Hope you all had a great New Year!In the spirit of changing the future, many people look to the past. I look at the present. Here’s what I see:1) Atheism is definitely taking a positive turn as religion takes a negative2) A quick scan of the H. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards web site yields NO COMMENTS on the need for the separation of Church and State. Even on their “issues” pages, religious equality and C/S separation are NEVER MENTIONEDFolks, the Separation of Church and State is not a single issue. It goes far beyond voucher schemes and Intelligent Design. Abortion, Gay rights, Stem Cell research, and Dealth With Dignity are all examples of religious institutions telling other people what to do. Our common foes like to divide the issue into subsects because it gives them many fronts on which to fight. Up until now, they have succeeded, to the detriment of our society.We need to reunify Church and State Separation, and improve the face of politics. The timing seems perfect — the momentum is ours to ride.If you’ve never fought HARD for our side, now is a great time to start. 1) NOW is the time to come out. Your coworkers and family have mostly heard about Atheism in the past few months, and they certainly heard about the Haggard and Foley scandals. You are justified to reject the mythologies of yesteryear!2) When asked, always tell people that the Separation of Church and State is your primary issue. Don’t let them subdivide it into smaller issues (which have enough momentum and support that they don’t need our help). Stick to your guns — C/S separation is the cornerstone of religious liberty, and everyone needs to know it!3) CALL the presidential hopefuls (all of them), and ask what their stance is. It doesn’t matter what they answer — they need to know it’s an isue.4) Write to your local papers. We need to MAKE this an issue for the next race!The timing is perfect — it’s what we’ve been waiting for. The question is what will you, personally, do about it? Will you let this opportunity pass, or capitalize on it with vigor?Individuals CAN make a difference in this environment!I’ve made a new years resolution to redouble my efforts in politics. The past is an educational tool and tells you what needs to be done, but the present tells you when to pull the trigger.Bang.
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“So many essential conditions are necessary for life to exist on our earth that it is mathematically impossible that all of them could exist in proper relationship by chance on any one earth at one time.”
Dr. A. Cressy Morrison,
Former president of the New York Academy of Sciences
Letsbeclear:
That’s actually correct, to a certain degree. But they don’t all have the SAME DNA. It varies from individual to individual. How else could DNA testing distinguish between individuals?
It’s incremental changes. No, the DNA is set pre-birth, in small doses. We’re talking millions of years here, not overnight.
DNA DOES change. I don’t know where you’re getting this ‘immutable’ crap, but selective genes get passed. Eye color, male pattern baldness, some inheritances actually skip a generation.
Besides, which situation would require humans grow wings? That sounds suspiciously like Lamarckianism, which has been refuted.
You’ve got nary a clue what you’re talking about. I’d advise you doing some real research in the matter, outside of Sunday School or theology classes.
‘Survival mechanisms set at post-birth’. Feh.
Sure, soon as you say anything worth respecting.
Have you read anything in the field? Done any REAL research?
Here, everything you need to know is at talkorigins.org.
And everything you need to know at
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/top.htm
Letsbeclear:
That sounds like a re-frame of Fred Hoyle.
‘Mathematically impossible’? How so? There’s no odds at all? Out of trillions upon trillions of planets, impossible?
Don’t you need to be omniscient to make a statement like that?
Oh, your link is too rich.
1995? 12 years ago? All of those claims, I’ve looked into them. Utterly bogus.
The quote at the bottom LIED. Henry Morris was never an evolutionist.
I’m guessing you’re a Young Earther?
Which of course, is even more laughable than a creationist.
Y’see, I’ve walked this road numerous times.
Next, you’ll be claiming that evolution is in it’s death throes.
The flood’s been debunked, there are more than enough ‘transitional’ fossils to prove the ascent of man, I mean, this is too much.
You people do live in your own little world, don’t you?
Letsbeclear:
Here’s a little reading for you:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/dawkins_explains_evolution/
“Natural selection is quintessentially non-random, yet it is lamentably often miscalled random. This one mistake underlies much of the sceptical backlash against evolution. Chance cannot explain life. Design is as bad an explanation as chance because it raises bigger questions than it answers. Evolution by natural selection is the only workable theory ever proposed that is capable of explaining life, and it does so brilliantly.”
My point stands that evolution, and whatever theory of origin one chooses with it, has such gaping holes both logically and scientifically that it requires as much faith as creation. One such proof of the impossibility of evolution is as follws (copied from website).
Our present atmosphere consists of 78% nitrogen (N2), 21% molecular oxygen (O2), and 1% of other gases, such as carbon dioxide CO2), argon (Ar), and water vapor H2O). An atmosphere containing free oxygen would be fatal to all origin of life schemes. While oxygen is necessary for life, free oxygen would oxidize and thus destroy all organic molecules required for the origin of life. Thus, in spite of much evidence that the earth has always had a significant quantity of free oxygen in the atmosphere,3 evolutionists persist in declaring that there was no oxygen in the earth’s early atmosphere. However, this would also be fatal to an evolutionary origin of life. If there were no oxygen there would be no protective layer of ozone surrounding the earth. Ozone is produced by radiation from the sun on the oxygen in the atmosphere, converting the diatomic oxygen(O2) we breathe to triatomic oxygen O3), which is ozone. Thus if there were no oxygen there would be no ozone. The deadly destructive ultraviolet light from the sun would pour down on the surface of the earth unimpeded, destroying those organic molecules required for life, reducing them to simple gases, such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water. Thus, evolutionists face an irresolvable dilemma: in the presence of oxygen, life could not evolve; without oxygen, thus no ozone, life could not evolve or exist.
