So when is this designer genius going to give us new knees, remove the tendency toward nearsightedness and stop making our testicles drop through.... OK, I'll stop there. But leaded just tastes so much better...
Well, if this designer fellow can go about parting seas, flooding the joint, smiting foes supernaturally and raising obscure carpenters from the dead (insert Karen Carpenter joke here), is it too much to ask to help a brother out with an upgrade?
Mike, I'm not saying that evolution is a big part of people's daily lives. I'm saying that it seems to me that a lot of people are interested in it. Almost everyone I know well enough to gauge whether they are interested in evolution is indeed interested in evolution. I don't know a lot of people well enough to gauge whether they are interested in evolution. But among those who I do know well enough to gauge this, the vast majority are interested in evolution. For whatever it is worth, The Origin of Species is one of the most influential books of all-time. It also was a fast seller. It was the Harry Potter of its day. And it prompted a scientific revolution. Evolution is the second most important idea in the history science, behind only atomic theory. According to Ernst Mayr, "Mankind apparently has always had an urge to explain and understand that which is unknown or puzzling. The folklore of even those most primitive tribes indicates that they had given some thought to questions about the origin and history of the world. They had thoughts about such questions as: Who or what gave rise to the world? What will the future bring? How did humans originate? Numerous answers to these questions were given in tribal myths." Mike, perhaps what you want to get across is that evolution is something that you don't think about a lot. That's fine. You might also be saying that evolution is something that isn't worth being interested in. I strongly disagree. But it is not something I want to argue about at the moment. They were all electives, and they were some of the most popular courses on campus. Mike, what is your point? I'm sure that evolution is interesting to nearly every person I know well. Learning about evolution and working on our more immediate problems are not mutually exclusive. Thomas Huxley, Stephen J. Gould, Daniel Dennett, Michael Ruse and others have thought and written about evolution as well as public policy issues. In fact, understanding evolution might help us with some of our more immediate problems, for example, the mapping of the human genome and the discovery of life-saving medications. Evolution has helped us learn that we better watch out for asteroid collisions. Something happened to the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. Maybe that understanding well help us in the future. It is also clear that our understanding of evolution has been instrumental in our coming up with life-saving medications. And the mapping of the human genome could not have happened without a solid understanding of evolution. In the words of geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution." Besides, evolution is just interesting to me. Mike, if you aren't interested in it, that is fine. Variety is the spice of life. But if you aren't interested in it, why are we having this conversation? I don't see us conversing about U.S. trade policy toward East Timor. What do you have in mind?
If we were already perfect by born were would be the virtuosity? As my professor Barajas said: "Thanks to god for horrible girls, without them we wouldn't know that the cute ones exist."
If we don't evolve, the cockroaches have already won. If so, we should all be worried. I hope my thoughts give the little bastards a week long migrane.
So you're saying we have an average of 10,000 "Roseanne Barrs" just to make 1 "Halle Barry" look good? OK, fine, but it would have worked just as well if that ratio were reversed. The current ratio is not very "intelligent" design from my point of view.
I disagree. For the medical benefits alone. Also, many people are interested in evolution. There is something to be said for doing what interests you. I do admit, however, that some of the paleontologists go overboard with their speculation on, for instance, whether the T-Rex was a complete scavenger or whether it killed some of its food. It is likely that researching evolution has helped us better understand the phenomena of extinctions. Before Darwin, it wasn't even thought that there were such things. And understanding extinctions has helped us. For one, we can make better crops. If it wasn't for the understanding of evolution, the biotechnology industry wouldn't exist. And improvements in food science and agriculture have kept people from starving. Maybe I didn't make my point well. You have suggested that a majority of people are not at all interested in evolution and why we are here. I wonder. We have had a few long discussions on Bigsoccer regarding evolution. In contrast, we haven't had many discussions on trade policy toward East Timor. Maybe one reason we have had discussions on evolution is that a number of people are at least somewhat interested in it. And, Mike, you seem to be interested in evolution. I recommend Ernst Mayr's book What Evolution Is. Here is an excerpt from Stephen J. Gould's book I Have Landed: "As a young child, thinking as big as big can be and getting absolutely nowhere for the effort, I would often lie awake at night, pondering the mysteries of infinity and eternity -- and feeling pure awe (in an inchoate, but intense, boyish way) at my utter inability to comprehend. How could time begin? For even if a God created matter at a definite moment, then who made God? An eternity of spirit seemed just as incomprehensible as a temporal sequence of matter with no beginning. And how could space end? For even if a group of intrepid astronauts encountered a brick wall at the end of the universe, what lay beyond the wall? And infinity of wall seemed just as inconceivable as a never-ending extension of stars and galaxies." Here is a passage for James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The narrator is the character Stephen, a child of maybe about 10-years-old: "What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? It could be a wall but there could be a thin line there all around everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be but he could think only of God. God was God’s name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French word for God and that was Gods name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all those people who prayed said in their different languages still God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God."
Im saying that good souls and beautiful ladies are precious because their qualities are very hard to achieve. If all (or most) women were hot sexy chicks then where would the satisfaction of taking one of them to bed? After all, in the dark "Roseanne Barrs" has vagina too.
But sometimes you just have to think, Hmmm.. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3209223.stm
I think it was Jupiter's message. He is the God of lightnings. Also the message is unclear... he is not dead. And if you're hit by a lightning you're lucky not to die. It could be a confirmation then... or a divine investiture. Food for divinators. btw filming (with all the machinery needed) in an open field during a series of thunderstorms throughout Italy could have helped. But this is european skepticism talking.
