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August 27, 2010 09:31 AM UTC

Ok, let's do this. Abortion/Creation/Christianity thread.

  • 514 Comments
  • by: bjwilson83

(It’s Friday, and it’s by popular demand – promoted by Colorado Pols)

I’ve been getting beat up quite a bit for my socially conservative views, so let’s talk about it. Give me your best shot. Can you explain…

1) Why taking the life of a baby is justified?

2) How evolution is a scientifically provable hypothesis?

3) How Islamic values are tolerant and Judeo-Christian values are barbaric?

I’d really like to know.

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514 thoughts on “Ok, let’s do this. Abortion/Creation/Christianity thread.”

  1. There is no such thing as a “scientifically provable hypothesis.”

    That you think there might be such a thing just demonstrates your ignorance of science.

    I have had 4 semesters of graduate level evolutionary biology. Yet I still consider myself a non-expert in this field. If you want a graduate level education in evolutionary biology, go get yourself this education.

    The (scientific version of the) Theory of Evolution makes many predictions about what we should observe in the natural world. One of those predictions is that there should be a particulate manner of heredity.

    That such a thing was later discovered to be true is an example of scientific (i.e., falsifiable) hypothesis generated from the Theory of Evolution that was not falsified.

    Here’s what you need to do, Beej:

    Walk on over the the bookstore in the basement of the student center and pick up a text book on evolution. Read it. Then walk on south to the biology building and ask Drs. Angert or Antolin or Funk or Ghalambor or Moore or Mueller or Simmons or Webb (to pick just a few who specifically focus on aspects of evolutionary biology) for more information. Repeat as necessary.

    1. Go find some material on the scientific method.  For you, Wikipedia should do…  Einstein states the basic underpinning of scientific hypotheses: No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

      Perhaps a better reference for you, directly relating to the subject, is Talk Origins’ description of the scientific method:

      All scientific statements and concepts are open to re-evaluation as new data is acquired and novel technologies emerge. Proof, then, is solely the realm of logic and mathematics (and whiskey). That said, we often hear ‘proof’ mentioned in a scientific context, and there is a sense in which it denotes “strongly supported by scientific means”. Even though one may hear ‘proof’ used like this, it is a careless and inaccurate handling of the term.

      (oh, crap – there’s that whole separation of math and science thing.  Sorry – I’ll stop interjecting that to protect your delicate sense of superior knowledge…)

      So, to the extent that you are looking for “scientifically provable”, evolution has long been a scientifically proven hypotheses.

      Here is a follow-up question, BJ.  You stated in another diary that you were a believer in Intelligent Design.  How do you apply the scientific method to ID?  Is it a “scientifically provable” hypothesis?  (This is a rhetorical question; the answer is “you can’t” and “no”, unless and until someone comes up with a scientific method of testing for the existence of God and his actions.  Yet you – and I – still have faith in Him.)

      1. That says it all about Talk Origins. But seriously, evolution has many flaws which have had to be explained away (invention of the “Cambrian explosion”, for example), and is nowhere near a scientifically proven hypothesis.

        I don’t make the claim that either intelligent design or evolution can be scientifically proven; we can only look at evidence. My point is exactly that – whatever your view of the world, you believe it on faith. A lot of so called “scientists” have a preconceived world view and look for data to support it.

        2. There is no “scientifically proven”.  Gravity isn’t “proven” – either its mechanism or the exact definition of its affect – but we still rely on the current hypotheses about gravity because they have not been refuted under the scientific method (and because they work for us…).

          The theory of evolution has not failed the scientifically designed tests placed before it, and it has withstood many such tests.  It is therefore the current scientifically accepted theory on the development of life on this planet.  It is not accepted “on faith”, but rather on the rigors of observation, testing, and analysis.

          (PS – the “Cambrian explosion” question, posited by Darwin himself as one of the major unexplained phenomina raised by his theory, may be simply explained as “missing data”; an article in the journal Nature in late June of this year reveals evidence of multi-cellular organisms a full 1.5 billion years older than the Cambrian period.)

        3. Invention? It’s a term to describe some observations. There are at least 2 hypotheses to explain the Cambrian explosion. Neither of them is universally accepted.

          Next strawman?

    2. Think you might be a bit biased in the creation/evolution debate? Brainwashed, even?

      The Theory of Evolution also makes predictions about what we should see in the fossil record. Like, thousand upon thousand of “missing link” fossils, which are not there. You’re still struggling to find even ONE credible missing link.

      Heh heh little do you know who I’ve worked with in biology.

      2. And it’s been 40 years since I took paleo.

        Although anti-evolutionists dispute whether Archaeopterix is a transition fossil (e.g., if it has feathers, it must be a bird) it has many features diagnostic of theropod dinosaurs.

        However, it’s pretty late in the evolution of dinosaurs to birds.  In the 1990s, other, earlier, examples of feathered dinosaurs were found in China.

        Of course the devil could have engraved those images in stone just to test our faith.

          1. Many of these fossils are found in quantity.  They’re hardly one-off deformed animals.

            You would have had more credibility if you had gone for the “devil put them there” argument.

          2. Hooray, we’re done with this argument.

            Beej, your apology for bringing this topic up has been duly noted and accepted.

            But before the rest of us celebrate our lucidity (again), why don’t you tell us, Beej, what is your hypothesis for what a “missing link” would look like?

      3. Perhaps it’s your failure to successfully complete any studies of evolutionary biology that has produced the bias? Just sayin’.

        And every organism ever described is a “missing link.” You’d already know this if you had an inkling about the actual science encompassed within the Theory of Evolution.

        You’d also know that every time a new fossil fits into a gap between known lineages, two new “gaps” are created. So the fact that there are millions of “gaps” is evidence of the millions of pieces of evidence for the (scientific version) of the Theory of Evolution.

        Every cladogram is a hypothesis of taxonomic relationships. Every new piece of evidence is a test of a hypothesis. It’s science through and through and has withstood over 150 years of assaults. It has only been strengthened. But of course, you already know this because of your “superior” education.

        I’m certain those you’ve “worked with” in biology would be horrifically embarrassed if they knew the full extent of your prideful ignorance. (Well, if those you’ve “worked with” are actual practicing evolutionary biologists.)

        1. “your failure to be brainwashed makes you biased”. Right. It’s separate species and your equivocating doesn’t change that. Yes, they would probably have been horrified to learn that I am a creationist. But my project didn’t involve macroevolution so it was a non issue.

        1. I went to a private, Christian college and am not so delusional as to disbelieve evolution. In fact, my geologist evolution-loving mother who believes ‘gasp!’ that fossils are REAL teaches at a private Christian college. Not all who attend are blithering idiots.  

          1. Having lost that wager, I’ll make another one – the only science courses you took as an undergrad were 100 level classes, or else those designed for undergrads who need to meet their core requirements.

                1. Science would be impossible without math, and math is frequently inspired by science, but math is not science. In a nutshell, mathematics studies the consequences of assumptions (axioms); it doesn’t attempt to determine whether those assumptions are true or not. That’s a scientist’s job.

    3. As has been stated here, you very rarely prove something true using science, and the very words theory and hypothesis imply unproveness, but also require that they be testable.

      So for you, some experimental data supporting the theory of evolution involving the scientific method and researchers who know that they don’t have all the answers, but who are trying honestly to learn new things.

      The important problem with ID is that it claims that because certain pieces of Darwin’s theory are not explained or understood, that those elements cannot be understood.  And to address these areas, ID substitutes an untestable hypothesis.

      Look, it may be true that there is a designer of life.  It just isn’t science to make that claim.  Science deals in the testable, and that claim is not.

      1. stir, stir, wave hands, say magical words

        and

        POOF

        a universe with everything whole and complete, including those rocks to make silly humans think there was something roaming these hills before they showed up.

        Very sound and no need to think, formulate question/hypothesis, test, rethink, retest. . .perform until – well forever because even facts need to be tested.

      2. But my point is that evolution is not a testable claim either. I have no problem with researchers who know they don’t know all the answers, but most are looking for evidence of evolution instead of creation. If they admit the flaws of evolutionary theory and don’t present it as settled science I have no problem.

  2. I am not aware of anyone claiming an absolute difference between Islamic and Judeo-Christian values other than you, Beej.

    My take from reading these endless threads is that everyone else has been arguing that ALL religious traditions have skeletons in their proverbial closets. If one reads any of the holy books, one can find passages that are truly disturbing and seem contrary to the loving, forgiving, tolerance, and understanding that adherents profess their faiths represent.

    Your childish denials about the crazy uncles that have been a part of your religion’s dark history, indicate to me that your faith is quite tenuous and lacks foundation. Your nasty tone about other religions, and your absolute refusal to consider that the Islamic faith might be at least as good as it is bad, indicates to me that you are not very good at the loving, forgiving, tolerance and understanding part of your faith.

    That you have to interpret everything as absolute black or absolute white indicates you don’t have a whole lot of experience in the real world. Repeatedly, when someone has challenged one small part of one of your factless rants, you have quickly demonized that person and made assumptions that that person disagrees completely with you.

    You need to grow up. Colorado Pols might not be the best place for you to do this. You need to learn about the world from face-to-face interactions where you have to witness how your ignorant accusations affect real people. You need to take responsibility for your positions in front of real people.

    Grad school is supposed to be an ideal environment for this. Don’t squander it. Get off the computer. Develop a taste for good beer. Say stupid things in the company of people you can trust. Admit to losing an argument or two. You’ll be a better person for it. And the world will be a better place for all of us.

    2. If you can’t tell the difference between Islamic values vs. Judeo-Christian values, you need to do some more research.

      Even if all religions have skeletons in their closets, you have to look at which religions have skeletons out in the open right now. Jihad certainly qualifies in my opinion.

      You obviously don’t understand Islam if you think it is a tolerant religion. Do you know how they treat gays? Adulterers? Women? Obviously, there are a minority of Muslims in America who hold more liberal views, but this is not the norm, nor what is taught in the Qu’ran. Funny, that those on the left would support the most ultra-conservative, oppressive religion on earth, and yet condemn more liberal Christianity.

      As for the rest, I have no intention of taking your advice on life. YOU could learn a thing or two by getting outside your liberal mind bubble. Maybe travel to ground zero? Take a trip to the Middle East? Or any foreign country for that matter. I assure you, it would be eye opening.

      1. Fundamentalists of any stripe–Xtian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew–perpetuate bad things under the ‘surety’ of their faith.

        The moral actor is not one certain of their view–imaging their motives to be the only ones that are pure–but the one able to navigate the nuanced shades of gray.  

        Remember BJ: The measure you give is the measure you get.

      4. Do you?  

        You rail against people on this board for stating provable instances of Christian intolerance and improprieties on the merit that they aren’t true Christians so can’t speak to it tennants. Yet you claim to ‘know’ how the Islam faith is taught and parcticed on all levels.

        Perahps you should widen your gaze and see the trees and not the forest.

        Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam is an umbrella for many factions of that religion. The fundamentalist of those religions do not represent the majority. I would never assume that Baptist Snake handlers are reprentative of Christians or that Zionist are represntative of Jews.

        In fact (little tidbit I picked up from a respectable source) if you do your homework, Islam in it’s true original form is more tollerant of women than Christainity or Judiasm are in their fundamentalist beliefs.  

        1. Islam has a more fundamentalist bent to it around the world than Christianity. You don’t see Christian terrorist training camps popping up everywhere, do you?

          Lol, “Islam in it’s true original form is more tolerant of women…”. First of all women don’t need to be “tolerated”, they need to be equally as important as men. But have you read about Mohammed? Do you know who he was and what he did? Go read your history.

          1. Have you ever heard of the word “militia”? There are many of these contemporary militias, like the Hutaree, all across America. There is another Christian militia that was going to be armed to “protect” the disgusting Qua’ran burning party in Florida. How about personal heroes of yours Beej: Clayton Waagner, Eric Rudolph and James Kopp of Army of God? He actually describes himself as a “Christian terrorist”. How about the militant group and “church” Christian Identity?

            Here are some other Christian terrorist groups that have popped up:

            *Kentucky State Militia

            *Ohio Unorganized Militia Assistance and Advisory Committee,

            *Southeastern Ohio Defense Force

            *Michigan Militia

            *Southern Indiana Regional Militia

            *Southern California High Desert Militia

            Not to mention all the militias “helping” patrol at the border. I just don’t know if they are religious or not.

            Beej, as usual you are completely ignorant or blind. I have no idea if this is willful, deceitful, or just plain ignorance. Either way, for you to make a claim that

            You don’t see Christian terrorist training camps popping up everywhere, do you?

            means that you know NOTHING about what is happening in your own country. You know NOTHING about what is being perpetrated in the name of your own religion.

            Perhaps you should worry more about what “Christians” are doing and less about Muslims and Islams.

            1. You do know militias are in the Constitution, right? Are you saying that our own Constitution promotes terrorism?

              Since when have Christian militias done anything wrong? All they’ve done is patrol the border (which desperately needs to be done because the federal government has failed to do it’s job) and pledge to protect America. Two very noble goals in my opinion.

              1. But nice job avoiding the point YOU made. The point is that even something laid out in our Constitution can be warped by religious fundamentalist into something violent and evil.

                Instead of worrying about it happening in another religion in other countries, perhaps you should work towards ending the violence (or potential violence) here in our own country perpetrated by members of your own religion?

                See The Hutaree for an example for “doing something wrong”.

        1. I haven’t met a Taliban over here yet, but I suppose there could be sleeper cells. But yes, the Taliban is a great example. Pop quiz: what does Taliban mean?

    3. Christianity went through the Crusades, and the Inquisition, and Irishmen killing each other, and in some places this continues into this century.

      Does this make Christianity bad?  No.  It demonstrates that evil men and evil groups have used the principles of Christianity to gain worldly political power.

      Only an ignorant douche-canoe would make the argument that Islam, with the concept of Jihad – which does NOT refer to making war, it’s simply the Arabic word for a struggle – is a war-encouraging system.

      BJ, I’ll suggest that the reason you take so much crap on this site is not because everyone likes to give you crap.  Truthfully, it’s kinda getting old.  The reason is because you say, ignorant, back-woods, uneducated, lunatic bullshit.

