cofty

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Posts by cofty

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  63

  Evolution is a Fact #27 - Monkeys, Typewriters, Shakespeare, 747s etc.

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  most creationist arguments can be summarised as "complexity, complexity, complexity - therefore god".

  we have all heard the illustrations about the odds of (insert favourite example) evolving, being less than 10,000 monkeys typing macbeth by pure chance.

  evolution is not like that.

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  cofty

  That is because you totally misunderstood the illustration Hooby.
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  21

  I need your opinions and recommendations please.

  by bola in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  after my exit from the watchtower shunning cult, i have received tons of invitations from different churches.

  but because i am aware of religious cults, i need recommendations of churches that are not cults at all.

  after exiting the watchtower cult, i don't want to fall into another religious cults.

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  cofty

  All churches are cults. It is a spectrum. Some are less harmful than others. It all depends how much you value your right to do your own thinking.
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  205

  Mathematically Measuring Evolution.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  mathematically measuring evolution.. when judging relationships in terms of morphological characteristics we will always be bound by the subjective.

  morphologically one cannot exactly measure the distance between two organisms strictly in mathematical terms.

  using the standard method of taxonomy we cannot quantify the difference between a horse and a mouse, or know which is closer mouse to cat, or mouse to fish.

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  cofty

  No what you have is hundreds of fossils that demonstrate the entire journey from fins to legs.

  
  
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  98

  Evolution Deniers - An Endangered Species

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  evolution explains how everything descended from a common ancestor over millions of years.

  creationists only seem to want to talk about what came before that common ancestor.

  just for the sake of discussion let's pretend that the following is true.

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  cofty

  Evolution explains how everything descended from a common ancestor over millions of years.

  Creationists only seem to want to talk about what came before that common ancestor.

  Just for the sake of discussion let's pretend that the following is true. Imagine science had nothing to say about the origin of the universe or life or DNA or the first cell or even the first multicellular organism.

  Even if all of that was the case - and it isn't - none of that would make the slightest difference to the fact of common ancestry through millions of years of biological evolution.

  Evolution is not an issue for most Christians. They have accepted the overwhelming evidence and adapted their theology. Evolution does not require atheism.

  It is a beautiful fact. It is beyond sensible dispute. Only Muslims in and Protestant Evangelicals are still fighting against it.

  The wilful ignorance that is required to do so has no place in an age of freely available information.
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  20

  Interesting take on John 3:16

  by NikL in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  the superstar of all scriptures.

  for god so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.. .

  but i just learned something about it.. i try to look at different translations of the bible and the lexham english bible words it a bit different.... 16 for in this way god loved the world, so that he gave his one and only son, in order that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life.

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  cofty

  NikL - I thought your OP was very interesting. Thanks for posting it.

  In other words "God loved the world in this way ... "
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  205

  Mathematically Measuring Evolution.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  mathematically measuring evolution.. when judging relationships in terms of morphological characteristics we will always be bound by the subjective.

  morphologically one cannot exactly measure the distance between two organisms strictly in mathematical terms.

  using the standard method of taxonomy we cannot quantify the difference between a horse and a mouse, or know which is closer mouse to cat, or mouse to fish.

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  cofty

  I believe you can do that. I don't believe a chimp can take 1 step and when he is done walking across town he somehow becomes a man

  Despite this being an incredibly stupid statement you have repeated it three times.

  I posted very long detailed posts yesterday refuting your assertion that there were no transitional fossils showing the evolution of limbs an inner ears. Every word of it was my original work.

  One minute you want to talk about fossils but when you are proven wrong you refuse to discuss it. That post was just the tip of the iceberg of the evidence we could talk about.

  You lied when you claimed to have read lots of books that present the scientific evidence for evolution. That is like somebody claiming they have studied calculus when it is perfectly clear they can't count to ten.
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  205

  Mathematically Measuring Evolution.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  mathematically measuring evolution.. when judging relationships in terms of morphological characteristics we will always be bound by the subjective.

  morphologically one cannot exactly measure the distance between two organisms strictly in mathematical terms.

  using the standard method of taxonomy we cannot quantify the difference between a horse and a mouse, or know which is closer mouse to cat, or mouse to fish.

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  cofty

  Please note how TWM totally ignores every piece of evidence offered against his bullshit.

  It is what all creationists do
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  205

  Mathematically Measuring Evolution.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  mathematically measuring evolution.. when judging relationships in terms of morphological characteristics we will always be bound by the subjective.

  morphologically one cannot exactly measure the distance between two organisms strictly in mathematical terms.

  using the standard method of taxonomy we cannot quantify the difference between a horse and a mouse, or know which is closer mouse to cat, or mouse to fish.

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  cofty

  One of the major differences between mammals and reptiles is in our ears.

