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Thread: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

  1. #91
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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    (Off on a semi-related tangent) One of the things I've never understood about the Catholic Church is the fact that they have always based their current, contemporary positions on the bible based on their current and contemporary thoughts. That's what they did at the Council's of Nicaea: They brought together a huge assembly of bishops and tried to reach a consensus on their belief structures and dogma. They made wholesale changes to the way the bible was understood, officially moved all the Christian holidays on top of existing pagan ones, made the use of icons official, etc, etc...but the important point is they met and used contemporary thoughts to modernize their church.

    Now the Catholic Church clings to old ideas and thoughts instead of embracing change and adapting to the present. They did it before, but now they are resistant to it. One example: The role of women in the Church. They have changed the role of Mary and her relationship to Jesus and Joseph before (Mary wasn't always a virgin), with the goal of enveloping more women into the church. But now they still resist letting women become priests. The result? They have a huge shortage of priests in the US, and now all the new priests are foreigners.

    I know that is a little off-topic, but it brings up interesting ideas about how religion deals with change and science.
    Fire Goodell

  2. #92
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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vis View Post
    Suit, science can never prove there is no God. That's not what science does. It has proven that many things thought to be God are natural and explainable. But if the faith is that God created the natural world and all the laws of physics etc... and he hasn't needed to violate them since (and why would he if the creation was exactly what he wanted the first time) then science can never touch that faith in either direction. It's the belief that God violated those laws in an otherwise unexplainable way that has no factual backing.

    So #4 is fine. You can't prove a negative. I think it was Bertrand Russell who once said that he couldn't prove that there was not a teapot orbiting Mars. So he's a teapot agnostic. I'm a teapot agnostic with regard to God, too. I can't prove that God doesn't exist. I can't prove that Zeus or Jupiter or Woden or...(you get the point) doesn't exist either.

    I have a feeling that not as many people actually believe in God as say they do. Many people believe in belief of God. That is, they think it's a good thing, and they try to believe in God, they hope to believe in God, they wish they could believe in God and they say they believe in God, they go through all the motions, they try very hard to be devout. Sometimes they succeed and for some periods of their life they actual do, in some sense, believe that there is a God and they think they are the better for it. Otherwise, they behave like people who probably don't believe in God. Very few people behave as if they really believe in God. A lot of people behave as if they believe they should believe in God.
    How about this? Wouldn't it be nicer if there was more of a reconciliatory tone in these debates? Such as the evolutionist saying "You know, there are a couple issues with genesis on my side of the table. I will concede that it's not impossible that maybe there is or was a God or higher power or energy source or something unexplainable that kick started this whole process." Conversely, the hard core ID believer could also say "You know, there is an awful lot of data that suggests there is something to evolution. Maybe God did include evolution in his plan for creation."
    Fire Goodell

  3. #93
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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by suitanim View Post
    How about this? Wouldn't it be nicer if there was more of a reconciliatory tone in these debates? Such as the evolutionist saying "You know, there are a couple issues with genesis on my side of the table. I will concede that it's not impossible that maybe there is or was a God or higher power or energy source or something unexplainable that kick started this whole process." Conversely, the hard core ID believer could also say "You know, there is an awful lot of data that suggests there is something to evolution. Maybe God did include evolution in his plan for creation."
    I won't concede there is something unexplainable. I will concede that there are some things unexplained. to do the former would, to me, be saying, there is some place we shouldn't look, where we shouldn't question, where we shouldn't explore.

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by suitanim View Post
    (Off on a semi-related tangent) One of the things I've never understood about the Catholic Church is the fact that they have always based their current, contemporary positions on the bible based on their current and contemporary thoughts. That's what they did at the Council's of Nicaea: They brought together a huge assembly of bishops and tried to reach a consensus on their belief structures and dogma. They made wholesale changes to the way the bible was understood, officially moved all the Christian holidays on top of existing pagan ones, made the use of icons official, etc, etc...but the important point is they met and used contemporary thoughts to modernize their church.

    Now the Catholic Church clings to old ideas and thoughts instead of embracing change and adapting to the present. They did it before, but now they are resistant to it. One example: The role of women in the Church. They have changed the role of Mary and her relationship to Jesus and Joseph before (Mary wasn't always a virgin), with the goal of enveloping more women into the church. But now they still resist letting women become priests. The result? They have a huge shortage of priests in the US, and now all the new priests are foreigners.

