Evolution works in mysterious ways

Oakman

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

And as I've said I never spotted any.

But that's because you have only read one version, by your own admission. Try the Vulgate on for size.

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

God's concpet of God on the other hand well that will be stretching my mind to new horizons for eternity.

I guess that's the problem. The more I understand about your concept of god, the more distasteful I find it. As for any assurance that it is God's concept, I am afraid i regard that as another case of a small man hoping to convince everyone that he's a great man because he speaks for god.

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

You know less about what something omnipotent and omniscient would do than you do about canine dentistry in zero gravity

You forget that I am an official preacher. ;P Whatever else, you cannot suggest that I know nothing about what I speak of. You, on the other hand, are a rank amateur, holding up your guesses as if they were Holy Writ.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

Matthew Faithfull

Oakman wrote:

Problem is that everybody is in the Church

Not quite, everybody is generally presumed to be in the Church because it not up to us either to determine or to know who is and who isn't. That is the preserve of God who does not generally hand out lists of those who are and aren't to men small or large. Anyone claiming he has done so is highly suspect. The danger comes when this occurs in a weak church without enough discernment to understand what's going on. This is not the norm or the general case. I guess you've probably been through a church split or two and they're nearly always sad and traumatic. 'By their works you shall know them' and remember that He has promised to build his Church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. The Kingdom of heaven is forever and that forever can begin right now.

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

Vikram A Punathambekar

Paul Watson wrote:

I wonder how many other "unique" surnames there are in the world.

Mine. Google it, and you will only ever come across two people - a distant uncle of mine, and, well, me. It's a corruption of a slightly more common name, Puntambekar. BTW, cows *are* female.

Cheers, Vikram.

The hands that help are holier than the lips that pray.

Matthew Faithfull

Oakman wrote:

I guess that's the problem. The more I understand about your concept of god,

Take no notice of my concept of God, it is inadequate, as am I, to begin to describe what the almighty is like.

Oakman wrote:

Whatever else, you cannot suggest that I know nothing about what I speak of

Much the same was no doubt said by the Pharisees who knew their scriptures at least as well as you and understood them even less. Perhaps you can enlighten me from your store of knowledge. Who is it that the verses in John 1 1-18 are talking about. There is clearly John the Baptist and Moses gets a mention but who is this word he talks about?

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

Lost User

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

Being taught as fact simply because it is I have no problem with.

Intelligent Design is fact? How so?

Lost User

What has atheism got to do with bias?

DemonPossessed

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

Like evolution but the other way around, species breaking up, loosing genetic information over time, becoming over adapted, over specialized to their environments, less flexible and more vulnerable to environmental change. Think of it as entroy applied to population genetics and you'll see that not only is it inevitable but it's obvious, accounts for all the genuine 'evidence' purported to demonstrate evolution, operates effectively over much shorter time scales and also absolutely rules out the evolution of higher organisms from lower ones.

If it is impossible for "higher" organisms to form from "lower" ones, then why is it that insects and bacteria can evolve resistance to pesticides and antibiotics in such a short time frame because of natural selection? Surely this added complexity could not arise through random mutations and natural selection. Is God sitting up in heaven magically using his Intelligent Design powers as we speak on bacteria and crop pests? If bacteria and insects can evolve changes that help them survive through mutations and natural selection in such a small timescale think what is possible over a timescale of hundreds of millions of years.

I'm a Christian: I *know* that I'm perverted. - Ilion

Matthew Faithfull

The universe and everything in it is the creation of an intelligent God who designed it. The clear marks of his design are written all over it for any and every open eye to see, 'so that no one may have an excuse'. These are the facts of intelligent design, it is a basis for science not a product of it or a theory dervied by it. It is theology and philosophy and should be taught as such.

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

Matthew Faithfull

DemonPossessed wrote:

why is it that insects and bacteria can evolve resistance to pesticides and antibiotics in such a short time frame

They cannot, no evolution is involed as discussed elsewhere in this thread. They must contain wihtin them the necessary information to enable the resistance beforehand, there is no opportuinity to evolve it by any mechanism ever propoed as evolutionary. They'd all take too long apart from just plain not working. If your code doesn't contain a DrawLine Function that can handle differing screen resolutions you're not going to get one by waving a magnet over your hard disk, not even if you wave it for a million years over a billion hard disks simultaneously, even if you do throw away a random selection of those that don't work every now and again. :)

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

Oakman

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

Take no notice of my concept of God, it is inadequate, as am I, to begin to describe what the almighty is like.

'Twould be easier to ignore if you spent less bandwidth posting about it, end without end.

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

Much the same was no doubt said by the Pharisees who knew their scriptures at least as well as you

They had less to study.

