Finally saw "The Passion of the Christ"...

[JackC 0]

Quote

We sure are spending an awful lot of money trying to figure out the origins of the universe for it to be a "meaningless question.". You are correct that it is not a question that science can answer.

Trying to understand the early universe and what was before the universe are two different questions. I thought you would know that, I see I was wrong.

Quote

It's not a concept that can rationally even be brought up without God.

What evidence do you have for the existence of an entity that started the universe and how do you get over the problem of infinite regression?

Please note: the superstitions of a bunch of Bronze age nomads is not evidence.

Quote

Every natural phenomena has a starting point.

Look up the Casimir effect.

Quote

The matter and energy had to come from somewhere.

Why? Look up the Casimir effect.

Quote

Evolution is all about the physical world controlling itself. Even if it was how it is said to have happened, something had to start the process. How logical is it to "ass-ume" that "In the beginning.....dirt?

Just because you cannot get your head around it, does not make it wrong. Take dpdx~h for example. Possibly the most misused equation in the history of science. You will have heard of it but most people don't understand it or know where it came from, but it's still right.

But you talk of logic, how logical is it to assume that god sent himself to sacrifice himself to himself to appease his own anger at his own creation so he wouldn't have to send his creation to a place of hellfire and damnation which he created?

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". ~ Philip K. Dick

[JackC 0]

Quote

Lucy - Nearly all experts agree Lucy was just a 3 foot tall chimpanzee.

Heidelberg Man - Built from a jawbone that was conceeded by many to be quite human.

Nebraska Man - Scientifically built up from one tooth, later found to be the tooth of an extinct pig.

Piltdown Man - The jawbone turned out to belong to a modern ape.

Peking Man - Supposedly 500,000 years old, but all evidence has disappeared.

Neanderthal Man - At the International Cogress of Zoology (1958) Dr. A.J.E. Cave said his examination showed that this famous skeleton found in France over 50 years ago is that of an old man who suffered from arthritis.

New Guinea Man - Dates way back to 1970. This species has been found in the region just north of Australia.

Cro-Magnon Man - One of hte earliest and best established fossils is at least equal in physique and brain capacity to modern man...so what's the difference?

Fuck me Paj, the best you can do is plagarise a Jack Chick cartoon!!???!!
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp
http://www.kent-hovind.com/chick/daddy.htm

I really think you should get your bullshit-o-meter recalibrated.

[AngelinaLewis 0]

Quote

How did others react? (I don't really feel like searching for old threads)

I didn’t understand what that movie was about. The words were printed too fast to read.

I just sat there bored, thinking to myself What Ever!!

[steveorino 7]

Quote

Quote

How did others react? (I don't really feel like searching for old threads)

I didn’t understand what that movie was about. The words were printed too fast to read.

I just sat there bored, thinking to myself What Ever!!

Read the gospel of John from chapter 17 until the end.

steveOrino

[steveorino 7]

Quote

Quote

Lucy - Nearly all experts agree Lucy was just a 3 foot tall chimpanzee.

Heidelberg Man - Built from a jawbone that was conceeded by many to be quite human.

Nebraska Man - Scientifically built up from one tooth, later found to be the tooth of an extinct pig.

Piltdown Man - The jawbone turned out to belong to a modern ape.

Peking Man - Supposedly 500,000 years old, but all evidence has disappeared.

Neanderthal Man - At the International Cogress of Zoology (1958) Dr. A.J.E. Cave said his examination showed that this famous skeleton found in France over 50 years ago is that of an old man who suffered from arthritis.

New Guinea Man - Dates way back to 1970. This species has been found in the region just north of Australia.

Cro-Magnon Man - One of hte earliest and best established fossils is at least equal in physique and brain capacity to modern man...so what's the difference?

Fuck me Paj, the best you can do is plagarise a Jack Chick cartoon!!???!!
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp
http://www.kent-hovind.com/chick/daddy.htm

I really think you should get your bullshit-o-meter recalibrated.

So are you saying there is documented scientific fact that Chick (and Jay) are wrong in their assessment?

steveOrino

[JackC 0]

Quote

So are you saying there is documented scientific fact that Chick (and Jay) are wrong in their assessment?

Acording to what I've read, Chick has produced a list that doesn't conform to scientific thinking. He's basically made up a list using fragments of fact and shot that down. Classic straw man stuff.