    I know that is a little off-topic, but it brings up interesting ideas about how religion deals with change and science.
    Here's my thought and I'm sorry it isn't kind. The early changes, and indeed, a lot of what Paul (or those claiming to be Paul) did was marketing. It was a fledgling church and needed to recruit. When the church was near all-powerful, it was all about rules they could force upon society , often in very violent ways. Now the church is powerful in some poorer countries and not as powerful in western democracies, especially the richer ones, even where people still self identify with the church. I think the church currently plays to those poorer countries and what works there. No condoms, we need numbers.

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    I believe they FINALLY did change their official stance on condoms, but only in regard to fighting STD's.
    Fire Goodell

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Heaven for Atheists


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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    delete
    "A man's got to know his limitations."

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vis View Post
    I won't concede there is something unexplainable. I will concede that there are some things unexplained. to do the former would, to me, be saying, there is some place we shouldn't look, where we shouldn't question, where we shouldn't explore.
    Vis I like you, but that answer makes you sound an awful lot like a complete tool.
    "A man's got to know his limitations."

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by zulater View Post
    Vis I like you, but that answer makes you sound an awful lot like a complete tool.
    Why is that? I could have used a football metaphor - it's like saying the Steelers can't win. Better?

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vis View Post
    Why is that? I could have used a football metaphor - it's like saying the Steelers can't win. Better?
    Vis I'm an agnostic, with more leanings toward atheism than any known religion. That said, to be completely dismissive of the possibility of some sort of creator, or to insist that all answers are attainable through science comes off as arrogant and foolish. Just as one can never explain a thing without a beginning or an end ( space) some mystery's (such as creation) will always be open to the interpretation of the individual. To paint those that ascribe to a religious theory of creation as ignorant or unknowing is crass and "toollike".
    "A man's got to know his limitations."

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mach1 View Post
    Obama believes in Allah.

    And 57 states.

    Allah IS God dumbass. Allah is the arabic term for God. No wonder Republicans are so against education. You're a prime example.

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Mach I is one of those people that believes the world is flat, 6,000 years old, and is in the center of the universe. lol No wonder this dummy voted for Bush twice. lol

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mach1 View Post
    big·ot

    Definition of BIGOT

    : a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigot

    You're one to talk. You don't even know what Allah means. lol Dummy.

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?


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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Hey Steeltown, you might want to lay off the name-calling and flaming. We do not tolerate that here. Refer to the COC.








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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by X-Terminator View Post
    Hey Steeltown, you might want to lay off the name-calling and flaming. We do not tolerate that here. Refer to the COC.

    But it's okay for your buddy Mach I to do it, right?

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by Steeltown View Post
    But it's okay for your buddy Mach I to do it, right?
    Find me one post where Mach 1 attacked another member. Last time I checked, the President is not a member of this site.

    I'm waiting.








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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by X-Terminator View Post
    Find me one post where Mach 1 attacked another member. Last time I checked, the President is not a member of this site.

    I'm waiting.

    *yawn*

    That's right defend your buddy. You were in another thread defending racial pics of the President. Not shocked at all.

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by Steeltown View Post
    *yawn*

    That's right defend your buddy. You were in another thread defending racial pics of the President. Not shocked at all.
    You might want to go back and read those posts again, because I did nothing of the sort.

    Any more false accusations you want to throw out?








  20. #110
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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by Steeltown View Post
    Mach I is one of those people that believes the world is flat, 6,000 years old, and is in the center of the universe. lol No wonder this dummy voted for Bush twice. lol
    And I'm the dummy?



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  21. #111
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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vis View Post
    George, if you have any honest intellectual curiosity read this:

    http://www.astrosafor.net/Huygens/20...Entrevista.htm
    Ok Vis my apologies for the delay, RL is getting in the way of my having any meaningful discussion online

    In regards to the link about Dr. Wächtershäuser, I will admit I don't fully understand all of this and I did not due a comphrehensive review of the peer reviewed material but it seems as though this theory suffers the same doubt and inability to prove as any other origin of life theory so far.


    " Iron-sulfur worldOne of the earliest incarnations of this idea was put forward in 1924 with Alexander Oparin's notion of primitive self-replicating vesicles which predated the discovery of the structure of DNA. More recent variants in the 1980s and 1990s include Günter Wächtershäuser's iron-sulfur world theory and models introduced by Christian de Duve based on the chemistry of thioesters. More abstract and theoretical arguments for the plausibility of the emergence of metabolism without the presence of genes include a mathematical model introduced by Freeman Dyson in the early 1980s and Stuart Kauffman's notion of collectively autocatalytic sets, discussed later in that decade.

