7603) and its nearby companion of very different redshift, are physically linked: it is its "authors" found 'the most impressive case of a system of anomalous redshifts discovered so far' 1. As early as 1971 Fred Hoyle described this galaxy plus companion as 'The case where it is hardest to deny the evidence 2' - and the evidence here concerns what one might call a 'forbidden link,' impossible within modern cosmology: then in 1983 Hoyle alluded to 'the manifest fact that NGC 7603 is connected to its satellite3 ' Is this indeed a manifest fact, or is it a mere error in perception as modern cosmology would have it? Do the new observational data comprise a crucial experiment, and if so what implications would there be? For an answer this we turn to the theories and the new book of Mr Halton Arp.

If one views the form of a spiral galaxy, it can appear more as having unfolded out from a centre, rather than having condensed inwards from homogeneous matter in space. That antithesis does quite well express the contrast between Arp's views, and current cosmological theories. We have become conditioned to the idea of black holes at galactic centres, as a logical consequence and end-result of the Big Bang. Let's try instead to envisage Arp's view, of galactic centres as white holes, from which the matter of galaxies has emerged. Creation, out of nothing?


Sir Fred Hoyle - Sir Fred Hoyle (June 24, 1915 – August 20, 2001) was a British astronomer, notable for a number of his theories that run counter to current astronomical opinion, He spent most of his working life at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, and was director of the institute for a number of years.

Hoyle's View
Hoyle always supported Arp - as Dr Jane Gregory, who is composing a biography of Fred Hoyle, explained to me. Jane works in the same department as me (the STS Dept at UCL) and told me how she had an interview with Sir Fred before he died: he kept showing her images of the filaments linking galaxies to adjacent quasars). This was clearly expressed in his 1983 The Quasar Controversy Resolved as well as in his last (posthumous) book co-authored with the eminent cosmologists Burbidge and Narlikar: A Different Approach to Cosmology: From a static Universe through the Big Bang towards Reality. Hoyle coined the term 'Big Bang' in 1950, in a derisive and skeptical sense, and his last title politely informs the reader of its erroneous nature. Through this book Arp is cast as the heroic pioneer, e.g. concerning how astronomers terminated his profession of astronomy in America in the early 1980s: 'Thus, Arp was the subject of one of the most clear-cut and successful attempts in modern times to block research which it was felt, correctly, would be revolutionary in its impact if it were to be adopted 8'. The authors endorses Arp's argument, e.g.: 'It is clear that over the past 20 years a great deal of evidence has been found which shows that many QSOs [quasi-stellar objects = quasars] with large redshifts are physically associated with galaxies having much smaller redshifts 9. The closure of his US career was surely beneficial, inasmuch as it resulted in Arp moving to Berlin's Max Plank Astrophysics Institute, with its new, X-ray telescope. He could re-examine objects he had earlier viewed through an optical telescope at the X-ray wavelength, as revealed their most energetic parts.

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...ontroversy.htm
(excellent article)

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I stand by my statement. And I'm supposed to give credence to a review article written by a crank site?

I daresay I can follow the science a mite more than you can, thankyouverymuch. Once again, English and Theology majors feel the need to teach scientists about science.

Who's arrogant? Who's the "liar"?

I suggest you re-read Mt 7:3-5. Commit it to memory.

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Originally Posted by MannyIsGod

Travis the way you handle yourself in regards to your religion never fails to impress.

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Thanks, Manny...

(But I'm still not going to call you God...:lol)

[QUOTE]

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Originally Posted by travis2

I stand by my statement. And I'm supposed to give credence to a review article written by a crank site?

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^^Originally posted by Stout: I also acknowledge that atheists abuse science to hammer their beliefs on others, because to them, naturalism is the only truth, and they want to set the ground rules of debate based on that. (addendum, joch - And I don't care if you're atheist or not, the statement fits your opinions).

jochhejaam---> Dismiss all new science and articles that don't agree with you on the grounds that it's contrary to earlier, outdated science. :rolleyes

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I daresay I can follow the science a mite more than you can, thankyouverymuch. .

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And that's you're reasoning for dismissing the studies of Arp and others?
Laughable t2.

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Who's the "liar"?

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According to you, God is. And since you said Arp is the "lone wolf" which obviously isn't true, then you are.

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I suggest you re-read Mt 7:3-5. Commit it to memory.

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I know the verses well (planks and specks) and they have no bearing on this/our discussion.

[QUOTE=jochhejaam]

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^^Originally posted by Stout: I also acknowledge that atheists abuse science to hammer their beliefs on others, because to them, naturalism is the only truth, and they want to set the ground rules of debate based on that. (addendum, joch - And I don't care if you're atheist or not, the statement fits your opinions).

jochhejaam---> Dismiss all new science and articles that don't agree with you on the grounds that it's contrary to earlier, outdated science. :rolleyes



And that's you're reasoning for dismissing the studies of Arp and others?
Laughable t2.




According to you, God is. And since you said Arp is the "lone wolf" which obviously isn't true, then you are.






I know the verses well (planks and specks) and they have no bearing on this/our discussion.

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I never said God was a liar.

But your actions make me wonder if you're really a Christian.