Critique the science by all means, but there's no point in shooting down fiction.

Here's some links to rebuttals of Chick list:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/bigdaddy.html
http://www.punkerslut.com/critiques/chick/bigdaddy.html
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Big_Daddy%3F
http://www.whiterose.org/dr.elmo/blog/archives/001781.html

In case you don't like any of those, you can go straight to the horses mouth by using this IIDB thread which contains hundreds of absracts from Science and Nature papers on the subject of evolution. http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=124611

[steveorino 7]

I was curious as I too have read many of the skulls were later found to not be that old, not human, etc. I'll research those other websites later.

Thanks.

BTW, I'm a Christian but not a 7 literal day creationist. I simply do not believe Genesis was written to be a "science" book.

steveOrino

[billvon 2,435]

>Lucy - Nearly all experts agree . . .
>Heidelberg Man - Built from a jawbone . . .

You've listed 8 fossils. Here's a more complete list:

Ardipithecus ramidus - bipedal, 4.4 million years old. Fossils of 2 of these were found.

Australopithecus anamensis, 4.2 to 3.9 million years old. Bipedal, better adapted to standing upright.

Australopithecus afarensis, 3.9 to 3.0 million years ago. Larger brain, stronger.

Australopithecus africanus, 3 to 2 million years ago. More human-like jaw, larger brain.

Australopithecus aethiopicus, 2.6 to 2.3 myr ago. Same size brain, different jaw, better adapted for plants.

Australopithecus robustus, 2 to 1.5 myr ago. Larger brain.

Australopithecus boisei, 2 to 1.5 myr ago. Larger face, same sized brain, larger jaw.

Homo habilis, 2.4 to 1.5 myr ago. First tool user. Much larger brain. Several instances have been found, and the brain grows from 500cc to 800 cc over the course of about a million years. Likely developed speech.

Homo erectus, 1.8 to .3 myr ago. Brain to 1200cc. Developed good tools, fire, clothing. First hunters. Very similar to modern man except for face, brain size and strength.

Homo sapiens (archaic) 200,00 to 500,000 years ago. Very similar to us, with only minor holdovers (larger face, larger jaw)

Homo sapiens neandertalensis 150,000-35,000 years ago. Larger brain than modern man, stronger, shorter. This offshoot of humanity didn't make it and became extinct.

Homo floresiensis, ~18,000 years ago. Smaller than modern humans, smaller brain, tool user. This offshoot also became extinct.

Homo sapiens sapiens, 120,000 years ago to present.

This hominid fossil record covers something like 4000 fossils extending over about 5 million years. There have been at least 35 fairly complete skeletons found of hominids over that period.

[pajarito 0]

Balance is one of those "ordinary" body functions we don't think about until it is disrupted. Sit in a violently spinning carnival ride for a few minutes, however, and then try to walk upright. You'll become acutely aware that your vestibular system, located in your inner ear has been upset. The dizziness and nausea you feel are symptoms that the carnival ride disrupted the normal functioning of the system that maintains proper balance.

Unlike all other primates, humans ordinarily walk upright, carnival rides notwithstanding. This posture makes "particular demands on the vestibular apparatus" because humans balance a large body mass "on very small areas of support" (Spoor et al., 1994, p. 645). Although chimpanzees may walk upright for brief periods--using what is called facultative bipedalism--only humans always walk that way. Our obligatory bipedalism is, in part, maintained by the distinctive arrangement of the semicircular canals in our vestibular system.

But what about the vestibular systems of so-called transitional forms between humans and other primates? Are those systems more ape-like, or more human-like? Recently, using a CT scanner, anthropologist Fred Spoor and his coworkers analyzed the inner ears of extinct hominids (in particular, Australopithecus africanus) and compared them with the inner ears seen in living primates and modern humans. Spoor's analysis confirms many creationist arguments about the nontransitional status of these hominids, and maintains the distance between hominids and modern man.

For many years, creationists (e.g., Gish 1993) have referred to the studies on Australopithecus by evolutionists Charles Oxnard and Lord Sully Zuckerman. These evolutionists, having analyzed postcranial (body) material of Australopithecus, contend that Australopithecus was not bipedal and transitional to man, but walked rather like a chimp.

