Hambone

Rev, you can delete my post, but not my ideas. I really, honestly don't care if my view conflicts with yours. If you don't like that, please discontinue reading everything and continue with your beliefs. If you want a counterpoint, keep reading. The choice is yours. Your censor and position of moderator will not stop my view from being heard. The Nazis silenced opposition.

Precisely. Your child would be chubby. Unless you got a female with "skinny" genes (I'm not positive which is recessive), your child will naturally have a few extra pounds. But how did that come to be about? Dietary deficiencies, or excessive glutting, over the years will alter your scion. It will not change your DNA, but that doesn't particularly matter. What matters is your sexual reproduction system. Sperm have to be made just like anything else in your body. Sperm are affected by your intake, specifically cholesterol, or other steroids. If an imperfect sperm combines with an egg, the embryo will not be as it should. Plus, only 23 of your chromosomes get tossed over to the woman. That's where the changes happen, for the most part. Well, if you agree microevolution exists, I have no further need to continue this argument. You admit that the story of Creation isn't exactly true, so it evolves, so to speak. Evolution encompasses everything. And, I have given you several sound examples of macro evolution. You guys sure are fossil nuts. Sociology enters the scene too. Animalalian patterns, actions, reproductive habits, are also part of evolution. You can't religiously scream fossils every time you hear the word Evolution. Please prepare for a long post, as I make it.

Who said that quote? That really is disturbing if people believe that. I'll make my comments about the pure evil of religion some other time.

Yup, I'm fully aware of C.S. Lewis' beliefs. I believe I mentioned that in one of my posts somewhere as well.

You didn't answer my original question though. And, by defeating the law, how is he different from any other anarchist? Or communist? And if he did everything right, don't you mean he did it all by standards he defined? That's like using the same word in the definition of a word. It's kind of redundant.

Yar...

Why? So, if my neighbor got a couple of his friends to get together and write a book praising him before my other neighbor killed him, then would he be the savior of humanity? If a child born today were to emulate the life of Jesus, would he be the savior and son of god?

Ugh. "Can't we all just agree to disagree"? I can't though. May I ask you a question though? Why does Jesus' death make him atone for all humanity? If my next door neighbor were to kill himself for the sake of humanity, would he be a martyr? If my next door neighbor were to crucify my other next door neighbor for his beliefs, would he be the savior of humanity? Of course not. Men die. Men die who shouldn't have died sometime. Jesus is just a corpse, like everyone else before him. There's nothing special about him, not even science can help him there.

Well, I had the foresight to copy and paste my entire post to somewhere else first. It's truly a shame my rhetoric is so painful to you that you would delete an entire post, just because a creative argument decimates all that you believe in. Until then, I leave you with this quote.

MC, if you liked UO, check this flash site out. Disclaimer: 1) If you did not play UO, the following will not be funny. 2) If words society has deemed profane scare you and/or make you cry, do not click. http://www.wtfman.com/flash/

Shadowbane does have some potential, I agree MC. How much have you read about it? The more I read the more I like. What it sounds like is the perks and PvP of UO without the pain, and with stellar graphics. I can't wait, I will be playing.

