|
< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 1664 OF 4594 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
Feb-08-11
 | | OhioChessFan: <Patzer: "Maybe you blew up a junk yard and a super computer emerged, but pardon me if I'm skeptical."> <JB: No, that probably wouldn't happen. But if billions of people tried that billions of times for billions of years, the conditions for that to occur may happen once.> Let's try that. Create some junkyards out of nothing for us and we'll both have a go at it. <Patzer> I had the same idea of appealing to syllogisms some time ago. I agree that the irrational claims of the other side are easily revealed in that manner. |
 |
Feb-08-11
| | OhioChessFan: <kb2: Intelligent design has too many problems to be taken seriously. Even countries which have no laws about religion in schools don't take it seriously. Much easier to worship natural laws or life itself.> There are no laws insisting kids go to church. You can ignore that your analogy is false, but I'll be happy to keep track of your failures for you. |
|
Feb-08-11
 | | twinlark: The Babel Fish as Proof of the Non-Existence of God
<Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.“The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ “‘But,’ says Man, ‘The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’ “‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanished in a puff of logic. “‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.> |
|
Feb-08-11
 | | Travis Bickle: <keypusher> What I really was trying to say in layman's terms is democracy from it's inception in the U.S. is more hypocrisy. I mean you have a small group of wealthy white men who escaped a really Big Rich Guy, 'The King Of England' and they set out to make things a little better for all? They eventually got around to importing slaves to do the hard work and the Chinese and the Irish to do back breaking labor and perish building the railroads to help the wealthy make it a little easier to control the whole country. Then the army set out to wipe out the true Native Americans the Indians so they could capture & rule the entire nation much like their king in England did. Then the 'Young Americans' made war on some hold out Mexican land owners in Arizonia, Texas & California so we could be a Republic for all! The Constitution was written for basically the rich white Privileged elite. And their very patriotic too! P.S. Here's a song to set the mood. For the purists, the elephants & tigers in the song are not to be taken literally but metaphorically. Peace http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fnm... |
|
Feb-08-11
 | | al wazir: So, is the Oklo reactor (see my previous post) a human hoax or a divine hoax? If neither, and if no other explanation is forthcoming, then it proves that the Earth is billions of years old. |
|
| Feb-08-11 | | rclb: ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ Funny, but of course wrong on all counts. A misunderstanding of faith (which is not the same as mere assent to the veracity of a proposition) and a catastrophic misunderstanding of God, who does not require our faith in order to exist. |
|
Feb-08-11
 | | kb2ct: <OhioChessFan:There are no laws insisting kids go to church.> Thankfully. But intelligent design is a well known ploy to get religion into the classroom. Despite any merits, this alone is enough to gyarantee its failure. :0) |
|
| Feb-08-11 | | rilkefan: <Assuming that all things reflecting intelligence came about as the result of random chance from the complex interaction of energy, matter and physical laws for which we have no explanation?> Hello, hundreds of years of science would like to make your acquaintance. |
|
| Feb-08-11 | | rclb: <Maatalkko> 'If you can add anything as a molecular biologist that amateurs don't know, I would appreciate it.' Well there has been quite a lot of progress really on prebiotic chemistry, some of it in the place where I work - see for example http://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/group... My own field is innate immunity and virology so I'm not a real expert in this area, but I do understand it fairly well. |
|
Feb-08-11
| | kb2ct: Mini lecture on the origin of complex life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ3x...
:0) |
|
Feb-08-11
| | al wazir: <OhioChessFan: Let's try that. Create some junkyards out of nothing for us and we'll both have a go at it.> Molecular biologists have already managed to create new life forms, forms that didn't exist previously. Of course you and I can do that too, with the help of a lucky (or unlucky) mutation. But as the bumper sticker says, microbiologists do it in a test tube. I'm no expert, so I don't have any basis for making a prediction, but I expect to live long enough to read about the creation of new single-cell life forms "out of nothing" -- that is, out of nonliving material. You probably will too. That's just one step away from abiogenesis. That step may take a little longer, but given adequate funding, I think it would be possible to reproduce the conditions in the Earth's oceans in the Azoic Era on a large enough scale, with the right mixture of chemicals such as amino acids that are known to form spontaneously, so that some form of DNA develops within a reasonable time -- say a few years. All by itself, with no divine intervention. I would call that abiogenesis. Would you? Or would you dig in your heels and say, no, it took human planning to prepare that mixture and those conditions? |
|
| Feb-08-11 | | rclb: 'I expect to live long enough to read about the creation of new single-cell life forms "out of nothing" -- that is, out of nonliving material. You probably will too.'
