spider,

whether you like it or not, some of us, having English as a second language, can comprehend it better than some of you Americans. At least our spelling is a lot better. And as to understand YOU, it's easy, you insult, you mean to insult, and you won't take insult. It's an American self righteous thing you have.

Paragraph 1) Spider is always right

Paragraph 2) Should spider not be right, look paragraph 1)

That sizes you up quite well.

voileazur,

Contrary to what you seem to believe, I didn't mean any offense by what I said. I work with many people from India and have in the past worked with people who were from other countries and used English as a second language. Your post was an obvious Strawman Fallacy and I gave you the benefit of the doubt by suggesting that it might have been the result of a language barrier. It seems that the barrier for understanding each other is far deeper than language, so I will probably ignore your posts from now on, like I do with "invisible". I find that when someone automatically assumes you are always wrong, that there is no longer any reason to communicate with that person.

Miguel wrote:
” ya'll boys are still playing here.
these chilli peppers must be the real deal”

The chili pepper argument was unambiguously discredited pages ago.

All that’s left now is a frustrated arachnid that can’t seem to comprehend the difference between faith and intellectual inquiry and who keeps jumping from erroneous conclusion to erroneous conclusion in an attempt to build a web to catch unwary prey. Unfortunately for the arachnid the erroneous conclusions keep popping out of existence and his web continually collapses in on itself becoming a tangled mass of unsupported speculation that no one could possible make any sense of, not even him.

Voil has offered the arachnid a viable solution. Just make one final leap of faith and realize that this is a personal choice. Quit trying to pretend that it’s some kind of profound absolute truth that must be true for everyone. Quit trying to pretend that it can be proven or disproved and just accept the fact that it is indeed an act of pure faith. Only then will the arachnid be truly happy. As it is now it’s the arachnid who is living in a web of frustration, not those who are attempting to help him see the light.

They are not attempting to tell him what to believe (like he is attempting to tell them), but rather they are simply suggesting that if he simply believes what he believes then he’ll find peace and will no longer suffer the anxiety of feeling that he needs to prove it to other people.

Faith is a powerful thing once a person has truly accepted it. You can always recognize a person of faith because they won’t have any need to ram their religion down your throat. The people who ram their religion down your throat are the one’s who don’t really believe it themselves. They are desperately trying to ram it down other people’s throats in the hopes of proving it to themselves. But that approach to spirituality is a futile one and completely unfulfilling for everyone it touches.

'spider',

As I invited you to consider in my earlier post, letting go of this complicated, convoluted and confused persona of yours, would go a long ways in helping to put you back on the path of God and your fellow human of good will.

I forgive your calumnious, manipulative, mischaracterizing and unique way of turning every straight and simple debate and question, into something so perverted, you can't make sense of your own discourse.

As I suggested before, I trust you have been hiding the real you from us. I also trust that this 'heavy' and 'confused' persona you maintain as a screen is a source of great suffering, and weighs you down unnecessarily.

I say that, because it is obvious you couldn't get any satisfaction from exchanges on these forums, given your persona's obsession to win at all costs, and the fact that every single exchange where you are involved, ends up in a loss for you.

Loss of credibility, loss of face, loss of dignity, loss of respect, loss of energy (or should I say, waste of energy), loss of love, and loss of so many opportunities for 'rapprochement' where all you are left with is 'estrangement'.

I have compassion for you 'spider'. You may see no other way than giving up on yourself, and cultivating fear and distance with people around you, but I won't give up on you 'spider'. You can count on me to keep calling for the real you to come out!

come on boys
be nice with spidey

Abra when I said we popped on the scene recently, I ment that man is a relative latecomer in the grand scheme of things. Given that you would think there would me more fosilized evidence available considering you can't swing a dead cat without hitting the fosilized remains of some prehistoric creature. Things do evolve, I saw in the paper today that Barney eventually grew feathers and sprouted wings (the Velocaraptor had feathers) and eventually became the birds of today. But that happened over a lot longer time period than the development of man. In considerably less time that it took Barney to become Henry the Hawk something slithered out of the primordial soup, eventually walked erect and became the only animal capable of not only destroying itself but the entire world, Sounds to me like homo destructus was on the fast track or got a jump start from somewhere.

GF wrote:
"Sounds to me like homo destructus was on the fast track or got a jump start from somewhere."

Well that may be true, but if the jump start came from divine intervention then the deity responsible didn't do a very good job.

If a deity is going to intervene and has a message to get across why not intervene now while we're advanced enough to understand the message without any ambiguity.

What’s with all the game-playing of he-said she-said? God supposedly tells a few people here and there secretly and then expects everyone else to believe them. Knowing all along that there are going to be plenty of other people who are going to claim to have their own messages from god.

Maybe that’s the way god is, but if god likes to play guessing games with his human pets then he shouldn’t get pissed when they guess wrong. That would be unsportsmanlike conduct.

