Praying?!? Sorry pal, God's busy with other worlds for the next few centuries, can I take a message?

POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Friday, July 10, 2009 17:49
VIEWED: 9477
PAGE 15 of 15

PREV PAGE 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

KWICKO

Sunday, July 5, 2009 4:08 AM

Quote:

its like the fruit fly argument.. theyve done more tests on it then any other organism, trying to create a positive mutation that led to new genetic material. what did we learn? in the end, theyre still flys.

How many millions of years have these fruit fly experiments been going on? You're arguing that because you can't see evolutionary changes within your lifespan - or even within the short time you've looked at these things - then that is proof that it doesn't happen.

I can't actually watch the Grand Canyon being formed by erosion; does that mean it doesn't exist?

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

BYTEMITE

Sunday, July 5, 2009 6:14 AM

Sorry, other post got interrupted by hunger. If you want me to continue explaining anything there I'd be completely willing to.

Just wanted to address this in particular first.

Quote:

again, ill be accused of over-simplifying, but because they were good designs.

I actually think that a lot of organisms really aren't well developed for their environment and for environment stresses. In fact, I'd say that their form and function is really only just good enough that they don't die instantly or drive their species to extinction.

For example, plants. Like I was saying earlier, plants and photosynthesis actually began to appear (and we have the fossils) in a time that had a much higher CO2 level, which they require for photosynthesis. CO2 is greatly reduced in concentration now, and some of the photosynthesis chemicals in plants are poorly adapted for choosing CO2 (what plants need) over oxygen in the current chemical composition of the atmosphere. The chemicals are a hold over from when CO2 was higher, and Oxygen uptake wasn't a problem.

Quote:
Since carbon dioxide and oxygen compete at the active site of RuBisCO, carbon fixation by RuBisCO can be enhanced by increasing the carbon dioxide level in the compartment containing RuBisCO (chloroplast stroma). Several times during the evolution of plants, mechanisms have evolved for increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the stroma (see C4 carbon fixation). The use of oxygen as a substrate is an apparently-puzzling process, since it seems to throw away captured energy. However it may be a mechanism for preventing overload during periods of high light flux. This weakness in the enzyme is the cause of photorespiration, such that healthy leaves in bright light may have zero net carbon fixation when the ratio of O2 to CO2 reaches a threshold at which oxygen is fixed instead of carbon. ~Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuBisCO

The other immediate example I can think of is people. Our bipedal stance and narrow hips actually make our birth process much riskier than quadrupedal animals.

It's good enough to keep our species going and competitive, but I consider it a major flaw in our form.

MAL4PREZ

Sunday, July 5, 2009 2:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
and where are the millions of intermediates which should litter the fossil records? thats right.. almost entirely absent. if thats the best you can do, i feel sufficiently vindicated

Antimason, you sultry minx. It only took two years for you to show up again spouting the same stuff. An example of "intermediates" was posted the last time we had an evolution discussion. Remember?

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=29741

Check my post of Tuesday, August 07, 2007 - 19:41. Also, recall this:

Intermediates, wouldn't you say?

I don't expect a response. I know you're quite skilled at ignoring what you don't like to see.

Yeah folks, all this has been gone over before. Lists of fossils, explanation of methods and terms, philosophy. But antimason openly admitted that he's not interested in learning. To quote:

"you're right, i didn't check the sites... but i've had my share of the evolutionary theory throughout school, and theres not much new ground to be broken. i will likely always be skeptical and left with the same questions, because no one will ever know what happened 'in the beginning" [sic]

It really is a brilliant system he's got. "I refuse to try and figure it out, so I don't get it, so no one else must get it either, so it must be all lies, lies!"

Other highlights from that old thread:

I asked if antimason had ever seen fossils in museums and such, and how he explained their existence. Does he believe that scientist are all acting together in creating a big huge lie? Do we spend out nights building fake bones, burying them out in the desert, then going the next day to "discover" them?

He never responded.

Several times I clarified things that still haven't made it into anti's cranium. Evolution is not about "in the beginning", it's about what's happened since then. Also, humans do not come from monkeys. There was a whole different animal long ago that both humans and monkeys are descended from.

Antimason saw technical problems in ice cores and C14 dating. Though he makes no bones about avoiding learning about these methods, and refuses to read any links or learn the correct lingo, he manages to know about blatant blaring problems that trained scientists never figured out. Of course, when I explained how scientists do indeed account for the things he brought up, he never responded to me. I guess the creationist sites he parrots didn't tell him how to discuss this methods in any detail.

Anti kept referring to science as a philosophy, as something one chooses to believe out of nothing more than will. I think he really is incapable of separating evidence-based theories from belief systems.

On this thread, I see that he's still clinging to the idea that nature is completely random, chaotic, and unguided. It was already explained several times that forces of nature provide structure. ie Look out your window: solid, dense material is down, air is up. Gravity sorts and provides order. But he prefers to deny natural order.

Eventually, Anti did the predictable name-calling and disappeared from the thread. I found this to be some interesting hypocracy, that he couldn't handle our doubts. His claim that scientists are lying, coming up with a huge sham just so we can get some funding or something, well, that's not at all offensive. (For the record, I'm not offended because his arguments are too weak to make me anything but incredulous and, well, amused. I feel like River trying to look into his head: what in the world is going on in there?)

And now a word about conceit: the incredible conceit of insisting that only a superbeing who thinks and feels the way humans do could have created the universe. Pretty damned conceited to say that life can be made that way we would build a house of Tinkertoys. Pretty damned conceited to ignore the many ways that nature provides structure, simply because nature's method of creating doesn't fit the human-cent

KWICKO

Sunday, July 5, 2009 2:47 PM

Mal4:

You mean AntiMason is really AuRaptor? That would explain an awful lot...

MAL4PREZ

Sunday, July 5, 2009 3:17 PM

No, I think at some point I figured out the Antimason is really my mom. The emotion based debate style and fact avoidance give her away.

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

CHRISISALL

Sunday, July 5, 2009 3:19 PM

*falls off chair LingOL*

The laughing Chrisisall

MAL4PREZ

Friday, July 10, 2009 4:50 PM

Would you look at that - when evidence was posted, Antimason disappeared. Again! Hmm, but this time he didn't bother to call me names first. I feel so ignored.

Any over/under on when he'll show up yet again saying: "There's no PROOF of intermediates in this so-called fossil record! NONE!"

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

ZZETTA13

Friday, July 10, 2009 5:49 PM

If there is no God and no heaven then who writes all those “ St. Peter at the pearly gate” jokes?

Z

I believe and I believe that the divinity has a sense of humor! If every time you prayed and your prayers were answered there’d be 6 billion well endowed, heavy chested millionaires on the planet.

PREV PAGE 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15