Merged (edited) General thoughts about Christianity and the bible

[P.J. Denyer]

Actual Canadians get all the hot girls.

Maybe, but no-one's ever met them to find out!

 

[Reformed Offlian]

But my wife god says we are only allowed one each.

I see a loophole...

 

[JayUtah]

That saw cuts both ways.

What an odd thing to say. Your critics seem to know more than you about everything, including your own religion and your own sources. You're reduced to unfunny one-liners and slop videos.

 

[Foster Zygote]

What was it that did not seem like research to you?

The part where you said "I was told".

 

[Helen]

And if you get a chance to see her live, take it. She's fabulous. (I've seen her a couple of times, at Skeptics in the Pub, and QEDCon.)

I probably won't (unless she decides to tour Sweden), but she's on youtube, so there is an ample supply And I think I have to buy her books... and generally stalk her from afar!

The world was a lot smaller then .

Was it on the moon? I hear everything there is much lighter and smaller

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

And on a more off-topic note, I'd like to laugh at what a stereotypical stupid boss God is in the Noah story. You'd think that if you ask someone to build the largest wooden ship built before or AFTER, and want to give some advice with your infinite wisdom, you'd include something like "for strength and rigidity take two long beams, and make a zig-zag of smaller beams between them. It's called a truss." I mean, right? What advice does god actually offer? Don't forget to put a door on it

I can imagine otherwise Noah having led the animals there, looking at an ark without a door, slapping his forehead, and going "d'oh! I knew I forgot something..."

 

[Foster Zygote]

Is that what evolution is? Creative thinking?

First, what Steve said.

Second, the problem most creationists seem to have with evolution by natural selection is that they can't wrap their head around the fact that there's no creative thinking involved in the process (although there's been quite a bit involved in figuring out how it works). Organisms don't evolve because they need to, or because they want to, or because some.outside agency wants them to. But creationists are stuck in this anthropocentric mode of thinking in which they think anything complex must have been designed by a mind.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And on a more off-topic note, I'd like to laugh at what a stereotypical stupid boss God is in the Noah story. You'd think that if you ask someone to build the largest wooden ship built before or AFTER, and want to give some advice with your infinite wisdom, you'd include something like "for strength and rigidity take two long beams, and make a zig-zag of smaller beams between them. It's called a truss." I mean, right? What advice does god actually offer? Don't forget to put a door on it

I can imagine otherwise Noah having led the animals there, looking at an ark without a door, slapping his forehead, and going "d'oh! I knew I forgot something..."

Sounds like something Lytton Industries built. They put automatic controls on the engineroom machinery on LHA 1, then removed because it didn't work. The removal on 1 matched the same gear being installed on LHA 3. Guess what happened when LHA 5 came along.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I'd like to add that, regardless of how one thinks it happens, we can see evolution happen in real time even today, when there is intense selection pressure. E.g., we already have elephants without tusks, because those don't get killed by poachers. Ditto for lions without manes. Whatever advantage the mane gave as ablative armour around the throat (basically you'd just get a mouthful of hair if you want to bite one in the neck,) doesn't work against a high calibre bullet and makes you a target.

 

[Foster Zygote]

IIRC Most saws cut on the forward-stroke, Japanese saws on the back-stroke. Neither is designed to cut on both strokes.

Two man felling saws had teeth designed to cut both ways, but you don't see them much since the advent of the chainsaw.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

BTW: LHA does NOT stand for "Largest Hotel Afloat."

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'd like to add that, regardless of how one thinks it happens, we can see evolution happen in real time even today, when there is intense selection pressure. E.g., we already have elephants without tusks, because those don't get killed by poachers. Ditto for lions without manes. Whatever advantage the mane gave as ablative armour around the throat (basically you'd just get a mouthful of hair if you want to bite one in the neck,) doesn't work against a high calibre bullet and makes you a target.

Those changes were attributed to "evolution"?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Those changes were attributed to "evolution"?

It IS a result of random mutation and natural selection in the face of an intense pressure. Humans didn't set out to produce elephants without tusks or lions without manes, and in fact the poachers would have preferred not to, so it doesn't quite qualify as artificial selection.

 

[I Am The Scum]

@Rusty Tyler Do you really think posting sensational YouTube videos is your best argument?

Given the caliber of the poster...

 

[JayUtah]

I'm pretty sure that a mutation that makes you undesirable to prevailing predators qualifies as natural selection.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

I'm pretty sure that a mutation that makes you undesirable to prevailing predators qualifies as natural selection.

TBH I think that barring techniques like gene splicing it's an arbitary distinction between 'natural' and 'artificial' anyway, or at least a very blurred line if you want to take intent as the divide. Humans are an environmental pressure on other animals, especially domesticated ones and our effects on them go back thousands of years before we had any clue what we were doing to them or how. Wolves that adapted to a more scanger lifestyle around human camps and became progressively less wary of humans became dogs and then diversified into different roles in our camps, tribes and societies because there those dogs that fitted into those environments prospered and were were more likely to produce pups that survived and had pups of their own, the fact that humans influenced this by providing easier food and mating opportunities for the ones we liked or found useful doesn't change that we are part of nature.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It IS a result of random mutation and natural selection in the face of an intense pressure. Humans didn't set out to produce elephants without tusks or lions without manes, and in fact the poachers would have preferred not to, so it doesn't quite qualify as artificial selection.

Evolutionary processes, as I understand it, are based on genetic modification. What you seem to be talking about is adaptatin. We didn't notice or find interesting the elephants without tusks until they were the majority of the specimens, based on culling out the ones WITH tusks.

 

[theprestige]

TBH I think that barring techniques like gene splicing it's an arbitary distinction between 'natural' and 'artificial' anyway, or at least a very blurred line if you want to take intent as the divide.

A distinction can be arbitrary and also reasonable. Intent seems like a reasonable place to draw a line. Poachers are basically doing apex predator things. I would say this is meaningfully distinct from an intentionally-guided breeding program.

 

[theprestige]

Evolutionary processes, as I understand it, are based on genetic modification. What you seem to be talking about is adaptatin.

Evolutionary processes require both. Random genetic mutation, run through the filter of adaptation to the environment ('natural selection').

 

[JayUtah]

You can certainly look at domestication and husbandry and say those are somehow artificial because you have one species helping another one along for purposes that have nothing to do with survival in the wild. But you have symbiosis, domestication, and husbandry in nature that have nothing to do with smart humans doing it. So no, I don't think it's helpful to draw a bright line between natural and artificial selection.