Half banana

Joined

• started 79 topics
• posted 3,096 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by Half banana

• 
  35

  Evolution is a Fact #11 - Tiktaalik

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  one of the biggest gulfs that life has had to cross was the transition from sea to dry land.. fish have conical shaped heads, reptiles have flat heads.

  fish have no necks; their heads are attached to their shoulders by a series of bony plates.

  land-dwelling animals all have necks; their heads can move independently of their shoulders.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  EQV I enjoyed your “ Just so” story about Tiktaalik, however except for the sarcasm, you make a good case of how illiterates must have interpreted things they found and had their ideas written down as holy truth.

  For a more convincing illustration of evolution’s reality, might I recommend the philosopher Daniel Dennett in his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. He likens the process of evolution to a heartless tennis tournament where the losers are shot and the only winners go forward together to breed (Djokovic breeds with Williams!) The aberrant lizard types were the only ones physically equipped to survive the specific conditions in the lagunal backwaters where Tiktaalic was found, the fishy types all died in that environment. Amphibians rule!

  The point being that no organism adapts itself... it's simply death before breeding if you can't cope with the environment. Life on Earth is a biological death and destruction derby whether you like it or not.
• 
  133

  What are the biggest holes in evolution?

  by shadow in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  how honest are the proponents of evolution?

  idk but curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  EQV I enjoyed your “ Just so” story about Tiktaalik, however except for the sarcasm, you make a good case of how illiterates must have interpreted things they found and had their ideas written down as holy truth.

  For a more convincing illustration of evolution’s reality, might I recommend the philosopher Daniel Dennett in his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. He likens the process of evolution to a heartless tennis tournament where the losers are shot and the only winners go forward together to breed (Djokovic breeds with Williams!) The aberrant lizard types were the only ones physically equipped to survive the specific conditions in the lagunal backwaters where Tiktaalic was found, the fishy types all died in that environment. Amphibians rule!

  The point being that no organism adapts itself... it's simply death before breeding if you can't cope with the environment. Life on Earth is a biological death and destruction derby whether you like it or not.
• 
  32

  What are the biggest holes in the ransom sacrifice?

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  how honest are the proponents of jesus as the ransom sacrifice?.

  curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  Searcher, the Wikipedia is a wonderful quick reference but the last thing it is, is scholarly. It is verboten as a reference in universities because it has no academic peer review by those who have given their lives to determining the veracity of the particular branch of research in question.

  “Bible scholars” are usually driven by faith and divine revelation. Academic textual scholars are driven by archaeology, history, logic and text evidences. So religiously committed "Biblical scholars", and rabbis and popular opinions and Wikipedia just don’t cut the mustard.

  General comment... If Jesus is your saviour, you are mistaken in thinking that Jesus has any credible, concrete, first hand, eyewitness evidence for his existence as a human.
  

  There were many notable writers and commentators who were alive at the time of his purported existence who would have given their eye teeth to record a super-man, had he really been there.

  Josephus was both a local man and a contemporary of the earliest years of Jesus-christianity had it existed.He was after all the governor of Galilee before getting Roman recognition and becoming a writer after the fall of Jerusalem. The very fact that he mentions Jesus as “the saviour” en passant without detailed explanation, which was his normal manner... is evidence that these words are later insertions into his text by desperate and dishonest believers. The historical silence about Jesus is deafening.
• 
  32

  What are the biggest holes in the ransom sacrifice?

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  how honest are the proponents of jesus as the ransom sacrifice?.

  curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  There is not one account of any ransom sacrifice having effect whoever does the dying .

  I like Xanthippe's picture of the validity of Jesus' sacrifice as a cheese with holes in it, I would like to add that the holes are connected only by a tissue of lies and superstition.
• 
  133

  What are the biggest holes in evolution?

  by shadow in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  how honest are the proponents of evolution?

  idk but curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  Faith in Jesus is no hole in evolution, it is irrelevant to it.
• 
  133

  What are the biggest holes in evolution?

  by shadow in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  how honest are the proponents of evolution?

  idk but curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  The principle of evolution is unchallenged. Abiogenesis is another subject as is the existence of God. I'm waiting to get my teeth into the supposed "big holes".
• 
  32

  What are the biggest holes in the ransom sacrifice?

