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Comments

[Obi-Wan]

Do you realize that in this last century more people have been killed by atheists than have been killed by "religious folk" (of whatever bent) in all of recorded history? You argue a comon falacy.

You didn't read my comment. I didn't say that atheists would always be more moral than anyone else--only that I think they are capable of a higher level of morality.

What they do with that is up to them, like everyone else.

[Obi-Wan]

The fact is, he won't. God will not violate his nature. He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

You don't know what God will do. You do know what a book that you believe was written by God tells you that He will do, but that's all.

[Rob]

I still disagree with your "before God made himself known" phrase. He either is or isn't. There was no before. God made himself known to man as soon as he created man. He's been with us ever since. If you don't accept that then the rest of your question is meaningless. If there is no God then our morality can't be based on him. If there is a God then there is no "before God" time.

The Greeks suffered the same fate as the Romans, btw and for the same cause. When right and wrong are relative then eventually anything goes and civilization crumbles. I bet the Greeks didn't start out with boy toys. Neither did the Romans start out as butchers. They had a wonderful republic with Senators... then an Emperor, then a Tyrant, then worse.. and worse..

[Rob]

but that's all.

But that's not all. Not by a long shot.

[Phoenix]

Good debate, Rob. We definitely do not see eye to eye, but you are a gentleman, and I very much respect your faith and dedication to it.

No matter the source of it, I believe that most people do live by 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. In the end, that is the best thing.

[Rob]

In fact, Jesus was once asked to summarize all the writings of the Law and the prophets and he summarized to a simple sentence: "Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself". I would argue that we all fall short on number 2, and some are very deliberate about it.. especially behind the wheel of a car. :-)

[Phoenix]

Ahh, but the problem with that particular statement is that too many people do NOT love themselves. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is more realistic.

I was reading National Geographic last night. Good article on DNA and how it is hardly changed at all since man emerged 1 to 1.5 billion years ago. This got me thinking about you. If you took your children to the Smithsonian and saw the archeological skeletal remains of early man, you would, no doubt, see the dates there, as well. What would you tell your children?

[Rob]

What I've told them all along... The science of dating is bad. There was a geologist that recently took a sample of rock from the lava cap at Mt. St Helens and sent it to 7 different labs to have them analyzed. All of them said the rock was from a volcanic eruption that dated back ranging from 300,000 years to 2.5 million years. Not quite the "20" he was expecting. There are plenty of animals (crustations I think) that will carbon date to several million years WHILE THEY ARE ALIVE. Personally I take all dates beyond a few hundred years with a huge grain of salt. How old is the Earth? Dunno.. me and Obi have gone over this and I'm of the opinion that no one has ever really proven this to a reasonable degree, one way or the other. 10,000 years or 4.5 billion? There's plenty of evidence that support both and either answer (or any between) is compatable with the Genesis account. Hows that? :-)

[Phoenix]

How's that? Well, it sounds like a kick in the face of all scientific inquiry and work. The scientists/archeologists dating primitive man can surely agree that they may be off by hundreds of years, but when you're getting in the millions of years, you've certainly surpassed the six/eight-thousand year claim you have going. That doesn't even make sense - that you would debunk the whole of international archeology/paleontology by saying it's wrong. Whoa. You are bashing scientists all over the world as if they haven't a clue what they're talking about. Does that not seem unreasonable to you?

[rob]

the six/eight-thousand year claim you have going

That's just it, I don't have it going. I said as much. I don't know and I don't presume to make a guess. Paleontology is not a hard science as sciences go. How can you make any kind of determination on how a group of people lived millions of years ago with any kind of assurance? You can't. You can see that some group lived somewhere and didn't have permenant houses and conclude they were nomadic. Maybe they were permenant and just had a "Burning of the Houses" party at the end of harvest season?
Now, why the face kick reference? When 7 leading research labs can't examine some rocks and date them to within an order of magnitude (and nevermind them being wrong by four orders of magnitude) then how can you say that I am impuning them? There is example after example after example of carbon dating being wrong and by no small amount. There are many examples of deliberate fraud in Paleontology (nebraska man, piltdown man, and many more) I call it like I see it and in this case I call it a bunch of people trying to make the data fit the theory instead of the other way around. If the science was sound then I wouldn't have a problem.