First of all, you said that Creation and Evolution are based on faith. You equate the two, they are unequal. Faith is something human minds create, that is incorporeal and the total foundation for Creation. Evolution is based on facts, hard undebatable facts. Don't make that mistake. Well, Rev, since you didn't like my giraffe example, let me put this on human levels. Easier to understand. Great athletes often aren't made, they are born. This is a fact no one likes, but it's true. Not all babies are born with the same concentration of fast and slow twitch muscle. A champion distance runner was born with loads of slow twitch muscle, ideal for endurance and prolonged aerobic respiration. A champion sprinter was born with loads of fast twitch muscle, ideal for short term results. Another interesting thing is both muscles types give the same output of energy, but only at different rates. Did the Christians know this when they wrote their Bible Creation story? Training does affect this, don't get me wrong. But, not all babies are born with an equal chance of becoming a star athlete. What does this have to do with macroevolution? Lots. You see, as tribes of pritmitive humans migrate, they live in different enviroments. Some humans went to the deserts, some went to the forests, some went to the mountains, some went to the plains, etc. I'll contrast primarily the ones that went to mountains with ones that went to less hostile enviroments. How is a Sherpa different from a fat New York lawmaker? The Sherpa has something that the New Yorker can not get, no matter how hard he tries, he has a larger lung capacity. His lungs are in fact bigger. The Sherpa needs them, he survives day to day in an enviroment where oxygen is less relatively abundant than at lower altitutes. The Sherpa also has slow twitch muscles, designed for long periods of exercise, whereas the New Yorker probably has a relatively equal concentration of both types. The cells of the Sherpa have, by necessity, far more mitochondria than the New Yorker. He can do aerobic respiration for far longer before fermenting lactate. One important thing here is that no matter how hard he tries, the New Yorker can not fully emulate the Sherpa, no matter what he can come up with from exercise to surgery. The Sherpa didn't develop his larger lungs overnight either. The wandering tribes possessed some degree of equity at some point in history. The Sherpa conformed to the enviroment. This, is called macroevolution. An entire organism changing based on situation and competition. A runner producing mitochondria is macroevolution: his structure fundamentally changes suit the rigor of the enviroment. If you want a third arm, you clearly don't understand the principles you are attacking. Humans change, they adapt. Humans are different everywhere throughout the world. You can believe whatever you like about some god creating them all, but situation and tangible principles govern it. Faith is notably lacking from this. -edit- The other thing that frustrates me slightly is how you pick and choose which points of mine you wish to rebut. I feel like I've made some solid arguments, that you ignore either out of resignation or whatever. Help me out here too, ya? oops, misread, nothing edited by fatty...

Novel was perhaps an incorrect term to use, this is one of the few times you'll see my retract a statement . Perhaps, Historical Fiction is a better term. Take a couple of average men, make them holy through literature. I'll have to detail my theory on the founding fathers of Christianity in another thread. One thing I would like to discuss is your comment of how you say you have seen god answer prayer. This is interesting, because it becomes difficult to debate, against the "god's divine plan" retort. But, I want you to try this. We'll test the power of prayer. Take 2 potters, fill them with equal amounts of dirt, put a tulip bulb in each, and give them ample sunlight and water. Expirement 1: Pray for one to grow, and don't pray for the other. Expirment 2: Leave the control alone, and pour saltwater in the other. Pray for the saltwater plant to grow and flourish. You will find that prayer does not stop nature. Prayer in itself is incredibly hypocritical in nature. Coaches and players pray before every football game. Does god really care about a diversion, whilst elsewhere in the world some practicing Christian isn't getting 1 meal a day? Most Americans have had plenty of food, clothing and oxegyn their entire lives. So, why would god care if one of their friends got injured in a car accident, while ignoring the prayer of a kid who wonders why his parents beat him? Prayer doesn't restore sight to the blind. Prayer is a placebo. If your prayer is answered, its part of gods divine plan. If it isn't answered, its part of gods divine plan. Setting the two equal gives the equation It isn't answered = It is answered This is not true. Two unequal things are not equal. Ever. There's my prayer lecture in a nutshell. My entire argument is sacreligious, by Christian standards. When I say that "it" is all a scam, be cynical with me and you can see what I see. I'm a former Christian, I understand your arguments, but I refute them. Have you ever pretended to fully be atheistic? Religion is to comfort. There is no god, and even if there was, he would not care about you or me. Back to fossils and macro-evolution. You ask for fossils? Almost everything happens on a cellular level first. Cells with only membrane (no cell wall) leave no fossils. As for my giraffe example, fossils do exist for transition species. The fossils of each generation only change ever so slightly, so fossils of one species may appear similiar to precursors. And there are fossils. One giraffe fossil has a smaller neck than the other one, there's your precursor. It's not necessarily that the giraffe died during juvenille ages, the skeletons have different proportions. The giraffe is just one example. To the anteater, you ask why there is no fossil showing the development? The snout has no bone in it. The hole in the skull of modern anteaters is larger than the hole of primitive "anteaters". As the snout developed as an evolutionary advantage, it became larger, and enlarged the hole likewise. Again, almost every characteristic of any animal is attibutable to evolution. Evolutionary perception can change though, as new knowledge continually is uncovered. Creationism is set in stone, there is no halfway about it. God made everything as it exists today, that's that. That is wrong. Go Christianity, be defensive more!

