04-14-2004, 08:35 PM | #1121 |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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But do I influence you?
*sends more evil mind waves thru the computer in the general direction of Boston*
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
04-14-2004, 09:44 PM | #1122 | |||||||
Quasi Evil
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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04-15-2004, 01:44 AM | #1123 | ||||||||
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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And how are YOU in an authoritative position to be someone "who lays out what we DO know", btw? A bit presumptuous, aren't you? and for the gazillionth time, I'm NOT "completely convinced" of creationism! Do you hear me? Hel-LO! For the gazillionth time, I think it is the BETTER fit of the two. I do NOT think evolutionism is completely wrong, or creationism completely right. Now do I need to say it a gazillion and ONE times, buster? or do you finally hear me? Quote:
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As BOP says, Bollocks!! As I've said many times before, it seems the gist of the argument is "well, given enough time, it can happen." Well sorry, but that's not science, that's faith, and unfounded faith. Do things like punctuated equilibrium REALLY not bother you at ALL? Talk about a lack of evidence! Sheesh! Talk about holding onto an element of a theory no matter what, even when supporting evidence can't be found. Truly sad, IMO. PE was developed because they couldn't find sufficient (if any) fossil evidence to support transitional forms. PE is a theory based on LACK OF EVIDENCE - IOW, since they WILL NOT give up on the unproven idea of macroevolution, they say that it must have occurred quickly and in short busts, WITHOUT leaving ANY evidence of it happening in the fossil record. Are you TRULY not bothered by that? I find it astounding if you are not. The part of creationism that bothers me the most is their theory of fossil positioning by water sorting and catastrophism; I do NOT embrace the whole theory mindlessly. But compared to punc. equil., this is not nearly as bad. And some parts of evolutionism seem fairly reasonable. But OVERALL, I think creationism is the better fit. Quote:
I have NO problems with the legitimacy of science in general. I DO have problems with the legitimacy of certain parts of the theory of evolution that are, BY DEFINITION, outside of the realm of scientific evaluation, being treated as if they were inside, and spoken about as if they were fact. (and to be fair, it seems that most of the TRUE scientists seem to not speak incorrectly; it's the people that come after them - mainly the journalists). Assume what you want; I've said until I'm blue in the face that I've looked at the evidence and happen to think that creationism is a BETTER fit; tho not a perfect fit. And I'm quite partial to the evidence that can be seen, as opposed to "evidence" that is in the imagination, such as punctuated equilibrium. And that should appeal to you, since you think things we can see are important.
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! Last edited by Rían : 04-15-2004 at 01:58 AM. |
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04-15-2004, 01:49 AM | #1124 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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(con't)
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Now for me to assume that I"m in denial, I would have to have a "therefore" statement to check it against, like "I'm in denial, and THEREFORE ..." What do you wish to insert there? I would think it would be "THEREFORE I ignore good evidence for evolution and ignore the faults of bad evidence for creationism due to my wanting creationism to be true." Is that good enough for you, or would you like to suggest something else? When you let me know, I'll go ahead and think about it
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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04-15-2004, 03:08 AM | #1125 | ||||
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Anyway, let's say for the sake of argument that the general consensus in Christianity is that Pagans (or any non-Christian) will go to hell because they actively chose not to be Christian, and therefore, actively chose to go to Hell. (This actually may be the consensus. I don't believe this but a lot of people do.) This is a lot like Jehova's witnesses; the reason they go door-to-door and try to convert people is because they believe that anyone who is not a Jehova's witness will go to hell when they die. They want to save as many people as possible. However, Christians who aren't Jehova's witnesses do not believe they're going to hell. Who is right? We can't judge. Along those lines, Christians can't judge non-Christians. In the Christian worldview, Pagans will go to hell. In the Pagan worldview, they will not go to hell. What is truth in one worldview is not the truth in a different worldview. What is the ultimate truth? Maybe there isn't one. But it is egotistical for a person to declare that their worldview is the ultimate truth. (I'm not saying you're doing that R*an, but that does add another angle to your argument.) About your excellent essay IR - I give it an A+. I agree with a lot of your points. However, I have a different belief about the Creator. (I'm going to start typing 'she', not because the Creator has any human qualities, but because I don't want to keep typing 'the Creator'.) I think it's entirely possible for the Creator to be aware, and to love and care about every living organism she made. I believe the Universe and the Creator are infinite. Humans are a tiny speck of this creation, but she is still aware of us and all other creations - earthworms, alien life, viruses etc. The Creator is a concept outside of human thought. We can only wonder how we are made, and glimpse a piece of her with our very human minds. If someone was to become enlightened with the truth of the Universe and the Creator, he wouldn't be able to explain it without altering the truth with human concepts, even though he fully understands the truth. There is nothing wrong with having a human concept of the Creator, we just should reflect that we don't know the ultimate truth, therefore, other worldviews should not necessarily be discounted. Looks like I wrote an essay of my own. Feel free to skim Lal. As a side-note, what does it mean to be Pagan Lal? (I'm curious about these things, just as Valandil. ) EDIT: Actually, the real reason I typed 'she' instead of 'the Creator' is because sentance structure doesn't sound right without pronouns. See, the human concepts are twisting my ideas already. EDIT2: Quote:
I think it's safe to note that R*an hasn't made any "things are definitely this way, because my worldview is right"-type staments, and probably isn't about to. (This comment isn't directed at any one person, but it is worth noting.) I'm done now. Really. I'm going this time.