Using a completely different approach from that of Oxnard and Zuckerman, and examining a different anatomical complex (the inner ear), Spoor and his coworkers support Oxnard and Zuckerman's conclusions. The "semi-circular canal dimensions" of Australopithecus, they write, resemble "those of the extant [living] great apes" (p. 645).

Once again, Australopithecus is shown to be very ape-like, not a transitional ape-man. The human condition is first found in the inner ear of Homo erectus, but insofar as Homo erectus has a modern human-like vestibular system, it offers no support for evolution. In a careful study, the creationist Martin Lubenow (1992) has demonstrated that Homo erectus does not differ sufficiently from modern man (Homo sapiens) to warrant the status of a distinct species. Rather, the differences between the two forms should be regarded as racial. A gulf exists, therefore, between humans and Australopithecus.

Evolutionists have tried to fill the gulf between by devising a "wastebasket" species, Homo habilis. But Lubenow (1992, pp. 157-166) has convincingly argued that Homo habilis is an artificial species because it combines disparate human and australopithecine remains (akin, perhaps, to mixing dog and cat bones together, giving the result a species name, and proclaiming it a transition between dogs and cats).

The Spoor study provides support for Lubenow's argument about the artificial status of Homo habilis. Two specimens, SK 847 and Stw 53, were long held to belong to the same species, with the former independently assigned to either Homo erectus or Homo habilis, and the latter to Homo habilis. Spoor and his coworkers show that the vestibular systems of the two specimens are so different that they could not have come from the same species. Specimen SK 847 should definitely be assigned to Homo erectus (and, if Lubenow is right, to human beings generally). Specimen Stw 53, on the other hand, has unique semicircular canals, although their proportions tend to resemble those of modern large primates. Spoor et al. argue that Stw 53 (which they believe should be assigned to Homo habilis) probably relied less on bipedal locomotion than did Australopithecus! Clearly, this is a step in the wrong direction (pardon the pun), evolutionarily speaking. As Spoor et al. note (p. 648):

. . . the unique labyrinth of Stw 53 represents an unlikely intermediate between the morphologies seen in the australopithecines and Homo erectus.

In conclusion, we can reevaluate the supposed evolutionary chain leading up to modern man: Australopithecus ---> Homo habilis ---> Homo erectus ---> Homo sapiens. Australopithecus is again shown to be too ape-like to count as a genuine transition to man. Homo habilis is again shown to be an artificial amalgam of disparate skeletal elements. And Homo erectus is not sufficiently different from modern man to be recognized as a separate species. Homo sapiens does indeed stand alone, created in the image and likeness of God. ---John Woodmorappe

Clicky

[hairyjuan 0]

Quote

I enjoyed watching it, because before I never really understood in my mind, what a horrific death Christ experienced, when he was thinking all about me and the rest of humanity.
Watching it made me realize that after all that pain I put him through, I still hurt him daily when I sin and go against his Word. "The Passion" encouraged me to live a holy life like never before, that I may honor Jesus Christ with my life.
That is proof that the story is bullshit, Roman Civil Law was absolute, the pilate's ruling of innocent would NEVER have been allowed to be overturned by an angry mob.

Seeing Jesus stumble with the weight of the cross on his back, and him bleeding for humans who would reject him and mock the very thing he did to show love for them--in my mind I saw love more than ever before, and I cannot wait to meet the face of love when I stand before him in heaven.

we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively


wishers never choose, choosers never wish

[Mockingbird 0]

What will they think of next?

Blue skies & happy jitters ~Mockingbird
"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

[JackC 0]

Even if there was some decent science in that cut-n-paste article, they well and truly fucked it up with the line "Homo sapiens does indeed stand alone, created in the image and likeness of God".

The authors argument is basically

1. Here's two fossils, A and B.
2. Fossil A looks different to fossil B
3. God exists

Horseshit.

Anyway here's Fred Spoor on Talk-Origin referring to Marvin Lubenow 1992 book "Bones of Contention" which are two of the authors your article references.

Keep up the good work disclosing the creationists' nonsense. I am very much aware that any arguments and disagreements in scientific debates between palaeoanthropologists will be taken out of context and used by creationists to suggest that they have science and actual evidence on their side. Once we get into further debate about the status and implications of Kenyanthropus platyops, I am sure they will (ab)use that too....

