Posts by Abaddon

20

Dino dies in Flood...

by Tashawaa in

jw
friends

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?article_id=27686

.... where to start??????

how about what was missing from the article... like a reliable dating method by two sources?.

Abaddon

OK, it appears to be a real fossil, but boy oh boy...

They located the dinosaur’s skull the following day. Jordan Hall was digging with a pick axe when he hit bone and a piece flew up toward Taylor’s ear. Taylor caught the flying bone fragment, examined it and recognized sinus cavities in it.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wYTXWiiAeKQJ:www.raisingthetruth.com/chapters/chapter-9/+Allosaurus+complete+fossil+skulls+2002+clinton+montana&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk

Taylor was not happy about the sloppy work Pete and his sons had done. The vertebral column had been badly undercut, and, fearing damage, he was furiously repacking dirt beneath the fragile bones. To all within earshot, particularly the DeRosas, Taylor explained that paleontologists never remove dirt from directly under dinosaur bones until they are encased in plaster, stressing that without the support they could easily break.
...

Perhaps the saddest thing about this situation is the tragically missed opportunity to glorify God it represents for the Creationist Movement. All too typically in the Christian community, what began in unity ended in disagreement and division, and, instead of benefiting all the groups involved and contributing significantly to the creation science, this God-given opportunity was used to enhance the work of a selfish few and received scant attention from genuine creation scientists. If the kind of selfishness and infighting characterized by this episode continues to take place when a valuable fossil is found by members of the body of Christ, it is likely that creationists will have little to contribute to the debate between creation and evolution for decadesto come, at least when it comes to the field of paleontology—often called the most evolutionistic of the sciences

http://documents.raisingthetruth.com/Chapter2/AllosaurusTBeh.pdf

In short, the allosaur was discovered in part a year earlier, a fee-paying expedition to 'find an allosaur' was organised the following year, the dig was done incompetently, and it all descended into a snarling mess. This website documents the entire mess: http://www.raisingthetruth.com

20

Dino dies in Flood...

by Tashawaa in

jw
friends

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?article_id=27686

.... where to start??????

how about what was missing from the article... like a reliable dating method by two sources?.

Abaddon

This may be a genuine discovery, in which case it is a pity as it is quite likely valuable information will be lost when amateurs extract it from the matrix.

As described it in no way "debunks the theory of evolution" or proves a global flood.

HOWEVER... my bullshit sensor is going off the scale here.

So you get almost $1k a head off people to go on a bone hunt, and jiminy, they find 'bones'. It is on private land so no competent oversight. WOuld not surprise me if these 'bones' remained in the CreationIDiotist circles free of any real investigation.

Many sincere people will be impressed, but somewhere (as has happened before in both CreationIDiotist and real scientific circles) there is someone who has seeded a site with plaster-casts knowing the ruse will not be discovered as those finding them don't trust real scientists. Next season they will be inudated with people wanting to find bones, all willing to pay for it.

I could be wrong, I could be right...

269

The Hubble, Yahweh, the Bible, and faith.

by Nickolas in

jw
friends

there have been several threads in which the views of the universe provided by the hubble space telescope have been discussed.

i guess this will be another one.

there's a new series being broadcast here in canada on the oasis hd nature channel entitled hubble's canvas.

Abaddon

Awen:

As far as the actual evolution of sexual reproduction, there are ideas but they are not proven; you can Google as well as I and have already provided links in your post. Here is another:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w0FiwfyUMM

It looks at the very start of the process (how haploid cells with one copy of each chromosome fuse to become duploid cells with two copies of each chromosome. how this is not irreducably complex as is often claimed, and why this would be advantagous). It is part of a series which means if there are bits you don't get or questions that remain unanswered you can go backwards or forwards in the sequence.

But remember, Google, Wiki and YouTube are not the normal methods of academic learning. You can do scholarly research outside of academic environments but it takes considerabley more time and effort than a bit of surfing.

Evolution would imply that an organism uses the most direct and simplest means to evolve.

