GG, If you want to read some mind blowing stuff from a truly great mind, read: The Demo Haunted World "Science as a candle in the dark" by good old Carl Sagan. You will find yourself screaming...YES! YES! YES! until something thinks your having sex as you read this book It will validate all your suspicions concerning the pseudoscientific garbage and myths that continue to float around our society. If you haven't read it. Order it right this second from amazon.com or wherever, and report back as you read it. Your reaction would be fun to watch If the theists want a better understanding of how good scientists think, I would also highly recommend this book. Everyone has something to learn from it. One of my favorites. And before you tell me to go read the bible... i've read it more than most theists already...thanks peace axeman
thanks for the recommendation, axe. i think Carl Sagan rules. that book you recommended has been in my amazon.com wish list for at least a year. i plan on reading all his books, eventually. of Sagan's books, right now i have, "cosmos," "pale blue dot," and "shadows of forgotten ancestors." a few weeks ago i ordered the "contact" book used for 1 cent on amazon.com, since i love the movie. btw, i also have, "the blind watchmaker," which i also saw you recommended.
Here is one of Sagans great analogies in the Demon Haunted World. Myth believers argue like this all the time. http://www.users.qwest.net/~jcosta3/article_dragon.htm peace axeman
I think you will particularly like THIS Sagan book because it is his masterpiece of DEBUNKING. It's not about space, and other cool stuff like that, it's about all the NONSENSE in the world and why SCIENCE is more important than ever, as how mythology continues to find ways of resurfacing. He discusses everything from religion, to UFO's, to the faces on Mars. And utterly destroys everything with brilliant logic and reason. Very very refreshing. From:http://www.exmormonfoundation.org/DHW.htm "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken." -- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, page 241 Two more funny quotes: "Within the personal religious belief system of a law enforcement officer, Christianity may be good and Satanism evil. Under the Constitution, however, both are neutral. This is an important, but difficult, concept for many law enforcement officers to accept. They are paid to uphold the penal code, not the Ten Commandments ⦠The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people donât like that statement, but few can argue with it." â pp.150-151. "Keeping an open mind is a virtue â but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open that your brains fall out." â p.177. peace axeman
How does the Bible suck? Even if you disagree with the religion, you should still realize the Bible is one of the oldest books in existence. Perhaps you should take the time to actually READ the book before you trash it -- or is that asking too much from you?
i'm not arguing that point. just because something's been around a while doesn't mean it's true. in fact, i'd be especially skeptical of claims made in like the year 900.
Why the $250,000 challenge is BUNK The creationists $250,000 challenge to prove evolution axeman _______________________________________ The site quoted is a lopsided joke. They introduce the site as presenting both sides to the evolution-creation debate but are nothing but a onesided junk science site. Pure lies and BS. Their main position is that of proving everything in the evolution side by relying on what some call micro-evolution and saying creationists move the goal posts to demand macro-evolution. The position of the creationists has forever been that you must have macro evolution to prove new species or species jump or beginning of life. Not minor changes in the original species. If the science community had one absolute proof of this the $250,000 would be gone and the whole world would hear about the final end of the debate but they can't produce even one recording of macro-evolution. _______________________________________________ An offspring of a plant or animal has characteristics that vary, often in subtle ways, from its âparents.â Because of the environment, genetics, and chance circumstances, some of these offspring will reproduce more than others. So a species with certain characteristics will tend, on average, to have more âchildren.â In this sense, nature âselectsâ genetic characteristics suited to an environmentâand, more importantly, eliminates unsuitable genetic variations. Therefore, an organismâs gene pool is constantly decreasing. This is called natural selection. Notice, natural selection cannot produce new genes; it only selects among preexisting characteristics. As the word âselectionâ implies, variations are reduced, not increased. For example, many mistakenly believe that insect or bacterial resistances evolve in response to pesticides and antibiotics. What actually occurs is that 1. a previously lost capability is reestablished, making it appear something evolved, 2. a mutation reduced the binding ability, regulatory function, or transport capacity of certain proteins, 3. a damaging bacterial mutation or variation reduces the antibioticâs effectiveness even more, or 4. a few resistant insects and bacteria were already present when the pesticides and antibiotics were first applied. When the vulnerable insects and bacteria were killed, resistant varieties had less competition and, therefore, proliferated. While natural selection occurred, nothing evolved and, in fact, some biological diversity was lost. The variations Darwin observed among finches on different Galapagos islands is another example of natural selection producing micro- (not macro-) evolution. While natural selection sometimes explains the survival of the fittest, it does not explain the origin of the fittest. Today, some people think that because natural selection occurs, evolution must be correct. Actually, natural selection prevents major evolutionary changes. Dr. Walt Brown ___________________________________________ Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently it is called the law of biogenesis. The theory of evolution conflicts with this scientific law by claiming that life came from nonliving matter through natural processes.a a. And yet, leading evolutionists are forced to accept some form of spontaneous generation. For example, a former Harvard University professor and Nobel Prize winner in physiology and medicine acknowledged the dilemma. The reasonable view [during the two centuries before Louis Pasteur] was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. George Wald, âThe Origin of Life,â Scientific American, Vol. 190, August 1954, p. 46. With no rationale given, Wald goes on to accept the impossible odds of spontaneous generation rather than creation. One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we areâas a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation. Ibid. âThe beginning of the evolutionary process raises a question which is as yet unanswerable. What was the origin of life on this planet? Until fairly recent times there was a pretty general belief in the occurrence of âspontaneous generation.â It was supposed that lowly forms of life developed spontaneously from, for example, putrefying meat. But careful experiments, notably those of Pasteur, showed that this conclusion was due to imperfect observation, and it became an accepted doctrine [the law of biogenesis] that life never arises except from life. So far as actual evidence goes, this is still the only possible conclusion. But since it is a conclusion that seems to lead back to some supernatural creative act, it is a conclusion that scientific men find very difficult of acceptance. It carries with it what are felt to be, in the present mental climate, undesirable philosophic implications, and it is opposed to the scientific desire for continuity. It introduces an unaccountable break in the chain of causation, and therefore cannot be admitted as part of science unless it is quite impossible to reject it. For that reason most scientific men prefer to believe that life arose, in some way not yet understood, from inorganic matter in accordance with the laws of physics and chemistry.â J. W. N. Sullivan, The Limitations of Science (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1933), p. 94. ___________________________________________ While Mendelâs laws give a theoretical explanation why variations are limited, broad experimental verification also exists. For example, if evolution happened, organisms (such as bacteria) that quickly produce the most offspring, should have the most variations and mutations. Natural selection would then select the more favorable changes, allowing organisms with those traits to survive, reproduce, and pass on their beneficial genes. Therefore, organisms that have allegedly evolved the most should have short reproduction cycles and many offspring. We see the opposite. In general, more complex organisms, such as humans, have fewer offspring and longer reproduction cycles.[/a] Again, variations within existing organisms appear to be bounded. Organisms that occupy the most diverse environments in the greatest numbers for the longest times should also, according to evolution, have the greatest potential for evolving new features and species. Microbes falsify this prediction as well. Their numbers per species are astronomical, and they are dispersed throughout practically all the worldâs environments. Nevertheless, the number of microbial species are relatively few. New features apparently donât evolve. Dr. ____________________________________ â The awesome morphological complexity of organisms such as vertebrates that have far fewer individuals on which selection can act therefore remains somewhat puzzling (for me at least), despite the geological time scales available ...â Peter R. Sheldon, âComplexity Still Running,â Nature, Vol. 350, 14 March 1991, p. 104.