what are your favorite sci fi movies or books.. mine.. asimov's foundation series.
clarke's childhoods end.. the day the earth stood still.
close encounters.
Plus so many more that others have already mentioned like Fight the Future, and The Matrix (only the first one though).....I'll stop adding now....well after I also mention the newest Battle Star Galactica.
.
we all remember where we were and what we were thinking during highly significant events....(e.g.
9-11, jfk, etc)..... if you can recall, what were the first thoughts racing through your mind as you sat at the 1995 d.c. at the infamous 1914 generation change announcement, was it "the final nail in the coffin of your wts beliefs or did you engage in mental gymnastics to try to assimilate the "fresh meat in due season" lol....... i was in such shock at this announcement, i think my mind just blanked out for 10 minutes followed by: "ok, this really is it for me......they have duped us all along", i then immediately started thinking of my 90 year old jw grandmother sitting in the stadium, and what must have been going through her mind......
Mixed thoughts...as always.
I was pissed that they found a way to wiggle out of its impending failure. But also impressed with the tighter new interpretation, and the ingenious (especially for them) way it solved the problem.
wednesday evenings (august 24th) fox news program "the oreilly factor" featured an interview life after "intelligent design" with dr. richard sternberg, editor, of the peer-reviewed journal "proceedings of the biological society of washington.
" dr. sternberg's home page discusses the recriminations he faced by certain members of the evolutionary establishment after publishing an arcticle by another person advocating the possibilty of intelligent design in the peer reviewed journal.
http://www.rsternberg.net/
Some thoughts from the material found at : http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/haldane_rebuttal.htm
This is a very common ploy of evolutionists, to claim that creationists don’t understand that evolutionary theory posits common decent from a shared ancestor. Regardless, this does not double the amount of substitutions that can occur from point A (man/ape ancestor) to point B (man), and this is the context of ReMine’s (and Haldane’s) argument.
Two people are at the same point. If one person stayed fixed and the other one moved then you can ascribe the entire distance between the two to the one who moved. If both people moved away from each other the total distance between the two is a sum of both of their travel. Likewise, the nucleotide differences between apes and chimps are a result of two paths. To use that combined difference for just one line, would not be accurate. You'd have to figure out the changes that occurred in just one line to be honest.
If Williams had read ReMines’ book, or even just thought about the problem logically, he would have discovered that neutral substitutions also must be substituted in! If a neutral trait (or substitution) becomes fixed, all alternative alleles at the same locus must still be removed. In fact, neutral mutations incur a greater cost, since they will have a greater propensity to drift back and forth in frequency since they have no selective value. Every time the frequency goes down, it negates any previous payment made by reproductive excess to get it to that frequency; when it drifts back up, a new payment via excess reproduction is needed, hence net cost is increased.
Let's not forget that Haldane's model is about the number of generations it would take for a previously deleterious trait to be fixed in a population once it becomes the only beneficial one. Neutral mutations do not have any impact on fitness. So there isn't a need for x individuals with one type of neutral mutation to replace y individuals with another type of neutral mutation for an evolutionary change. So why include them as part of the cost for evolutionary change?
I still need to read that other article. If it was from Remine, then he'll surely give a clear enough presentation, whatever his ideas. Who knows, maybe there'll be something in it that'll change my mind?
Later
wednesday evenings (august 24th) fox news program "the oreilly factor" featured an interview life after "intelligent design" with dr. richard sternberg, editor, of the peer-reviewed journal "proceedings of the biological society of washington.
" dr. sternberg's home page discusses the recriminations he faced by certain members of the evolutionary establishment after publishing an arcticle by another person advocating the possibilty of intelligent design in the peer reviewed journal.
http://www.rsternberg.net/
The assumptions of the model are applicable for a deteriorating environment scenario. But you know that reality isn't just one particular scenario all of the time. Anyway, here's a website for the general public that takes a look at the Haldane Dilemma:
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/haldane.html
And as you asked, here's one primary source, a paper that I've read on it, from the PNAS:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=434284
Hear Read from you later
wednesday evenings (august 24th) fox news program "the oreilly factor" featured an interview life after "intelligent design" with dr. richard sternberg, editor, of the peer-reviewed journal "proceedings of the biological society of washington.
" dr. sternberg's home page discusses the recriminations he faced by certain members of the evolutionary establishment after publishing an arcticle by another person advocating the possibilty of intelligent design in the peer reviewed journal.
http://www.rsternberg.net/
Finally, those that do reject evolution do not just merely point to problems with the origin of life (and based on this alone) choose to ignore evolution, but also use many other valid arguments as well.
I've seen some of them, like using the fairly old theoretical model of evolutionary load and saying how it shows evolution to be too costly to occur. But then they fail to even address the follow-up papers showing solutions to that model. There were several plausible and easily occurable scenarios that did so and its not like they're recent solutions either, but have been around for several decades. I've found its been the same thing time and again with all of those "valid arguments" put forward by ID proponents. Counterpoints are readily found.