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"I can add some more, if you'd like it. Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to Punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools." - Sam Gamgee, p. 340, Return of the King Quote:
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Last edited by Nurvingiel : 04-15-2004 at 03:17 AM. |
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04-15-2004, 09:03 AM | #1126 | |
Elf Lord
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Q: How can you tell Rian's back? A: A thread that you checked once a week, you have to check once an hour.
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Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill Last edited by GrayMouser : 04-15-2004 at 09:06 AM. |
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04-15-2004, 09:51 AM | #1127 | |
Advocatus Diaboli
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you also help me to clarify and better define my position... much like the flip-side of the medieval devil's advocate who tested the beliefs of the believers, you're my lord's advocate, testing the strength of my non-belief
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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04-15-2004, 03:11 PM | #1128 | |||||||||||
Quasi Evil
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Punctuated equilibrium is NOT mutually exclusive of phyletic gradualism. I think you are making the supposition that it is here. Its not. There are plenty of examples of life forms who have had all sorts of transitional stages. Whales come to mind. Horses. Not to mention all the currently LIVING animals whose skeletal structure show us EXACTLY that! And these are ALWAYS ignored by creationists. Wonder why… So really punctuated equilibrium is simply a piece of the evolutionary picture. Why do you parade it around like a captured enemy flag on your humvee? Quote:
Oh heres something I found that may be relevant and show how old this argument is: Quote:
1. Eldredge, N., & Gould, S. J. 1972. Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism. In: Models In Paleobiology (Ed. by T. J. M. Schopf). 2. Gould, S. J., & Eldredge, N. 1977. Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered. Paleobiology, 3, 115-151. Feel free to check em out at your local library if you don’t believe me. Quote:
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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04-15-2004, 03:13 PM | #1129 | |
Quasi Evil
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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04-15-2004, 03:51 PM | #1130 | |
the Shrike
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"Binary solo! 0000001! 00000011! 0000001! 00000011!" ~ The Humans are Dead, Flight of the Conchords |
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04-15-2004, 03:58 PM | #1131 | ||
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Thank you BoP. You're the only person to respond to my excellent post! I know Rian will when she comes on though.
Anyway, PE seems like a perfectly reasonable theory to me.
