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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 06/01/2002 : 18:35:20
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gezzam
SFN Regular
Australia
751 Posts |
Posted - 06/01/2002 : 20:46:04 [Permalink]
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Several years ago a man in Queensland told me that he had a cat in his house. He wondered if he could turn it into a dog so he fed the cat slowly increasing amounts of dog food and lo and behold, after ten years of this it stopped purring and meowing and started to bark and chase cars.
"Damn you people. Go back to your shanties." --- Shooter McGavin
Edited by - gezzam on 06/01/2002 20:46:29 |
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Espritch
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 06/02/2002 : 19:11:46 [Permalink]
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quote:
We now have fresh water crocodiles and salt water crocodiles that are different species but probably had a common ancestor. This is not evolution. It is only variation.
I guess it would too much to expect Kent Hovind to figure out that that is evolution in a nutshell. Speciation through gradual genetic variation over time.
Sigh.
quote:
Just dropped in at Borther Hovind's site.....
Ummm...doesn't that qualify as just a bit masochistic? 
Edited by - espritch on 06/02/2002 19:19:22 |
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jec96
Skeptic Friend
USA
61 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2002 : 09:10:05 [Permalink]
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Link please? I feel like punishing myself...
-It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2002 : 09:17:45 [Permalink]
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Here ya go, bro. Pour yourself a double and drink at least half of it before you look at this mess. It'll help you keep your sense of humor.
http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=faq
f
If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.
-- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, 20 May 1988
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2002 : 10:57:05 [Permalink]
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quote:
I guess it would too much to expect Kent Hovind to figure out that that is evolution in a nutshell. Speciation through gradual genetic variation over time.
Look at this section from his ideas about where the different races of human came from (emphasis is mine)
The fourth (and I think the best) theory says the races came from the Tower of Babel. Genesis 10:20 says, "These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, in their nations." Perhaps all families, countries, nations, and tongues were created or developed from this event. Maybe the colors were divinely created at that time, or maybe they are just a natural product of a small group of people speaking their own language and marrying back to their own parent stock.
A small group, seperated from the main, develops anatomical changes over the generations. He's teaching evolution and he doesn't even know it.
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860 |
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Xev
Skeptic Friend
USA
329 Posts |
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PhDreamer
SFN Regular
USA
925 Posts |
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James
SFN Regular
USA
754 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2002 : 19:34:10 [Permalink]
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quote:
quote:
Here, this is pretty bad too:
http://www.apologetics.com/default.jsp?bodycontent=articles/kreeft-arguments.html&backpath=Theism%20and%20Theistic%20Arguments
Never have I seen so many words say so little. The unstated premise of every single one of these syllogisms is "God exists." Of course, the stated conclusions are "God exists." Which relegates everything in between to meaninglessness. All of these proofs reduce to "God exists therefore God exists." Truly awe inspiring.
As in how it can take a dictionary full of words just to say that they're bloody freakin' stupid?
When I tried to read, my eyes nearly blanked out, there was so much bullshit.
________________________
Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life.
Two more years...Two more years...Two more years...Two more years...Two more years...
*whine* |
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Espritch
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2002 : 21:06:52 [Permalink]
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1. THE ARGUMENT FROM CHANGE (annotated)
The material world we know is a world of change. This young woman came to be 5'2", but she was not always that height. The great oak tree before us grew from the tiniest acorn. Now when something comes to be in a certain state, such as mature size, that state cannot bring itself into being. For until it comes to be, it does not exist, and if it does not yet exist, it cannot cause anything.
Quite right. The current state of a thing is a direct consequence of it's previous state. And your point?
As for the thing that changes, although it can be what it will become, it is not yet what it will become. It actually exists right now in this state (an acorn); it will actually exist in that state (large oak tree). But it is not actually in that state now. It only has the potentiality for that state.
Yes. It (acorn) also has the potential to become squirrel food. I'm still waiting for a point.
Now a question: To explain the change, can we consider the changing thing alone, or must other things also be involved? Obviously, other things must be involved. Nothing can give itself what it does not have, and the changing thing cannot have now, already, what it will come to have then. The result of change cannot actually exist before the change. The changing thing begins with only the potential to change, but it needs to be acted on by other things outside if that potential is to be made actual. Otherwise it cannot change.
Have to differ with you here. The changes to a thing do relate to things outside of it. But that is because they are both part of a complex interrelated system called the universe and pretty much everything effects everything. If the squirrel finds the acorn, it feeds the squirrel. If the acorn grows into an oak, it may feed the squirrel's descendents. The effect flows both ways. The relation is reciprocal. Things in the universe change each other.
Nothing changes itself. Apparently self-moving things, like animal bodies, are moved by desire or will--something other than mere molecules.
