I know I’m beating my head against a wall here, but I’ll try it one more time.
Lacunas, why should I believe your religion over any other one? What is it about your beliefs that make them truer than Hindu beliefs or Scientology beliefs? Remember, members of those religions have just as much faith as you do, and their holy books also say things about how they’re right. From where I stand, your beliefs are at exactly the same level of Hinduism, Scientology, and every other religion, superstition and myth.
You clearly don’t believe every other religion, superstition and myth in addition to Christianity (or you’re very good at believing lots of contradictory things), so why do you believe Christianity over all those other ones?
I’m confused by the refusal to acknowledge evolution. I know a Roman Catholic who (last time I checked) believes-
That Christ was conceived of a virgin
That he lived, taught, and performed miracles
That he suffered and died under Pontius Pilate
That he rose from the dead
That he ascended to heaven.
Yet, this man (let’s call him Richard) also accepted the evidence for evolution. He has a PhD in biochemistry. Neither his faith nor mine require us to ignore the evidence. Why, Lacunas Quell, does yours?
I wonder why Der Trihs provided me links to articles of ignorance (wikipedia) to support evolution and refute creationism? It’s now apparent that those articles should be deleted, according to those who support evolution (evolutionist), and shouldn’t be considered reliable and credible scientific data.
I suppose the Oxford dictionary is also ignorant since the made-up word “evolutionist” is also found there.
That the words exist does not mean then that their use is proper.
And Wikipedia is good only by the strength of the works cited. It just so happens that the pages Der Trihs mentioned have plenty of supporting articles linked to them.
Your definitions have no citations. Still a pathetic effort.
I said that the articles on evolutionist and evolutionism were ignorant and should be deleted. I stand by that. I NEVER said anything about other Wikipedia or Wiktionary articles.
I’d have to see the definition they give. If it included a note along the lines (this word is used mainly as an epithet by creationists and does not have wide acceptance) I’d be fine. Otherwise, I’d say they made a mistake.
It’s already been pointed out to you, but Haeckel’s drawings were not hoaxes. They were enhanced by him, in an attempt to shore up his idea of how evolution works. His reputation suffered because he enhanced the drawings instead of presenting his findings transparently. But the major point is, his ideas were contrary to Darwinian evolution, were quickly discredited (Darwin’s ideas won out instead), and no one has given his recapitulation theory a backwards glance in 125 years. It’s dishonest for creationists to keep bringing these up, but that’s no surprise, because everything creationists point out is dishonest to the core.
The frauds were, lessee, the “enhanced” drawings by Haeckel, never widely accepted and then discredited 125 years ago, and the Piltdown Man skull, again never widely accepted and then shown to be a hoax what, 60 or 80 years ago? These are not by any stretch important findings that were thought to support evolution! They were outlier ideas even at the time, and have been discredited for many decades. Do you have any others?
Given that I was satisfied without a doubt that he was God, then I would of course believe in him. But I certainly wouldn’t worship him if he was the God of the Bible - he’d have some ‘splainin’ to do!
I’m not particularly in the mood to debate with a creationist, but this is flat out false. The so-called “Law of Biogenesis” does not state that “life only comes from life of its kind”; it says “modern organisms do not arise spontaneously from non-life in nature”. For example, maggots are not spawned from rotten meat, rats do not spawn from piles of dirty rags, etc. It is a refutation of the idea of “spontaneous generation”.
That creationists continually point these things out is largely why they aren’t taken seriously. Mutations in and of themselves do not change one species into another. Natural selection can preserve the status quo, in certain situations…though I’d wager you don’t really understand how or why, nor under what circumstances this might occur. As for “eliminat[ing] those organisms that are “changed” from the norm”…you really don’t understand what natural selection is, do you?
No, it wouldn’t. Fish never turned into amphibians, ape-like creatures didn’t turn into man.
Good thing to see that you are here, but I had to suffer a drubbing when I said a similar thing early.
I pointed out early that we did not evolve from apes, but from a common ancestor. But technically that was not correct so, can you clarify? (no, it was not our current creationist that put my feet to the fire) It seems that nowadays one can say that we did evolve from apes as the larger ape family can include Humans and the common ancestor of today’s apes and humans.
GIGO, I think you and DF are saying different things. Saying that “ape-like creatures turned into man” implies that there were individuals who changed. However, it’s true that a population of ape-like creatures evolved over many generations, eventually to humans.
I think that was his point.
And by the way, Lacunas, we have observed these evolutionary changes (fish to amphibians and apes to humans), because we have the fossils that demonstrate it. The fossils are an observation.
We did not evolve from modern apes, true, and we do indeed share a common ancestor with all of them (that is, there is a species that was ancestral to all extant apes, including us). That common ancestor is, necessarily, a member of the clade which it spawned, thus the common ancestor of all apes is an ape itself. The apes which gave rise to us were not gorillas or chimps or bonobos, but an extinct ape which was neither of those groups (specifically, the common ancestor of us, bonobos and chimps). That common ancestor was a basal homininid (Homininae being the clade which contains Hominini - us - and Panini - chimps and bonobos*).
As for what I meant in my reply to LQ, we did not evolve form “ape-like” creatures, we evolved from apes. Apes didn’t “turn into” humans, humans are still apes.
And the whole fish-to-amphibian thing is correct in terms of life style, perhaps, but not in terms of phylogeny. Osteichthyians begat sarcopterygians begat tetrapods begat temnospondyls begat lissamphibians. What we think of as “amphibians” (frogs, salamanders, etc.) are derived tetrapods, just like us. Fish didn’t hop out of the water and become salamanders any more than they became birds, or us.
Note: I am not up on the latest terminology for primate clades, so those names could very well be different from the current literature; I don’t tend to follow human evolution much.
Read the story of Mose, the rock, the staff and water. Moses was not allowed to cross the Jordan because God wanted the demonstration of his power to be solid. By hitting the rock with the staff, Moses made it possible to doubt God did it, and so belief would have required faith. God did not want faith, so Moses was punished.
You should read some more of the real Bible, not your inferior sequel.
Actually the standard Christian and Jewish reading of that text is that Moses was punished for explicitly disobeying God’s instructions, twice, not because he made it possible to doubt. God said he was to speak, but being a showman he hit the rock, twice. The punishment was for failing to follow instructions and (probably) for being a Benny Hinn style showman. Nothing to do with inducing doubt can be implied from the text, though of course you may choose to interpret it that way.
According to the text, it was apparently becuase his son wasn’t circumcized. God didn’t do it because when Moses’s wife saw what God was going to do, she circumcized the kid. That’s Exodus 4:24-26, unless you’re talking about another time God wanted to kill Moses.
It’s also symbolic. It happens right after God tells Moses that the firstborn Egyptian sons are going to be killed. So, you have God saying, “Israel is my first born son, and since you won’t let them go, Pharaoh, I’ll kill your firstborn son.” Then God tries to kill Moses, but Zipporah circumcises his son, touches his foreskin to Moses’s feet and says to Moses, “You are a bridegroom of blood to me.”, and God doesn’t kill Moses, just like the lamb’s blood on the Hebrews’ door go on to save their sons.
So it’s sort of a presaging of the whole Passover event.