In response to your comment that I have been uncivil, pshaw I say to you. Certain statements of mine you attack as being, as you call it (a religious man, mind you) "uncivil". "Religion is for the weak, plain and simple" This is straight copy and paste Freudian thought. Blame history. "Jesus was a product of his enviroment. He was born into a manger, I believe, and never quite had an ample sum of money. So tell the people what they want to hear, that they will go to eternal bliss if they work hard. Any lie has to be attractive to get people to believe it. That was the single most influential scam perpetrated, ever." This is simple truth. This is rebuking a belief I believe does not have any founding, other than ponderance. If I used words you don't like, accept my sincerest apologies. "Blessed be he who created Syphilis and Gonnarea." God made it all didn't he? You deal with the bad stuff too then, he's your god after all. "The Bible is a novel, so treat it like any other artistic work" Tell me why it isn't a novel. "Christians are diehard fans of some novel, no different from Trekkies who dress up and attend conferences honoring their favorite characters" A supportive analogy. "You can base your life around god if you wish. there is a god, he exists as one of the most prolific works of fiction ever written in the history of humanity" Again, disprove me then. Show me why the Bible isn't a novel. "The reason I attack your book is because it is nothing more than a compilation of superstition" Which it is.... sorry if the truth is poignant when phrased correctly. "believing in Creationism is "ignorant." The quotes are there for a reason. "Religion is superstition, whether you like that fact or not" I already adressed this. "Creationism is defunct" Definitions are key. "Why do you assume god is a male? This means god has masculine gonads, testes and a penis. This means god has developed implements for excretion, reproduction, and has a digestive tract. Whoa, but he's all powerful" So a creative argument is uncivil nowadays? No one told me. "Religion is just hopelessly outdated theory" A statement I will back up to the end. Sorry you went through all that copy and paste trouble, but if you feel I owe you an explanation I believe I adressed everything.

Birds don't produce turtles man. That's not evolution, thats ConGregationism, something you produced out of your imagination and distortion of reality. You ask questions, here are answers. You claim there is no proof of macro evolution. This is not true. The driving force behind evolutionary advancement is competition: for resources. In the plains of Africa, you think it's coincidence that giraffes have a long neck to access an otherwise inaccessible food source? You think anteaters have a long snout because it looks pretty, or god gave it to them? Nope, ants were a relatively untapped food resource in the community where that development was created. There's millions of examples, I give you two. Another question raised was "where are the transitionary organisms?" Well, back to competition we go, this is getting repetitive. I'm having to explain basic evolutionary laws here. Competition. Allow me to refer back to the giraffe as an example. The creature we presently call a giraffe did not always have the long neck. It evolved from a similiar creature, land dwelling and herbivorous. Over time, as competition grows, a natural consequence of population augmentation, foremerly abundant resources become scarce. So, a long neck, formerly a disability, is selected for as a desirable trait. This does not happen over one generation. Eventually a certain gene can spread to everyone in a closed population, over time. So, the neck rises. This is your transitionary animal. So, you think a giraffe with a 1' neck is going to be superior to a giraffe with a 4' neck? Of course not, it is foolish. It is obvious. Not all transitionary organisms survive. Sometimes they do. Take a frog for instance. A frog is a descendant of modern reptiles. Frogs do skin respiration due to their poor respiratory system. They evolved from other organisms, and over time, adapted to their enviroment, learned new surivival techniques, and changed. The transitionary animal can still be found on the modern planet. Sometimes, even the original organism remains. Archabacteria live deep in ocean vents. These are the first cellular organisms. They do chemeosmosis, using chemical and heat energy to produce ATP instead of the more popular and potent aerobic pathways of more developed organisms. These still remain, because as evolution continues, the scion lack the ability to live in the original enviroment, thus leaving the original species with the less competition it needs to survive. I hope I thoroughly adressed your question. "Changing DNA structure is no big deal." If Evolutionary Theory were Christian religion, this would be the most heretical statement possible to make. You would be burned, as Christians have done to non-believers. DNA is everything, I mean everything. One amino acid in the gargantuan strain causes Downs Syndrom, sickle-cell anemia, or could code for a third arm. From this statement you clearly do not understand the purpose and function of DNA; I cannot stress using words how false that statement is. One tiny little alteration in fact causes macro-sized changes. AIDS, as Zeabos says, illustrates execellently principles of evolution. Unlike any other virus, AIDS attacks macrophages (white blood cells) which are the only thing the body creates that can destroy it. AIDS also buds during reproduction, keeping surface receptors from the host cells that prevents the immune system as recognizing the object as non-self, and elimating it. This is adaptation, survival of the fittest in action. Zeabos gets a thumbs up for this example.