“desire and will” Instinct and biological urges, a direct result of chemical signals moving through the pathways of the brain, an organ that is, surprisingly, composed entirely of “mere molecules”.
And when the animal or human dies, the molecules remain, but the body no longer moves because the desire or will is no longer present to move it.
Actually, a decomposing corpse can move quite a bit. But I suppose that is attributable to the will of the maggots.
Now a further question: Are the other things outside the changing thing also changing? Are its movers also moving? If so, all of them stand in need right now of being acted on by other things, or else they cannot change. No matter how many things there are in the series, each one needs something outside itself to actualize its potentiality for change.
I've already noted that the universe is a complex system and everything effects everything else. The universe may be regarded as a complete, self contained system.
The universe is the sum total of all these moving things, however many there are.
Ah. So we agree.
The whole universe is in the process of change. But we have already seen that change in any being requires an outside force to actualize it.
We've also already seen that this is a reciprocal process.
Therefore, there is some force outside (in addition to) the universe, some real being transcendent to the universe. This is one of the things meant by "God."
Ummm…no. That doesn't follow. No convincing reason has been given to think the Universe is not self contained. Individual parts may depend on the whole but it doesn't follow that the whole must depend on something else beyond the whole.
Briefly, if there is nothing outside the material universe, then there is nothing that can cause the universe t |
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gezzam
SFN Regular
Australia
751 Posts |
Posted - 06/05/2002 : 00:00:58 [Permalink]
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quote:
It is not a changing thing; it is the unchanging Source of change.
What the?????
"Damn you people. Go back to your shanties." --- Shooter McGavin |
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
Posted - 06/05/2002 : 02:25:14 [Permalink]
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Ouch! Reading this hurts. None of the arguments are true and all of them are stupid.
The one that I felt was the most insulting was the argument from degrees of perfection. We can think of terms like good and bad so there must be something perfectly good. It closes with:
quote:
Question 1: The argument assumes a real "better." But aren't all our judgments of comparative value merely subjective?
Reply: The very asking of this question answers it. For the questioner would not have asked it unless he or she thought it really better to do so than not, and really better to find the true answer than not. You can speak subjectivism but you cannot live it.
The funniest one was the shortest one:
quote:
17. The Argument from Aesthetic Experience
There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Therefore there must be a God.
You either see this one or you don't.
I don't!
The argument from Miracles was pretty funny, too. Pascal's Wager and the argument from design and its variations are well worn.
The rest were either arguments that are based on the assumption that human thinking and feeling is something that transcendenses matter and science or are based on variations of the first cause argument.
What really gets me about this proofs for the existence of God, is that the God whose existence those arguments fail to prove has only little resemblance to the guy in the Bible. The Arguments could as well be taken as 'proving' the existence of Allah or some other creator.
Edited because I never notice my obvious mistakes until after I hit the post-button.
Edited by - Lars_H on 06/05/2002 02:28:17 |
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Tim
SFN Regular
USA
775 Posts |
Posted - 06/05/2002 : 04:24:06 [Permalink]
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The problem here, is that we think this shit is really whacked, but for the 'true believer', this is evidence far beyond any science could gather.
Worse yet, the 'true believer' hasn't a clue as to what her/his Bible actually says. There was no need for the books to be translated to the modern languages, because they still defer everything to the authority of the clergy. Buy a mail order diploma, tack some initials onto the end of your name, and call yourself a preacher. Then, you can sell them whatever you like, other than reality.
"The Constitution ..., is a marvelous document for self-government by Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society." P. Robertson |
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James
SFN Regular
USA
754 Posts |
Posted - 06/05/2002 : 05:43:04 [Permalink]
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Is anybody else here a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000? If so, send me a private message.
For everyone else: http://pinky.wtower.com/mst3k/mistings.shtml
________________________
Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life.
Two more years...Two more years...Two more years...Two more years...Two more years...
*whine*
Edited by - James on 06/05/2002 05:45:02 |
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jec96
Skeptic Friend
USA
61 Posts |
Posted - 06/05/2002 : 14:42:51 [Permalink]
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quote:
Here ya go, bro. Pour yourself a double and drink at least half of it before you look at this mess. It'll help you keep your sense of humor.
http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=faq
f
If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.
-- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, 20 May 1988
Thanks Filthy, picking up a fifth now *hick* did I drink that already?
-It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 06/05/2002 : 16:39:14 [Permalink]
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quote:
Not all the arguments are equally demonstrative. One (Pascal's Wager) is not an argument for God at all, but an argument for faith in God as a "wager." Another (the ontological argument) we regard as fundamentally flawed; yet we include it because it is very famous and influential, and may yet be saved by new formulations of it.
Hmmm? Am I misreading this or is he actually saying that he knows that the ontological argument is wrong and proposes that someone rework it to make it a more convincing lie?
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860 |
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