If such a game-playing god exists I’ll have to wait until I meet him in person to find out what his game is. Otherwise, I’d just be groping in the dark with the he-said she-said crap.

wow take one sentence out of a paragraph and subtly shift the direction of the discussion away from something that don't support your theory. I just read in the paper today that the "Hobit" discovered in 2003 in Indonesia has a wrist bone that is indistinguishable from an African Ape or early hominin-like creature and nothing at all like that seen in modern humans or Neanderthals. The Hobit lived about 18,000 years ago but scientists had thought that humans had the planet to ourselves since Neanderthal died out about 30,000 years ago.

The theory of evolution askes us to assume missing evidence exists but is just unfound and every time we ask what if the missing evidence does not exist we are labeled religious zealots and what we believe is dismissed as mythology.

Earlier there was some discussion about cross breeding, that is not evolution, that is cross breeding. You can cross a plumb and a peach to get a necterine, but left alone neither the plumb nor the peach has evolved into a necterine yet the theory of evolution askes us to assume that it is possible.

Another article in today's paper says that 50% or more of the bison heard on Catalena Island has cattle DNA. This heard was thought to be the most pure strain of American Bison left because it has been secluded on the island since the 1920. Another example of cross breeding. Some of the original heard were crosses, beefalo or cattleo what ever you want to call them. Tthrough inbreeding of the heard the DNA has been passed along to the offsprings, but this once again is not evolution.

It was stated that "there could have been no crossing between Neanderthal and Cromagnon man," that there is actually no evidence to support this, but we are asked to assume that it is a fact. Every time there is a chasm of doubt, evolutionists asks us to cross the bride of assumption. Yet when they come upon a chasm of doubt in our beliefs they say no bridge exists.

The theory of evolution is just that a theory because it has not been proven beyond all doubt. Eienstein's Theory of Relativity is still called a Theory because it has yet to be proven beyond all doubt even thought there is a perponderance of evidence to suggest that it is true. Until it is proven it remains a theory.

GF wrote:
“wow take one sentence out of a paragraph and subtly shift the direction of the discussion away from something that don't support your theory.”

What exactly are you talking about?

You seem to be questioning evolution, but you have no proposal for anything better, and everytime I mention how absurd any such proposal would be you accuse me of shifting the discussion away from something that doesn’t support “my” theory.

I’m honored that you think that evolution is ‘my’ theory. But it’s not.

Moreover, if you have not better explanation that fits the evidence than what is it that you are trying to get at? You challenge the popular conclusions about data but you have nothing to offer in return.

You seem to be suggesting some other magical force of intervention, but every time I address that issue you claim that I’m shifting away from the discussion.

Just exactly what is it that you are proposing GF? Because so far all I’ve heard is a bunch of whining that you don’t understand the conclusions. I haven’t heard a single constructive suggestion from you yet. You don’t seem to have anything better to offer.

What YOUR theory GF? Or don’t you have one?

Are you suggesting divine intervention or not? If not, then just what is it that you are trying to suggest? That you don’t believe the current theory and have nothing better to offer? Not impressive GF.

what am I talking about look to your previous post where you quoted one sentence from my post and went of on a what's God's plan tangent.

I never referred to the theroy of evolution as your personal theory. While the theory does hold some water there are still some major leaks too that no one is able to explain so we are asked to assume the leaks don't exist.

My theory is that the Theory of Evolution is exactly that, and until it is proven conclusively without asking for a bunch of assumptions it will remain a theory. certain fact point to it's correctness but certain large gaps leave unanswered questions.

“My theory is that the Theory of Evolution is exactly that, and until it is proven conclusively without asking for a bunch of assumptions it will remain a theory. certain fact point to it's correctness but certain large gaps leave unanswered questions.”

I’m in total agreement with you on this GF.

I guess what we seem to be in disagreement with is the significance of the unanswered questions. You seem to be suggesting that these unanswered questions somehow imply that the whole theory could fall apart and ultimately be completely wrong. I disagree. No matter what the answers are to the unanswered questions that’s not going to shake the underlying foundation.

To me, it’s like this. We go out and dig up all the part of an old automobile engine. We have the block, crankshaft, pistons, connecting rods, camshaft, the heads, a few valves and some broken valve springs. We also found an intake manifold but no carburetor.

We exam the pieces and say, “Hey this was some kind of internal combustion engine!” We can see how the pistons fit into the block and how the crankshaft moved them. We can see how the valves must have worked and just assume that there were more, we just didn’t find them all.

So then you come along and say, but wait a minute! There’s no carburetor! You’re theory that this is an internal combustion engine makes no sense without a carburetor. Everyone looks at you and says, “Oh come on Forge! It’s obviously what this thing is, just because we can’t find the carburetor doesn’t mean that our theory is wrong.

Then you start nit-picking. Yeah, but you haven’t found a radiator either! What kept it form overheating? And you don’t have an oil pan, what kept oil from running out on the ground? Your theory makes no SENSE!!!

So you’re willing to reject what we have simply because we don’t have every single last piece. However, the vast majority of people involved with the project are convinced that the pieces we do have are the remnants of what use to be an internal combustion engine. That evidence isn’t going to disappear just because we can’t find the carburetor, radiator or oil pan.