      (You’re free to disagree, but make sure that instead of actually arguing the points here, you call me names, or blame Bill (Clinton/Ritter), as the real problem with Islam is that Bill Clinton something something…)

      1. And generally unjustifiable.  I, however, cannot actually have one, so I figure the logical thing to do is to let those people who can have abortions deal with their decisions.  

        You know, I assume that I am not the only moral person in the world, and that other people will try to make the right decision, too.

      2. …the BJ stuff is getting old. I’ve been reading Pols for years, and have rarely found the need to post anything (I’ve posted twice before). The discussions are smart, and sooner or later, the point that I had hoped would get thrown into the mix does. Yet reading the constant right-wing echo-chamber bs from bj has really soured my taste for this site.

        It’s not that I can’t appreciate opposing points of view, it’s that every argument with you is the same: Facts are thrown out the window in exchange for vitriolic insults, and when someone does respond to your ranting, you either quit replying to the thread, or it’s back to the insult generator.

        We get it, bj: you’re the lone voice of reason in the wacky-left blogosphere. Must be lonely living in a world where you’re the only reasonable and intelligent person.

        1. post, Chris. As I sat here in the early morning hours going over this endless drivel from bjwilson83, I was motivated to respond myself. Fortunately, you took the words right out of my mouth (or …off my fingers, I guess).

          There are a number of intelligent, respectful conservatives on this, my favorite blog. Ellie, BarronX, Laughing Boy, and…and…(I’m pulling for you here, brother)…Libertad, Republican 36…the list is long. Beej is not worthy of being listed with that group.

          Beej, is neither intelligent, nor respectful. His opinion is of no more consequence than the fart of a pigeon, passing overhead. I only occasionally read anything he types anymore because it is all meaningless drivel. I have been searching for some thread of evidence that he actually listens to anyone besides those voices in his head. I haven’t found that thread.

          He presumes to know that Jesus would not use the word “fuck”.

          What more is there to say?  

      3. All you have to do is look at Mohammed’s life. Who’s the ignorant “douche-canoe”? As for the rest, it’s just typical enraged lefty blather.

        2. … for perhaps my reading of the Koran was sloppy.  You seem to know what you’re talking about, so please tell me what I missed, and where I should begin my re-education about the tenets of Islam.

  3. I don’t have a good answer for this.

    Our society has deemed that there are times when taking the life of another human being is justified. It has not done this lightly. Usually these situations are very tightly prescribed.

    War. Police actions. Protecting your own life under evidence of a real and present threat. A court-sanctioned penalty.

    Some times these situations where taking the life of another human being is sanctioned by our culture are not so well prescribed. For example, the “make my day” laws allow one person to kill another when one of them feels “threatened” at home. By and large I can support this, even though I am uncomfortable with how it might be abused.

    I do not claim to understand why abortion is seen by some to be uniquely abhorrent. I find all of these justified killing scenarios abhorrent and go out of my way to avoid being put into a situation where I would have to make such a decision.

    None the less, I think my society has done a pretty good job of prescribing the unique situations under which taking another human’s life might be considered justified.  

    1. Having been involved in formal abortion debates in a Christian setting, I have seen a distinct and un-Christian tendency for the anti-choice side to devolve into demonizing those who have and perform abortions, ascribing to them motivations which they seldom if ever have.

      No-one wants to wake up in the morning to decide “I want to have an abortion today”.  Abortion providers would rather be treated like normal OB-GYNs than separated as some demonized sub-profession of doctor targeted by extremist religious zealots.  In fact, if it weren’t for that demonization and the subsequent limited number of providers, my guess is most all abortion doctors would rather be OB-GYN / surgeons.

      Abortion is an uncomfortable choice, and ambiguous or abhorrent morally to the vast majority of people at some stage or another of pregnancy.  We have made a compromise that protects the life of the mother and weighs it against the potential life of the foetus, and we tweak that compromise hopefully as evidence alters our understanding (but more often as social persuasions and activism override our best knowledge).

      1. “We have made a compromise that protects the life of the mother.” The life of the baby should be protected unless the life of the mother is in danger.

      1. Innocent people are killed in war.

        Innocent people are killed in childbirth.

        Innocent people are killed by policemen.

        Innocent people are killed by their neighbors.

        Innocent people are killed by the judicial system.

        Your “argument” fails to document that abortion is uniquely abhorrent.  

        1. Would you argue that babies or children should be allowed to play on a battlefield? Even in war, is the killing of an innocent child justified? Should it be legal for policemen to kill innocent people? Should it be legal that neighbors can kill innocent people? Should there be no checks against killing innocent people in the judicial system like “innocent until proven guilty”, appeals, etc.?

          You’re making my point exactly, abortion just be illegal, just like any other taking of an innocent life.

      3. Roman Catholic doctrine – the primary source of our modern abhorrence of abortion – up until I think a year ago believed that babies who had not yet been baptized went to Purgatory because they had not been cleansed of original sin.  It was therefore bad to have an abortion because you sent the baby to Purgatory (it was almost better under this doctrine to murder the child after it was baptized – at least then it was an innocent going to Heaven).

        According to traditional religious doctrine in place in Biblical times (you want to be literally Biblically accurate, right?), a baby was not considered a person until it drew its first breath.

        According to U.S. law, a fetus is not a person until birth.  It is not afforded legal protections of any sort until the third trimester, the time at which medical ethicists, backed up by (recently re-affirmed) medical research consider that the fetus has any reactions or sensations denoting a “real person”.

        The claim against abortion is a purely religious one (and a changing religious claim at that).  It has no place in our laws; if those of a particular religion wish to follow their own restrictions, that is their right, but this country’s principles should be advanced enough to prevent such a restriction from being imposed upon people not of like belief.

          1. I said “traditional religious doctrine in place in Biblical times”, and, truthfully, my statement is not universal for the whole region.  Surprisingly, the alternative view prevalent at the time is very similar to, if less scientifically based than, our current laws (the fetus was not considered to be with soul until approx the end of the first trimester, and regardless of the term of the pregnancy, health and life of the mother were generally considered acceptable reasons to have an abortion.  The Jewish law at the time was, apparently, that in the event that the life of the mother (or that of her children) were threatened by the fetus, than an abortion was actually required – the lives of fully formed and living people being considered more important than that of the not-yet-born (and in some eyes not yet fully alive) fetus.

            Abortion as homicide was only endorsed by the RC Church (and hence by all of Western Christianity) in 1200 – prior to that it was not considered equivalent to killing a person.

          2. (Loud buzzer…….)

            There isn’t any reference to anything approaching abortion.

            In fact, Jews are adamant to this day that life begins with the first breath.  That’s why, in Hebrew, the word for breath and life are the same.  Something like “Ru-ach,” phonetically, IIRC.

            Well, another Beejer “fact” goes into the dust bin.  

        2. unborn babes didn’t go to purgatory.  They went to Limbo.  Purgatory is where sinners who died with venial (misdemeanor) sins dwelled until they worked off their time.  Sinners with Mortal (felony) sins went to Hell.

            I personally like the formulation of Davey Crockett, after losing his seat in Congress:

           

          The voters can go to Hell.  As for me, I shall go to Texas.

             

            1. All those years hanging out with priests and I was never molested once!  I did have wonderful talks with Father Brady and Father Walsh.  They were good men.  In the end, they were committed to a logical fallacy that I no longer can endorse.  But that doesn’t make them bad people.  They taught me a lot.

                Including the fact that the Limbo is more than an obsolete dance craze.

  4. 1-Prove the world was created in six days.  Don’t forget to explain how “days” were measured when the Sun wasn’t created until the fourth day.  And don’t forget to explain how the omnipotent creator created millions of now extinct species as trial runs.

    2-Prove why your particular religious sect, probably the snake handlers, is not only the one true faith but has the right to torture and kill anyone who dissents.  Don’t forget to explain why it’s ok to torture Jews until they profess Christianity, then baptize them and give them the last rites before killing them — thus ensuring they did in a state of grace and can go directly to heaven.  (Google Torquemada, Spanish Inquisition) to help justify your persecution.)

    Explain why since you have obviously the one true faith, why at least 2/3rds of the world rejects Christianity.  Explain why, even among Christians, about three-fourths reject Protestantism in favor of Roman Catholicism.  Explain why even the majority of protestants reject your bible-thumping, snake handling, position.  Discuss why your beloved Genesis is infallible while the Book of Mormon is heretical.

    3-Explain why rapists have the right to force their victims to carry the fetus of said baby to term. Explain why a fully formed human being is created the instant a sperm enters the egg.  Finally, explain why the right to life ends at birth and the fetus, once born, thus loses its right to health care.

      Extra credit: Explain that virgin birth thing and the doctrine of original sin.  

        1. This comment does not deserve a response.

           The standard procedure for ideologues and whack jobs (such as anti-evil-lutionists) is to throw out their own crazy ideas as fact and challenge anyone to disprove them, using an unattainable cartesian standard of proof.

           

          The world is flat.  Prove me wrong.  No, you can’t use Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe as proof because Descartes deceiving demon misled you.  I win, the world is flat.

            Likewise, fundamentalist protestantism is the one true faith, prove me wrong.

             Evil-lution is wrong, God created the universe is six days…err, six distinct periods of time.  prove me wrong.

             The simple fact is that you haven’t presented an iota of evidence for Yahweh creating the world (even undere the thin veil of “intelligent design” because not one shred of such evidence exists.

            “It’s evidence because I say it’s evidence.  The Bible says it’s evidence and that’s good enough for me.”

            It’s not evidence just because you want it to be.  And you can’t quote the Bible to prove things that are asserted in the Bible.  

            Now, go home and handle your snakes.    

  5. 1) It isn’t, but abortion should be a woman’s choice and not a choice made by someone else which she is forced to submit to.

    2) It isn’t. But there is a hell-uv-a-lot more scientific evidence showing evolution occurred and hardly any showing the Earth was created in six days with a deity resting on the seventh.

    3) They both are tolerant and barbaric. If followers believe the literal text of the holy books. Muslims and Christians have a long history of intolerance and hate towards each other. One would hope that the VAST majority of Muslims and Christians understand the nuances of their holy scriptures and practice love and peace instead of hate and anger.

    1. 1) Should I have the “choice” to kill you if you inconvenience me? Even were you to get in a bar fight with me and beat me up, it probably still wouldn’t be justified for me to kill you.

      2) This is a disagreement on what the evidence shows, and there is plenty of evidence for creation. Just one example – when we went to the moon, they expected a huge layer of dust to have accumulated over billions of years. In fact, it was just a few inches thick. As I said before, I don’t think the “days” have to be literal, based on the original Hebrew word.

      3) I agree that the Crusades were an abuse of Christianity, but what is the equivalent to Jihad today in Christianity. And do Christians treat women as property? Do they half bury adulteress women and stone them to death. Do they hang gays? Do they behead criminals? Not in the most fundamentalist of Christian sects.

      1. Although you have an Islamic “republic” in Iran, they haven’t declared war on anyone.

        If jihad is war, then it needs the organization of war – that is, an army. Al Quada, Hamas, and other terrorist groups are not armies, and they are not fighting for any achievable directives. Just because they call it jihad, doesn’t mean that it IS jihad.

              1. … you’d have a point. But the only evidence offered has been a false claim about its namesake. So there’s no rational reason to believe that that’s what they’re doing.

        2. Ahmadinejad says he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. War is inevitable and coming soon. Jihad is guerilla war. I can’t believe you’re defending Al Quaeda and Hamas.

          1. … please don’t do that. You know I’m doing no such thing (“defending al Quada and Hamas). You’ve asked not to be slandered downthread; don’t do it to me.

      4. of another person!  There is nothing, no situation, anywhere, anytime, that is analogous to the state of pregnancy.  

        Now, go look up the meaning of “analogous” and try to remember it!

  6. 1)  First I would argue with you on your definition of a “baby”.  

    2)  It isn’t completely provable, but it is certainly no less “provable” than the creation story. Further, there is, in fact, more evidence to support evolution than there is creation.  I would also argue that they are not mutually exclusive.  Finally, and most importantly you are conflating science and faith….one is provable, the other not.

    3)  The “values” of Islam are as varied as the values of “Judeo-Christianity”.  While I am a Christian and you are a Christian, it is quite obvious our values are quite divergent in many areas.

    1. I would sometime like you to explain why you are a Christian.  You’re a thoughtful person and have managed to detoxify most of the fundamentalist poison.  But why bother?  Why continue to cling to the central vision of Christianity, the notion of a personal relationship with a divine, supernatural, creator?  Granted that you (and Barron X, from a different perspective) have about as intelligent a view of Christianity as I have encountered, I still wonder why you bother?  I grant that the real Jesus had some very solid ideas.  But the notion that he was “the Christ,” — i.e. , the messiah of Jewish prophecy — just seems untenable to me and I am curious why you cling to it?

       No offense intended, and no answer required.  But I think your views would be worth hearing.  

      1. Because it works for me.

        Christianity is the religion of my youth, so I’m sure that has a lot to do with it, and it is my belief that the way in which Jesus lived his life is the best model for me to emulate.

        I don’t take the Bible literally, I do, however, take it seriously.  

        Furthermore, unless some of us Christians who I believe are more reasonable than some of the “wing nuts” do not do all that we can to protect what we see as the ultimate message of Jesus (work on yourself, don’t try to perfect others), it will be destroyed by those who seek to use the Bible as a weapon to control others.  

        Finally, it is a baby and bathwater issue.

        In spite of my being horrified (quite literally horrified. I’ve had friends that have committed suicide because they had been told by “Christians” that they were not worthy of the love of God or other people) that the teachings of Jesus as reported in scripture have been bastardized by so many people who claim the mantle “Christian”, I really believe that there is much to be learned by studying the Bible…and discerning life lessons from it.

        One more thing:  I make no claim that Christianity is the “only” way to a hereafter (if there is a hereafter); I do, however, say that for me, it is the only way.  Others may have another way there and it is not my place to tell them that they are wrong.  That is where personal faith comes in.

        1. I have to say I place less emphasis on the “just because” and more on the “I really believe” side than your statement, but you articulate the views of many mainstream Christians who have not bought in to the fundamentalist, dominionist, prosperity gospel and literalist traditions that have sprung up (mostly in this past century or so, and especially since the late ’70s).  Christianity “feels right” in a very spiritual sense to me.  It is settled in my being, and I am comfortable with it.