Yes but no. Organisms in a population of organisms that have characteristics that allow them to have a greater number of offspring than is normal for that population of organism will result in those characteristics being more common in sucessive generation of that population. A complex 'accidental' charateristic that allows greater transmission of genes to successive generations will 'win' over a simple pre-existing characteristic. An organism also does not 'know' the difference between complex and non-complex, there is no 'choice', there is just success in passing on genes. Some are better than others.

Sexual reproduction in humans for example is quite complex so why do we reproduce this way and not assexually as Evolution says the first single cell organisms did?

Try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC8LZlmwCzE&feature=related. Human sexual reproduction is a further elaboration of pre-existing sexual reproductions and as such is slighly more complex than those methods of sexual reprodction that went before it as they were of those that went before them. As the linked video shows, it all started with cells fusing.

Each layer of oomplexity was selected for because it allowed greater success in passing on genes and/or greater variability in the genes passed on so as to allow natural selection more to select from. For example, if an asexual organism can have 1x chances of a new trait, an sexual organism will have 2x chances (this is VERY simplified). So we reproduce sexually as it allowed us to be more adaptable and successful in our environment; some organisms still successfully use asexual reproduction as it wiorks perfectly well for them in their environment.

Why is the fertilized egg not attacked by the mother's immune system since it constitutes a foreign body (containing male chromosomes) before the placenta is "created".

Two-way process that is not fully understood; progesterone is a immuno-suppresant, the placenta produces another one, and the fetus is active in not being rejected. The placenta is key. But this bio-feedback loop did not happen overnight and each step along the way from cell fusion to eggs to live bearing had advantages.

How could nature evolve a female member of a species that produces eggs and is internally equipped to nourish a growing embryo, while at the same time evolving a male member that produces motile sperm cells?

Not seperate things. Happened at same time. If a 'male' organism got too out-of-step with 'female' organisms it would not be able to reproduce and vice-versa. Thus over huge amounts of time this arrose in minute steps.

Great questions Awen and some of the answers are not fully understood yet. However, do not fall for the IDist or Creationist dimwittery of assuming just because evolutionists cannot explain everything evolution is fundamentally wrong. We might not be able to fully explain some things but the evidence for evolution, both in fossils and in genes, is incontravertable, and falsifies any literal interpretation of any creation myth.

42

Name Things That Are Unique To Jehovah's Witnesses

by minimus in

jw
friends

they are the only religion that i know of that disapprove of a college education.

they alone believe in the significance of 1914. they exclusively believe that christ jesus is michael the archangel.....to name a few.. what can you add to the list?.

.

Abaddon

They are a cult without a leader and all the more deadly for it. The majority of cults fade after their first leader dies, or transition to a new single-point of authority. The Borg transitioned from Russell to Rutherford, but Knorr or whatever that flagrant non-entity was turned it into a poisonous snake with no head and a smell with no shit. I can only think of the scientossologists as doing similar and they have a more identifiable head.

Now headed by an unaccountable committee it is free of the dangers of transitions between leaders and the potential loss of momentum or large-scale changes as like some cancerous growth its leadership will just go on and on, replacing some corpsicle with another as they snuff it.

There is no hyper-rich Hubbard at the centre of the web, no child-molesting messiah. There is nothing behind the curtain.

As an organisation it is the epitome of soullessness and pointlessness.

Oh, the WCG actually apologised for 1975

49

More on Saturday's drama: Endo-symbiotic theory mentioned not once but twice

by sir82 in

jw
friends

i don't want to give a full synopsis of saturday's drama, for fear of inducing stupor among this thread's readers, but.... .

the drama deals with a jw family with 3 kids, 2 of whom are in various stages of rebellion against all things jw.. the older brother is one of the "rebels", while the younger brother is a thoroughly annoying piece of brown-nosing crapola, completely buying into the jw mindset.. anyways, the younger brother is asking the older brother about why he doesn't want to attend the family study any more.. the older kid's rambling answer touches on something along the lines of "i'm learning things in school about how life really came here.

it's not as simple as you think!".