[Phoenix]

Lawwsy. Does your wife just head off to the boudoir and shut the door when you all have a minor debate going? :}

The 6-8 thousand year ref is from the Bible. Time of Adam and Eve. What you claim is the beginning of man. Even if none of the scientists have the 'exact' data, for sure the emergence of man was a million years ago give or take a couple of thousand. They, the scientists don't make this stuff up. You can't make up a fossilized skeleton.

So, you are happy with what the Bible says and with debunking all scientists as being wrong for the sake of your belief? Is that a correct statement?

[Phoenix]

Wait a minute. The emergence of man from the mists of millions of years ago is NOT a theory.

[rob]

...is NOT a theory

You think? 'exact' data? Try no data. If our ancestors roamed the earth for millions of years why aren't there thousands and thousands of their skeletons found? several million years worth of them?

Another example of false assumptions.. Scientist say that when you drill an ice core from Greenland you see strata in the ice. They say that the strata are seasonal changes to the ice and you can count the like rings in a tree to determine how many years back the core goes. ie, 1000 strata means you're back 1000 years.

Back during the WWII there was a flight that was ferrying to England. A B-17 and 2 flights of P-38s. They had some fuel problems and had to land in Greenland and were left there. Over time they were buried in the snow and ice and in 1992 someone decided to recoved one of the planes. They drilled down and were able to pull one of the P-38s up from 268 of ice. How many ice strata were there between the surface and the planes? 46 right since it was 46 years elaped, right? Well, they found hundreds and hundreds of layers. So why is it when a core is pulled the strata are assumed to be years? I did a quick scan of the internet and the accepted answer seems to be yeah, they start out near the surface with lots of layers but as they compress under the weight of the new snow they compress down to a single layer per year. Huh? Intellegent Ice?

So, you are happy with what the Bible says and with debunking all scientists as being wrong for the sake of your belief? Is that a correct statement?
No, that's not what I said at all. I said I smell data being adjusted to match a theory. Bad science.

[Phoenix]

Dang. Before I even got to the explanation for the plane settled down into the ice, I figured the same thing. Common sense. Not adjusted data to fit a theory. Oh well. I can't tell you why there are no more skeletons around. There are enough that have been radio-carbon and DNA dated to prove man has been around longer than 6,000 years. But here is a conundrum I have never been able to figure out and it probably has everything to do with why we don't find one-million-year-old skeletons sitting at rest-stop picnic tables in NC. When archeologists dig up ancient cities, I am always amazed. The city was abandoned, obviously, and never settled again. Over the millenia, dust just covered it up. Entire cities. I can understand on a desert, but in places where this is no desert, how does mankind just let a city get buried to 'life' forever? That is, until some archeological dig finds it. Dinosaurs are older than man. There are plenty of their bones around. Do you discount that as junk science or poor dating? We DO know they predate man.

[Obi-Wan]

We DO know they predate man.

Don't tell that to these folks.

Actually, just google the words dinosaurs humans (no quotes). The entire first page of hits--the top ten--all, in one way or another, promote the idea that humans and dinosaurs did indeed coexist.

I'm not yet arguing that issue one direction or the other--only pointing out that a fairly large population, perhaps surprisingly large to some, does indeed believe they did.

[Rob]

I wasn't going to mention that.. :-) We seemed to be winding down and I didn't want to throw kerosene on the embers.. FWIW, at Mt St Helens there is already being found petrafied wood. Only 20 years to make. Fossilization of animals can happen in about that time too.

[Obi-Wan]

Rob, first of all, sorry that I've been "out of the fray" for the last 4 days or so.

But one thing that strikes me over and over again in this thread is that you make a lot of assertions, but with no links or even much of a logical argument to back them up.

Now, never let it be said that I deny a man the right to believe whatever he wishes. I certainly reserve that right to myself. But when I attempt to argue a point in a public forum, a reasonable respect for those who read my words demands that I make a reasonable effort to support my point(s) cogently and rationally.

In particular, it's probably a safe assumption (if there is such a thing) that you are a more expert user of the internet than I am, and I'm no slacker. Adding a link to a comment is easy, but you almost never do it. And in the absence of either supporting documentation or rational argument, your arguments, although no doubt fervently believed, lack serious credibility.

For example, I asserted that, if an act has no intrinsic moral value, than God could change his mind about it at any time. I made at least an attempt at logically arguing that point.

