warri0r45

Rocco, we don't have to do what grizzly bears do (or accept that it's an alright way of doing things) just because it's natural. We have the capacity to show compassion for other animals, so why not do it? My question still stands if you want to answer it - if you think pain is just an instinctive reaction and a quick, painless death isn't something we should worry about for animals, I take it you wouldn't care if you were tortured or beaten for no reason if you were, say, a fish (or any other animal that satisfies the hypothetical)? Hey, who cares right? Its just a reaction in your brain and you have no feelings about it.. Its not like you would mind being tortured. Its only pain, right? Am I to take it that you think there should be a reason for inflicting pain on an animal based on that last line? If so, thats good, but what a stupid reason to justify inflicting pain on a fish.

It doesn't matter if it's instinctive or if the animal has any feelings about it at all. The point is that there are some instances in which inflicting pain on an animal is needless and shouldn't be done. They feel pain, just like you do. Am I to take it that you'd be fine being beaten to a pulp if pain was an instinct for you and you didn't have emotions? The amount of people trying to justify needless abuse to animals is staggering. That's irrelevant because I'm not a lower life form. And it's not needless, I just believe that anything that could potentially better a persons life (that includes better tasting fish) is fair game [pun]. It's a completely valid question - just answer it. Or are you too afraid because you know you'd hate to feel pain just like any other animal? Instinct or not, emotions or not, it doesn't matter. Pain is pain, and needless suffering is wrong. As 1_man_army argued quite nicely, it is needless. Just kill the damn thing and eat it raw if you want to.

It doesn't matter if it's instinctive or if the animal has any feelings about it at all. The point is that there are some instances in which inflicting pain on an animal is needless and shouldn't be done. They feel pain, just like you do. Am I to take it that you'd be fine being beaten to a pulp if pain was an instinct for you and you didn't have emotions? The amount of people trying to justify needless abuse to animals is staggering.

Kary Mullis also denies that HIV causes AIDS. He may have a bit more authority to claim something like that (though I don't think he has expertise in immunology or virology), but he certainly doesn't have the authority or expertise to claim that global warming is nonsense. Agree with your "silver bullet" argument that we should halt excessive use of fossil fuels, though.

Look at it this way: It can feel pain but is it just reacting because thats what it is 'supposed' to do? Mrmegakirby, elephants have been proven self aware but concious i'm not sure? If you have a link to an article could you link it to me please 'cause i'm interested. So? It's still being put through pain needlessly so how is that ok? It's still suffering, and if there's no good reason then you shouldn't do it.

Who cares if it has consciousness or not? Many animals can feel pain, so that should be enough not to abuse them needlessly. Anyone who abuses animals for no reason has something wrong with them.

A few suspect emails from one university in Britain = decades of international climate research is a lie? No. That's stupid.

Animals can feel pain, though. Why isn't it wrong to torture an animal if they can feel pain? I'd say it's wrong to needlessly inflict pain and suffering on animals. I'm quite fine with using them for food, though. Most of the videos organisations like PETA use to justify their cause will show the worst of the worst and don't represent common industry practice.

It was fine. Thanks for that. I'd imagine your situation is a very heavy one to deal with. Some final questions if you don't mind. Why do you think you're gay? Why aren't you attracted to girls? Sorry for all the questions, I just think you could be a great example for this thread. Hopefully when some people hear your expierience they might understand that sexuality isn't exactly something you can control.

That one is always funny. I mean in a sense, if I was straight I'd ask the same thing. But it is pretty stupid when you think of it. One argument I hate, is that it's "perverted." in what way? I mean, Iguess cause its not natural. But not natural and perverted are very different. ps. oh yea, i'm gay. You're a Christian, right? How do you reconcile Christian beliefs on homosexuality with being gay? Also, assuming you live in a Christian community with Christians in your family (I think you've said this before, but I could be wrong), how do you deal with it then? Are you open about it? I'm genuinely curious.

Onset of Putrefaction by Necrophagist.

It has also been scientifically proven that men should mate with woman yet somehow people still go gay :o Sience has been wrong once too may times for me to have any faith in it. I'm almost tempted to challenge you not to take antibiotics next time you get sick, but I wont because you might die. Dispite the argument about the God gene thing, it's quite silly to discount science because of a few faults among a sea of sucesses.

Wow that was kind of rough, people are entitled to their opinions at least, even if they are stupid. Update: Still not getting the vaccine, the Swine isn't going to kill me, neither will the regular flu. He didn't say people weren't entitled to an opinion, he just said they're largely stupid opinions. I have to say that he's right.

Thanks, I vaguely remember the name as I think I've seen some of his videos before. I'll have a look.