Abaddon

EH? The endosymbiotic theory has nothing to do with abiogenesis (the origin of life). Endosymbiotic theory postulates that eukaryotic organisms absorbed or were invaded by bacteria that developed a symbitoic (co-operative, like cows and their gut bacteria or ants and aphids) relationship with the host cell, later becoming organelles like mitochondria, or possibly that two types of bacteria acheived the same ends through a progressively closer symbiosis, one eventually absorbing the other.

This is one of two things, sheer ignorance and trying to sound with-it, or deliberately creating a strawman by maing it sound like endosymbiotic theory is a theory of abiogenesis.

14

Jerry Bergman v PZ Myers Debate

by cofty in

in part 1 bergman speaks about his past as a jw and how it influenced his thinking.

he actually claims that the watchtower were the only religious organisation to oppose the nazis.

i swear i am losing iq points by the minute listening to him.

Abaddon

nicolaou: I re-read that old thread. Have to confess I laughed, both at what I said AND at myself. Boy, I really can get on one sometimes. There is an xckd cartoon of this guy pounding a keyboard and his girlfriend asking him if he's coming to bed, to which he replies he can't, as "someone on the internet is wrong!" Maybe I have grown up a little in eight years, lol. Maybe.

14

Jerry Bergman v PZ Myers Debate

by cofty in

in part 1 bergman speaks about his past as a jw and how it influenced his thinking.

he actually claims that the watchtower were the only religious organisation to oppose the nazis.

i swear i am losing iq points by the minute listening to him.

Abaddon

Bergman has posted here in the past (his name was his log-in). I think he ran away from a discussion we were having when I asked him about Bristlecone pines. He is also evasive, as he never gave a straight answer when questioned about his beliefs. He is very convinced of his own cleverness, but is pretty much not worth the effort as he's so insubstantial.

9

Please Help Headisspinning With Her iPhone!

by headisspinning in

jw
friends

hey guys.... i'm still here and following every day but it's all on my iphone so i can't comment or message or post replies and i'm going crazy!.

little baby boy - darling that he is - pulls my hair, yanks on my shorts, scratches and bites my skin or wails whenever i try to go online... once he's up on my lap.. .well, watch out keyboard!.

(oh how i long to bring him to the kingdom hall - lol!).

Abaddon

I use the Mercury browser for the iPhone. Once installed, clcik on the cog, and then settings, and in General Settings make 'Identify Browser as' IE7; then as described above, click on the T above the text box.

I find it easiest to write the post in Notepad, and then cut and paste it into the text box as described. When done, click on Insert, and then click Submit.

77

My Last Thread

by Maze in

my interest in posting here has deadened lately.

this will likely be my last thread.

initially i participated here because i was interested in sharpening my perception against opposing points of view.

Abaddon

That should be 'ever proved anything in a serious discussion other than rather uncomplimentary things about themselves?'. Am typing on an iPhone.

77

My Last Thread

by Maze in

my interest in posting here has deadened lately.

this will likely be my last thread.

initially i participated here because i was interested in sharpening my perception against opposing points of view.

Abaddon

I regret the car analogy is not my own, but is so damn good it stuck in my memory, and will I hope itch away at those who read it and don't act on it's logical conclusion.

As for where I was JD, well you know, good times, bad times, I know I've had my share, my woman ran off with a blind man but I still don't seem to care. To be honest I decided to stop identifying myself as an xJW. Posting here kinda typecast me, although others may not have found the same. But as, after a long gap, the song remains the same, I made the right call for me.

From some comments I gather this person may be some species of sock-puppet/attention whore/troll.

And this is what they and the monomaniacal 'god speaks through me' sad sacks and YEC/OEC/ID fucktards don't get.

'We' might not change their mind, but it is not about them. It is about those who merely read and are informed by the debate.

Has a creationist (or other type of conspiracist such as Truthers, Birthers etc.) ever proved anything in a serious discussion that rather uncomplimentary things about themselves?

Have any of the self-appointed members of god's elect ever proved anything other than all they hear is the Universe making a whooshing noise as it revolves around their pointy little heads?

Those who scream and shout to hold on to what ever stupid little fancy that fills their need for understanding and control do more to push those on the wall off to 'our' side than a million learned essays.

'We' win, not because we are so good, but because the others, the fantasists and science deniers, are so bad.