Religious Apes with Technology.

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There's a saying you hear in colleges which goes: "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullsh*t."

I've noticed a lot of folks try to explain their ideas and beliefs here on WP and elsewhere by using tons of big words. I can't help but think it's just a futile attempt to confuse someone and win an argument. Just saying.

The Evolutionist thing again.. cmon!

Just use the term evolution to describe the process, instead of branding us all evolutionists..

See what I did there? Heh. Branding.

Indeed, you could spend a life cycle going around with this stuff... but hey it's not all bad.

Don't let it ruin your day- I wont either.. it's just the internet after all. I've been in less thought provoking discussions with people on the internet./

Last edited by CornerPuzzlePieces on 30 May 2012, 11:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It took several minutes for my university level english classmates to find all the big words, when they could use simpler ones.. Personally I think it makes me look like a goof. So I usually just simplify if possible.

Although, sometimes big words are appropriate.

That's not what I meant. When I said, "might," I meant it. I know people who grow up in religious backgrounds who, when they get older, decide to quit believing in Scripture. I also know others, who like me, quit believing in Evolutionism and start believing in scripture. I also know people who retain the same beliefs throughout their lives.

My aim in replying is to instill a little tolerance and respect for other points of view. What prompted me to first post to this thread was the fact that CornerPuzzlePieces implied that just because someone believes in scripture that they are less intelligent apes. It was this intolerance that had to be addressed, and I wanted to explain that not all or even most people who believe in the Bible are less intelligent than those who believe in Evolutionism. I know both intelligent and plain stupid people from both worldviews.

I hereby nominate CornerPuzzlePieces be appointed dictator for life. It is only by his wisdom that the religious scourge shall be wiped off this Earth to be replaced by rational beings. Then we will make more iPhones and Razrs to populate the Earth. CornerPuzzlePieces will publish his grand doctoral thesis, unimpeded by people of faith's existing.

That actually doesn't sound too bad.. dictator mortality rates aside of course.

I did not mean to attack you personally, sorry if it came out that way. I just tried to point out that the discussion had essentially regressed into schoolyard-speak; "-You're stupid!" "-No, you are!"
(religion and politics is a neverending discussion)

I like that you are an openminded person, religious or not does not matter as long as you have tolerance and respect.

I come from a non-believing family, and I believe as much in aliens as I do in gods. My wife and her family(all very intelligent and friendly people) are all religious. So I agree.

*Officially out of religion discussion now*

Everybody here makes good points, but let's not forget: the church jailed Galileo for going against their word and the religious nuts still consider stem cells wrong, despite the fact that as long as we have abortions we might as well use them to improve the lives of others.

Sometimes its required for precision. Also brevity has never been my strong suit, I am quite jealous of people who can say in 2 sentences what takes me 2 paragraphs - and I frequently say so, if you look through my posts.

Congrats on writing only 2 sentences this time!

respect is earned not given implicitly, and i agree intelligencee doesnt come into play the real physical world does.

that said i can tolerate a viewpoint as long as they tolerate me expressing mine of theirs.

cyberscan, you are very misinformed on the subject of evolution. Whatever your sources, they are wrong.

You seem intelligent, but garbage in, garbage out. Evolution is not a religion by any stretch of the definition of what religion is and what science is. Evolution is good solid science, in fact, I do not know of any other scientific idea that has as much evidence of so many different types that all point to the same reality. I have studied this subject intensely more than forty years (I turn fifty-two this summer), and what amazes me more than anything is how many people are so incredibly misinformed about this subject.

Evolution has nothing to do with Hitler or his policies. There IS abundant evidence of hominid evolution, thousands of fossils from more than a dozen species of our ancestors or close cousins of the past six or eight million years, and even if there were NO fossils, none at all, there is way more than sufficient evidence of other types that clearly show evolution happens way beyond any reasonable doubt.

IF you are a sincere seeker of truth, I recommend the "talk origins" web site or (if you have questions) discussion group. One of their web site's pages deals specifically with every creationist claim and thoroughly debunks all of them, with references. The "Sensuous Curmudgeon" blog also has many archived articles that deal with your erroneous misunderstanding of what evolution is and how much evidence there is for it, including articles about the fossil evidence and about the supposed links from Darwin to Hitler.