          V: Whether Jesus is “the Christ” of Jewish prophesy – something that no modern reasoning will ever deduce – or “merely” perhaps the greatest prophet and leader presented to the ancient Jews (as believed by some early Christians who were persecuted pretty much out of existence), his teachings are still worth the faith IMHO.

        2. I don’t mean to force Christianity or even Christian values on anyone, and I don’t think government should either, with the exception of protecting life. I think that protecting the right to life (and I mean this in the general sense – preventing murder, etc.) is something we all believe is a responsibility of the government. It’s why we have cops – “to serve and protect”.

          I do believe that you can’t be a Christian and believe there is any other way to heaven than Jesus.

          “There is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved”. – Acts 4:12

          “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.” – John 14:6

          1. thankfully, you don’t have the final say on who is and who is not a Christian and that is one right I will not cede to you or anyone else.

            I also stated quite clearly that while I do take the Bible seriously, I don’t take it literally.  It is impossible for me to remove the context (the time, place and social norms) in which the various books of the bible were written; and the methods that were used to determine which books were in and which were out.  Yes, it may have been “devinely inspired” but it was men’s hands that wrote it and put it together and translated it over, and over, and over to the language of the page which I read….which is also why I pray for discernment when I read it.

            1. But those verses are pretty hard to contextualize away. I mean the one from John is a direct quote from Jesus. And if you can’t trust those verses then I don’t see how you could be sure of any other verses either, in which case it’s pointless and you might as well give up on Christianity.

                    1. I can quote it in the original Koine Greek if you want, but I didn’t think you would understand it.

              3. again:  I take the bible seriously, but not literally.

                As far as I can tell there are no “direct quotes” from Jesus, given that the Bible I am reading is in English and has been translated innumerable times.  

                  1. From Wikipedia:

                    Historical reliability of John:

                    “The teachings of Jesus in John are very different from those found in the synoptic gospels.[62] Thus, since the 1800s scholars have generally believed that only one of the two traditions could be authentic.[62] Today, prominent, mainstream historians largely tend to discount the historical value of John. Few scholars regard John to be at all comparable to the synoptics in terms of historical value.[42][105] E. P. Sanders and other critical scholars conclude that the Gospel of John contains an “advanced theological development, in which meditations of the person and work of Jesus are presented in the first person as if Jesus said them.”[106] “The scholars of the Jesus Seminar assert that there is little historical value in John and consider nearly every Johannine saying of Jesus to be nonhistorical.[107] Geza Vermes discounts all the teaching in John when reconstructing “the authentic gospel of Jesus.”[108]

                    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B…

                    (Emphasis mine)

                    1. not Greek, and the Gospel of John was written 80-100 years after Christ.  But if BJ says it’s a ‘direct quote’ it must be so.  

                  2. that one puts quotation marks (or prints it in red letters) around a statement doesn’t make it a quote.  It means that it was reported as such, that is all.

                    What I was getting at is that Jesus did not write any of the books of the Bible…we are left with reports of what he said and did…at best second, but more likely third, fourth and fifth hand (and that may be being a bit optimistic).

        3. I live a block away from the Metropolitan Community Church and have been struck by the fact that many, probably most, of its members are quite serious Christians, admittedly sans the “all gays go to hell” aspect that besots a few of the fundie persuasion.  I was baptized as a Catholic and took it quite seriously, being an altar boy until I was 18.  But 18 is also the age when I left the Christian faith.

          There is indeed much of value in the Bible, and a lot of dreck as well — I don’t really believe God commanded genocide, as the old testament insists.  

            I doubt very much that there is a hereafter.  The idea that our consciousness could survive the disintegration of our bodies seems wholly irrational.  Consider the fact that a relatively small disruption of the brain, Alzheimers, can destroy the consciousness we have.

            If, however, I’m wrong, I can’t believe in a judgment that says “Well, you said your hail marys and paid your tithe, so I’m going to overlook the fact that you were a total shit all your life, come sit by me.”

            In short, if Jerry Falwell and every other insufferable idiot I know is in heaven, then Hell looks like a much more interesting place.  Ill get to hang out with Voltaire, Mark Twain, and ladies of sterling but negotiable virtue.  And good jazz is much more to my spirit than endless harp music!

            I guess the closest religion to mine is reform judaism.  They downplay the deity angle, much as the Unitarians do.  But unlike Unitarians, they have a deep respect for the tradition and substance of our religious legacy and recognize that the quest for the holy grail has value quite aside from the fact that no such vessel actually exists.  You seem to have distilled a similar sense of value from the wreckage of traditional Christianity, and I respect your quest.

            Pax Vobiscum.

          1. I wholeheartedly agree with this:

            I can’t believe in a judgment that says “Well, you said your hail marys and paid your tithe, so I’m going to overlook the fact that you were a total sh*t all your life, come sit by me.”

            That’s one of my problems with Catholicism. In my view, all of us are “sh*ts” and nobody could make it to a perfect God without Jesus’s sacrifice. Being fully God and a righteous man, his sacrifice was enough for those who place their faith in him.

            There are definitely some bad apples in evangelical Christianity, but it’s just a matter of sorting out the good from the bad. You should check out mainstream protestantism with a reformed bent (can’t go all the way Reformed, 5 point Calvinism is a bit extreme for me). 🙂

            1. There are definitely some bad apples in evangelical Christianity, but it’s just a matter of sorting out the good from the bad.

              Why is it so difficult for you to sort Muslim apples?

            2. The Catholic church (which I believe I’m in the process of leaving) decided which of the many writings about Jesus were “canonical.”  Your Bible was selected by Catholics.  Catholics don’t take it literally, by the way.

          2. on several occasions, and more than once I’ve looked around and thought, were Jesus to wander into a church in Denver some Sunday morning, that is likely the church where he would feel most at home.

            He would be surrounded by people who are “the other” in today’s society….much like he was when he walked the earth.

            1. religious leaders and conservatives despised. Tax collectors, prostitutes, zealots.

              When Christ criticized, it was the people who judged others.  Who believed their interpertation of scripture and religious mores allowed them to be better, to condemn and to punish.  It was against those who made public display of their superior piety.  The wealthy, connected and powerful.

              To paraphrase…it would be easier for a camel to thread the eye of a needle then for Glenn Beck to know the Kingdom of God.

              (For the record–Twitty don’t believe in heaven and hell.  Beck, BJ and I will all swim together one day in the Eternal Stew).  

              1. he said things like “go and sin no more”. He forgave and reedemed; he did not accept and tolerate. Much like the guy in the front page article trying to help gay people.  

    2. 1) Yes, but if you take a baby one day before being born, it’s hard to argue that it is not alive.

      2) Again, this is an argument about evidence and there is certainly plenty for creation. Perhaps there are some features that are not mutually exclusive, but the creation of humans is. The Bible says the God formed man in his own image out of the dust of the ground. That’s different than evolving from monkeys. I agree that science is provable and faith is not. My point is that the theory of evolution would fall into the category of “faith” since it is not provable by experiment.

      3) They are indeed quite varied, but on the whole more oppressive than Christianity.

      1. Marilou was using this statement the other day, too. What is the significance of this? Abortion seldom happens beyond the 13th week, which is never going to be “one day before being born.”

        2. If a baby is alive one day before being born, what is the day that it goes from being a mass of cells to a living baby? You have to go back to conception.

          1. in order to be alive.

            Right now, I don’t know if there’s a place they can “draw the line,” but we know for certain that it’s well after week 13.

            1. There are people who wouldn’t be alive without a number of things they rely on. Food, water, air being a few. There isn’t anywhere to draw the line, so it’s conception or birth. Hence the “one day before birth” argument.

              1. Once born, we have the means for acquiring all those things. Babies don’t need to be taught how to breathe, or eat or drink. They need lots of care, of course, but they’re doing all that on their own. A fetus 13 weeks old can do none of those things, so calling it “living” means that that you’re completely ignoring what life is.

            1. You don’t know what you’re talking about. In this case, if “not alive” = 0 and “alive” = 1, there are only two possible values for the function (f(x) must be 1 or 0). Could you please tell me at what point c, such that 0 < c < 1, f(x-) = 0 and f(x+) = 1? I.e. what is the point at which the baby is not alive one moment and alive the next? That’s right, math is not your strong suit.

                  1. Creation could have been seven days? Eight days?  Or four billion years?  And the technique could have been evolution, right?

                    So life can be divinely inspired and evolution the technique that SHE used, right?

                      So why are you whining?

                       Sorry, you don’t get off that easy.  If you are going to denounce evil-lution, you have to promote Creationism.  No midway.  Once you abandon the six-day, 6,000 year absolutist position, you have no way to stand against evil-lution and no point to your original harange.  Either the Bible is literally perfect, as recorded in the King James version, or human reason must be taken into account.

                    1. is used elsewhere to refer to an age. Whatever the technique, God created man out of the dust of the earth. That doesn’t sound like evolution to me, and I don’t think the evidence supports evolution either. My basis for believing life is young is the recorded genealogies.

                    2. oh wait, we don’t.

                      A few more questions.

                      Is the earth fixed and unmovable?

                      What is the shape of the earth?

                      What are its boundaries?

                      The Bible, taken literally, as in ‘man was created from dust’ suggests the earth is fixed at the center of the universe; that it is not spherical; that it has edges.

                  1. But either the earth was created in six literal 24-hour days, as measured by the atomic clock in Boulder…oops, atoms were created yet…or it wasn’t.  So the Bible isn’t literally true.  So your whole crusade against evil-lution in defense of snake-handling, fundamentalist protestantism, is a failure and your life is wasted!

                       

                    1. Like I said above, the same Hebrew word for “day” was used in other places in the Old Testament to mean an “age”.

                      Ha! My life has hardly been wasted. I’ve achieved more than I could have dreamed.

                    2. thanks for walking into the trap.  Now, explain why these first three stages occured, apparently lasting quite a long time, before the sun was created in the fourth “stage.”

                      Genesis just doesn’t cut it, amigo.  It’s poetry, not science.  You can’t make it into science by calling it “intelligent design”  

              2. You keep trying to insinuate you know more math than me, yet you act so cowardly when actually challenged on it. I know more than you. You don’t have to trust me. You could email me. Yet you don’t. It’s the sort of belligerence you see from a drunk kid hanging out the side of a pickup truck as it speeds past pedestrians.

                Why are there only two possibilities? Imagine being deep asleep (as you are in all your math classes, obviously) vs. wide awake (as when spending all your time on this site). Are there ever times when you are intermediate between the two? Half asleep? Almost but not quite awake?

                1. I believe Beej told us the other day that he’s done with his coursework.

                  It’s his dissertation he’s procrastinating by posting here, and he’ll keep milking that cash cow until his adviser makes him get a real job.

                  1. was based on a compromise, the idea that early on the fetus was not alive, that shortly before birth the fetus was alive and could theoretically live on its own, and that in between was a difficult-to-quantify gray area, and that therefore abortion should only be allowed in exceptional circumstances. It’s a legal definition, and thus necessarily a compromise.

                    Seems to me that it’s worked pretty well in getting around the issue of when the fetus is human: somewhere in the second trimester, depending on circumstances. That may not make you happy as a mathematician or theologian, but it’s consistent and reasonable in the real world.

                    1. What’s next? Old people are a gray area? Euthanasia. Non Aryans are a gray area? Gas chambers. You see where this kind of thinking leads?  

                    2. Because those aren’t comparable situations. No one can say exactly when life begins, but you can say pretty precisely when life ends.

        1. What did you miss? There is no place to draw the line, so it’s either conception or birth. I believe a baby is alive one day before birth, and hence all the way back to conception.

                    1. Life begins at conception. You’re having some serious reading comprehension problems.

          2. There is no place to draw the line, so it’s either conception or birth. I believe a baby is alive one day before birth, and hence all the way back to conception.

            Thus anyone who burns a pile of acorns should be convicted of arson for starting a forest fire. No bright-line place to draw the line between acorn and oak tree, after all!

      3. Most Muslims accept evolution as valid – in fact, Islamic scientists have been theorizing on evolutionary topics like environmental adaptation since the early 9th century.  (The Islamic faith values science as a method of seeking truth, which they are called to do.)

        Many Muslim nations, though they accord women a lesser legal status than men, nonetheless have always recognized a woman’s rights to property and work; the former took some our our United States until the 1970s to fully recognize.  Several Islamic countries far outpace ours in the representation of women in their parliaments, and the largest Islamic nation in the world, Indonesia, has managed something we have not – a female leader.

        I wonder how much of Christianity’s enlightenment is due to the secular nature of the places it is most prominent as opposed to what would be enacted were Roman Catholicism, the SBC, the association of Evangelical churches or other sects in charge.

        2. is actually less tolerant, it elevates survival of the fittest over individual rights, which come from a Judeo-Christian few of humans being created in the image of God.

          So would you be ok with women having a “lesser legal status” in America? Benzair Bhutto was assassinated, remember.

          Christianity paved the way for enlightenment. It was Catholics that started the first schools in Europe. They always held knowledge and learning in high regard – think monasteries, etc.

          1. You are talking about social darwinism, something promoted by capitalists, not scientists. (BTW, you are a capitalist, aren’t you Beej?)

            Beej, let us know when you figure out what is encompassed within the scientific version of the Theory of Evolution.

            No sense arguing with you over your cartoon versions of something or other.

              1. (the one that explains how all life on this planet is related via common ancestry) that makes any reference to individual rights.

                Therefore, you are not talking about the scientific theory of evolution when you go on about

                … [evolution] elevates survival of the fittest over individual rights, which come from a Judeo-Christian few of humans being created in the image of God.

                This is a component of the social darwinism that capitalists espouse. Are you a capitalist, Beej?

                Your apology is graciously accepted, Beej.

                1. Nothing in the theory of evolution makes any reference to individual rights. Those come from the belief that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Would you like to apologize to me?

          2. You’re getting better at this, but you’ve got a ways to go.

            I would like you to note that the ‘Judeo-Christian’ view of humans being created in the image of God is also the Islamic view.  Same old books, different religions.  And that, despite Islam’s long-standing acceptance of the concepts of evolution, it took the (supposedly Christian) social Darwinists of the West to fully embrace evolutionary principle for social domination.  That attitude survives today in Republican thought.