We're in agreement then. 1. Mutations have been observed, but an animal turning into a whole different kind of animal has not. (Just so we're on the same page, I'm not disputing microevolution.) The lack of evidence alone is reason enough not to believe that evolution is a proven fact. 2. The transition from asexual creatures to creatures who need both a male and female in order to reproduce makes very little sense at all. There had to be two animals that randomly generated these "opposite gender genes" from asexual parents in the same lifespan as each other, they had to find each other on this huge planet earth, and have intercourse in order to pass the gender genes down (and the genes had to be successfully carried down into the offspring and so forth). It's also pretty hard to believe that wings randomly and successfully came to be, given all the complications to aerodynamics. 3. There is a lack of transitional creatures in our fossil records. Why don't we see species of animals all with "half-wings" or other useless body parts? Even Darwin himself said, several generations ago, that if we don't find enough inter-species fossils then his theory would collapse. It's 2009 now and we're still searching. I have every right to be skeptical, especially when the person who proposed the theory even agrees with me. 4. The Law of Biogenesis VS The Theory of Evolution. There is plenty of evidence for Biogenesis - every living creature we have observed had parents. As for evolution, the only things we have to work with are conjectures about "patterns of progression". 5. Humans look for patterns where they do not exist. For example: the Mother Mary on someone's toast and seeing pictures in the clouds. Evolution sounds exactly like this. People putting skeletons next to each other, seeing some similarities, and then inferring that there is a pattern showing some sort of "progression". 6. Evolution proposes that my great-great-great etc. grandfather was a single cell. My body is composed of millions. Where did all the millions of extra cells come from? What about the DNA? 7. There is no need for evolution to exist. It is not the only possible explanation for why our bodies are so fine-tuned for survival, if you would even call it that. Again, I'm not saying evolution is an impossibility. It just surprises me how many people have such faith in this theory (enough that they even claim they're 100% sure about it) while they dismiss anything else without sufficient evidence to be entirely false. Evolution is exactly like God of the Gaps, but with the "God" part taken out.. Wishful thinking in order to try and explain a mystery without using the word "god", although the amount of support for each type of explanation are severely lacking. Belief in evolution and god are quite similar in this respect. 1) We havent seen that scale of change directly because it takes a very long time. We have seen processes of speciation and organisms gaining new traits, however. I say evolution is proven mostly because of retrotransposons and other hard evidence like that. Retrotransposons prove that were related to chimpanzees and can be used to reconstruct phylogenies of other sets of organisms as well. However, they cant be used to generate phylogenies for all of life because background mutations make them indistinguishable over longer time scales. Having said that, Id argue if weve basically proven it for some organisms, whats there to prevent it from happening in others? At the very least, all the other molecular sequence evidence would suggest that the universal common descent of all organisms is a very good theory and the most solid explanation for how we got here. 2) To be honest Im completely ignorant on the proposed mechanisms of how sexuality and flight evolved and the evidence to back it up, but from what research Ive done into evolution I wouldnt discount that its out there. Off to do some research I suppose. 3) Three points here. One, there are indeed transitional fossils out there, for example Tiktaalik roseae and Ventastega are among the fossils showing a fish to tetrapod transition. Other interesting transitions are the tetrapod to whale transition, with new fossil finds in Pakistan in recent years. Two, animals wont evolve useless body parts. To say so doesnt make sense based on what we know about natural selection. I suppose you could call the weird hand-like fins of Tiktaalik useless, but it would seem theyre used for moving around swampy/floodplain areas (cant explain it too well basically areas with shallow water). Three, the person who proposed the theory hundreds of years ago doesnt own it and doesnt dictate what makes it stand or fall. Youre right to say that were still searching, but that doesnt mean we havent found some interesting fossils. Theyre out there if youre willing to do some research. Ive provided some examples here, and another example that you can follow up on (whale evolution). If you just google something like whale evolution or horse evolution youll find some good information, trust me. 4) This doesnt make any sense. Ive seen this used as an argument against abiogenesis before, but not evolution. Evolution is perfectly consistent with biogenesis. One organism produces offspring with slight variations, and so on, and so on, and so on. In retrospect, the latter generations look different to the first. As for patterns of progression, theyre perfectly reasonable and are based on science. In other words, scientists propose structures that we ought to find if x evolved into y. You can see an example of this in whale evolution, where the middle ear structure of the transitional forms needed to shift from hearing in air to hearing underwater. This is exactly the kind of shift documented in the fossil record. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v430/n7001/abs/nature02720.html Perhaps the best geological/paleontological evidence for evolution is the principle of faunal succession, which states that there is a consistent order of fossils from less complex to more complex forms over time, basically documenting the direction of evolution throughout the history of life, if you like. http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/programs/html/school/moviepage/09.01.17.html 5) What a ridiculous comparison. Its nothing like religious people freaking out because they think they see a face in a piece of toast. Firstly, paleontology is a fair bit more sophisticated than putting fossils next to each other and looking. There are a certain amount of detailed physical characteristics that need to show a logical progression for the transition to be plausible (e.g. whale inner ear structure). Added, this isnt the only line of evidence evolution is based on. See: retrotransposons and the principle of faunal succession for two examples. 6) This one is easy. The extra cells came from cell division, as did the extra copies of DNA. If youre wondering about the evolution of multicellularity, it would do good to research cell adhesion and some interesting species like Dictyostelium discoideum: http://dictybase.org/tutorial/about_dictyostelium.htm In a nutshell, its single celled, but part of its life cycle sees the cells aggregate to form a multicellular community. 7) In response to this I would say that evolution is the best explanation for how life on earth developed. Sure, some supernatural force may have done all of it and all the evidence could be a sham, but to me thats just ridiculous. A few points in response to this: First, I dont accept evolution through faith. I accept it through evidence alone, as Ive described here and at other points in this thread. Second, Ive never claimed Im 100% sure about all of evolution. Much of the phylogenetic work that goes on is very hard to prove definitively, hence why we can only form best guesses at this stage. Having said that, some things we can be certain of, such as the human-great ape relationship, among others. Third, there is no evidence that God created life on earth and most counter-arguments are based on ignorance (irreducible complexity being a prime example of this) or misunderstandings of evolution and how it works. Another example of people using the god of the gaps argument as evidence that God created life is in the vein of what you argued how come we dont see x/y/z in the fossil record? or how did x/y/z evolve?. While those are interesting questions, they are by no means evidence that god must have done it. Oftentimes, a little bit of digging will reward you with answers. Fourth, I completely reject that evolution is like god of the gaps. The reason is simple: its a science and is based on continual criticism and testing of hypotheses. Irreducible complexity is a great example to show what I mean as soon as people like Michael Behe started arguing that the bacterial flagellum/blood clot cascade, etc, was irreducibly complex, people started pointing out all the research thats gone into showing potential routes of how these systems evolved through natural selection. This is the heart of why evolution is not a god of the gaps argument whenever we dont know how something worked, we research it ad nauseum and if were still unsure (e.g. the imprecise nature of phylogenetic reconstructions) then well admit it. The alternative is to ask questions of evolution and conclude that god must have done it. Thats god of the gaps. There is plenty of evidence to support evolution and the fact that its the best explanation for how life on earth originated. If creationism is the alternative explanation, theres simply no contest.