It is such ignorance of basic facts of nature such as evolution on the part of some Christians that make Christians look really stupid to people who are aware of what evidence actually exists. IF evolution were the way some creationist web sites portray it, then of course it is ridiculous and nobody should accept it as the fact that it is. However, such web sites are notorious for ignoring much of the evidence, and denying or distorting the evidence they don't ignore. You have been lied to by whoever gave you your information on this subject.

A long time ago Saint Augustine warned of this very problem, that if Christians make ignorant assertions about the natural world that unbelievers can clearly see are false, it destroys the credibility of their beliefs. Put yourself in my shoes for a moment please. Imagine somebody were to tell you they had the answer to eternal life in heaven and salvation from hell, that they knew God's will for you, but then out of the blue they also say that the earth is flat in spite of all evidence to the contrary. It is THAT ridiculous. Would be willing to trust their advice on spiritual matters when they are so easily proven wrong about physical matters so easily checked?

It's funny that so many Christians say that if evolution is true, then God is a liar. I see it the complete opposite: if evolution did NOT happen then God is a liar for planting so many different types of evidence that clearly show it DOES happen. Like it or not, humans are close biological cousins to chimpanzees and other great apes. Even Michael Behe (author of Darwin's Black Box and other "intelligent design" books) concedes that the earth is more than 4 billion years old and that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor (see page 72 of his more recent book The Edge of Evolution).

Again, nothing personal, but when you spout such nonsense about evolution, saying things that have been thoroughly debunked many times by many people,(and most of all: debunked by reality), it hurts your credibility on anything else you say on any subject.

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 31 May 2012, 6:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Hahaha, thanks. It feels like a stroke of genius when I can manage to explain something precisely, with efficiency. I think I like to err on the side of precision too much.

Evolution simply means change over time. Cockroaches, for example may over a period of time develop immunity to certain types of pesticides. However, even over a period of thousands of years, they are still cockroaches. Certain types of finches with genes for longer beaks or certain plumage will pass this characteristic to their offspring. If these characteristics make it a lot easier for these birds to hide from predators or find food, naturally, there will be more of finches with these characteristics. However, if and when the environment changes, and these characteristics no longer provide the same advantages, there will be fewer birds with these characteristics. This is science. I get that. I am glad that this is taught in the schools. It needs to be.

However, it has never been demonstrated in a laboratory or any other place that a lizard comes from a frog or a frog from a fish (without gene modification). Many people believe that this is how nature progresses, but it has never been demonstrated in a laboratory. In other words, it is unproven. Many fossils that some conjecture are ancestors to current species have been shown to belong to animals that are still living today. I don't object to teaching evolution as science in school. I reject the science books still using known fake charts to prove their point. I reject the artists rendition of precursors to man being based upon only a couple of bones.

What I reject is teaching Evolutionism as science in school. Evolutionism is the belief that we are descended from more primitive or simpler life forms. I reject that it is being taught as an indisputable fact when it is based on many assumptions. One of the steps in the Scientific Method is to test the hypothesis. So far, I know of no laboratory test where one kind of animal changes into another kind of animal over many generations. Some characteristic may change as the environment changes, but when the environment once again favors the characteristics of previous generations, then characteristics will revert.

I studied nuclear physics and understand radioactive decay. In the Navy, we learned about many factors that can change this rate of decay. It is impossible to know the accurate rate of decay or the original amount of radioactive samples over the period of time Evolutionist preach was necessary to produce mankind.

What is happening in Detroit, Michigan is proving this. After the economy was tanked, many people left Detroit and abandoned their canines. The Pit Bulls, Beagles, German Shepherds, Border Collies, and many other breeds were left to fend for themselves. The survivors formed packs, and the characteristics of the dogs in these packs show more and more characteristics of coyotes, wolves, etc. However, they are still canines!