            I am not okay with women having a lesser legal status, but they still do have said status here in this country.  There is a reason why there was (and should still be) an Equal Rights Amendment stating simply “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”  Women’s legal protections under the Constitution originate with Congress, while men’s legal protections originate with the Constitution.  Women still face a higher burden of proof than men in discrimination cases, e.g.  Is it as bad as a country using strict Shari’a law?  No, but it’s still inexcusable, and it’s conservative Christians blocking the passage of the amendment.

            The teaching at Catholic schools and monasteries was largely Bible-centric; the Enlightenment was explicitly a breaking away from religious domination of the reasoning process.

            1. True, but when Mohammed came along the sanctity of life went out the window. One reason why I believe Islam is a perversion of Christianity. Mohammed admitted to getting his revelations from demons, after all.

              If you promote more rights for women, then it makes no sense that you would want to promote Islam, in all but the most liberal interpretation. I am not aware of women facing a higher burden of proof anywhere. Which law?

              The Enlightenment may have broken away from religious values, but education started with Catholics.

              2. This thread has been quite the tour de force of crapping on other religiouns by BJ. Thanks for shitting on the fact that before Catholicism, Jews were doing a good bit of education for a thousand years or two (aided by their Shabbos dinosaurs, right BJ?). As a Jew pissed at the above, as well as offended by your nasty muslim-bashing (“when Mohammed came along the sanctity of life went out the window”, let me suggest that you crawl back into your neo-Nazi mascot costume and go get ass-fucked by your soulmate the Grand Wizard of the KKK.

      4. My point is that the theory of evolution would fall into the category of “faith” since it is not provable by experiment. Again, this is an argument about evidence and there is certainly plenty for creation.

        Cite one single piece of evidence for creation.

        In six days, four of them without a sun by which to measure days.  The creation must be by Yahweh, it must result in a single man and a single woman, who have two sons.  Miraculously, one of those sons, after killing his brother, finds a wife (!) and spawns the rest of the human race.  

         Yes, one iota of evidence for creation (beyond that provided by the big bang and all that followed.)

         Use any source except the Bible, because you can’t use the Bible to prove the truth of the Bible.  That’s like using the communist manifesto to prove the value of communism.

        1. I’m not wedded to literal days, based on the Hebrew meaning of the word. There is plenty of evidence for creation. Irreducible complexity is found in many species. The fossil record. Dust on the moon. Etc. There are books and websites dedicated to the subject if you’re interested.

          1. Come on Beej, present the evidence for a single case of irreducible complexity in an organism that has lived, or currently lives, on Earth. (Since Behe has not been able to provide a single example, if you can you should let him know.)

            1. but I’ve heard presentations on it. How an you say that there isn’t a SINGLE example of irreducible complexity in the whole world? There are plenty of interrelated biological processes where two processes rely on each other simultaneously.

              1. Do your research before you make absolute pronouncements.

                I can say there isn’t a single example of irreducible complexity in any living structure because there is no evidence to show that I might be wrong. That’s why. It’s how science works. You’d know this if you had studied the scientific version of biology.

                So, get back to me on this. What will it take you, 1,000 years?

                  1. Of course, the flagellum is NOT irreducibly complex – the parts are useful for other functions AND there are simpler flagella structures that the one you linked to without understanding.

                    Have you been to Mickey Behe’s web page? Even Mr. IC himself has never published a case that demonstrated IC.

                    Here’s what Behe says about his research focus:

                    My current work involves: 1) educating various groups to overcome mistaken ideas of what exactly intelligent design entails, so that they can make informed judgments on whether they think it is a plausible hypothesis; and 2) trying to establish a reasoned way to determine a rough dividing line between design and non-design in biochemical systems. [emphasis added]

                    If you read his publication list there is not a single publication on a case of IC.

                    It’s bogus, Beej. You’ve been taken for a fool by the whole Creationist Corporation of America.

                    FAIL.

              2. … is the SAME bullshit line you used to say yes, “death panels” really are in the health bill!  Verily, it is an awesome rhetorical device to defend yourself when you MSU.

                  1. Outstanding piece here.

                    For Darwin, the molecular explanations of organismal evolution were irreducibly complex. It remained for Mendel’s description of inheritance to provide a conceptual framework for the genetic processes that permit natural selection.

                    But Mendel himself had no understanding of the nature of the genetic material. Again, the irreducible complexity of the subject reared its head and kept science at bay until new technology allowed Franklin, Watson and Crick to reveal the structure of DNA.

                    Still, the organization of nucleic acids into discreet units of information that may be turned on, turned off and transposed into molecular machines was beyond their imaginations.

                    It fell to Benzer, Jacob and Monod to unravel this next piece of irreducible complexity, nearly completing the description of the molecular biology and biochemical mechanisms beneath evolutionary change.

                    One thing unknown to them was the explanation of mutational processes in eukaryotic DNA, which was provided by McClintock’s studies of gene transpositions.

                    Hence, irreducible complexity is more appropriately called “human ignorance,” which has retarded the progress of this particular scientific field for over a hundred years.

                    Re: Flagella

                    and Blood Clotting

                    You don’t even read what you cut and paste, let alone have the first inkling of what it means, and therefore have exercised no effort to see how easily it has been debunked.

                    You’re a pathetic rube.

                    1. A degree in biological anthropology (human evolution), with lots of coursework at the graduate level.  Not that that matters to Beej in the least, but thanks nonetheless.

          2. the fossil record, etc.  Show me one iota of Evidence that says a guy with a long beard took six days to create human beings in his own image.  You have zero, nada, zilch, evidence.  You can’t use the evolutionary record to fight against evolution.  You don’t do the math.

              Again, one example, that Yahweh (or Allah, if you prefer) created this whole thing.  

              Intelligent design is a thin cover story for Genesis.  The fossil record, with those millions of failed experiments, utterly refutes the notion of intelligent design, which would have gone right straight from the amoeba to Superman without such failed experiments as Neanderthal Man in between.

            1. The fossil record utterly refutes evolution. Neanderthal Man was a hoax, and there should be thousands and thousands of “Neanderthal Men”. I am going to stop responding to posts where you make fun of creation occurring in six days since I have explained about six days why the days don’t have to be literal days. Better yet, we’ll use the $25 fine per reference system.

                1. Neanderthal Man was a hoax

                  here should be thousands and

                  thousands of “Neanderthal Men”.

                  Neanderthal man was one of two strains and, yes, there were (and are) thousands of skeletons.  

                  I think in your feeble little way, you might have been thinking of Piltdown man.  That was a hoax.

                  But you don’t even know enough about this subject to make a decent fool out of yourself.  Neanderthal man was a hoax, indeed!

                  If he was, how do you explain Ken Buck!  

                  1. Hmmm? And you don’t think there’s any bias among these scientists? Very funny about Buck. You should ask his wife and daughter what they think of him. Or maybe not, your family might get jealous.

                    1. since it is from 100 years ago (discovered as a hoax 50+ years ago).  

                      Here’s a more relevant and recent hoax for you.

                      At the risk of outing, can I ask, is this you?

                  2. I like to think of the Neanderthal human line as our cousins.  Too bad they did not make it to this era, it would be interesting to know them.

                    Following the continuing research of our cousins makes me wonder when our replacements will show up – and where. And, if it does show up will it be killed off as different by those protecting their turf.  

              3. … that claims the fossil record “refutes” evolution.

                If you’re going to use the scientific method to say evolution isn’t supported by the evidence, you have to play by science’s rules. If, OTOH, you just believe the world was created because the Bible says so, you’re free to do so, but it means you can’t try to use scientific-style arguments.

                1. Climate Gate, anyone? (Yes, all you academic lords who will one day control my future, I do believe in peer-reviewed papers. I just think that in maybe a very small number of cases it could lead to just a teeny bit of bias. Not, that, you could ever be wrong or anything…)

                    2. The science itself is not the same as a scientist’s behavior…just as the quality of your graduate work is not necessarily diminished by your displayed idiocy on this blog.  

                1. Sorry there were several of them that were hoaxes and I confused the name. Now maybe the more important question is, why would someone do such a thing?

          3. If you don’t believe in the six literal days of creation, then how about the literal truth of the Bible, which says the Earth is 6,000 years old?

            Do you believe that man was created in God’s image and has never changed?

            Do you believe other creatures created by God have never changed?

            1. Where does the Bible say the Earth is 6,000 years old?

              Yes, man was created in God’s image and the species has never changed.

              Ditto on other species. There is no fossil record of intermediate forms between species.

      5. 1)  That is why abortion in the 3rd trimester is permitted to be restricted to cases in which the mother’s life is at risk.

        2)  Yes, the bible does say that, but again we are talking about literal versus figurative.  The bible also says (in Paul’s Letter to the Romans) that disobediant children are deserving of death, if one reads it literally….which, thankfully, our parents apparenty did not.

        3)  Some branches of Islam are quite oppressive; that does not make all of Islam responsible for those branches though.  There are Christians that are in certain African nations as we speak encouraging those governments to implement the death penalty for gays and lesbians.  I am a Christian and I certainly neither agree with nor condone such actions.  I think the whole, “They are worse than us”, approach to religion is silly.  Suffice it to say that there are good people and bad people in all religions.  

        1. 1) Then why shouldn’t it be restricted in the second trimester. Does the baby “become alive” exactly sixty days after conception? Why then?

          2) That was Old Testament. All of the “big 3” faiths share the Levitical law. In Christianity, Jesus was the perfect sacrifice and paid for all sin, so we can obtain mercy through him instead of judgment.

          3) I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where Jesus or anyone else calls for the death penalty for gays and lesbians, so they are obviously not going by Scripture. I’m not sure but I think Muslims who advocate the death penalty for gays and lesbians believe that is what the Qu’ran teaches. Agreed that there are good and bad people in different religions, my point goes to the underlying sacred writings and ideology of each religion.

          1. 1)  A point has to be decided on—that is really what we are quibbling about.  The fetus cannot survive outside of the womb until some point beyond the second trimester.  The womb is still property of the woman and she has a right to evict any unwanted tenant it if she so desires.  I tend to err on the side of the woman about whose “life” there is no question.

            2)  Romans is in the New Testament in my Bible….what version are you using?

            3)  You may not (I don’t either), but there are a number of Christians that do and that same chapter of Romans, if taken literally, is pretty hard on gays and lesbians (I know, I’ve had it thrown against me several times by “good Christians”).  There is no universal agreement within Christianity as to what our own sacred texts mean…(Is baptism required to inherit the kingdom?  And if it is, must you be fully immersed?  Should women be permitted to be ministers?  Can a divorced person be remarried?  Does one have to believe in the “virgin birth” to be a “good Christian”?  Can one believe in evolution and be a “good Christian”?)  So the question is, why are you holding Islam and its adherants to a level of accountability that is higher than you are holding Christianity and its adherants?  

            1. on what the sacred texts are.  Different branches (Roman Catholic, American Protestantism, Orthodox) have different Canons.

              Then there are other variants like Mormonism that have exclusive canons as well.

              BJ–Which version of the ‘sacred texts’ are the unerring Word of God?

            2. 1) Yes I agree. The only logical point is conception. So if I own a house as property, and you start living in it, do I have the right to kill you if you won’t leave?

              2) Romans does not say kids should be stoned. What verse are you referring to?

              3) Christians do not believe in the death penalty for gays, at least not any I’ve ever met. In fact, I’ve never met a Christian that advocated for any sort of legal penalty for being gay. Romans is very clear that God detests homosexuality, just like all other sin. The other questions would be good subjects for another thread. I’m holding Islam to the same level of accountability as Christians – abide by the law, don’t murder, treat women with respect, etc.

              1. …. If I may address your first point, deciding that life begins at conception (which doesn’t even appear to be supported by scripture, at least not by the quotes you posted elsewhere in this thread) is arbitrary, not logical.

                  1. … but deciding that it MUST be at conception because science currently has no answer is arbitrary. It’s no different then deciding the world was flat back when astronomy and navigation were so underdeveloped that no one could conceive of a round earth.

                    Science can’t detect the soul. Maybe it will happen some day, but the fact that it can’t now doesn’t mean we should arbitrarily decide when it happens, especially if we’re going to rely on scripture that itself is unclear (except to someone who wants to see the answer there, even though it is not).

              2. On point 1, you would be ok with me coming to your house, moving someone in by force and then letting that person not only live there but have you feed that person? If so, that is awesome, cause I have some friends whose lease is about to be up and they would love to live expense free. Just send me an email with your location and we will be along shortly.

              3. 1)  Conception is not the “only logical point”…birth could be just as “logical”, given that we celebrate “birthdays” not “conception days”.  From a purely legal standpoint, every right is dictated by a “birthday”….the right to vote, drink, drive, register for the draft, retire; labor laws…everything is based on the date of birth….not the date conceived.  Do you have the right to kill someone who won’t leave, well, yes.  “Make my day” laws make that pretty clear as well.

                2)  Romans 1:30-32 (KJV) says: 30Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death

                3)  Well let me introduce you to Peter LaBarbera, a (self proclaimed) Christian activist who supports the Ugandan “Death for the gays” law.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…  

  7. How was the Grand Canyon formed?

    Did humanity coexist with dinosaurs?

    Is each and every person who does not comport with your beliefs damned for all eternity?

    1. I think the early is only 40 years old. People who say they’re over 40 are defiling God’s Truth.

      I just lost my pet dinosaur when they went extinct 8 years ago. That’s all I can say right now; I’m still choked up about it.

      The one omission from the Bible was that Cain not only committed fratricide, but also always tried to “split the bill” at dinner when he was the only one buying expensive alcoholic drinks — that really used to piss off me, Noah, and Moses. But we haven’t been out to dinner together in about 20 years, i.e., half the age of the earth ago.

      1. Dinosaurs aren’t extinct.  You and I are still around.  

        I love your split the bill analogy.  There is evil inherent in the human spirit!  It’s like my no good cousin Wendell trying to split the bar tab when I’m drinking What Jesus Would Drink, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and he’s drink some Overpriced Socialist Swill from Belgium.

            1. And don’t give me any of that “the earth has been around FIVE THOUSAND years” bullshit that BJ peddles. I’m more God-fearing than he because I believe in an EVEN YOUNGER earth, so hah!

    2. Erosion, probably. I’m not an expert but as I have said before, I’m not wedded to a young earth view, I just believe that life on earth is young.

      Possibly.

      No. It is my opinion that those who don’t place their faith in Jesus Christ will not be with him in heaven.

