http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=4102028&nav=23iiI’m still waiting for Orlando to be destroyed because disney allows gay partnership benefits. Now, Lord Robertson decrees that the intelligent people who have turned away ALL the ID-ers in Dover are Anti-God. And we still need to murder that guy in Venezuela!
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karen:
Careful, HMDK will become seething w/jealousy!
phreedm:
“OFF TOPIC….but I couldn’t resist.”
When can you ever?
I think the better question is….
Who lied more?
jcc,
you’re right, logically it does make more sense that since earth is more favorable to life now, we would see more abiogensis.
But as karen & HNZ have said, who knows what recipe is the right one? I guess that’s what I was trying to get at, albeit poorly.
OK, time for some sillyness. Next time you get upset with people like phreedm, get some quotes he may understand.
http://www.shipoffools.com/curses/index.html
By the way, do you guys ever sleep or go to work?
reluctant
Well, my hairless admirer will have to learn that being a goddess has its privileges!
As for you sir…quit apologizing for your questions! You told me there are no dumb questions; that goes for you also.
And by the way, I love you too, Sweetie.
flanonblvr -
If you don’t mind saying, what part of FL are you from? I live on the Space Coast.
Well, FL is kind of a weird place, but I like it! TOO MANY BAX’s,(& too many hurricanes, lately) but the weather’s great! Swimming in the summer, bonfires in the backyard in the winter.
billh
We who put up with mere mortals like phreedm have evolved past work and sleep!
Sword strike
Funny how atheists, who represent about 10 to 15% of the populace, account for only 0.209% of prison inmates? That’s one FIFTH of ONE PERCENT!
Well the country where i live in about 90%of the population is christian statistically.
But really, that just means that 90% belong to the state church. That doesn’t make you christian. Saying you are catholic or protestant doesn’t make you christian. So those figures you mentioned can be twisted.
BTW, people might become christian after going to jail. This wouldn’t surprise me. Often people have to fall hard (like me) before they can accept that God is the only whose hands you can put your life in.
Oh No!!! The no true scottsman fallacy!
It is interesting to note what I said in a prior posting about the 2 religious teenagers that killed their parents in PA. Here is the link again:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1314534
And in response to goose’s categorization of the no true scottsman fallacy, these two were home schooled in a highly religious environment!
atomictesting:
So, you’re saying it’s doubtful that current atmospheric conditions are more hospitable to life than they were 3.5 billion years ago?
I’m not. Please don’t misunderstand my question.
jcc
No. Saying current conditions may not be right ingredients in recipe for generating life.
Current conditions are hospitable to extant life. Conditions 3.5 billion years ago were presumably hospitable to life as it was 3.5 billion years ago. It seems unlikely that either life would find the others conditions hospitable.
HeatheNZ & karen:
But if all life on earth comes from a common ancestor, then isn’t it quite a stretch to assert that it’s basic requirements for survival have changed so much as to make one intolerant of another? I’m saying that it’s extremely improbable that carbon-based life on earth?as we know it, both present and past?has changed it so much that it now requires a completely different environment for survival.
I disagree. For example I refer to the relative levels of the different gasses in the atmosphere. Many extant life forms are sensitive to this mixture and would not survive long if it changed appreciably. I tend to ascribe to the idea of very different atmospheric conditions 3.5 billion years ago. Perhaps you disagree and consider such conditions to be a stable constant?
Also I thought your question was primarily about abiogenesis. It was primarily to this point that I was refering rather than species survival.
jcc,
that is reductio ad absurdum, to say that all current life requires the same *relative environmental variables to live/survive, based on a common ancestor. Humans cannot tolerate the same level of radiation as bacteria living in nuclear reactor cooling water, or even cockroaches. You cannot make a rational leap like that over 3.5 billion years.
What I was trying to get at there was conditions that are tolerable to one form of life are deadly to others, and carbon-based life has adapated to the changing environmental variables in order to survive. Now, give it a slow change over 3.5 billion years, that would not be illogical to think that life adapted to the conditions we see today.
jcc said:
“I?m asking why spontaneous generation doesn?t occur ?naturally? now.”
a question to you and others.
does anyone know for certain that it doesn’t? if we find a “new” species of flora or fauna in some isolated corner of the planet that is undespoiled by man, how do we know that it wasn’t recently created? I define recently here as ‘not over geologic time’.
also jcc (and other xtians here) another question for you. if the bird flu virus evolves so that it can be transmitted from human to human, do you consider this evidence of evolution of a species? and if not, what do you consider it to be? if your god creates it from scratch then doesn’t that make him a cold-blooded murder?
just musings of dreamer….