Cockroaches can produce three generations in a year. That means by the time a human is 20 years old, there will have been sixty generations of cockroaches. That is three hundred generations in a century, yet over last three hundred years, cockroaches remain essentially the same.

Evolutionists preach the myth of Dinosaurs being extinct long before man was on earth. However, many historical texts talk about dinosaurs. The works and discoveries of Marco Polo are taught in many public schools, yet the part about Marco Polo describing what are now called, "dinosaurs" is left out. The Bible itself describes dinosaurs, but any mention of this is also left out. I discovered these two things reading the texts on my own and not through some creationist website. I read Marco Polo long before I had access to the Internet. Other works will also bear this fact out.

In case you are wondering, the Bible itself states that the world is round. As a matter of fact, many Christians were persecuted for believing this. The flat earth myth was put out in order to keep people under the sphere of influence of the Church. People traveled to the New World centuries before the Roman Catholic Church came into existence.

We can argue back and forth for days, weeks and month, but I don't see the point in it. The argument wasn't started by me. I only responded when it was implied that those who believe in the Bible were basically described as stupid apes. I'm not disputing that many organized religions organization sometimes teach myths. One only has to study the origins Christmas and Easter to understand that. However, I have still seen many myths still being taught in the public schools.

"So far as I know of..." Exactly, you DON'T know! I tried to steer you to resources to correct your incorrect assumptions, but you are resistant to truth. Whatever. I stand by what I said. There IS evidence of evolution. It has been tested and observed in the field and in the laboratory. The web sites I pointed you to can give you links to resources to show you this. If you want to keep your blinders of ignorance on, so be it. Evolution IS a fact of nature whether or not you choose to accept it.

So called "living fossils" such as coelacanths are not evidence against evolution. If a species is well adapted to its environment, there is no selective pressure for it to change. Some of the more stunning evidences of evolution from the past few decades include the discovery of Australopithecus afarensis, which even if not a direct ancestor is definitely a close cousin to us. You can't ask for a fossil more intermediate between modern apes and modern humans. Several features of its anatomy are perfectly intermediate. Another is Tiktaalik, one of the first tetrapods that was found exactly when and where geology and biology predicted it should be found. Note Tiktaalik was a stunning test of the assumptions of geology and biology and confirmed both! Human chromosome 2 is practically a smoking gun showing the recent common ancestry of humans with the other great apes. it clearly shows evidence of being two ape chromosomes fused together. Explain that if evolution didn't happen? Same with the pattern of nested hierarchies of pseudogenes and endogenous retroviruses in the DNA of different species (more evidence of the sort where even if we had NO fossils, none at all, we could still safely say the evidence supports evolution as an observed fact of nature).

The most convincing evidence are the nested hierarchies of many different types of data that all result in the same tree of life being plotted. Again if evolution didn't happen, why oh why does it look so much like it does? You want to continue to deny reality and wallow in your ignorance? How does it honor Christ to spread misinformation? So you object to teaching evolution as science, but the reasons you give are riddled with errors and show gross misunderstanding of the subject and of the evidence. I'm glad you're not in charge of defining science. It would be worthless and would produce nothing of value then.

So why is tissue from a more distant relative, swine (according to evolution charts) used as a donor for transplanting into humans? The human body rejects tissue from chimpanzees while it is much less likely to reject tissue from swine. Why?
Yes, I also heard of Xenotransplantation involving chimps, and I am aware that they are expensive to raise, but they are not endangered, and pig tissue is usually more successful. Again, why? There are more reasons then worrying about infectious diseases.

I also strongly urge you to read "The Travels of Marco Polo." Excerpts from this book is used to teach history in public schools. Marco Polo is recognized as a very important explorer, yet the education system only picks and chooses which parts are allowed into the classroom. Why isn't his description of dragons included in classroom texts? The word, Dinosaur is less than 160 years old. What were these creatures called before? Do you know that there are several verses in scripture that describes dinosaurs? Why is this never mentioned? There is evidence of creation, but when people choose to reject it out of hand, I don't see the purpose of wasting my time arguing.

Last edited by cyberscan on 31 May 2012, 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.