A statue for Mr Wallace, 100 years on....
snare&racket
JoinedPosts by snare&racket
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16
Raise your beers to Mr Wallace !
by snare&racket insome people don't realise that attacking darwin's personal life over evolution is nonsensical as he was not the only scientist with the theory at the time.
many scientists were debating the idea including darwin's father and grandfather.
amongst the people throwing the theory around was a young poor welshman with a love for biology and questions, his name was alfred, yes everyone could calm down a welsh :) man called alfred wallace was also on the case...... many don't know that he contributed much to the theory too.
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this site sucks! its just a buncha athiest on soap boxes.
by crossquestions6995 inthis site is not a healthy forum for discussion or healing.
its an arena for jaded athiests to bash anything christian or god related.
yes, i know the jw's lied to us about god and the truth.
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snare&racket
Urghhh how can i heal myself after being duped into worshiping a genocidal, infanticidal, sacrifice demanding, blood expectant, sexist, racist, jealous, wrathful Deity, with all you people using "LOGIC" and " REASONING" to codly explain why going back and worshipping the same god from the exact same book but in a diffferent building under a different name ...would be silly and a bad idea!
What an awful site!
What an awful bunch of people you are!
Don't you know I have come up with explinations that may make sense if you give me half a chance to explain why my god can be such a huge wanker!?
Thankfully your faith in science means you still have some faith, your worship of darwin may replace my worship of god, but was darwin a better man than the god of the bible...? Hmmmm well, maybe that is a bad way to put it.... Can Darwin juggle lions whilst pissing lava? No! He's dead! My god can!
I hope you all find my god, the father, the personification of love... and if not.... GOOD LUCK IN HELL! Ha ha ha ha
good day to you......
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Have you ever had a hallucination? What was it like?
by Nathan Natas ini have almost never had a visual hallucination and i was wondering what they're like.
how "real" do they seem?
is there any kind of a hint you get that tells you they are not real?
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snare&racket
Waking up hearing your name called is very common and not to be considered as symptomatic in most cases. It is very common as is hallucinations following little sleep.
Having spent some time in an asylum for my training, I was able to interview many patients who did experience them. They were as real to them as anyone else In their real life, any abnormal elements to the experience, the patients explain away via elaborate means. For example, hearing voices is explained away as real people.....using telepathy or picking up radio signals in the mind, or signals being implanted by a malevolent force etc etc. Fascinating though deeply sad and sometimes frightening too.
i found this video at the time, it is very interesting....
http://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds.html
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IS it possible that Paul was just a failed Pharisee that
by confusedandalone insaw an opening?.
if we look at christianity it appears that pauls teaching are what formulate it and not jesus.
paul often contradicts the words that are "supposedly" spoken by jesus repeatedly.
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snare&racket
Paul came 30+ years after jesus dies, was a roman government official and was known for killing christians. He wrote most of the new testament and set up the christian religion. He added Roman doctrines and watered down the Jewish doctrines. He self appointed his role by claiming to have met jesus's ghost on a road 3 decades after his death ( just how many 2nd comings have to happen before we say it happened, the 3rd day after his death, on the beach in the form of another man, pentecost 33 ce, on the road to damascus, 1914...)
Looking at the bible with this perspective, it is obvious Paul had an agenda and his own direction, he used the might of the Roman persuasion to advance his version of the events. Reading his books it is clear that the followers back then disagreed with him and his views greatly, not to mention he,was writing everything having never even met Jesus! It was all....'inspired'...... Hmmm sure it was uncle Paul.
may i humbly suggest a book, all JW's and christians should read it. It is called THE LOST CHRISTIANITIES.
Please read it, it is a historian approach to the formation of the bible and who/what influenced it, what got left out and why....
Juicy stuff!
snare x
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Evolution of the Eye
by zound inafter doing some research on the evolution of the eye, i compiled this simple explanation of the key points.
anyone with greater knowledge please correct anything mistaken - and questions / comments welcome.
any writers that want to correct grammar/sentence structure issues would be great also.. .. .. .. an eye, simply put, is photoreceptors + structure.. the structure can be something as simple as a cup-shaped depression or pinhole lens, or as elaborate as our camera eye, an insects compound eye, or the mirror eyes of a scallop.
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snare&racket
A most excellent thread!
To people pondering how different anatomy evolved at the same time, the anatomy has to increase in function and be refined over time. The optic tract existed before the photorecptors for example. Before you go 'but wait!'....it wasnt an optic tract originally, it would have had a different role or even been a simple neuron. It isnt that there was magically a photoreceptor on the top of a fishes face and nothing connected to it, then magically over time an optic nerve developed and connected to it, whilst at the same time or further down the line the brain developed the occipital visual region for processing the data. That is back to front, think function and anatomy over evolution. Evolution is not the process of something from nothing, but something else from something! So the photorecptor and optic nerve was something else that was functional in that organism first for example.
In fact thinking functionally, helps to breakdown what evolved first and then we can explore why. Wings on some birds began as little limbs that helped the earlier species negotiate brush and jungle enviroments! Ears were initially bones in the jaw, later mutations allowed these vibrating bones to become functional in detecting what we call sound. Refined over millions of years we have reasonably good anatomy for hearing.