No such thing as 'God'... pretty sure about that. wouldn't make any sense IMO. But sometimes I do wonder (this stuff keeps coming back into my head)... where did everything come from? And what would 'nothing' look like (try and imagine that for fun) In this light the existance of a superbeing who designed the universe once makes more sense than the big bang theory... which actually isn't an explanation at all. Then again... who created the superbeing? One way or another universes come and go, grow and shrink and start all over again. The same cycle as everywhere basically. Who knows how many man-like beings have wondered about stuff like this over the past billions and billions of centuries? BTW... anyone here care to share their ideas about the pope? Does anyone take him (or the vatican in general) seriously for instance?
The fundamentalists that get worked up about evolution or the age of the universe should read chapter four of 2 Chronicles. http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=2CHRON+4&language=english&version=NIV
I was just thinking about religious nutcases... Thought I'd share these "wonderfull" links: http://www.prayercalendar.com/pray4bush/index.php http://www.presidentialprayerteam.org/ http://www.prayforgeorgewbush.com/pages/236635/index.htm http://www.fastforbush.com/ http://www.prayingforthepresident.com/ Cute, huh?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/494.asp Closer examination shows there are at least two possible explanations. 1. The first concerns the meaning of the word ‘cubit’, and how it would have been used in measuring the vessel. A cubit was the length of a man’s forearm from the elbow to the extended fingertips. The Hebrew cubit was about 45 centimetres (18 inches). It is obvious that a man’s forearm does not readily lend itself to the measurement of fractions of a forearm. In the Bible half a cubit is mentioned several times, but there is no mention of a third part of a cubit or a fourth part of a cubit, even though these fractions of ‘a third part’ and ‘a fourth part’ were used in volume and weight measurements.2 It therefore seems highly probable that any measurement of more than half a cubit would have been counted as a full cubit, and any measurement of less than half a cubit would have been rounded down to the nearest full cubit. From 1 Kings 7:23 (‘a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about’), it appears that the circumference was measured with ‘a line’, i.e. a piece of string or cord on which the distance was marked, and this length would then have been measured off in cubits by the measurer, using his own or someone else’s forearm, or possibly a cubit-long rod. Similarly the diameter would have been marked on a line and ‘cubitized’ in the same way. If the actual diameter was 9.65 cubits, for example, this would have been reckoned as 10 cubits. The actual circumference would then have been 30.32 cubits. This would have been reckoned as 30 cubits (9.6 cubits diameter gives 30.14 circumference, and so on). The ratio of true circumference to true diameter would then have been 30.32 ¸ 9.65 = 3.14, the true value for p, even though the measured value (i.e. to the nearest cubit) was 30 ¸ 10 = 3. This only mentions one possibility. The other possibility is addressed in the link. If someone were to ask the BenReilly to state the length of a day, would he reply “twenty-four hours,” or would he be compelled to specify – twenty-three hours, fifty-six minutes, and 4.09054 seconds (the actual measurement)?
See, that's pretty close. Pi = 3 is not. The larger point is that the Bible makes for a pretty crummy science book. You can either look for the larger truth in the Bible or toss Galileo into prison. I'll take the former.
sorry to butt into this fascinating exhibition of pedantary, but (and bear with me, it's late over here) are you claiming a day doesn't last 24 hours? Now I know a year doesn't last 365 days, hence the extra day in leap years, but the effect of overrunning by 4 minutes every day would be like putting the clocks forward by an hour every 15 days. I think we'd have noticed that by now, especially in the summer when it'd be dark at noon.
"They" do a reset every weekend between 2 and 3 in the morning so nobody notices ... except in Europe where it happens during the work week. This is why you get more vacation than we do in the USA ... or something like that.
It depends on how you define one day. The Earth makes one complete rotation on its axis in about 23 hours, 56 minutes. At the same time, it's orbiting the sun. To maintain its relative position, it has make slightly more than one rotation.
Wel, that's the point, isn't it. It's an act of supreme arrogance to imagine we know everything - so we can't simply say 'I don't know how the world was created' - we have to try and invent something. You also have to bear in mind that the romans gave us our approach to religion. I remember being told by a chap who studied at theological college at the beginning of the last century that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John represented, (in no particular order), the physical, spiritual, metaphysical and religious aspects of the life of christ. Once the romans got hold of religion it became more mechanical in nature. I think it was Gibbon that said that the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire and it ended up selling salvation for a few dollars to anyone who would pay.
Interesting. That's the sort of thing you can say to a girlie at a party to show your intellectual side. She'll be really engrossed and tell you sincerely what an interesting guy you are, and how she's so glad to be chatting to someone who can hold a decent conversation, right up until the point at about midnight when she'll announce that she's enjoyed your company, but she must dash and find a monosyllabic muscular bloke to have sex with. She'll want you to be a friend of course, and as you are such a good friend she'll happily tell you about 'Darren' she hooked up with that night, and how it's great that they shag like bunnies day and night and he's done things to her that she never thought possible, let alone legal, and all that time your sat there cosily at the table, with her so close you can feel her warmth, while you're stuck with the emotional contradition of a broken heart and a raging hard-on as she puts you through you own unique personal torture. Or maybe not.