    However, the idea that a closed metabolic cycle, such as the reductive citric acid cycle, could form spontaneously (proposed by Günter Wächtershäuser) remains debated. In an article entitled "Self-Organizing Biochemical Cycles",[92] the late Leslie Orgel summarized his analysis of the proposal by stating, "There is at present no reason to expect that multistep cycles such as the reductive citric acid cycle will self-organize on the surface of FeS/FeS2 or some other mineral." It is possible that another type of metabolic pathway was used at the beginning of life. For example, instead of the reductive citric acid cycle, the "open" acetyl-CoA pathway (another one of the five recognised ways of carbon dioxide fixation in nature today) would be compatible with the idea of self-organisation on a metal sulfide surface. The key enzyme of this pathway, carbon monoxide dehydrogenase/acetyl-CoA synthase harbours mixed nickel-iron-sulfur clusters in its reaction centers and catalyses the formation of acetyl-CoA (which may be regarded as a modern form of acetyl-thiol) in a single step."

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

    and from the new world encyclopedia

    "Current models
    There is no truly "standard" model of the origin of life...


    Wächtershäuser's hypothesis

    Another suggested answer to this polymerization conundrum was provided in 1980s, by Günter Wächtershäuser in his iron-sulfur world theory. In this theory, he postulated the evolution of (bio)chemical pathways as fundamentals of the evolution of life. Moreover, he presented a consistent system of tracing today's biochemistry back to ancestral reactions that provide alternative pathways to the synthesis of organic building blocks from simple gaseous compounds.
    In contrast to the classical Miller experiments, which depend on external sources of energy (such as simulated lightning or UV irradiation), "Wächtershäuser systems" come with a built-in source of energy, sulfides of iron, and other minerals (such as pyrite). The energy released from redox reactions of these metal sulfides is not only available for the synthesis of organic molecules, but also for the formation of oligomers and polymers. It is therefore hypothesized that such systems may be able to evolve into autocatalytic sets of self-replicating, metabolically active entities that would predate the life forms known today.

    The experiment, as performed, produced a relatively small yield of dipeptides (0.4 to 12.4 percent) and a smaller yield of tripeptides (0.003 percent) and the authors note that: "Under these same conditions dipeptides hydrolysed rapidly." Another criticism of the result is that the experiment did not include any organomolecules that would most likely cross-react or chain-terminate (Huber and Wächtershäuser 1998).

    The latest modification of the iron-sulfur-hypothesis was provided by William Martin and Michael Russell in 2002. According to their scenario, the first cellular life forms may have evolved inside so-called black smokers at seafloor spreading zones, in the deep sea. These structures consist of microscale caverns that are coated by thin membraneous metal sulfide walls. Therefore, these structures would solve several critical points of the "pure" Wächtershäuser systems at once:
    1. The micro-caverns provide a means of concentrating newly synthesized molecules, thereby increasing the chance of forming oligomers;
    2. The steep temperature gradients inside a black smoker allow for establishing "optimum zones" of partial reactions in different regions of the black smoker (e.g. monomer synthesis in the hotter, oligomerization in the colder parts);
    3. The flow of hydrothermal water through the structure provides a constant source of building blocks and energy (freshly precipitated metal sulfides);
    4. The model allows for a succession of different steps of cellular evolution (prebiotic chemistry, monomer and oligomer synthesis, peptide and protein synthesis, RNA world, ribonucleoprotein assembly and DNA world) in a single structure, facilitating exchange between all developmental stages;
    5. Synthesis of lipids as a means of "closing" the cells against the environment is not necessary, until basically all cellular functions are developed.
    This model locates the "last universal common ancestor" (LUCA) inside a black smoker, rather than assuming the existence of a free-living form of LUCA. The last evolutionary step would be the synthesis of a lipid membrane that finally allows the organisms to leave the microcavern system of the black smokers and start their independent lives. This postulated late acquisition of lipids is consistent with the presence of completely different types of membrane lipids in archaebacteria and eubacteria (plus eukaryotes) with highly similar cellular physiology of all life forms in most other aspects.