In reality it is the Evolutionists who have seen the need to insist on the decoupling of origins from evolution, in order to protect (firewall) evolution from some potentailly very powerful points.
I'm curious. What are some of these powerful points being avoided?
Secondly, the severe problems with abiogenesis are not merely because of a "paucity of data", but instead are based on a considerable amount of known data and chemistry.
Chemical pathways have been tested out in the lab and they have been able to generate many of the different amino acids, fatty acids, as well as some of the nucleotides and the sugars. But I've read how several of the pathways are mutually exclusive and how many of them have very low yields. Now from that, I too would doubt the probability of those building blocks being naturally available in the quantities needed for the startup and continuation of life. But then maybe I think that way because I lack vision?
You see, some of those building blocks have even being detected in material from space. We can't deny their natural presence. Not so improbable then. The chemical hurdles have evidently been overcome for some of the building blocks of life.The question is how did they form there? With more data, we may eventually see how all of them could have been formed, either on Terra or a better suited setting elsewhere. So IMHO, the small amount of data currently available doesn't make this an open and shut case for either side.
P.S. Yeah, the idea of having life be infinitely old is easily refuted. Nicely done there bud. Now what if there were some way for life to traverse between universes in an infinitly old multiverse?
wednesday evenings (august 24th) fox news program "the oreilly factor" featured an interview life after "intelligent design" with dr. richard sternberg, editor, of the peer-reviewed journal "proceedings of the biological society of washington.
" dr. sternberg's home page discusses the recriminations he faced by certain members of the evolutionary establishment after publishing an arcticle by another person advocating the possibilty of intelligent design in the peer reviewed journal.
http://www.rsternberg.net/
Maybe what hooberus might be thinking about is the experiment where RNA molecules were shown to undergo natural selection?
The researchers made the inference that it was highly likely then for natural selection to have been involved very early on in the formation of life itself. Maybe thats why hooberus wishes to link evolution with abiogenesis. If I'm wrong hooberus, let me know. In either case, natural selection as we all know isn't evolution, and evolution is a different natural process from abiogenesis.
I think the ID camp needs to couple origins (abiogenesis) to evolution, so they can then bank on the paucity of data in that area. Possibly to be able to say its all a non-starter and then choose to ignore evolution on those grounds. But if the Intelligent Designer could have no beginning and has always been, why not just keep it a step simpler and say that cellular life has always been?
some of you might had read that in one of my other post...my father, who is the only jw in the family, came up with the word "excommunicated" when talked about disfellowshipement.
now, nobody here seems to have any idea what this is all about.
he seems pretty certain that it's now the proper word to use.
LilyCurly,
I'm a Canuck too. As far as I know, AlmostAtheist is right. They aren't using "excommunicated" among themselves or in their material when talking about their own. (Unless I've missed something recently in a WT- Let's just say, I'm not its most avid reader).
I did find this instance though:
from the w86 4/1 p. 30Questions From Readers
·
Why have Jehovah’s Witnesses disfellowshipped (excommunicated) for apostasy some who still profess belief in God, the Bible, and Jesus Christ?
But like AA said, its usually used when talking with non-jws so that they understand. Almost always they've used the word in their publications when talking about what other religious groups do.
My faves are a mix of his solo material and stuff from the Police. No particular order
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2000.11.id_coming_clean.htm .
ill come back to what it means for design in nature to have empirical content, but i want for the moment to stay with the worry that intelligent design is but a disguised form of creationism.
ask any leader in the design movement whether intelligent design is stealth creationism, and theyll deny it.
I'm sure Demski is a nice gent and probably a more humane person than a prick like me. I think everyone is set in their thinking about one topic or another. But I really don't think that ID proponents have a case when they say evolutionists are just as dogmatic as the religous (with the creed they blindly follow being naturalism).
I think the ID camp chooses to ignore the practical aspect of science that plays a part in all this. To be productive and to propel human knowledge forward at a more than a snail's pace, scientists focus on the more strongly confirmed hypotheses vs only the weakly confirmed ones. Otherwise they'd be having to investigate nearly all hypotheses one can think of, except for the ones that contradict themselves, of course.
So as a useful means of considering which hypotheses are more credible (and so more worthy of investigation and the $$$$ for it) there are usually some markers that are looked for:
I'll admit some of these overlap with each other like 2 and 3, and 1 and 2, but you get the drift.
Intelligent design simply doesn't come off as strong as evolutionary explanations when using those characterisics. Really, what else can we learn from: "It was all created." How? - There's no proposal. Knowledge doesn't move forward as much.
.
i've got my copies and reviewed them, like many others here, but i didn't see any references to the faithfula and discreet slave.
did i miss the reference or is it really not covered in the publication?.
I only scanned through it quickly, but I didn't find anything specific on the FDS or meat in due season. It still does mention the 144,000 as being a select group who'll rule in heaven with JC. But curiosuly, nothing about an earthly component heading up what should be taught on earth. It seems to emphasize that the true teachings of JWs are all straight from the Bible.