I understand we could both continue to post numerous links supporting our arguments for creation/evolution and the origins of life without convinving each other to change our scientific point of view. Thus i believe the answers lie not only in science but in each persons conscience. As i have posted elsewhere;
Everyone is designed with the knowledge of God inside us. How each person responds to this is different. Some choose to deny him, as evident in this forum, and define their belief system on the non-existence of something. Either God is real and requires the ultimate attention or God is not real and requires no attention at all. Atheism believes God is not real and still gives him a lot of attention – an intriguing paradox!
This shows that should one choose to believe, deny or run from God, the issue touches the hearts of all and cannot be merely pushed aside like the Loch Ness monster as it is intrinsic to our nature. Like it or not, dealing with the internal yearning to have relationship with God burdens us our entire lives as it is a human longing that is not satisfied any other way.
Sorry, please disregard the 3 before the word evolutionists as it was accidently entered whilst cutting and pasting.
Letsbeclear
Maybe it’s me, but I am completely confused by what you are trying to convey to me about conscious thought.
Is it a separate entity or not? Are you saying that we are all connected by our thoughts? How is “conscious thought as evident and existent in animals and humans ” not something that would die with the animal/human containing it? Please make up your mind.
Or someone, please point out to me WTF I am missing.
I can’t really add much to what KA has said to your comments about evolution. You really are barking up the wrong tree; changes don’t happen overnight, and if you really study how evolution works, you will see that it is ordered. Yes, there are some steps missing, but it’s a big planet, the research hasn’t been going on all that long comparatively, and there are lots of reasons why some evidence may forever be lost and we have to jump gaps.
Still none is as great a leap as saying a loving, invisible, eternal being made it all happen, and is still here, somewhere—everywhere, actually.
As KA said, there IS evidence for evolution. The only evidence you have for god is feelings.
You haven’t answered me about which, if any gods you can deny, btw.
Why do Christians almost always choose to adopt names so filled with irony?
Haven’t been around much but I am just taking a moment to commend the two of you(K and Karen) for your dedication and patience. Considering the nonsense I’ve been reading it’s surprising that more epithets have not surfaced.
This defines the utter futility of arguing with a theist. Evidence/ shmevidence.
karen:
Ooh, nice catch on the contradiction. I missed it.
LBC is reifying right ‘n left.
LBC:
Well, truthfully, the only reason this goes on, is that
A. We’re pretty much sick & tired of you clowns trying to run our lives for us, &
B. You people lost your free pass when those jets hit the WTC.
Religious behavior is demonstrably dangerous, it’s irrational, & besides, if gawd’s prophesied a bunch of events to come about, y’all should sit on your hands & wait it out.
The next time you want to blather on about how evolution’s a ‘matter of faith’, think on these items:
A. Evolution is the backbone of biology. If it didn’t work, we wouldn’t have such a variety of crops, medicines, CSI labs, & a # of other perks it gives us.
B. Prior to Darwin, 100% of the scientists believed in creation. The populace is now down to about 1%, & failing rapidly.
I don’t count Dembski, Behe, or Morris among those worthies.
& spare me your parroted recitation of the Goldilocks effect.
Letsbeclear wrote:
Nice attribution, I am sure the author is impressed. Did you learn that from babble school?
It is difficult to know the exact conditions on and surrounding the early earth which was after all and obviously billions of years ago. However, there is no doubt that the atmosphere was not the same as it is today. So your source, which you hide so effectively, is really starting from the wrong side of the model and then jumping to conclusions at the other side of the model.
There is probably one bit of useful information there, which is that the conditions under which the first life on earth evolved were very harsh conditions. That is probably why it took several hundred thousand years to occur. I am sure you will agree it is not surprising the oceans would surely have provided a more stable environment for life to begin its long journey of evolution.
Evolution is a very interesting reality, your “soul” would be happy if you spent some time studying it. Earlier in this thread I made a statement about a rat turning into a pigeon, well I assumed that you would understand I was joking, of course a rat can not turn into a pigeon. However, apparently you assumed that I was serious. That is very sad, I feel sorry for you. By holding on to a very obviously flawed belief you are missing out on a lot of truly amazing knowledge.
By holding on to christian beliefs that originated two thousand years ago, when the conditions for life were quite different than they are today, you are endangering human life and possibly most life on our lovely planet.
Most christians are very self centered only caring about how they will be perceived in a mythical “after life”. At the time the bible was created those ideas were not so destructive as they are today, it was a different time and place.
So I will encourage you to but down your bible. Take a look around, try to understand reality. Spend some time studying evolution so that you have an understanding of what life is.
The bible was written two thousand years ago, you cannot expect the conditions of life today to be the same. Please stop your dangerous and destructive belief in mythology.
rna2dna:
I really like that description. The entry into a model is an incorrect 1.
I’m still just shaking my head, over the DNA/court example.
That’s just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
Never did get to hear LBC’s ‘proof of gawd’. No doubt, it was something along the lines of the complexity of a single cell/watchmaker theory.
Sometimes I really wish these folks would do some research prior to opening their mouths.
All flesh is grass, and all is loveliness is like te floer of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when te breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are like grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.
Ignore this entry; trying to post a pic.
Ignore this entry; trying to post a pic.
ABC-TV once again spouted flames against atheism by opening a segment on Sunday, 4th March by stating extremist atheists want to ‘get rid of God’. All we really want is to bring back the Constitution, Ammendments, and Bill of Rights and firm up the SEPARATION of Church and State.I’d feel safer if certain people DID continue to fear hell fire and Divine retribution ! There’s too much religion in public life at taxpayer expense.
Interesting point of views. Here’s another interesting thing you should check out. Ben Stein is putting out a new movie that is trying to promote teaching creationism in schools. It’s called Expelled… check out the website. http://www.expelledthemovie.com