Religious members often note the flagellum of sperm, a rotary propulsion system as irreducibly complex, i.e. that its parts have no function if broken down into smaller units. Though this is an example of how to think about evolution, it is also an example of how ignorance can trap people too. Simply repeating what you hear and not doing some simple research may hold you back for years, reassured in false information. The coding for turbines is in all simple cellular life, turbines exist in the mitochondria of all cells. Just as our powerplants use turbines to transfer energy from non usable to usable forms, so does the cell (ATPase). This turbine is only a few steps away from a flagellum. There are plenty of papers on the devlopment of those steps.
And below, the atpase as found in huge numbers in all living cells....
When I first took on evolution properly, I thought I had some good ammo in discussing the eye and the flagella. It didn't take long to realise how misinformed I was :( ....... Thankfully :) x
snare
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A Handy Guide to Woo and Assorted Superstitions
by cofty init's interesting how superstitious people point the finger and laugh at other people's superstitions.. the only honest thing is to reject all of them.
here is a handy checklist to see if you have missed any.
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snare&racket
Exams were hell, should have revised my crystals and magic water.....
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Aren't these the cutest earrings?
by jgnat in.
https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/62857452/rainbow-genes-dna-earrings?ref=sr_gallery_10&ga_search_query=earrings&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=zz&ga_search_type=all&ga_facet=earrings.
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snare&racket
oh no.... I think they have sickle cell!
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Accepting my own mortality, and the naturalness of death - the final step in my JW recovery.
by fresh prince of ohio infor people who have a paralyzing fear of dying, to where it seems like it's this horrible, stalking monster, jwism is a powerful sedative.. but really, the idea of living forever, in human form, is nonsense.
living forever isn't about living forever, it's about not dying.. death is natural.
it can be painful, sudden, or both.
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snare&racket
How long would a species last that did not seek to prolong survival? There is usually paticular emphasis on passing the age of procreation and seeing the successful genetic continuation before people are 'more' content to pass away.
This is not unique to humans, try drowning a cat/dog/tiger and see how keen it is for the big sleep. This hesistancy to die even in the animal kingdom does not logically conclude their right or natural progression to everlasting life. The emphasis on genetic continuation is also seen in the animal kingdom as paternal animals risk or even offer their lives to a predator of their offepring. Despite life being precious to an animal, its offspring are generally more so.
Being alive consumes energy, consumes time and space. To want to live forever is to deny the right of others to live at all. It is a selfish thing to deny the wonders of life to people who would never exist had some had their way of immortality. Simple physics and biology dictate that to live and breed for infinity would be impossible. To live forever and not breed would be a death sentence to the unborn.
Living forever is a very selfish want when examined in the realms of reality. Of course an ignorant and loyal to the end cultist/fundementslist could claim the magic of god as the answer, he could make the earth, universe and everything infinite..... Of course, introducing new forms of humans on a new planet in a new universe with new physical laws and new constraints may answer the dilemma, but gone is the notion of everything they claim. We would not be us, our earth would not be our earth and our universe not our universe, the life we did not want to end would not be our life.... Quite a different set of circumstances to where we began i.e. Living forever on a paradise earth. The irony of course is, this promise, this description, this concept is not found in ONE verse of the bible anyway, not ONE. Only ONE bible reading christian religion teach this,because it simply is not in the bible.... The Jehovahs Witnesses! They only introduced it 50 years into the religion themselves. In the 1930's they now had to explain why there were more than 144,000 witnesses as they had long taught that was the limit to the number going to heaven ( Ironically to explain away why so few people were JW's), What a mess!
But far from the JW message, the reality is that death and energy transfer is very natural, to not WANT to die is also very natural. There is no contradiction if you know your basic biology. Along comes a cult and takes advantage of these two natural incidents and hangs an untrue but seemingly logical fallacy.... If you dont want to die, death is unnantural, therefore living forever is natural. All the time they forget.....no ignore.....that they denounce the simple dog as mortal, yet no dog wishes to die either. The snake salesman is good at his job however and 8 million people want the product..... Everlasting Life, even at the expense of all the earth being wiped out by a deity for them to get it. All thiose men and women, all those children and babies... All those buildings to rubble...... all for a log cabin in a field and a panda in the garden, how disgusting! The snake salesman is that good at selling the product, not only do they want it, they believe they deserve it... EVEN at such great cost in human life and suffering at gods hand....why? Because they attended some meetings and placed some magazines...........
crazy.......
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A Handy Guide to Woo and Assorted Superstitions
by cofty init's interesting how superstitious people point the finger and laugh at other people's superstitions.. the only honest thing is to reject all of them.
here is a handy checklist to see if you have missed any.
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snare&racket
Just because you have never experienced crystal powers does not mean they don't exist....... Tosser!
I once fixed an uneven testicle with 1/2 lb of quartz and some superglue........
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god-of-the-gaps. Should we or shouldn't we fiil in the gaps with God?
by KateWild inscience imo does not have all the answers.
when i discover gaps in science, it's easy for me, as a temporary measure to fill in the gaps with god.
i do this until i have learnt something new.. what about you?
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snare&racket
ah prologos, 'research of the gaps' isnt a quip , its what we do.... It works...