I doubt it. Probably we will get to a self-replicating nucleic acid though. |
|
| Feb-08-11 | | shach matov: <Travis Bickle: <twinlark: can you tell us what you think the substantive discussion is and has been actually about?> I think it has been about 95% of your ego.> That's what I was trying to tell <twinlark> all along:) |
|
| Feb-08-11 | | Marmot PFL: <'I expect to live long enough to read about the creation of new single-cell life forms "out of nothing" -- that is, out of nonliving material. You probably will too.' I doubt it.> No kidding. They can't even say why Toyotas accelerate. |
|
Feb-08-11
| | OhioChessFan: <OhioChessFan:There are no laws insisting kids go to church.> <kb2: Thankfully. But intelligent design is a well known ploy to get religion into the classroom. Despite any merits, this alone is enough to gyarantee its failure.> Change of subject, as normal. Or was it a nonsequitir. Anyway. I'll consider that a white flag. Until next time, have a nice day. |
|
Feb-08-11
 | | valiant: The New Tories ...
<The government's levy on bank profits has been increased to £2.5bn this year - raising an extra £800m. The levy is intended to ensure the banks were making a 'fair contribution' to society, the chancellor said> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/... |
|
| Feb-08-11 | | Marmot PFL: <<OhioChessFan:There are no laws insisting kids go to church.> <kb2: Thankfully. But intelligent design is a well known ploy to get religion into the classroom. Despite any merits, this alone is enough to gyarantee its failure.> Change of subject, as normal. Or was it a nonsequitir. Anyway. I'll consider that a white flag. Until next time, have a nice day.> I didn't read the whole discussion, but I think I see the connection. Instead of requiring kids to attend church (unconstitutional), they are trying to get schools to teach religion, only under the guise of science. Not all religious people are doing this of course, and in fact many, perhaps most, are against it. |
|
Feb-08-11
 | | patzer2: <rclb> I believe the Genesis account of creation where God created the specific "kinds" of life recorded there. However, I also believe some small observable changes occur within the "kinds" God created and that some of those changes are considered to be evolution by modern scientists. For example, I understand some authorities on the subject even consider selective breeding and DNA manipulation of plant and animal life to involve "evolution." |
|
| Feb-08-11 | | cormier: This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.
You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”
He went on to say,
“How well you have set aside the commandment of God
in order to uphold your tradition!
For Moses said,
Honor your father and your mother,
and Whoever curses father or mother shall die.
Yet you say,
‘If someone says to father or mother,
“Any support you might have had from me is qorban”’
(meaning, dedicated to God),
you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother.
You nullify the word of God
in favor of your tradition that you have handed on.
And you do many such things.” |
|
| Feb-08-11 | | cormier: ý1 hour agoý
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday set out four steps Cairo must take to end Egypt's crisis, telling its ally to stop harassing protesters and immediately repeal an emergency law allowing detention ... |
|
Feb-08-11
| | twinlark: <schach matov>
<That's what I was trying to tell <twinlark> all along:)> Bullshytte. |
|
Feb-08-11
 | | Shams: One example of an intelligent system for which no designer is apparent is an anthill. (I'm indebted to Hofstader's <Godel, Escher, Bach> for this example.) An anthill displays 'emergent properties' of intelligence that cannot be located in any individual ant. In such critical tasks as food-gathering and response-to-invasion, individual ants behave in ways that contribute to "intelligent" behavior on the part of the group at large, even though this consequence cannot be said to have been intended by any individual ant. I suppose another obvious example, though dangerous to cite on this board, would be the "invisible hand" of the marketplace. Leaving aside whether consumers are "intelligently designed" or not, nobody would argue that the free market's "invisible hand", made up as it is of nothing more than the aggregate of actions of individual consumers, is "designed". Yet it certainly betrays intelligence. |
|
| Feb-08-11 | | rclb: <patzer2>?? (major theological error, and totally unsustainable scientifically). |
|
Feb-09-11
| | patzer2: <rclb: <patzer2>?? (major theological error, and totally unsustainable scientifically).> Acknowledging the existence of small biological changes within species, such as selective breeding, is a theological error? How so? |
|
Feb-09-11
| | patzer2: <Shams> What do you suppose is the ultimate source of the collective intelligence of the ant colony or the market place? I'd guess my opinion on it is different than yours. |
|
|
|
< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 1664 OF 4594 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