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

understood them even less

You need to spend some time studying the history of Judea.

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

There is clearly John the Baptist and Moses gets a mention but who is this word he talks about?

We really should refer to "Logos" which doesn't exactly mean "word" (Could that be an error???) but is what the Greek author of John used. This is, of course, the section of the New Testament that was used to place Yeshua as an equal the Yaweh. Yaweh was also identified with Logos and so we had the start of the triple-headed god.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

Lost User

It is called belief, not fact. Different people believe different things. You accept on faith that God created everything; another person may not accept it.

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

The clear marks of his design are written all over it for any and every open eye to see, 'so that no one may have an excuse'.

Lots of people have a different opinion. All I have to say is this. You can believe in anything you want. You don't have the right to force it on anyone else. You force it on people, when you ask it to be taught as fact in schools. Teaching christian beliefs have an appropriate means -- Catechism, Sunday school, maybe a religious studies class in school. I hope you understand my point of view.

DemonPossessed

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

If your code doesn't contain a DrawLine Function that can handle differing screen resolutions you're not going to get one by waving a magnet over your hard disk, not even if you wave it for a million years over a billion hard disks simultaneously, even if you do throw away a random selection of those that don't work every now and again.

This is a typical creationist error. And one of the most ridiculous misunderstandings of evolution. Evolution does not deal with impossibly improbable single step changes. It deals with cumulative small changes over an extremely long time frame. Extremely small random changes in the offspring of each generation, such as the ones in bacteria that give them resistance to antibiotics allow natural selection to "select" the best suited ones to survive and produce the next generation of offspring. And over an extremely long time scale, this produces big changes, but in a small time scale, it produces small changes.

I'm a Christian: I *know* that I'm perverted. - Ilion

Matthew Faithfull

So you agree that the Logos referred to is the Christ as verse 17 clearly implies. Now in order to then reject the divinity of Christ you must tear apart the entire new Testament, writing off all the bits you don't agree with, reattributing parts to different times and authors and coming up with complex justification for choosing far out interpretations in one place and orthodox ones in another where this choice seem entirely arbitrary. :sigh: Everyone form the Gnostics to the JW's to Steve Chalke has been there before. It all amounts to 'I don't like what the Bible says so I'll write my own'. Which in turn amounts to 'I know better than God', hardly original and its kind of obvious where that road leads. Just for fun why don't you tell me how you take apart ' I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except by me' using 16 different translations, 3 language, 9.5 feet of rope and a fish hook to empty it of meaning and cast doubt on where the comma should go. I can't say I look forward to it fire away.

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

leckey 0

All arguments I have heard against evolution end up revolving in a higher being and religion. So if I can find someone who does not believe in a higher being and they can disprove evolution, then I would consider hearing the argument.

I have a blog for those with a sense of humor. The codeword is "scuttlebutt." http://craptasticnation.blogspot.com/[^]

eggsovereasy

Your mom is an infant...

Al Beback

Oakman wrote:

Al, Adam and Eve didn't have any daughters.

:omg: Does that mean Eve got busy with her own sons? (I don't care enough to look it up.)

- Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. - Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. - Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil? - Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? Epicurus

Matthew Faithfull

That if I may say so is a typical pseduo scientific error. Firstly I am not a typical creationist, secondly I'm well aware of the how the theory of evolution is supposed to work i.e. not coming form a position of ignorance as you assume so no need to preach its tennets to me and thirdly as discussed elsewhere in this thread it's wrong. As in, does not work.

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

Patrick Etc

I don't understand why you don't just give up. You're the unarmed savage against a well-equipped, advanced Roman army. What is your professional training that might give you even the slightest bit of knowledge in the fields of chemistry and evolutionary biology? It's getting kind of pathetic watching this go on. You're talking about things you know absolutely nothing about, against someone who does this for a living and has extensive education on the subject. First year biology students know more about this subject than you are demonstrating. You believe all sorts of things about how genes behave, except all of them are demonstrably false by repeated proven experiment. Really, this is getting pathetic.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. - Albert Einstein

Matthew Faithfull

Thomas George wrote:

You don't have the right to force it on anyone else.

Pehaps according to your belief system I don't but what about if according to my belief system I do? Then by doing so I'm doing right and by complaining you're wrong by your own measure as you're trying to force your beliefs on me. This is the fundemental insanity inherant in post-modernist thought. It's not up to me to resolve it, I actually believe what I believe and I believe it universally and consistently so it applies equally to you as to me. If your belief system is discontinuous or inconsistent then applying it in a rational universe is going to present you with some challenges. :)

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

Paul Watson

She grew up. You should too.

regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa

Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:

At least he achieved immortality for a few years.