    Another unsolved issue in chemical evolution is the origin of homochirality; that is, all monomers having the same "handedness" (amino acids being left handed, and nucleic acid sugars being right handed). Homochirality is essential for the formation of functional ribozymes (and probably proteins too). The origin of homochirality might simply be explained by an initial asymmetry by chance, followed by common descent. Work performed in 2003, by scientists at Purdue identified the amino acid serine as being a probable root cause of organic molecules' homochirality. Serine forms particularly strong bonds with amino acids of the same chirality, resulting in a cluster of eight molecules that must be all right-handed or left-handed. This property stands in contrast with other amino acids, which are able to form weak bonds with amino acids of opposite chirality. Although the mystery of why left-handed serine became dominant is still unsolved, this result suggests an answer to the question of chiral transmission: how organic molecules of one chirality maintain dominance once asymmetry is established.

    and


    "Metabolism first" models: Iron-sulfur world and others

    Several models reject the idea of the self-replication of a "naked-gene" and postulate the emergence of a primitive metabolism, which could provide an environment for the later emergence of RNA replication.

    One of the earliest incarnations of this idea was put forward in 1924, with Alexander Oparin's notion of primitive self-replicating vesicles, which predated the discovery of the structure of DNA. More recent variants in the 1980s and 1990s include Günter Wächtershäuser's iron-sulfur world theory and models introduced by Christian de Duve based on the chemistry of thioesters. More abstract and theoretical arguments for the plausibility of the emergence of metabolism without the presence of genes include a mathematical model introduced by Freeman Dyson in the early 1980s, and Stuart Kauffman's notion of collectively autocatalytic sets, discussed later in that decade.

    However, the idea that a closed metabolic cycle, such as the reductive citric acid cycle, could form spontaneously (proposed by Günter Wächtershäuser) remains unsupported. According to Leslie Orgel, a leader in origin-of-life studies for the past several decades, there is reason to believe the assertion will remain so. In an article entitled "Self-Organizing Biochemical Cycles," Orgel (2000), summarizes his analysis of the proposal by stating, "There is at present no reason to expect that multistep cycles such as the reductive citric acid cycle will self-organize on the surface of FeS/FeS2 or some other mineral."

    It is possible that another type of metabolic pathway was used at the beginning of life. For example, instead of the reductive citric acid cycle, the "open" acetyl-CoA pathway (another one of the four recognized ways of carbon dioxide fixation in nature today) would be even more compatible with the idea of self-organization on a metal sulfide surface. The key enzyme of this pathway, carbon monoxide dehydrogenase/acetyl-CoA synthase harbors mixed nickel-iron-sulfur clusters in its reaction centers and catalyzes the formation of acetyl-CoA (which may be regarded as a modern form of acetyl-thiol) in a single step."

    http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/...Origin_of_life

    there are other critiques from the ID and Scientific Creationist side but I did not think you would see those as credible sources

    All of this just goes back to my point. Evolutionist have tried to take the high ground on this issue and say that their theory is fact and proves everything. Well which theory. there are a multitude and they are all inconclusive. SO while evolution as most people think of it. (fossils, birds, adaptation) has some scienctific veracity the larger theory about creation of life is still just a theory that has yet to be proven.
    Last edited by Just George; 09-04-2011 at 06:35 PM.

  22. #112
    World Champion Array title="Just George is on a distinguished road"> Just George's Avatar

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Also I am very saddened by the way this discussion has turned. If you want to bash Obama and Bush go ahead and do it there are plenty of other discussions dedicated just to that.

  23. #113
    The Oncoming Storm Array title="Vis will become famous soon enough"> Vis's Avatar

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/08/australopithecus-sediba-bones_n_954212.html" target="_blank">

    <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/08/australopithecus-sediba-bones_n_954212.html" target="_blank">


    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/08/australopithecus-sediba-bones_n_954212.html


    Transitional form?

    Two million-year-old bones belonging to a creature with both apelike and human traits provide the clearest evidence of evolution's first major step toward modern humans – findings some are calling a potential game-changer. An analysis of the bones found in South Africa suggests Australopithecus sediba is the most likely candidate to be the ancestor of humans, said lead researcher Lee R. Berger of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.
    The fossils, belonging to a male child and an adult female, show a novel combination of features, almost as though nature were experimenting. Some resemble pre-human creatures while others suggest the genus Homo, which includes Homo sapiens, modern people.
    "It's as if evolution is caught in one vital moment, a stop-action snapshot of evolution in action," said Richard Potts, director of the human origins program at the Smithsonian Institution.

    ....

  24. #114
    Klaatu barada nikto Array title="suitanim has a brilliant future"> suitanim's Avatar

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Well, that, or............

    Fire Goodell

  25. #115
    The Oncoming Storm Array title="Vis will become famous soon enough"> Vis's Avatar

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    Re: Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

    Quote Originally Posted by suitanim View Post
    Well, that, or............

    That's fine because it's not Jesus, it's the 12th Doctor.

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