I’d like to point out the existance of large amounts of oxygen in the present atmosphere plays a large part in the prevention of sponataneous generation of primitive microbes now a days. Don’t even bother with that one, jcc/phreedumb, early bacteria didn’t need oxygen.
Early earths atmosphere was devoid almost totally of oxygen and was very rich in carbon dioxide and nitrogen which early life forms thrived on. Oxygen was actually toxic to these anaerobic bacteria which produced oxygen as a waste product just as modern anaerobic cells and photosynthetic bacteria (cyanobacteria) and plants do today. Eventually oxygen built up to toxic levels for these organisms but at this point aerobic cells became dominant to exploit the newer oxygen rich atmosphere. Today there are still examples of extreme conditions (undersea vents, hot springs, hypersaline environments, etc-) in which life flourishes and could hold clues to early life on earth. Also, many scientist now belive that the first organisms on Earth might very well have been delivered here from other planets through meteorites which were blasted off of a planetary surface by an impact and traveled through space until being caught in earth gravity. Apparently bacteria and even more complex organisms such as lichens (algae-fungi symbiotic organism) are able to withstand deep space travel. Perhaps life did not originate here but somewhere else and traveled here later.
Alex.
GooseHenry:
I get a little tired of these statements. Don’t get me wrong: I rather like you. You’re polite, you’re somewhat likable. You don’t dress up most of your statements w/rhetorical nonsense, or flail about.
But we the infidels seem to always hear this excuse. I think it’s a cop-out, myself.
As an atheist, I have no choice but to accept the good w/the bad. We’ve got our black eyes, too. The French Revolution. The Communist takeovers in the USSR, China, & Cambodia. We don’t have the luxury of saying, “Oh, they weren’t true atheists!”
It just seems, that when 1 of your sheep stray, it’s no longer a sheep. Complete species change.
What constitutes a ‘true’ Xtian, then? Behavorial? Maybe.
But when 1 of your own do something outre, they’re cut out of the flock.
It fairly reeks of social darwinism.
Maybe that’s just me.
Reluctant, I agree.
It’s a cop-out of the same order as:
“Well, God works in mysterious ways!”.
As if blathering such swill somehow excuses every atrocity on earth.
But, (devils’ advocate), on the other paw, I don’t blame EVERY christian for the sins of EVERY other christian.
Well, except maybe for the inerrantists… not even God, should he exist, would have the stomach for the drivel issuing forth from such voluntary lobotomy-cases.
GooseHenry:
“But really, that just means that 90% belong to the state church. That doesn’t make you christian. Saying you are catholic or protestant doesn’t make you christian. So those figures you mentioned can be twisted.”
Okay, what’s the test, then?
How does one tell if someone is a TrueBeliever(tm)?
I agree with you, actually, to a certain degree.
The state-church in Denmark (Folkekirken/The People’s Church)
has many, many members, and I’m willing to bet that a great part of them aren’t particularly devout.
One reason for its large membership is that we’re practically BORN into it, as they handle the certificates,
and that few people bother, later in life, to really consider wether they want to be members or not.
People just don’t really think to much about it, one way or another.
Especially since the church-tax you pay as a member is very, very small.
So, to sum up, GooseHenry, I agree with you to a certain extent, it’s just that in the U.S., as far as I know at least, people aren’t “herded” this way into a state-subsidized church.
Plus, as far as I recall, the statistics the others quoted we’re surveys taken IN THE PRISONS;
i.e.: they asked the inmates themselves what their beliefs were.
And if that is so, then I’d say it IS very accurate.
Reluctant
I agree these folks have the art of the white wash down to a fine procedure. They never acept that any of themselves are wrong but given that possibility exists they pull out the forgiveness card. We as atheists can never experience that forgiveness simply because we do not believe ( ala click your heels and say the magic words). Which in fact makes us twice as doomed.
Today is thanksgiving and I am thankful I have come to my senses and do not believe in that nonsense
jim
I don’t know why you folks are so down on Pat Robertson. If you are ill he will cure you right through the TV set and you don’t even have to go and see him. Benny should be taking notes!