Yet this is basically what you are suggesting with evolution. Just because we don’t have all of the answers you claim that the whole theory is suspect. But that’s not the way other people see it. There is enough evidence already to make the conclusion that life evolved to higher and higher complexity on the earth. That’s like the engine block, crankshaft, pistons and heads. Now, you’re going to question the whole theory because we haven’t yet found every little piece.

We may never find the carburetor! That doesn’t deny the fact that we found the whole rest of the engine.

I mean your certainly free to draw whatever conclusions you like. But from my point of view your claim that the whole theory might be reversed just makes no sense. The engine block isn’t going to fade away. It’s here to stay. Any answers to any of the unanswered questions are obviously going to include the engine block. Life evolved to higher and higher complexity on earth. That part isn’t going anywhere. That part has been unambiguously confirmed. That’s the engine block of the theory of evolution.

All unanswered questions are going to necessarily have to agree with this foundational observation. You might find fuel injectors instead of a carburetor for example. But whatever you find it’s going to fit the engine of evolution.

You’re suggestion that these unanswered questions cast doubt over the theory as a whole are simply untrue.

It’s not “JUST a theory” like you keep suggesting. It’s an observation that life became increasingly complex as the earth aged over 4.5 billion years. That observational FACT is not going anywhere.

without a carburetor an internal combustion engine could be a multi cylindered air compressor.

The single piece lacking is the "Missing Link" it is not a small part it is the whole essence of the argument. It's a great big hunk.

Here is a theory for you, lets assume for the sake or argument that Mars was once populated with an advanced civilization. then things began to fall apart up there, they sent a space probe to Earth. Now we have our Martian Adam and Eve on the shining blue planet. The planet is populated with Neandertals and one Saturday Night Eve has a headache, and Adam drinks enough Saber Tooth Lite to where the cave girls look pretty or maybe Eve gets a glimpse of Grog and discovers that the the club he carries on his shoulder is not the only one he has. Now you have the original sin and some litte Martianthals running around who eventually survive all their parents. I can buy your assumption that the missing link exists, all you have to do is buy my assumption that it came from Mars.

Evolution doesn't deny the theory you've proposed.

Your theory already accepts that some evolution has occurred on earth.

Evolution does not preclude the possibility that additional life was added to the mix from extraterrestrial sources. Although, there are biological reasons to believe that such a thing is highly improbably. Mainly because any extraterrestrials that came to earth, and who coincidentally had a similar enough biology to actually survive eating earthly plants or animals, would also most likely died instantly from viruses and bacterial infections that their immune systems would have been overwhelmed by.

So while your theory can’t be entirely ruled out, its facing a very low level of probability.

However, even accepting that it might be true, then you're not really arguing against evolution. All you're suggesting is additions to the mix.

I won't argue against that as a possibility in the strictest sense. However, I would still argue that I don't feel it's necessary. I would also ask where the evidence is?

You've talked about gaps in the evidence for evolution, yet here you are suggesting a theory that has no physical evidence to support it at all.

I'm not saying it can't be true. But where's the gapless evidence for it?

Where’s any evidence at all, for that matter?

You reject one theory because it has what you call "gaps", and then propose another theory that has no evidence at all?

You're just enjoying the art of speculation, and that's cool.

Nothing wrong with that.

For arguements sake lets say we evolved, what did we evolve from? The animal theory has already been disproved, we now know we didn't come from chili peppers either so what could it be?

Steve wrote:
"The animal theory has already been disproved"

Disproved by whom? The people who make Animal Crackers?

umm
the scientists that you so called educated folks rely on so much


if you read back to an earlier reply


i ask
Isn't it a proven fact that human male semen cannot impregnate an animal.

read Oanais reply

I did read that exchange. The answers to those question can be had in an introductory course on genetics. It's not a problem.

Beside that you phrased the question wrong.

You should have asked, "Isn't it a proven fact that MODERN human male semen cannot impregnate any MODERN animals?"

The statement as you had stated it previously was not true. Man was not always evolved to his present state. This is what "evolution" is all about. It's not an instant on/off switch.

So your question is an actually an invalid one in the way that it is phrased. You're imagining things to be different than they actually are.

It's quite possible that an ancient Cro-Magnon man might not be able to propagate with a fully modern Cro-Magnon man. This can't really be known with certainty since there are no ancient Cro-Magnon men around to try it out with. Although, some modern men still exhibit caveman-like behavior so it might be true that we aren't evolved far enough along yet.

However their will eventually come a time when modern humans are sufficiently genetically removed from their ancestors that they would not even be able to make with their very distance ancestors. We could potentially already be that far away from ancient Cro-Magnon man now, I honestly don't know about that, and I'm not sure if anyone can actually say for sure.

It's also possible for the human race to fall into two separate species. If two groups of humans are separated long enough they would eventually become unable to breed. The time scale for that may be several millennia though depending on many environmental factors.

Can anyone else teach evolution for a while?

I could use a sabbatical.

Sorry Abra,

Looked long and hard, but couldn't find a replacement 'evolution teacher' to teach a bunch of obstinate 'counter-evolutionists'.

I'm afraid you'll have to put off your sabbatical!!!

:)

LOL abra, it's been a fun and interesting discussion.