Like i said, false prophets. Its like wearing a Slayer shirt when all toghether you really hate Metal. So you're saying that every Christian who ever does a bad thing didn't love Jesus at all and was just jumping on a bandwagon to fit in? Thats rediculous. Just accept it - Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics - everyone has the capability of doing bad things. The argument that as soon as they do something wrong they're no longer a Christian is a cop out. Sure, there's no religion to stop us, but my post was to argue why that doesn't necessarily matter. However, it would be entirely reasonable to say that without specific religious rules, there is no barrier to often-indulged-in acts like drinking, smoking and sex. It doesn't bother me though, because I'm fine with all of those things, within reason.

Ofcourse there isnt any official text. Nothing about Athiesm really is official. Its the "do what ever you want" religion. It has no boundies, no rights and no wrongs. That, in my opinion is a flaw. No rules cause people to run amuck (i know its not the right spelling but you know what i mean :P). And i'm sure you know what i mean by this statement? That isn't true at all. Atheists don't murder or steal any more than Christians do. And "do whatever you want" isn't a part of atheism. What some people need to understand here is that atheism is a lack of belief in a god/s, and nothing more (there's also the belief that god/s don't exist, but it's less common). There are no rules, no do's or donts, no rights or wrongs. However, this doesn't mean atheists will automatically run around killing people or doing other horrible things. Firstly, we have to law to worry about (well, "worry" perhaps isn't the best word to use - in many cases I think the laws we must abide by are entirely justified). Second, there seems to be this biological barrier to murder, stealing, or other commonly accepted wrongs. I liken it to a disgust reaction and would argue it could be an evolutionary adaptation to surviving (and flourishing) as a social species. Trust me gorgoroth, you dont have anything to worry about with atheists. Most of the time we just want to live our lives in peace like everyone else.