Religion exists because people need answers. Every religion, by necessity of definition, has a creation story. Why is yours right, but knowledge wrong? And every other religion, wrong? Or did the creation happen more than once? This debate is fruitless depending on what you want to get out of it. Will I change your closed mind? No, quite clearly I will not. Back to religion. People need answers, something to lean on, belief that their toil on Earth means something. Religion is for the weak, plain and simple. If you can't find the answers, attribute them to some god, make him all powerful and hump all the answers into one anthropocentric deity. Weakness, intellecual weakness is what it is! Jesus was a product of his enviroment. He was born into a manger, I believe, and never quite had an ample sum of money. So tell the people what they want to hear, that they will go to eternal bliss if they work hard. Any lie has to be attractive to get people to believe it. That was the single most influential scam perpetrated, ever. I'm afraid I don't quite follow when you say evidence in evolutionary theory is circumstantial. If you mean that it is based on circumstance, as the popular definition is, then you argue the wrong side there bro. Evolution IS based on circumstance, organisms change according to their enviroment. That's exactly what it is, giving it a fancy word isn't denouncing it in the slightest! Or maybe you mean it is incidental. Again, yes. That is basic evolutionary theory, I don't quite see your point there. Or is it complete and particular? Yes, it is that too. It is NOT, however full of ceremonial display. That's called Christianity. You told me I take the evidence and look at it one way. Quite the misconception. Example. Prokaryotic cells have a little habit of absorbing plasmids (small DNA strands) from the enviroment and expressing them. Now, let's look at this in a Creationism view. God created everything. He created those plasmids from their base components, quarks. He created the prokaryotic cell. His will lets the cell absorb the plasmid. Why doesn't the Bible mention any of this? Because no one knew hardly anything by modern standards. Now, sit back and let logic diffuse into your head. The cell absorbs the plasmid by allowing it through its phospholipids and cell wall, probably through pores or some form of facilitated diffusion. The DNA is transcribed into RNA, mRNA, and is expressed. god is notably lacking from this picture. Blessed be he who created Syphilis and Gonnarea. One thing is you asked me for proof that "Creation" as you define it never happened. Do you want me to fax you some photographs I took as the universe was forming? Your proof is Evolution. I'm sure when the original Instigator dreamnt up all this Christianity he never dreamed it would have lasted so long or become so influential. Your proof is the cosmos. The creation is described as taking 7 days. It's generally agreed that it probably wasnt 7 days. Days is a human term anyways, defined by our revolution around the central sun of our galaxy. So, he assembled everything in 7 days eh? Nope. The Bible is not to be taken literally, perhaps? New galaxies and solar systems are discovered on a daily basis. god sure didn't see that one coming. The lunatics who compiled the document called the Bible had no clue of any of this stuff, so it wasn't a part of your collective answer. The Bible is a novel, so treat it like any other artistic work. Can you disprove Middle Earth from J.R.R. Tolkein? Can you disprove Hogwart's Castle? Think infinity now. Don't be flabergasted by all this information, reread it once. Since I answered (however roundabout), do me the same favor. Show me that Creation happened, except in your novel. Christians are diehard fans of some novel, no different from Trekkies who dress up and attend conferences honoring their favorite characters. Asking me for proof of Creation nonexistent is surrending this argument. Christianity and Creation have been on the defense the entire time. Fall back some more, on shattered pillars of false faith called god.