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/invalidtaxon.html

And here's an article explaining why John Woodmorappe's article "Standing (and Walking) Alone" (the one you produced) is horsehooey.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_canals.html

[hairyjuan 0]

Quote

Duh! God gave me a brain for a reason. Those who test God and don't use the abilities He's given them are just asking for trouble.

so why dont you use it, instead of letting that fearful mind-control bullshit rule your infinite concious. really wind catcher logical, reasonable thought rules out jesus being real, i dont agree with judaism either but at least they do know the truth about jesus. addicts always deny their addiction yours is probably dopamine

we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively


wishers never choose, choosers never wish

[hairyjuan 0]

Quote

Quote

the movie "passion of christ" is nothing more than an exercise in mass mind control. it is the most disgusting diatribe yet produced on the mythological virgin-born "saviour". jesus was no more real then than the man in the moon is today

Now that's an in-depth analysis...
Real "Free-thinker."

to take a myth (provable at that) literally is the suspension of rational thinking notthe other way around

we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively


wishers never choose, choosers never wish

[hairyjuan 0]

Quote

http://www.kent-hovind.com/

Yup, he's a quack....
I think I hear the same laughter as Sarah....

so produce something other than your bible that proves it, i. e. roman, egyptian, greek records(which do exist) or read everything that i have studied for the last 15 years. you are obviously stooping to name calling because you don't have a leg to stand on with your claim that the bible is true

we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively


wishers never choose, choosers never wish

[stevebabin 0]

You got the wrong guy....
PM sent.

"Science, logic and reason will fly you to the moon. Religion will fly you into buildings."
"Because figuring things out is always better than making shit up."

[billvon 2,435]

>Our obligatory bipedalism is, in part, maintained by the distinctive
>arrangement of the semicircular canals in our vestibular system.

That's a pretty big jump, there. People with damaged vestibular systems can still walk. Which is exactly what evolution needs to drive changes - a gradual improvement on an existing system.

>Homo habilis is again shown to be an artificial amalgam
>of disparate skeletal elements.

Basically complete h. habilis skulls have been found. They are an intermediate step between our ancestors and us, so much so that even creationists can't decide if they are apes (and thus not like us) or funny looking humans. Marvin Lubenow, a creationist author, thinks h. habilis is completely human. Duane Gish, a well-known creationist debater, at first claimed it was fully human, then later changed his mind and claimed it was an ape. Even their own arguments list commonalities between both apes and humans, which is exactly what you'd expect in a transitional fossil.

I think the argument you may be using here is the "invalid taxon" one, where the h. habilis is claimed to be inconsequential because there are variations between fossils recovered. There have been far too many fossils recovered, though, for the claim that "they're all mistakes" to be valid.

> we can reevaluate the supposed evolutionary chain leading
>up to modern man: Australopithecus ---> Homo habilis --->
>Homo erectus ---> Homo sapiens.

And it's being re-evaluated all the time, as we find more fossils. Yet every fossil we find fits into the gradual progression of man from a common ancestor with the chimpanzees to modern man, with several interesting exceptions (like the dead-end evolutionary lines of Neanderthal and h. florensis.)

I find it odd that some creationists accept that we can evolve enough to increase our brain size, change the shape of our face, change the angle of our hips etc over the course of half a million years - but the idea that we could change them to a much greater degree over 4 million years is unacceptable.

[pajarito 0]

Quote

I find it odd that some creationists accept that we can evolve enough to increase our brain size, change the shape of our face, change the angle of our hips etc over the course of half a million years - but the idea that we could change them to a much greater degree over 4 million years is unacceptable.

Adaptation to one's environment is not at all the same thing as changing into another species altogether. There’s not evidence to support that…anywhere. If I exercise my muscles, over time, they will grow larger and retain muscle tone (brain included). There's variation in all of us. That doesn't mean that some of us are progressively changing into something else at the most basic level. With the evidence we have available today, I think it is a leap of faith on the part of the evolutionist. It is a very attractive theory, however, and I can see why so many would want to buy into it even without being able to even come close to filling in the gaps. It is a way of explaining the origin of things without a creator. It is a way to build our own “Tower of Babble”, if you will, and put ourselves in place of God. It's putting something that isn't within our comprehension into terms we can understand despite our extremely limited capacity. Many secular humanists, however, “religiously” sink their teeth into it like there was no tomorrow. I think it’s dishonest of them not to admit that they’re relying in large part on faith of their own.