          1. … though the raptors ate the rest of the dinos before the 40th day, and as punishment the giraffes and other strong-legged animals used their powerful legs to kick the raptors off the boat, drowning the last living dinos. The flood waves were so powerful that they drained a huge portion of the radioactive carbon-14 of the drowning dinos’ bones — yielding the present mis-belief by scientists that those bones show millions of years of decay of that carbon isotope.

            (I’ve visited the Creation & Earth History Museum in Santee, CA; my explanation is about as solid as what you see there,)

    2. From dictionary.com:

      sciВ·ence

      -noun

      1.

      a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.

      2.

      systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.

      3.

      any of the branches of natural or physical science.

      4.

      systematized knowledge in general.

      5.

      knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

      6.

      a particular branch of knowledge.

      7.

      skill, esp. reflecting a precise application of facts or principles; proficiency.

      …note the example of “the mathematical sciences”. See, math is science. Key word in #2 is “experimentation”.

          2. Then why are you making erroneous pronouncements?

            Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.  That’s often credited to Abe Lincoln, a Republican.

            1. Obviously, as the context of my comment made clear, I do know the rough time frame. I couldn’t care less whether anyone on this site thinks me a fool; they’re going to think that regardless simply due to ideology.

              1. billions to thousands? 6 orders of magnitude?

                WTF are you smoking this weekend?

                You claim that math is the language of science, and you claim to be studying applied math, yet you discard the most basic scientific principles when it clashes with the bible: a book written by men, telling a story decades after it occurred, then translated from one language to another by other men centuries later.

                The principles at play were not even conceived by any of those men when the bible was written and translated.

                Wow.  

  9. Just figured I’d post a more thoughtful question than Blow Job’s “my Christianity is the Crusades b/c I really really want a holy war with Islam!”

    2. But excuse me if I’d rather ponder the deep questions of the universe. And please don’t slander me. I said the Crusades were an abuse of Christianity.

      1. that you would rather “ponder the deep questions of the universe.”  Rather you seem willing to burp up the latest thing, unquestioning, from Sean Hannity, Faux News or the ‘Discovery Institute.’

        That is not pondering–which means to question and consider.

      2. Kill the infidel.  Seize Jerusalem and massacre the Jews who have lived there for thousands of years, and the Muslims as well.

        The point is that if you want to defile Islam (and you desperately do) by citing the excesses of a minority of zealots, then you can’t ignore the massacres by Chreistian kings and knights acting with the blessing of the pope himself and literally (in their view) earning their way into heaven (by earning a plenary indulgence.)

        1. I believe the Crusades were an abuse of Christianity, and IIRC they weren’t even protestant. Show me where you find a mandate for the crusades in the Bible. It’s not there. Jihad is not the excess of a minority of zealots, it is a concept which appears over and over in the Qu’ran.

          1. Crusades were an abuse of Christianity, and IIRC they weren’t even protestant.

              Actually, there no protestants for about 15 centuries.  The Christian Church was fairly unified for that time and you can’t duck responsibility for it if you goal is to prove Islam is evil and Christianity is perfect, except of course for the excesses of those evil papists!

              Of course, there is no mandate for crusades in the Bible.  Indeed, if I am to believe you, the Bible is a biology textbook, solely devoted to establishing how life evolved without the aid of evolution and ultimately reached the peak of perfection, white, male, heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon Protestants of the fundamentalist persuasion.

               Give it up, boy.  

            1. I couldn’t do anything about the papists. Thank God for Martin Luther. I’m not talking about the histories of the religions, I’m talking about ideology, sacred texts, and current practices. Protestants (as pointed out elsewhere in this thread) include all races and all genders. You give it up, old man. 🙂

          1. Because “restoring honor” is an evil plot to exterminate Muslims. Riiiiiiiiight. Beck has more honor in his little pinky than you have in your whole body.

                    2. In fact, I cannot understand why so many of you (starting with SH, TLO*) keep biting into the bullshit sandwiches.

                      Just ignore it. There is no snark, no humour no…anything.

                      It’s just pointless.

                      Unless you can somehow bait bj into outing someone, other than himself, of course, that clearly was not enough.

                      *the lost one

                    4. A Bush appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights denounced allegations by some pundits that the Justice Department is refusing to pursue a voting rights case against members of the New Black Panther Party because of race, and suggested that the charges being made by right-wing figures are politically motivated.

                      Conservative broadcasters and websites have claimed that the Obama administration is dropping prosecution of New Black Panther activists who were videotaped outside a Philadelphia polling station on Election Day 2008, making intimidating remarks; one man was carrying a nightstick.

                      Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, the commission’s vice chair, Abigail Thernstrom, said, “We have no direct evidence that [the NBP activists] actually intimidated anybody, stopped them from voting.” Thernstrom even characterized the case, in a recent column published by the National Review, as “small potatoes.”

                      Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez testifying that the Bush Justice Department “determined that the facts did not constitute a prosecutable violation of the criminal statutes”; a civil lawsuit was filed in the last days of the Bush administration, and a judgment won by the Obama Justice Department in May 2009

                      http://www.cbsnews.com/stories…

                      The decision not to file a criminal case occurred before Obama was even in office.

                      This means that the case was downgraded to a civil case 11 days before Obama was inaugurated, 26 days before Eric Holder became attorney general, and about nine months before Thomas Perez was confirmed as head of the Civil Rights Division.

                      http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-t…  

                    6. I know, I know… ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ are on your side.  (As long as you don’t require, you know, facts and evidence).

                    10. He laughs at schmucks like bj wilson that actually believe the crap he has written for him, garbage he doesn’t believe himself.

                      Carnival hucksters like Beck owe their living to the rubes that literally shill for him, against their own best interests, too narrow to know it.

                      bjwilson is that demographic fox is targeting. Beck is the sales rep, bjwilson is the recepticle.

                      When you get to this point, it’s probably not productive to argue with a person like bj wilson, who’s now simply arguing for the sake of arguing. The proof is in the fact that he has no facts, denying and shifting, moving the goal posts. But he has received a lot of attention, and I suppose in his eyes, his being humiliated is better than being ignored.

                      It’s now a waste of time.

                      Bjwilson is incorrigable.  

  10. As long as we can deny science and make up timetables: I think pregnancy isn’t 9 months, it’s 1 month. The first 8 months, the woman is just getting bigger to make room for a whole baby to be placed in the womb, fully formed, by God. Ultrasounds are just pictures of the baby developing in heaven. So it’s not abortion until 1 month before birth; earlier abortions are just expulsions of tissue that God makes look like a baby just to fool us — just like how he places fossils in the ground to fool us and test our faith.

    1. I agree. And despite all claims to the contrary, the fossil record does not match up with evolution. It baffles me why otherwise smart professors are willing to be complete buffoons in defending this. Where’s your missing link? And even if you had a credible one, why aren’t there millions of fossils? And why did you have to invent the “Cambrian explosion”, i.e. creation? The fossil record shows that species have remain unchanged from the beginning, other than minor variations in size.

      2. You want a halfway creature between the ape and intelligence man?  Look in the mirror!

        (and good luck explaining all those millions of fossilised species in a creation that took only six days.  That’s a lot of experiments gone wrong, kid!

                1. Your God didn’t get around to creating the sun on the fourth day.  So, the plants would not have performed photosynethesis until that day.  The poor old animals must have been mighty hungry until your “intelligent designer” fixed that little flaw.

                    Genesis is poetry.  Evolution is fact.

                  Deal with it.

                  1. Read your Bible. On what day did God create plants? On what day did he create animals? Now which is greater, 3 or 5? Also, when was light created? Answer: the very first day. Not the fourth day. Genesis is logically consistent. Deal with it.

                    1. Have you read Genesis 1 and Genesis 2?  They have different orders for when living things were created.  Which one’s right?  

    1. and I’m sure I will be again.

      Evolution, under the scientific method, will never be a proven fact, only the theory that has survived repeated testing to date and seems to fit the available data.

      If you are a philosopher of science, you cannot discount other possibilities – including that in which a Creator has come along and futzed around with things to the extent that the available data is “just to test our faith” and leads us to false conclusions.  But someone who respects the scientific method must also accept that the theory of evolution appears to be valid.

      Like so many other things, the only reason evolution is controversial is that it refutes a literally divine Bible.  Christians who believe the Bible to be merely inspired by God, but written by Man and containing Man’s errors, omissions and embellishments can freely accept that evolution and God are not mutually exclusive.

      1. Christians who believe the Bible to be merely inspired by God, but written by Man and containing Man’s errors, omissions and embellishments can freely accept that evolution and God are not mutually exclusive.

      2. Anybody who speaks a second language understand that some words and ideas cannot be perfectly translated.

        Beej, Caveman doesn’t count as a second language.

      4. A philosopher of science will reject an explanation like “Creator has come along and futzed around with things” because it is a supernatural, not a scientific explanation.

        Evolution is both a theory and a fact.  It is a theory to the extent that it organizes biological knowledge and makes predictions about the state of the world, both as it existed in the past, as it functions today, and how it will operate in the future.  It is thus a testable theory:  if a fact about the world (past, present, or future) is discovered that contradicts the theory of evolution, the theory of evolution will fail.

        Evolution is also, simply, a fact.  It is observable that organisms have changed form and that new species have appeared, and continue to appear, by the accretion of changes in response to selective pressure.

        1. I said possibility.  As a scientist or a philosopher, or a philosopher of science, I cannot discount the possibility of a Creator – I can only assert that She is beyond my current capability to form a scientific test by which I can test a hypothesis, and so my hypothesis is not scientific in nature.

    2. but it does say a baby is a life in the womb. The typical verse in support of this is:

      “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” – Psalm 139:13-16

      There’s plenty of others though, check out this website:

      http://www.dougbrittonbooks.co…

      Actually, there is one here that refers to conception:

         Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you (Isaiah 46:3-4).

      Other good ones – would God “uphold” or “know” a non living lump?

         Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God (Psalm 22:9-10).

      The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;  I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:4-5).

         This is what the LORD says-he who made you, who formed you in the womb, and who will help you…(Isaiah 44:2).

      2. That seems to me to suggest that life begins before conception. The old “twinkle in dad’s eye” theory.

        By this reasoning, not having sex when you could be having sex is murder.

          1. The soul by your own admission and by that of the Bible exists outside of the body before there is a body (and after).  When it enters the body is not specified.  Does the soul await the formation of the body in the womb before entering?  How long?

            1. I wasn’t around for the first two, so I don’t know when.

              I know approximately when she had her first dream about our third in which she appeared as a person (with what later developed into her actual personality), and it was sometime early in the second trimester.  

              I’m not going to try to extrapolate that past her personal experience or insist that others accept it as evidence of anything.  It worked for her.

              2. because that’s the kind of experience that illustrates how personal, and how far beyond the ability of the law to define it, the moment is.

                I believe viability is the best way to make such a thing law.

      3. … are that these aren’t that clear. They all speak of the soul. They don’t speak of the moment at which the soul and body become one, and most traditions I know of assigned that moment to birth.

        For example, that very first quote from Psalm 13, praises God for the ingenuity of His creations, here focusing on the body. (Something worthy of praise indeed – how a cluster of cells turns into something as complex as a human being, or even a microscopic organism really, is really breathtaking when one spends some time reflecting on it.) But it doesn’t really speak to “life.” The same could be said of the Isaiah verse.

        Psalm 22’s verse is more praise of God, saying it’s “from birth and his mother’s womb that He has been David’s God. And Jeremiah was marked before he was conceived – he’s speaking about his soul, which was around before he had a body to occupy.

          1. I talked to him and knew he was a boy.  I had no doubt whatsoever that he was a human being with a soul and his own life within 2 weeks of conception.

            Several years later, I was pregnant again.  I felt nothing.  I never had any sense of another human being inside my body.  At 12 weeks, I had a miscarriage.

            These were my babies and I had some feeling that I couldn’t explain about their existence.  During and after my first pregnancy, I couldn’t understand how anyone could deny that there’s a baby there from very soon after conception.  After my miscarriage, I did understand.  Not every baby has life in the womb.  My second one never did.  And only I knew that.  The government didn’t, BJ didn’t, none of you did.  Only I knew that, which is why I decided that we must leave decisions regarding the unborn baby up to the woman who is carrying it.

            BJ, there was nothing I could have done to give that second baby life, and believe me, I wanted that baby.  But there also was nothing I could have done that would have killed that baby, because it was never really alive.  Do you understand that?  By your beliefs, at the moment of conception God formed a lifeless lump in my womb.  And that lifeless lump had more rights than I did?

        2. and beyond the scope of random chance, in my opinion. Yes, the verses don’t mention conception, but it seems clear that God refers to people “in the womb” as being alive.

          1. as saying that they’re alive from conception to birth. Clearly they’re alive by the third trimester, in that they can survive out of the womb (albeit with lots of medical care, if you’re talking about weeks 28-34 – thanks, science!). But it’s a leap of faith, not logic, to extend it to the entire nine month time period.

            And you can decide that it’s beyond chance – that’s not what we’re debating, however.

            1. I don’t see any moment in the womb where one second the baby isn’t living, and the next it is. Unless you want to fudge on what it means to be alive and claim that you can be “half-alive”?

      4. Do the words “conception”, “know”, “create”, and “womb” translate directly? Do the meanings or nuances change depending on the language or version? I’m not a language expert but as usual I doubt it’s quite as black and white as Beej believes.

        And this passage:

        I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.

        “Secret place”? “Depths of the earth”? How is this about conception happening in the womb?

  14. Voyageur, I love your “take it from the other direction” approach.  I will be using that often.

    3-Explain why rapists have the right to force their victims to carry the fetus of said baby to term.

    Very powerful!

    Explain why a fully formed human being is created the instant a sperm enters the egg

    Because God wants it to be is not an answer since according to Women’s Health…

    It is possible that as many as 50% of pregnancies miscarry before implantation in the womb occurs. Early after implantation, pregnancy loss rate is about 30% (i.e. this is still before a pregnancy is clinically recognized). After a pregnancy may be clinically recognized (between days 35-50), about 25% will end in miscarriage.

    This means out of 100 fertilizations, 50 will not attach to the womb.  Out of those 50, 15 will be lost early due to whatever. Out of the 35 left about 9 will end in miscarriage, leaving 26 out of 100 fertilizations result in a pregnancy, if my math is correct.

    So obviously, God doesn’t want all fertilizations to end up as human.