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"I can add some more, if you'd like it. Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to Punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools." - Sam Gamgee, p. 340, Return of the King Quote:
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04-15-2004, 04:21 PM | #1133 | ||
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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So to you, I'm in denial, no matter what evidence I can offer to the contrary? You won't consider any evidence? Sounds close-minded to me. And you can offer no "therefore" statement for me to even evaluate your claim? No matter what I say, I'm just in denial about evolution, and there's no way to check if it's true or not? Why did you ask me to evaluate it if you won't give me anything to evaluate it WITH? I'll have to just write it off as an unfounded and incorrect opinion, I guess. But of course you're free to have opinions - but I still don't understand why you would challenge me to consider it then give me nothing to evaluate it with. And as I've said before, (seems like I'm saying that a LOT lately ) if a bunch of great new evidence comes up for evolution, then I might switch over and think it's true. It does NOT affect my faith in God. It would take other kinds of evidence to do that. So your statement doesn't even apply, because I don't consider evolution to be at loggerheads with Christianity, because God could be behind evolution (which is non-testable). But I think you'll say I'm in denial, anyway, right? It seems like you just can't give that up, even when I come right out and say that I don't consider evolution to be at loggerheads with Christianity. Now that I've taken away that reason, what new reason will you come up with to say that I'm in denial? Quote:
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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04-15-2004, 04:27 PM | #1134 | |
Advocatus Diaboli
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i'm also curious why a creator is necessarily "outside of human thought"? (i.e. incomprehensible)
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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04-15-2004, 04:38 PM | #1135 | ||||
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Well, she certainly could care about day to day morals. I don't personally think she's concerned about what goes on in the bedroom, but I don't discount the possibility of this. Quote:
Though, maybe we do know what the Creator is like. I doubt it, but in my worldview, practically everything is possible. EDIT: *pokes Rian* I really want to know what you think about my earlier (on this page) essay post. I want to hear your PoV on the subject.
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"I can add some more, if you'd like it. Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to Punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools." - Sam Gamgee, p. 340, Return of the King Quote:
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04-15-2004, 04:56 PM | #1136 | |||||||||||
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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and psychology, fergoodnesssakes?! Quote:
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Let me try to show an example off the top of my head. Say when you mix chemical A and chemical B, that chemical C always shows up as a by-product, and if you mix A with D, E, or F, chemical C does NOT show up. This is based on SCIENCE - repeatable, observable procedures. Then based on this knowledge, you could take an unknown chemical, X, which is either B, D, E, or F (but you don't know which) and mix it with A, and if chemical C does NOT show up, you could conclude that chemical X is NOT chemical B. That would be a valid proof based on "lack" of evidence. However, you CAN'T chemical A and mix it with an unknown chemical and see a non-reaction and say "well, it MUST be chemical D, E, or F, since we KNOW that these don't react with chemical A." There could be another chemical out there that doesn't react with chemical A! In this case, lack of evidence is NOT proof. (prob. a lousy example, but hey - I just made it up. Please try to be open-minded and I think you can see what I mean). So you can't just say "well, we see large periods of stasis and abrupt appearances of new species, therefore MACROEVOLUTION must occur in short spurts that just HAPPEN to not appear in the fossil record." This is FINE as a theory, but it does NOT prove that MACROEVOLUTION happened! At the VERY BEST, it proves that IF macroevolution (and that's a HUGE "if") happened, then it happened this way. And again, I object to it being represented as proveable. And as far as supported by evidence - well, duh! It was formulated by looking at the evidence. And I can formulate lots of other nice little theories by looking at the same evidence that are all equally unproveable. Quote:
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! Last edited by Rían : 04-15-2004 at 05:07 PM. |
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04-15-2004, 05:15 PM | #1137 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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IOW, there may not be an ultimate truth about the best sport to plaly, but there ARE ultimate truths about things that I kinda think of "rewindable and playable on a tv". And if the technology existed, and there was a giant videocamera recording things, then we could rewind the tape and play it on a tv and see if macroevolution really DID happen, or if God really DID create us essentially as we are now. Do you see what I mean? If you can't assent to that idea, then there's really no use in discussing these differering worldview possibilities, IMO. Do you agree?
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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04-15-2004, 05:17 PM | #1138 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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It's your guys' fault for being so intelligent and fun to talk to! BTW, what did you think of my response to your Mt. St. Helens post?
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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04-15-2004, 05:17 PM | #1139 | |||
Co-President of Entmoot
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That's true - a lot of different religions have huge floods as part of their creation stories. This suggests that historically there was a huge flood. I don't believe the Arc story to the letter. The point of it is the message, not the specific actions. I don't think it's meant to be taken literally. EDIT: *nag* Respond to my essay! I really want to know what you think. Not to attack you or anything (I would never do that), but because I value your opinion, it's insightful.
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"I can add some more, if you'd like it. Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to Punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools." - Sam Gamgee, p. 340, Return of the King Quote:
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Last edited by Nurvingiel : 04-15-2004 at 05:21 PM. |
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04-15-2004, 05:36 PM | #1140 | |||||
Quasi Evil
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Last edited by Insidious Rex : 04-15-2004 at 05:39 PM. |
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