[billvon 2,435]

>Adaptation to one's environment is not at all the same thing as
>changing into another species altogether.

It is EXACTLY what it is all about. A whale is a mammal adapted to the ocean. Humpback whales adapted to filter feeding; killer whales adapted to the niche that was present for large warm-blooded carnivores.

To see this in action, all you have to do is go to a good zoo and compare a hippo to a seal to a manatee to a whale. You can see all those animals, adapted to their own specific niches. It may be hard to imagine a mouse becoming a whale, but not hard at all to imagine a manatee becoming a creature like a whale, or a seal becoming something like a manatee, or a hippo becoming a bull seal.

>If I exercise my muscles, over time, they will grow larger and retain
>muscle tone (brain included).

?? That's completely different. Your kids will not have those bigger muscles; such adaptation is not passed on. (Unless, of course, the weaker of your children die off because they are not well-adapted to the environment, which is the sometimes-cruel way evolution works.)

What we're talking about here are traits that are passed on genetically. That's where evolution works.

>It is a way of explaining the origin of things without a creator.

Quite true. It is a way to explain our origins with science rather than religion. And I have no problem teaching creationism as a religious text - it's just not science.

>I think it’s dishonest of them not to admit that they’re relying in
>large part on faith of their own.

You are confusing faith with science. Natural laws are not altered by faith or belief; they just are. No matter how much faith you have, you're not going to survive jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. Gravity trumps faith in that case.

The mistake many secularists make is that since natural laws always 'win' that there is no place for faith, which isn't true at all. They do the whole issue a great disservice by trying to confuse the two - just as militant creationists do their own cause a great disservice by trying to replace science with their own flavor of myth.

[pajarito 0]

Quote

To see this in action, all you have to do is go to a good zoo and compare a hippo to a seal to a manatee to a whale. You can see all those animals, adapted to their own specific niches. It may be hard to imagine a mouse becoming a whale, but not hard at all to imagine a manatee becoming a creature like a whale, or a seal becoming something like a manatee, or a hippo becoming a bull seal.

I think many people see what they want to see. Many people desperately want it to be true. Given the huge variety of species on the planet, you'd think there would be fossil evidence of millions of transitional forms. It's just not there.

[narcimund 0]

Quote

I think many people see what they want to see. Many people desperately want it to be true. Given the huge variety of species on the planet, you'd think there would be fossil evidence of millions of transitional forms. It's just not there.

This has been fascinating to watch. I didn't know there were people who really believed the things you believe.

What an eye-opener.

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[pajarito 0]

Quote

This has been fascinating to watch. I didn't know there were people who really believed the things you believe.

What an eye-opener.

Glad I could be of service.

[Casurf1978 0]

The evidence is there. A simple Google search brought up the American Institute of Biological Science and this paper with emphasis on fossil records.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton2.html

[pajarito 0]

Quote

The evidence is there. A simple Google search brought up the American Institute of Biological Science and this paper with emphasis on fossil records.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton2.html

Their strongest argument is that the Archaeopteryx is the missing link.

Problems with this:

- It has a ‘mosaic’ of characters in common with both groups but shows no true transitional structure such as a part-scale, part-feather.
- There are no fossil links between it and either reptiles or birds—it stands alone.
- True birds have been found which are assigned by evolutionists to an earlier time than Archaeopteryx.

Again, there should be a multitude of transitional forms to present this case. There aren't. This was a unique bird. Nothing more. If there was anything to it, there would be examples of transition from scales to feathers.

Quote

“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of 'paleobabble' is going to change that.”
-- Dr. Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself

The fact that it had some features in common with reptiles means simply that it had some features in common with reptiles — not that it evolved.

[hairyjuan 0]

Quote

Quote

Keep tithing, Pajarito........

I do.

Quote

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
Matthew 6:24

more on what the jews KNOW about your "messiah"

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
Mark 10:25

Every man according as he purposes in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loves a cheerful giver.
2 Corinthians 9:7

Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed me. But you say, How have we robbed you? In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse: for you have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my house, and prove me now herewith, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
Malachi 3:8-10

we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively


wishers never choose, choosers never wish

• Quote