          1. I’m, pro choice and pro capital punishment, a thoroughly densible position.  Pro-life, anti-capital punishment is also defensible from a consistency viewpoint.

              I do admit I can’t quite understand the logic of peoploe who passionately defend a pro-choice stance on abortion while denouncing capital punishment.  The notion that it’s ok to take (pre-conscious but obviously innocent) life but not the guilty strikes me as astoundingly inconsistent.

      2. under carefully prescribed conditions, as I noted above, and which you quickly misunderstood.

        It may still be wrong to take an innocent human life (I certainly think it is abhorrent, as I stated clearly above). But in certain situations, our society has chosen not to prosecute. For example, when innocent people are killed during the “normal” execution of war activities, the soldiers who are responsible are not prosecuted for murder.

        1. and thankfully in our country they volunteer. Also, wars should be justified by some greater good, such as preserving liberty or preventing a greater evil (like Hitler). Abortions of convenience hardly compare. To save the life of the mother, yes that might be a greater good.

                1. Having been in the United States Military, I feel confident in saying I’m sure you’ll never put yourself in the position of proving that statement.

                    1. That would make Tom Tancredo his role model. or bothways beauprez. How about billy owens. No, wait, Cheney. What was that, 5 deferments for shooter?

                      Always the same with these guys, bj included. So patriotic, so passionate for shit they have no intention of being part of.

                      So mouthy, so gung ho, so “USA, USA”, as long as they aren’t the guy taking the plunge, from recruit to boot to school to the shit, back to the world, where it took a Democratic CIC, Senate and Congress to fix a VA system that bj’s republican heroes tried mightily to dismantle, all while screaming “freedom fries”, accusing combat veterans of treason, and outing U.S. covert operatives

                      There’s plenty of bloggers here that have elequently detailed the struggles of the VA under Bush. One need only read SSG Dan to get an idea.

                      Anyway, chickenhawk it is bj, get used to your new handle.

                         

          2. I did, but back in the day the draft was a real thing.  And without the draft, I wouldn’t have volunteered — my logic was that if I had to go, I wanted to have a little control over my circumstances.  

                    1. Same with my dad.

                      But in that case, we were facing a world war, and the death toll could have been much worse if we didn’t send soldiers to stop Hitler.

                      Actually he was Vietnam, IIRC.

                      Hitler, the Domino theory, ‘yellow cake.’  It’s all the same, right, killing becomes approved and thus OK?  

                    4. Stopping him, “if he had a nuclear bomb”, wouldn’t have been anything you took part in!

                  2. Might want to google the Stolen Valor Act for that one!

                    For future use….most people know, U.S. involvement in the Second World War was from 07dec41 to Sept. ’45. Vietnam involvement was 20 years later.

  15. “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

      1. and that got almost 200 comments – over 100 in the first day.

        Not complaining, because it wasn’t one of my better written ones, but the FPE’s need to keep it consistent.

      2. and that got almost 200 comments – over 100 in the first day.

        Not complaining, because it wasn’t one of my better written ones, but the FPE’s need to keep it consistent.

        1. There have been several, and another may have preempted yours, Ari.  But with four of us acting independently, consistentency may be too much to ask for.

  17. Is the only way to continue the circular logic – endless views cultivated by rhetorical in-breeding from those claiming to be “social conservatives”.

    1) Why does the fetus faction choose to support an unborn fetus, but generally supports the death penalty and glorify deaths in war.

    2) How does social conservatism – political ideology – relate to scientific reasearch? Maybe the writer still believes Archangel Michael planted dinosaur bones to test our faith in God, promoted by the “Flat Earth Society”. Moving on…

    3) Why do social conservatives have a difficult time separating Church and State in political threads? But then again, extremism and reactionary impulses have no end to it’s boundaries for justifying hate and bigotry. Actions speak louder than labels. In otherwords, I can myself the Queen of England – and believe it to be so – but that doesn’t made me one.

    Regards,

    The Queen

  18. I’ll be back later to answer more comments; it’s hard to keep up. It would be helpful if there were one or two other social conservatives responding, but alas, I’m the only bastion of common sense around here. 🙂

      1. is that crazy is in the eye of the beholder. It’s amazing the difference in reactions I get when I post here as opposed to, say, facebook or PPC.

        1. You’re probably dealing with a broader cross-section of American society here than with your friends at FB, most of whom I’m wagering share your beliefs.

          What’s PPC? Google gives me a whole lot of different meanings for that one.

          1. No my friend, I am dealing with the far left of the far left over here. Only square state is worse. PPC = People’s Press Collective, the right wing equivalent of Pols.

            1. … like Voyageur? He’s so “far left” that we was a Republican until about a year ago! Or Phoenix Rising, another former Republican. Or me, who’s never registered Democratic or done anything to get one elected (outside of voting and the occasional modest donation)?

              “Perception is reality” but your perception is distorted by your bias.

  19. Your questions are so stupidly slanted, biased and unintelligible that I’m surprised ColoradoPols even gave you the courtesy of front page space. I question whether you “really want to know” anything in the world that does not fit within your narrowly circumscribed world view.

    But sure, what the hey, it’s a Friday afternoon. Here goes:

    1. There may be a few, extremely, extremely limited situations where taking the life of a living baby would be justified. The only ones I can think of is where the baby has been born with an unquestionably and quickly terminal condition AND is in extreme, severe pain. In such cases I could imagine doctors and parents making the unbelievably heartbreaking decision to administer morphine or do something else to mercifully bring the child’s life to an end. I would imagine that would be the hardest decision any parent could ever have to make. And the above is just my personal feeling; I’m not even sure if the current laws would allow such action.

    Now if on the other hand you are asking something about abortion, you need to ask another question.

    2. Evolution is not a hypothesis. There are many, many articles and books discussing the facts supporting evolution. Here is one tiny example: http://news.nationalgeographic…

    That being said, you are free to believe that Jesus rode on a dinosaur. It’s a free country.

    3. This is a “when did you stop beating your wife” question. Some Islamic values are tolerant and some are not, just as some who profess Christianity are unbelievably barbaric and most, thankfully, are not.

    But your question was “how.” I think most of us can agree that those who murder doctors or blow up buildings in the name of Christianity or Islam are barbarous, while both Christians and Muslims who tolerate other faiths are, um, tolerant.  

    1. That would have made a great triumphal entry.

      1) But that would be done for the good of the baby, not for the convenience of the mother.

      2) Evolution is a hypothesis. It is not testable.

      3) See posts above. Many things found in Islam are not found in Christianity. I agree on the “how”, it’s just there’s a lot more Jihadists trying to murder people and blow up building than Christians trying to do so. In fact, there are virtually no Christians trying to do so.

  20. “How Islamic values are tolerant and Judeo-Christian values are barbaric?”

    Neither “Islamic values” nor “Judeo-Christian values” are coherent concepts.  There are many versions of each.

    The values of Muslims in Lahore’s establishment are not the values of Muslims who are Taliban leaders a day’s drive away in Northwestern Pakistan.

    The values of Reform Jews in Denver are not the values of Hassidic Jews in Tel Aviv, and the values of Christians at the United Church of Christ in Vermont, are not the values of the Christians in an Assembly of God church in Oklahoma.

    Anglican communion denominations in Africa are much less tolerant than Episcopalians who are the American wing of the same denomination.  The Missouri Synod Lutheran church a block East of Washington Park is less tolerant of gays and lesbians than the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American a block West of Washington Park, but have done more to be welcoming for deaf Christians.

    Religious texts like the Quran, the Torah and the Gospels do not obviously translate into either values or ways of life.  They provide a shared point of departure for people who call themselves Muslims, Jews and Christians respectively, but they take their meaning in the context of a society and a tradition.  

    You wouldn’t know from reading the Torah alone that Jews don’t practice animal sacrifice, could inaccurately assume from reading the Quran that genies have a much greater role in the Islamic faith than they do, and might mistakenly guess from reading the Gospels the Christians are predominantly radical Marxists who don’t believe in private property.

    Around 800 CE, the Islamic empire was much more tolerant than any of the Christian successor principalities to the Roman Empire, but was probably less tolerant than the Christian community of Southern India.  Today, every major faith has more and less tolerant communities, although only the intolerant ones make the papers.

    There are Christians who still burn witches in Nigeria.  There are Muslims who stone people who aren’t even married for adultery in Northern Afghanistan.  An absurdly high proportion of Jews in the world are Yankee fans.

    There is no point in talking about some hypothetical “average” or “typical” Muslim or Christian or Jew, because those people exist only in statistical reports, not in real life.

    2. and to a large degree is focused on destroying America. We have to defend against it. Is this not the point of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

      1. that didn’t exist, and then to create a functioning civilian government after having removed the previous one.  Radical Islamic terrorism never had anything to do with Iraq and wasn’t found there until we put it there.

        Shutting down a terrorist organization based in Afghanistan, because the Taliban government that ruled most of the then civil war torn country had failed to do so, was the motive for the Afghan War.  But, it was never a war against “Islam” and indeed, the

        U.S. supported a new Afghan constitution that made Islam the established religion of the country and gave Islamic religious law the same status that the Constitution has in the law of the United States and provided for clergy to sit together with lawyers as judges in Afghan courts.

        The U.S. supported Iraqi constitution also gave Islamic law a privileged place in the Iraqi legal system, although it did not provide for clerics to sit as judges in national courts.

        Presumably, the U.S. approach would have been similar if the terrorists were communists (as there were in the 1970s in Afghanistan).

      2. American is way down the list of targets in the world of radical Islamic terrorism.

        A fair amount of radical Islamic terrorism is focused on destroying Israel.  A fair amount of radical Islamic terrorism is focused on replacing Western style parliamentary systems with Islamic theocracies.  A fair amount of radical Islamic terrorism is devoted to wresting control of areas with large Muslim populations from India (India also has a lot of Maoist terrorism and Hindu supremacist terrorism).  A fair amount of radical Islamic terrorism is calculated to led to “ethnic cleansing” in places like Bosnia and across the African Sahel.

        The share of radical Islamic terrorism directed at the U.S. is smaller than the share directed at the U.K. or Germany (which have proportionately larger and more radicalized Muslim populations), and only a little greater than that directed at Sweden’s population of editorial cartoonists.  Radical Islamic terrorism is positively epidemic compared to that of the U.S. in places like the Philippines and Somolia, where that has not spilled over into anti-U.S. actions despite U.S. military aid provided to fight them.

        It also isn’t just support for Israel that draws the attention of radical Islamic terrorists.  U.S. support for repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt also foments a lot of the anti-American sentiment among radical Islamic terrorists.

  21. 1. Is it your position that from the moment of egg fertilization the zygote is a “baby,” and the zygote’s existence cannot be terminated even in the case of rape or incest, and if the life of the mother is at stake, the zygote has equal right to exist as the mother so therefore the mother must be left to fate? If not, please explain.

    2. Is it your position that there is no such thing as evolution, and if so please provide a brief description of your hypothesis as to natural history.

    3. Assuming you believe the New York (“Ground Zero”) mosque should be prohibited by the government, please explain how your view comports with the First Amendment and property rights.  

    1. 1) The baby has as much right to exist as the mother if her life is not in danger. If her life is in danger, obviously everything must be done to preserve both lives, but I can’t say that the baby has more right to live than the mother.

      2) God created the earth, and life.

      3) I do not believe that.

      1. for the definitive answer to natural history, complete with a theory, tests to prove or disprove it, data from those tests, and analysis that supports it.

        PS – saying God did it says nothing against evolution.

  22. is this: I believe unwanted pregnancies, the number one cause of abortion, would be drastically reduced if realistic sex education were mandatory in our schools. And mandatory sex education would be that which approached the topic from the assumption that many of the kids will become sexually active before they graduate high school.

    Starting from such a point, sex education can cover many different approaches, including but not limited to abstinence, proper condom usage, birth control, the morning-after pill and abortion; but the emphasis would be on prevention.

    If girls and women don’t get pregnant when they aren’t ready, they won’t get abortions.

    3. by implicitly condoning it among teens who might not otherwise be sexually active. Parents should educate their kids when they reach an appropriate age, which may be different for different kids.

      1. Especially since a LOT of parents are negligent in their duty here. And studies (which I’ll have to find) show no increase in sexual activity among teens who DO receive this kind of education then those who don’t.

        Unplanned pregnancies impact all of society in highly negative ways. If they don’t lead to abortion, then they lead to a perpetuated cycle of poverty (since the likelihood of teen pregnancy goes up as income levels go down), impacting us in places like schooling (unwed teen mothers are more likely to drop out), social stability (the dads are a lot more likely to split the scene, and if they pay child support, they come from the same underprivileged background and have little to contribute), health care (there are good programs out there, but obviously fewer poor children would mean less need for taxpayers to fund them), and the increased chances that these kids will be teen parents themselves.

        I’ll do some research and try to find that study.

        1. He was talking about the middle school in Denver handing out condoms the other day and apparently there are studies showing that it does increase sexual activity. You’d have to ask him for the link though.

          I think we can all agree that teenage pregnancies are a bad thing.

          2. It’s your right to go with your beliefs when practicing your religion, but not when debating cause and effect of policy.

            I have two requests:

            One, read my links (none are long by themselves, but the one showing abstinence-only’s failure includes a link to a 25 page .pdf compiling the data proving their case).

            Two, pardon me if I completely disregard Caplis. If you can’t share a link, I’m not going to look for one from such a suspect source. (That rule about news sources being okay but commentary sources being too slanted and agenda-oriented to be trusted.)

          1. as it shows that, during the 2000s (when Bush pushed abstinence-only) – and, it must be emphasized, after a long trend of declining teen pregnancy – that trend reversed itself and we got an increase of BOTH pregnancies carried to term AND abortions among teens.

            http://www.guttmacher.org/medi…

      1. they prove de-volution.  From Striped sox to John Elway and back to utter mediocrity (with a born again 3rd string quarterback) is just 50 years.  I guess the phrase is regression to the mean.

    4. would design our bodies so that the amusement park and the sewage treatment plant share the same space?

      Or, why did the intelligent designer get dolphins right by separating breathing and eating, but we get stuck with a choke-prone, double duty combination eating and breathing passageway?

      And, since there appear to be many, many different “designs”, why doesn’t that “prove” the existence of many, many “designers”?