Cabinet by Spawn of Possession (album). Wow.. After Noctambulant had such good reviews I didn't think Cabinet could have been better..

To be honest, I'm not that interested in evolution nor have I done enough research on the topic. This is why I didn't claim if it's true or false. Right now I'm just on the fence and reserving my opinion until I learn more about it. You claimed there were good arguments against it, let's hear some. If you want to learn more I can help you out by clarifying any misconceptions. As for the rest of your post, I don't disagree with the general thrust of it. Skepticism is a good thing and helps us come up with new ways of thinking about things. But I agree with assassin as well. There are some things we can be sure of; some things which will probably never be disproven. I mean sure, at the back of your mind you could be open to the possibility that we're all terribly wrong about everything, but to focus on that as a likelyhood in the face of overwhelming evidence is stupid.

I'm not dismissing them as impossibilities but I would like to see much more evidence if I'm to have any belief in them. As far as I'm concerned, I've seen arguments against evolution that are just as good as the ones for it. By the way, I noticed you said they repeated some of the steps of abiogenesis. Not all of them. Accuracy is essential when trying to find out the truth, especially in subjects as murky as theology and the origin of life. I don't see why it's so bad to be skeptical about scientific theories but not with religion. You can be skeptical when skepticism is due. I would remind you though that religions offer no evidence for their ideas nor any way to test them while scientific ideas do. Scientific ideas, even abiogenesis, offer a means of self-critique and demand evidence before they're taken seriously. As I've said before, abiogenesis isn't perfect, but at least it has something rather than "god did it" and that's it. Having said that, there's no real way of proving exactly how abiogenesis happened, assuming it did. There are lots of possibilies, some more likely than others, and with time and more research we should be able to figure out the most likely and hopefully even create life ourselves. What are the good arguments against evolution? Let's argue some. The only ones I've come across have been either misinterpretations of what evolution is or misinterpretations of some other science (such as thermodynamics, for example).

The Negation by Decapitated.

Except there is no proof whatsoever that the vaccination caused that. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation. Out of interest, I did a little calculation when I heard about that story the other day, and based on the 10 million or so shots used in the US so far and the 10,000 or so people affected by the most common form of dystonia (I think it may have been even more, but I'll use a conservative estimate), you'd expect about 1000 people who got the shot to have dystonia. Enough to make it plausible that this a completely chance event. As for the topic in general, I agree with fastortoise. Just because it hasn't gone through clinical trials, it doesn mean that it was rushed or is unsafe. There would have been QC checks at all stages I'm sure, and you need to remember that there is a similar process every flu season to make a new vaccine againt the regular flu. Having said that, I think the vaccine is probably best for those in at-risk groups. I'm not convinced it's deadly enough to justify whole-population vaccination programs. First of all, it's MRSA, not MERSA. Second, flu vaccinations don't cause antibiotic resistance (wrong on mechanism of action and target organism - I think this is new for me); that wound be over-perscription of antibiotics. 1. Haha i figured that but when i googled it as MERSA a bunch of things and no spelling suggestion. 2. If you read my whole thing I stated that I knew that not how MRSA came about and that it was antibiotic resistance, it was an analogy 3. Cats Damn, very sorry about not reading your post properly. That was quite stupid of me.

The theory of the multiverse: with an infinite amount of universes, anything can happen. Does this mean there's probably a god in one of those universes? As for abiogenesis, that's a leap of faith. There's been no empirical evidence for it whatsoever. There has never been a scientific reenactment of a living cell arising from inorganic material. The only reason this theory exists is because we have no other explanation for the origin of the first cell - which sounds a lot like god of the gaps and an argument from incredulity to me. Until I see abiogenesis and evolution, I will always be as skeptical as I am with religion. False. We have repeated some of the steps of abiogenesis in the lab, proving it's plausible. Well, to be fair it's not perfect and cound do with more evidence, but it's not a god of the gaps argument like the others that have been brought up. Why? Basically it's because we can and have tested it to see if it holds up to what happens in the real world. As for seeing evolution, researchers have seen it happen in E.coli and multiple other species. If you want unequivocal evidence for common ancestry, I've posted some in this thread somewhere. It's irrational to equate evolution and religion. One has plently of evidence, while the other does not.

Whatever her claim is, I think it's still plausible for it to be a completely chance event and there's no evidence to suggest the vaccine caused her dystonia. By the way, what's dormant dystonia? I tried googling it and I couldn't find any solid info on it... As for the second point, it's actually true that not giving the immune system enough practice causes it to grow weaker. An example of this is that antibodies don't last forever, hence why we need to get booster shots with some vaccines. What's your point here exactly? I'm having a hard time seeing it.