  We have three small bones that transmit sound to the inner ear. Technically called "auditory ossicles", they are the malleus (hammer), incus (anvil), and stapes (stirrup).

  Reptiles have just one bone in their ears, the stapes. The additional ossicles in our ears act as a lever to amplify the compressions and rarefactions of the air. The challenge for evolution is to explain where these additional mammalian bones came from.

  What reptiles lack in the ear they more than make up for in their jaw. Our lower jaw is made of just one bone but reptiles have a whole array of them. Since evolution frequently adapts existing features and puts them to new uses, could it be that jaw bones of our reptile-like ancestors have been modified to do the job of hearing instead of chewing?

  Evidence from comparative anatomy, embryology and paleontology all combine to prove that this is the case.

  There are many transitional fossils that illustrate this fascinating aspect of evolution. In this post I want to highlight three of them.

  Dimetrodon lived between 290 and 270 million years ago. It belongs to a group of species known as the synapsids which are reptile-like but more closely related to mammals than modern reptiles. It was already extinct 40 million years before the dinosaurs first appeared.

  You can see from the picture that it had an impressive collection of bones in its lower jaw. The articular bone hinged against the quadrate bone of the skull and both abutted against the stapes transmitting sounds from the jaw to the inner ear. The dentary bone which holds the simple teeth is not involved in the joint.
  

  As we come forward in time the fossil record shows all the non-dentary bones reducing in size until they become just tiny splints in the inside back of the jaw. At the same time the dentary bone gets bigger until it becomes the entire jaw. As synapsids became more active in chewing with their differentiated teeth they needed a stronger bone. One bone is better than many bones stitched together.

  Diarthrognathus provides us with an exceptional example of this stage of evolution. It lived around 200 million years ago. Its name literally means "two jaw joint". Its dentary bone has expanded upward and made contact with the squamosal bone of the skull to form a new jaw joint. However the old articular/quadrate joint is still fully intact.

  We could not ask for a more perfect example of a transitional form.

  

  Moving further along the timeline the fossils show that the old articular/quadrate joint becomes so diminished that it no longer serves that purpose and the dentary/squamosal joint takes over completely. So what became of the quadrate and articular bones? They continue to reduce, become detached from the jaw and move into the middle ear to become the incus and malleus respectively.

  In 2007 Luo Zhexi and his colleagues described a fossil called Yanoconodon from the Yixian Formation in China. It is a true mammal that lived around 122 million years ago and has been labelled as "The Rosetta Stone" of mammalian ear evolution. The amazing thing about this creature is that it has the tiny auditory ossicles like any modern mammal but they are still fused to the lower jaw.

  Supporting the evidence for ear evolution is the interesting fact that in the human embryo the incus and malleus bones first appear in the jaw and move up to the middle ear during development. Even after birth the little bones may retain a few lingering filaments of so-called Meckel’s cartilage.

  Dr Karen Sears investigated the embryology of opossums and discovered that the process is slowed in the case of that species. They are born with the incus and malleus still part of the jaw and looking a lot like the arrangement of a reptile jaw. As they grow up the bones migrate the middle ear as in all other mammals.

  This story that is told so eloquently by the fossil record as well as in the embryonic development of modern species is an amazing example of evolution of a major transition.

  When creationist demand a fossil of a creature with "half an ear" we can actually provide them in abundance.

  
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  205

  Mathematically Measuring Evolution.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  mathematically measuring evolution.. when judging relationships in terms of morphological characteristics we will always be bound by the subjective.

  morphologically one cannot exactly measure the distance between two organisms strictly in mathematical terms.

  using the standard method of taxonomy we cannot quantify the difference between a horse and a mouse, or know which is closer mouse to cat, or mouse to fish.

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  cofty

  Let’s talk about chimp to man. Evolutionist say that the difference between man and chimp is 1.5 %. Does not seem much. What we need to find out is how much is much. When we hear that there is a 1 ½ % difference between man and chimp it seems not to be much. But we must take into account what 1 ½% exactly means. If there are three billion base pairs in a human 1 ½% calculates to 45 million base pairs or 15 million codons. It is estimated that it would take 10X10^21 mutations to get five condons to mutate in the right order. One and half percent does not look like much but when analyzed, it becomes overwhelming evidence against man ever evolving from a chimp.

  Difficult to imagine how you could write a short post that displays more ignorance of genetics, logic and evolution.

  Jaw-dropping!
  
  
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  315

  Atheism = self defeating.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  atheism = self defeating.

  first may we define our terms.

  the word atheism comes literally from the greek, alpha the negative and theos [for god], therefore “negative god” or there is no god.

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  cofty

  What we have is micro evolution [the beaks of finches changing size and shape] passed as proof of macro evolution [man evolving from a chimp]. _ WTM

  When wilfully ignorant creationists talk about men evolving from chimps wise people just smile condescendingly and walk away.