  24. A book by J.B. Phillips. It’s a classic BJ and one I highly recommend you and others read (only 140 pages).  Arguing with you on Pols is not going to change your mind about abortion (and other issues), but it might prod you to be more tolerant of those that differ.

    P.S.  You will have to order it through your favorite bookstore, Amazon.Com, etc.  The paperback version is less than $10.

  25. For anybody to absorb the ass kicking by these posters that this “bjwilson” character has is…..well……..a real head scratcher.

    Time and time this guy’s been body slammed, crushed, decleated, nuked, face planted by actual experts in religion, biology, economics, geology, on and on.

    Time and again he simply denies facts, data, anything that conflicts with his narrow viewpoints, and comes back with sophmoric taunts.

    I’m actually almost embarrassed for him…well, not really. He’s definately asked for every knockout he’s absorbed.

    Facts never trump ideology with bj wilson. It’s maddening. It makes it difficult to read the intelligent posts here, as he hijacks great threads with this bullshit and these nonsensical right wing talking points, most of which have been debunked before the guy gets to his computer to write them.

    He changes the subject, avoids the point, skirts the issue like my daughter did when she was 9. But she grew out of it. He never seems to realize how childish he comes off as.

    I can think of only two reasons for anybody to put themself through the humiliation bjwilson sets himself up for.

    Either it’s the negative attention’s better than no attention syndrome, or somebody’s payin’ him a bunch of money to prostrate himself like this for some reason.

    The definition of insanity is doing the same thing that got your ass kicked the first time, again, and again and again, expecting to somehow change the outcome.

    And then I realize it…I posted on his thread. For him, in his mind, it’s a win.

    I guess ya got me.

    1. I’ve been around these sort of debates for a long time and I know have the facts and evidence on my side. I’m not getting paid for this; I enjoy discussing the issues and enlightening lefties. Indeed. Got ya.

      1. Um… that’s not in evidence here. You have FAITH, but it hasn’t served you well in the debate. Unless you have the kinds of “preconceived biases” you keep saying that scientists have, I don’t think there’s a single point on which you’ve prevailed.

        Well, maybe that’s why the other conservatives haven’t come to your aid so far. H-man at least has been active all day. We’ll see if Barron tries to make a contribution (and I don’t mean one of his angry rants which he’s often posted when discussing abortion).

        1. Of course YOU don’t think I’ve prevailed on any points, that’s not the point. As for the other conservatives, I suspect they have more important things to do than indulging in my philosophizing. Like, you know, actually winning elections.

              2. … the one where you claim I defended al Quada but couldn’t parse out how?

                Or the one where you said you took science courses (of complexity greater than 100 level) but only named math, which isn’t science?

  26. For anybody to absorb the ass kicking by these posters that this “bjwilson” character has is…..well……..a real head scratcher.

    Time and time this guy’s been body slammed, crushed, decleated, nuked, face planted by actual experts in religion, biology, economics, geology, on and on.

    Time and again he simply denies facts, data, anything that conflicts with his narrow viewpoints, and comes back with sophmoric taunts.

    I’m actually almost embarrassed for him…well, not really. He’s definately asked for every knockout he’s absorbed.

    Facts never trump ideology with bj wilson. It’s maddening. It makes it difficult to read the intelligent posts here, as he hijacks great threads with this bullshit and these nonsensical right wing talking points, most of which have been debunked before the guy gets to his computer to write them.

    He changes the subject, avoids the point, skirts the issue like my daughter did when she was 9. But she grew out of it. He never seems to realize how childish he comes off as.

    I can think of only two reasons for anybody to put themself through the humiliation bjwilson sets himself up for.

    Either it’s the negative attention’s better than no attention syndrome, or somebody’s payin’ him a bunch of money to prostrate himself like this for some reason.

    The definition of insanity is doing the same thing that got your ass kicked the first time, again, and again and again, expecting to somehow change the outcome.

    And then I realize it…I posted on his thread. For him, in his mind, it’s a win.

    I guess ya got me.

      1. in which Rocky lost but declared himself the winner.

        I can see the TV movie now on the CBN network: “I Win Because All THEY Have Are Facts: The BJ Wilson Story.”

          1. … is that you falsely claim I took out of context these dishonest stupidities, yet you still stand by them:

            * denying evolution, and even the existence of Neanderthals;

            * claiming the imposition of a minimum for health benefits creates “death panels,” on the laughable misunderstanding that imposing a minimum somehow precludes greater benefits;

            * insulting Islam as inherently disrespecting life from the beginning (i.e., not just Wahabism or other extremist forms)

            * insulting Judaism by denying that it had education

            For your own edification, BJ, claiming your embarassingly dumb statements were “out of context” is the oldest political cliche in the book, a never-convincing way to walk away from your own words.  And again: there’s just no way to deny as “out of context” statements that you still stand by!  And let me close by noting that under your own fundamentalist version of Christianity, Jesus would throw you into a low level of hell for being a pathological liar.

  27. This is an article that appeared in 5280 in June/July2003. It is a history of the Imam that first espoused Jihad and the Origins of his hate for America. it is an interesting read filled with historical fact.

    Please do not reply until you have actually read the article. As once you have read the article you can tell me where Sayyid Qutb studied. granted that is in the very first paragraph but you should be able to not half ass it… (if only so we can start to argue from the same place of understanding.)

    http://www.5280.com/issues/200…

    I contend that as the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths draw from one another they actually share

    1)a common God

    2) the same values as the one or two previous

    3)and that it is the murderous thugs that Hijack each religion to express (and carry out) their Hate.

    All three proclaim to be the one true religion. yet each uses the one previous.

    this exploration through religion also mirrors evolution. but that is a grad level ponderance.

  28. Strawman #1:  An embryo is not a “baby”.  Neither is a fetus or a blastocyst.

    Strawman #1:  Nobody knowledgeable in the subject claims that evolution is a “scientifically provable hypothesis”.  They simply acknowledge that it’s the basis of modern biology and that there is no theory that is competitive with evolution from a scientific standpoint.

    Strawman #3:  I’ve never even heard anybody in US politics describe Islamic values as “tolerant” and Judeo-Christian values as “barbaric”, so this strawman doesn’t even merit a response.

    1. You have two strawman #1’s. 🙂

      1) Ah but it is.

      2) Actually, I have heard many times that is a “scientifically provable hypothesis” from so called experts. In fact, you as good as just said it in the next sentence. Evolution is not a scientific theory. It is untestable, and therefore does not follow the scientific method. It is a worldview just like creation.

      3) That comes from ColoradoPols. It’s what everybody kept telling me.

      1. The Theory of Evolution: a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations… (Miriam-Webster, used by Conservapedia)

        This matches the requirements of a basic scientific hypothesis.  Under the scientific method (which, if you are an applied math major working with the sciences you should either know or be fired for not knowing), the next step after formulating a hypothesis is testing.

        Perhaps the most observable test of this hypothesis would be to observe the evolution of multiple generations of an organism, and if possible to set up a condition where the natural selection process can be reproduced by other scientists.  dlof above links to a test involving E. coli which fulfills this experiment, and it matches the expected results.  Other observations on more complex animals include an extension of Darwin’s finch observations where populations of birds on islands have actually been observed diverging from a common ancestor.

        Those tests (which apparently you don’t think exist) cover micro-evolution and the beginnings of macro-evolution.  At the other end, we expect to find a progression of species diversification and advancement in the fossil record.  Though the record cannot be complete, scientists have in fact found such a progression, including transitional plants and creatures that are predicted by the theory.

        So, having designed several scientific experiments for which data has been collected, we apply the scientific method to the results and find that our tests have not been able to disprove the theory, and in fact the theory (or something so close as to be indistinguishable for the experiment) was observed in action in various tests.

        Being the scientific method, the results were published and reviewed by other scientists and found to be scientifically sound tests, and knowledge was spread.  New tests were setup up, the process was repeated, and so on.

        Looks like a testable hypothesis to me.

        1. It’s simply not possible to set up an experiment that lasts millions of years. And if it were, it wouldn’t matter to us because we’d be long dead by the time it finished.

          We find no such thing in the fossil record.

          1. is a test of evolution.  And evolution passes.

            An experiment is not merely something that can be observed by humans at every moment of the experiment.  Sometimes nature provides the experiment.  For example, what happens when a primitive group of organisms is isolated on an island-continent for millions of years…

                  1. The fossil record is evidence, from which hypotheses can be drawn, but since the records are not something that we can repeat, we cannot call them an experiment, and their study is outside the scientific method (in a vacuum).

                    They do provide compelling evidence that evolutionary processes are at work, but they do not answer any questions definitively.

                    That whole repeatability thing is the sticking point in almost every theory’s general adoption.  You’ll find a huge range of generally accepted scientific theories which are still unproven (due to their nature as unrepeatable), though supported by evidence, the big bang – which is not evolution, BJ – is a great example, quantum theory as well.

                    BJ, I will challenge you to find any scientific theory in the modern age which has been in existence, and generally accepted, for as long as Darwin’s theory, without being disproved using scientific methods.

                    1. The (scientific version of the) Theory of Evolution encompasses and generates numerous hypotheses, many of which are falsifiable and testable within the lifetime of a fruitfly. Many more are testable within the time span of 100 fruitfly generations. Many more are testable within the career of a scientist.

                      This is true of all scientific theories.

                      Thus, the Theory of Evolution is scientific and is testable (of its component hypotheses).

                      Your claim, dlof, would invalidate geology, astronomy, paleontology, etc from the realm of study using “the” scientific method. In fact, all of these are sciences.

                    2. However, we are getting into a realm of dispute about what is science, and what is not. Geology, and paleontology, are good examples.  They differ from other fields of study, physics and chemistry, e.g., in that you cannot perform repeatable, empirical, experiments to test hypotheses.

                      The Theory of Evolution is NOT testable.  There is a great deal of evidence supporting it, but I challenge you to devise an experiment by which a species may evolve from an ancestor species.

                      The key for you to look for is the word “theory” which indicates that is is an unproven hypothesis.  This is opposed to things like, say the 0th law of thermodynamics, which was a theory until it was tested and proved to be true.

                      Finally, BJ’s off his rocker here about the claim that evolution is not an accurate description of speciation, but he’s not wrong that we have no means of empirically testing and reproducing it.  

                      It’s debatable if we should consider geology, paleontology, and other observational (vs. experimental) fields of study sciences, in the strictest sense of the word.

                      < promises not to comment on this diary again >

                    3. I am only commenting in the diary, yet again, because you have said something that is entirely wrong.

                      First, there is not a single scientific theory that is testable.

                      A scientific theory is NOT an unproven hypothesis. (BTW, there is no such thing as a proven scientific hypothesis – hypotheses may be falsified, or not yet falsified, but they are never proven.)

                      A scientific theory is an explanation for natural phenomena. A scientific theory incorporates and links numerous facts, hypotheses, laws, other observations, some bits of speculation, etc.

                      The scientific endeavor is not limited to lab bench experiments that can be performed in high school classes. It is much more grand than that. Some aspects of science incorporate “natural” experiments – those that have happened in nature but lack controls on some other factors of interest. For example, a lava flow is a natural experiment in which one can compare rates of species colonization on bare substrate to the rates in an area with a developed soil.

                    4. Theory does not mean “unproven hypothesis.”

                      Your demand that evolution can only be proved by an “experiment” that shows a species evolving into another species in an observable lifetime is ridiculous.  All scientific evidence points to such macroevolution as a fact, not a theory–unless you believe, perhaps, that life is only 10,000 years old.  

                    5. Hypothesis:  Fossils of a particular morphology will be found in strata of a particular age.

                      Null hypothesis:  Such fossils will not be found in earlier strata.

                      See?  Experiment regarding evolution that entails examination of things as they are.

                      It is repeatable, because anyone can go and do the same experiment.

                      The problem is that you misapprehend what “repeatability” means in the context of experimentation.

                    6. You’re arguing with a freakin’ idiot.

                      If you win, all it means is that you’re smarter than a freakin’ idiot.

                      BJ has been schooled 100 times in this thread.  He’s too stupid, too arrogant, or both,  to know it.

                      Be my guest and school him one more time.  He’ll still be too stupid and/or arrogant to know it.

                    7. I will post one more time.  THIS is a reasonable argument.  The question about what constitutes science, and how the scientific method can be applied outside the laboratory, and controlled circumstances, is an interesting one.

                      We obviously disagree about what constitutes an experiment, and what control and repeatability mean, but that’s fine, and really debatable.

                      This is a debate that takes place in many an academic setting, and if we think Colorado Politics can get rough, you should see politics in academic departments.

                      Now, no mas (and thanks for the disagreement, more entertaining than arguing about abortion being bad).

          2. Macro evolution is, roughly, the study of species differentiation, while micro is the study of mutation within a species.  Many tests have been performed toward this end.

            Scientists have been able to create reproductive separation (both selective and viability) of both plants and animals (typically insects); reproductive separation is one of the traditional ways of defining species.  (E.g. there are 5 varieties of Dark-Eyed Junco; in my lifetime they were considered separate species, but have been found inter-breeding regularly and so have been combined into one species; contrast this to many orchids, which can be hybridized but normally are found only pollinating their own species.)

            Scientists have also been able to confirm the origin of several species of Brassica (lettuces, broccoli, etc.) as being hybrids of other Brassica species; they can be hybridized and are fertile, but do not normally cross-pollinate.

            And, finally, scientists have observed a small number of cases of organisms (algae and bacteria) changing so drastically in response to an outside stimulus (usually introduction of a predator species) that they not only evolved into a new species, but also into a new family of organisms.  (The algae actually evolved from a single-celled organism into a colonial multi-celled organism…)

            In the fossil record, it’s only been since the late 1970’s that species-to-species transitions have been documented from the fossil record (for lack of enough specimens, and for lack of manpower – sorting through hundreds of specimens embedded in rock is time-consuming).  Some of the best work comes from Wyoming, where a large deposit of mammal fossils is being systematically analyzed.  Paleontologists have documented species-to-species and genus-to-genus transitions in rabbits, horses, and other animals in the fossil record.  I know you disparaged it earlier, but TalkOrigins has a nicely compiled list (with references) of transitional fossils on record; Part 2 includes a number of species-to-species smooth transition studies.

    1. that’s 100 from Beej spouting his snake-handling stupidities and 200 from us laughing at him.  Hey, I had fun.  In his masochistic way, he probably did too.