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  how honest are the proponents of jesus as the ransom sacrifice?.

  curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  
  

  how honest are the proponents of Jesus as the ransom sacrifice?
  

  curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?
• 
  8

  The Evolution of Humans

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  tracing the evolutionary path of humans is complicated.

  simply because human and proto-human remains (including bones) are perishable.

  remains from the distant past are usually only preserved when some unique features exist that assist preservation.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  FTS, the unilinear model i.e. a single evolving thread remains an idealistic notion which does not easily fit with the findings. Whereas 1992 is a long time ago in paleoanthropology, the phylogeny or positions in the family tree, are still constantly being reconsidered as new finds and new species are discovered. Since that date we have even had two completely new types of human species living simultaneously with our own namely the Denisovans in the Urals and the so called 'Hobbit', Homo floresiensis from Indonesia.

  Imagine the consequences of living with other species of humans...
• 
  12

  Evolution is a Fact #9 - Less Chewing More Thinking

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if you put your fingers on the side of your head, just above your ears, and move your jaw you will be able to feel your temporalis muscles doing their thing.. compared to our primate cousins our temporalis muscles are puny - approximately one eighth the size.

  the reason for the difference is a mutation of the myh16 gene in humans that produces a protein called myosin heavy chain 16. in primates like the gorilla this protein produces the powerful chewing pressure of the jaw.. our closest hominid relative, the chimpanzee have an intact myh16 gene.

  since the rate of mutation can be determined, hansell stedman and his team at the university of pennsylvania have calculated that the mutation that disabled the gene in our line happened between 2.1 and 2.7 million years ago.. the large temporalis muscle has to anchor to very thick and strong skull bones.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  Just a note on our relationship with Neanderthals.

  Most of us posting here will have between 4% and 9% Neanderthal genes and the last known full blown member of that sub-species died out in Europe about thirty nine thousand years ago.
• 
  12

  Evolution is a Fact #9 - Less Chewing More Thinking

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if you put your fingers on the side of your head, just above your ears, and move your jaw you will be able to feel your temporalis muscles doing their thing.. compared to our primate cousins our temporalis muscles are puny - approximately one eighth the size.

  the reason for the difference is a mutation of the myh16 gene in humans that produces a protein called myosin heavy chain 16. in primates like the gorilla this protein produces the powerful chewing pressure of the jaw.. our closest hominid relative, the chimpanzee have an intact myh16 gene.

  since the rate of mutation can be determined, hansell stedman and his team at the university of pennsylvania have calculated that the mutation that disabled the gene in our line happened between 2.1 and 2.7 million years ago.. the large temporalis muscle has to anchor to very thick and strong skull bones.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  @Love Uni, As far as I know there is strong actual evidence in China for domestic fire in a hominin occupied cave at 800,000 years before present. More recently reported in Southern Africa is fire use probable at around 1.2 million years.

  Neanderthals living in the colder parts of Europe would most certainly have used fire to keep warm and to make the meat and veg more digestible. It has been discovered that Neanderthals ate a wide variety of root vegetables. In the Ukraine they built huts framed with mammoth bones and made them windproof with the skins. They lived mainly during cold dry climate episodes. They burnt bones for fuel out there on the treeless steppe. Hearths are almost universal for Mousterian (Neanderthal) culture but only go back say 350,000 years.

  For Homo ergaster , H erectus and H heidlebergensis, as far as I know there is very little actual evidence except at the Wonderwerk Cave in S.A. (the name has just surfaced) mentioned above. Otherwise it is just absence of evidence at present, not evidence of absence for fire use in the earlier human species.

  @BethSarim, absolutley right! It only needs investigation on the skeleton of one proto-human to destroy faith in the Bible. The fact is there are thousands of finds with diverse species giving a picture of the human pedigree going back to the remote past.

  The JW org dare not look at the evidence: if Adam was a myth; Jesus' ransom is invalid... and bang goes Christianity!