Sorry Contra, but that man speaks the truth.

I wasn't truly old school, but I played looong time ago. I played on Cats. Some of my earliest memories are lighting fires next to 7xGMs and watching the swearing follow

Not really, the CTs have to run a death rush into a building with few options. Organization owns cs_bank on T. Another bad map.

I object to the nature of this poll. My l337ness cannot be capture in a 1 line poll option!

This has been done before

I played old school UO, before that horrible thing called Rennaisance ruined it. I played old school EQ too, before that horrible thing called Kunark ruined it. I played D2 later, before that horrible thing called LoD ruined it. I played all the old school games as they came about, but the demons that work at R&D always have to make some gimpy patch that ruins it. Now I play CS

Erm, I kind of read what you said jokingly Linch, but in reality, yes. Is that not what fanatics say that god did? Create life out of lifelessness? So yes, yes we would. We could make up our own gospel and sell it to the masses, make people see things as they "really" happened. Religion.... wow. Zweih, I can't help but insult your book, attribute that to the nature of this discussion. There is nothing to show that because you base your life around it, it makes anything it says more true or less true. There are only facts. Alchemists wasted their entire intellectual life trying to turn metal into gold. They believed fervently in them and would not alter their beliefs. Don't be the same is all. Be cynical, skeptical about what you hear, and ask for proof. You can base your life around god if you wish. there is a god, he exists as one of the most prolific works of fiction ever written in the history of humanity. Dorian Grey has influenced people's lives, mine included: a testament (catch that pun?) to the fact that ficticious characters can in fact be influential. You're not skeptical about what you read, you accepted it as you read it. That's the downfall of religion.

Lol. When you feel fervently about something, strong rhetoric is better than strong religion. Leads to a lot less terrorism at least. Revs, since you are getting mad at me, allow me to explain myself at least. I was born to a father raised Catholic, a mother as well. We attended Episcopal church. When I was young, I was taught creationism among other biblical doctrines and truths. This is not fair. I was young, and I was impressionable. I don't know much about you, but I would guess that you have always had your religious associations. This is not fair on you either, since as an adult you naturally resist change. Social intertia to coin a term. Not all these theories were around when your mind was forming it's own conjectures, so you upheld the conjectures of a single man. Back to me, I was raised Episcopalian. Just like Creationists our of lack of knowledge try to find flaws in evolutionary theory, I found flaws in the story of the creation that I could not get past. It's not in my nature to accept the theories of someone without skepticism. I'm not a gullible person. Cynicysm keeps me alive, keeps my mind sharp. I stopped attending church. One hour every week is a price incredible too steep for a false eternal salvation. The same god Christians worshipped tried to revoke Galileo's theories, started the Crusades, justified racism, blinded people from a force they uphold: truth. It's always been out there, for those who don't mind embracing something other than traditional beliefs. It's a good thing Christians don't rule the world, the same physics that keeps the planets in line keeps the potential difference gradient moving to your computer so you can read my prose. Imagine if the Christians had their way. Reactionary people. Logic shatters the hull of the floundering vessle called god.

Again Revs, I'm trying hard not to offend, but I had to answer the points you brought up. Be objective, what is something that evolution can not explain?