      1. I’m not laughing at him (I’ve decided I’m going to try to handle myself differently here), but I am trying to point out the problems with his beliefs, particularly about science and law and what they have to say about a lot of this stuff.

        1. I know, lots of people on this blog weren’t looking for a religious debate.  That’s why it’s a separate diary, folks – you don’t want to watch it, don’t.  There are plenty of other diaries to keep you entertained; at least the debate was pretty contained to this diary.

          And I’m not laughing at BJ, either.  His debating technique needs some refinement, but he’s a fine student (and example) of modern conservative Republican thinking.  It’s good to know the reasoning (or what passes for it) of one’s opponents in the political game, and this kind of discussion airs some of those.  (Of course, I could have gone to any of a half-dozen conservative anti-evolution sites and gotten the same stuff, but not the back-and-forth responses…)

          As BJ notes himself, this will clarify things for later.  For example, I know now not only that BJ relies solely his faith to determine his position on abortion, but also that either his faith or his politics prevent him from considering that evolution is even a scientific hypothesis, or testable.  How this makes him an acceptable partner in any controversial field of scientific exploration (e.g. climate change) is beyond me; one might hope that others involved in his projects would double-check his work if he opposes the point of the research.

          1. Now you believe evolution is testable? Please explain, how might one go about testing it? I suppose you could watch a rock for awhile; I doubt it would turn into anything else.

          2. One of the difficult things to do when a “bj” starts talking about 3 of their 4 big ones is good responses before shaking head and walking away.  #4 is teh gay.  This diary should be a good source for quick answers to use before shaking head and walking away.

            Every politician should build issue sheets from this diary too.  I will be creating mine and making sure to update it as the diary evolves in the future.

  31. beyond boring.  This is the last thing I’ll ever waste time on that has his name on it.  If he’s allowed to continue threadjacking other people’s posts, I’ll have to pass on what the smart reasonable people have to say as well.

    Shame.  

  32. No point in embarrassing BJ any further.

    I’m officially pronouncing him schooled.

    He’ll have to argue with himself or anyone else who thinks BJ is more important than the Rockies.

  34. My comment is #250 or something. Don’t you all have better things to do than debate this kid?

    Let it be.

    Enjoy life without replying to someone whose mind can’t be changed.

    It isn’t worth it.

    It’s like listening to two stubborn deaf people argue with eachother.

  35. 367 posts, not including this one, arguing religion on a political website. Wow.

    We now return to our regularly-scheduled juvenile name-calling and personal attacks.

  36. You have confused the Constitution with your religious belief.

    You have confused the bible with scientific literature.

    You have posted questions which are inherently unanswerable because you fail to define your terms.

    It is unfortunate that bloggers here have risen to your bait.

    Peanuts in front of monkeys…..and you win,ultimately, because you have so well played the blog.

    1. That was the founders. I seem to remember something about being “endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights”? Hmmmmm? So even the ACLU implicitly supports the notion of a creator by defending Americans’ rights.

      I do appreciate your compliment about my blogging skills.

      1. But if it’s self-evident that we’re endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, why has it only been evident for the last 250 or so years, and the vast majority of human history is a tale of human rights being violated?

      2. More and more you remind me of Orly Talz of one of the Korean Moonies or someone else not American born.  I hasten to add that you have never claimed to be an American.  There are those in the media who disavow civil rights and our way of government, but claim to be adhering to “founding fathers” and “jesus christ”…in ways which reek of propaganda and do not reflect one of the most instinctive

        values…that of playing fair.

        I am a proud, card carrying member of the ACLU, which fights to protect Constitutional Rights,none of which you have cited, let alone defended.

  37. while the soul is a spirit directly created by God.  In other words, spirits don’t evolve.  Man is both body and soul.  The soul consists of intelligence and free will.  As per Genesis:  and God breathed into IT a soul and IT became man.

    1. Genesis 1:27 –

      “So God created man in his own image,

      in the image of God he created him;

      male and female he created them.”

      That doesn’t sound like God breathing into a monkey to me.

      1. There are two, and they don’t match.  Biblical scholars will tell you that they both come from older traditions and were merged into the Book of Genesis.

        Genesis 2:7

        And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

        The Islamic is slightly different, attributing the soul as part of God himself (as also insinuated at several points in the New Testament).  Surat as-Sajda, 9:

        then [He] formed him and breathed His Spirit into him and gave you hearing, sight and hearts.

        1. They match perfectly. Or are you talking about the Islamic version? I suspect Mohammed changed it. After all, Islam didn’t exist until Mohammed came along. The Biblical Genesis goes back all the way to the beginning of time through the Jews.

          1. In Genesis 1 (leading into 2), the universe is created in six days from a watery void, lower life forms first, ending with man and woman.  In Genesis 2, Man is created from dust, then a place for him carved out of the unwatered, undifferentiated earth, with plants, then animals, and finally Eve.

            These two myths are contradictory in their timeline and in their account of What Came Before.

            1. Genesis 2:4 says “and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground”

              The key phrase here is “of the field”. This verse is referring to domestic agriculture, which didn’t exist because there was no rain and no man to work the ground. It doesn’t refer to the existence of vegetation itself. In fact, Genesis 2:5 says “but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground”, so there was plenty of water for wild plants and trees.

              Nice try, but your little dig at “myths” isn’t provable.

              1. (New Living Translation)

                4This is the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth.

                When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,5 neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the Lord God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil. 6Instead, springs [mist] came up from the ground and watered all the land. 7Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person [soul].

                8Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. 9The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground-trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

                [10-17, describing Eden and the proscription against eating the apple]

                18Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” 19So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the manc to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one. 20He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals. But still there was no helper just right for him.

                21So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. 22Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man.

                The Douay-Rheims uses the word ‘ground’ where you say ‘herbs of the field’.  The plain meaning of the whole phrase is that, like in Genesis 1, there was nothing without God.  And the literal term is not ‘streams’, but rather ‘mist’ that God commands from the unpopulated ground.

                “Myth” is simply a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, esp. one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature., which describes these two accounts of creation.

      2. I should have checked first (I relied on a trusted source, which is why I did not put it in quotes).  However, after checking a bit, here is an annotation to this passage in the Douay-Rheims Bible:  “Let us make man to our image”… This image of God in man, is not in the body, but in the soul; which is a spiritual substance, endued with understanding and free will…”

        1. Of course, this sounds like a Biblical interpretation by the RC Church, not a translation note or cross-reference.  This makes sense, because it removes a dissonance between the two Genesis stories and uses passages from later in the Bible to infer what the Genesis passage means.  (It also comports with the Islamic passage I noted above.)

  38. This has been a highly interesting, entertaining, thought provoking, and extremely popular thread. I might have to start doing a weekly Friday “hot topics” thread.

  39. Issue # 1: The issue of choice is not black and white.  Many people dont’t support it but feel a woman has a right to control her body.  Social conservative believe in big government on this issue.  There is neither popular nor scientific consensus.  Draw your own ethical lines but do not impose them on others.  Enough said.

    Issue #2: Those who believe in Intelligent Design present it as science.  They get upset when asked to prove it.  The proofs usually presented are Life and the universe are really big and complex so God must exist.  Also, I.D. supporters point out that because evolution does not explain everything God must exist.  They also are fond of pointing out that Isaac Newton was a proponent of Intelligent Design.  This is misleading.  Newton said there was a Prime Mover that started the process.  I propose a theory that Newton was afraid of what the church would do if he publicly denied the existence of God.  The Catholic Church had been known to kill people for heresy.

    Issue #3: No religion not Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Wicca, Shinto, Buddhism or any other religion you can name has only one viewpoint or approach.  Some are barbaric, some harmless, and some a little of both.

  40. question for you Beej

    as you are so scholarly and well-informed on this subject…

    Did God create the heavens and the Earth and everything in-between?

    (There will be follow up questions, so keep paying attention…)

  41. It’s been a long time since I’ve engaged in a debate of this sort.  It’s hackneyed and stale.  The fact that you would even ask such questions shows that no amount of thought, debate, or evidence will make a difference, but what the heck – it’s Saturday and I’ve got nothing better to do.

    You certainly know how to start a discussion – 480 comments already.  I’m not going to read them all, so if I’m repeating what others have said, forgive me.  Or not.  I really don’t care.

    All three of your questions are based on false premises.

    1. Why taking the life of a baby is justified?

    I don’t know anyone who thinks infanticide is justified.  Well, except my wife, but she just says it because she hates children and she’s being ironic… I think.  Your question is transparent, however, and it’s clear that you’re talking about abortion, not infanticide.  Your false premise is that an embryo or fetus is a baby.  They’re not.

    The justification for killing an embryo or fetus is that an actual human (the mother) should have the right to control her own bodily processes, and if she doesn’t want to use her body as an incubator for a proto-human, that should be her right.

    2. How evolution is a scientifically provable hypothesis?

    This debate is so old and so much has been written about it that to answer it thoroughly is not possible in a comment thread.  Your false premise is that evolution or any other scientific theory is scientifically provable.  In science, nothing is ever 100% proven.  Rather, the scientifically accepted theory is the one that best fits the currently available evidence.

    So, evolution is the theory that the variety of life on earth developed over billions of years through a combination of random mutation and natural selection.  There is a vast amount of evidence to back up the theory, and there isn’t room to list it all here.  The alternate theories are:

    Creationism: An invisible man in the sky made all of the creatures on Earth just as they are today, then made the first man from clay (like Gumby) and “breathed life” into him. He then made the first woman by ripping out one of the poor guy’s ribs.  You may find this to be a reasonable explanation, but I don’t.

    Intelligent Design: Essentially the same as Creationism, but it leaves out the embarrassing details found in Creationism.  Some intelligent thing or set of things created all of the creatures on Earth as they are today through some means unknown to man.  And don’t ask where the intelligent thing(s) who made us came from.  The theory has some holes in it.

    3. How Islamic values are tolerant and Judeo-Christian values are barbaric?

    False premise: that anyone is saying this.  I’m sure there may be some people out there who argue this – that Islam is more tolerant than “Judeo-Christian values”, whatever those are, but I haven’t heard anyone say that.

    There are over 1 billion Muslims in the world.  They don’t all think the same, just like all Christians don’t think the same.  Some of them are tolerant; some of them are not.  Some are fundamentalist nutjobs, and others just want to be left alone to practice their religion in peace.

    The term “Judeo-Christian values” refers to a wide variety of concepts.  I doubt your idea of Judeo-Christian values and mine would match.  I’m just taking a wild guess that you favor American military aggression.  Were we turning the other cheek when we invaded Afghanistan?  Were we treating others as we would like to be treated when we invaded Iraq without provocation?  Are we suffering the little children to come unto us when we deport them?  I’m guessing that your values are barbaric, but that doesn’t tell me anything about Judeo-Christian values, because you aren’t a Christian.  Christians follow the teachings of Christ.

    1. Stephen Jay Gould on the fact of evolution:

      In the American vernacular, “theory” often means “imperfect fact”-part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus creationists can (and do) argue: evolution is “only” a theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is less than a fact, and scientists can’t even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): “Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science-that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was.”

      Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin’s proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.

      Moreover, “fact” does not mean “absolute certainty.” The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

      Evolutionists have been clear about this distinction between fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory-natural selection-to explain the mechanism of evolution. He wrote in The Descent of Man: “I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to show that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change. . . . Hence if I have erred in . . . having exaggerated its [natural selection’s] power . . . I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.”

      Thus Darwin acknowledged the provisional nature of natural selection while affirming the fact of evolution.

  42. So I’ve been gone a while, off at the Obama Youth re-education center, and come back to this???  A non-diary (three sentences, a fragment and three questions) that got 480+ comments.  Good Job BJ (whatever that stands for).   I wanted to let you know, I have been given my next mission by the New Black Panther Party.  Apparently I am to relocate to Ft. [redacted], enroll at [redacted] University, and sign up for one of your [redacted] classes.  See you next semester!

  43. 1) The taking of the life of a BABY is not justified by any “civilized” culture I am aware of. Large parasitic growths in a woman’s body are a matter for her handle with the advice of her doctor and is none of the business of the rest of us.

    2) See comments above for your lack of understanding of general sience. No need to repeat the obvious.

    3)They aren’t. Any groups’ “values” that include punishment to those outside said group who do not share those “values” are the same, but barbaric is not the correct word. The people accurately called Barbarians generally did not partake in such behavior. Heterophobic would be a more correct word (even though that term is now used to incorrectly refer to sexual orientation).

    1. … than a horrific roadside accident everying can’t help but be drawn in to stare at, yielding an aggregate slowdown in everyone’s efforts to get where they need to be.

      1. all I’m wondering is if this thread can reach 500 comments. I’m not sure since I’ve taken time off from Pols on occasion, but I’d bet no diary has generated 500 comments before. (This one will be 492, unless someone else posts something before I get this one published.)

        1. ColoradoStoopid.com then we can all go there to

          1) give him the attention he craves, and

          2) provide ample citations and evidence, ad nauseum, that in spite of getting a fine socialized education one can still be a complete fool  

    2. Infanticide (generally via exposure) was a right of the father in ancient Rome until very late at its decaying end, and in many of the Greek cultures that preceded it.  The first volume of the book, “A History of Private Life” by one of the academic presses, devotes a large section to a discussion of how this worked.

      After the fall of Rome, the killing of babies to manage succession issues in the Byzantine empire was widely known to happen and accepted in much the way that arranged marriages in the interest of affairs of state were accepted.

      The story of baby Moses in the reed raft in Egypt, and the myth of one of the earlier Mesopotamian kings it derived from, were both references to the widespread right of fathers to insist on infanticide in those eras.  It was also common in pre-Christian pagan Europe.  Herod’s massacre of the innocents, while condemned by its targets recounting the story in the New Testament (and may very well have been a historic event), was considered to be within his authority.

      Most of the “civilized” cultures from Sumerians to the Romans practiced infanticide, and it remained common, but sub rosa, through at least the 18th century in Europe and the United States.

      The legal right of a father to kill his children wasn’t clearly and universally repudiated until the 19th century.

      1. …he got the go ahead from God to kill countless innocent babies!

        So apparently killing children is perfectly fine if you can justify it. By this reasoning, a zygote or fetus shouldn’t be an issue at all. The Bible is there to guide is in our daily lives, we just have to open our minds and hearts.

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