Your response, was:

The fact is, he won't. God will not violate his nature. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. God could snap his fingers and make every living person a perfect being.. but that would violate free will that he gave us. So he's spent the past 6000 years shaping us and moving us in the direction towards moving closer to him because he didn't want to break a rule he made.

There's no attempt at logical reasoning or documentation--although I suspect that your documentation is the bible, which was why I replied:

You don't know what God will do. You do know what a book that you believe was written by God tells you that He will do, but that's all.

...which of course is still true. Your only reply?

But that's not all. Not by a long shot.

Still, no attempt at supporting this assertion.

Also, I need to point out that you make a pretty serious and sweeping condemnation of the idea of "peer review" (cutting across multiple scientific disciplines, so interwoven is evolution in all the biological sciences) in this comment:

The science of dating is bad.

As I asked once before in another thread wherein you said that the theory of evolution had already been long falsified by facts,

This is what I'm asking for: a link to a documented fact that falsifies the theory of evolution. Not just something that may weaken it a bit, but something that "goes for the jugular" and contradicts evolution outright. And, as I said earlier, it's ok if this takes you some time to find. I'm patient.

But that specific issue aside, just remember the old saw: "The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data.'"

[rob]

Well, I apologise for making sweeping statements and not referencing them, but when I comment here Im either
a) At work and between crisis, or
b) At home, tired from fighting crisis all day and taking a break from playing legos with my son.
Besides, I did backup an assertion I made earlier.. namely that atheist have killed more people in this century than religious people have in recorded history. I researched that, provided links to my source and then was waved off as being non-germain.. It probably was, but darnit, I did the work!! :-)
Well if you want a smack down, go for the juggular proof against Darwinian Evolution, how about this mathmatical argument? Most specifically the second section. When you start talking Plank time and number of elementary particles in the observeable Universe, then you're talking my language!

[Obi-Wan]

Yes, you did reference one source, an article in Wikipedia. I apologize for missing that.

Also, I pretty much assumed that, when you're at work at least, you're commenting in a hurry with little time to research anything, and I should have brought that point up myself rather than leave you with the task of making it.

I'm just left unconvinced, though, of the relevance of your point. First, you didn't really support your point by listing any numbers. I of course looked at the article you referenced, but with all the numbers listed I certainly didn't take the time to add them all up according to "Christian/atheist/unknown" or whatever.

Second, that particular list shouldn't be used as an authoritative source by its own admission--at the top it says,

Most numbers are estimates and are often in dispute...This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Additionally, for this list to have any relevance to the point we're discussing, the people killed "by atheists" should have been killed specifically because the person/people ordering their deaths were atheists, not simply because they were despotic leaders like Stalin. That point might be hard to substantiate.

Rob, I completely sympathize with your position as a father and an overworked IT manager/"miracle worker," as I've been there myself (albeit in a slightly different professional field). It's hard for you to do time-consuming research, but that can't be a reason to just believe what you say by faith. If you're unable, for several good and worthy reasons, to logically substantiate your points (not only by linking to sources, of course--I'm also talking about simply making logical arguments and addressing the arguments I make), maybe someone else reading this thread will be able do so.

But I sure hope not. I've thoroughly enjoyed your contributions to discussions here since last June, and I'd hate to see you "pass the torch" to anyone else.

[Phoenix]

Hijole! From today's NYT's. n two reports today in the journal Nature, a team of scientists led by Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago say they have uncovered several well-preserved skeletons of the fossil fish in sediments of former streambeds in the Canadian Arctic, 600 miles from the North Pole. The skeletons have the fins, scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long. But on closer examination, the scientists found telling anatomical traits of a transitional creature, a fish that is still a fish but has changes that anticipate the emergence of land animals — and is thus a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans. In the fishes' forward fins, the scientists found evidence of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods. Other scientists said that in addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution, the fossils were a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who have long argued that the absence of such transitional creatures are a serious weakness in Darwin's theory. What They Said ''It's a really amazing, remarkable intermediate fossil. It's like, holy cow.'' -- Neil H. Shubin, University of Chicago scientist who led the study of the fossil The discovery team called the fossils the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. The fish has been named Tiktaalik roseae, at the suggestion of elders of Canada's Nunavut Territory. Tiktaalik (pronounced tic-TAH-lick) means "large shallow water fish." "The origin of limbs," Dr. Shubin's team wrote, "probably involved the elaboration and proliferation of features already present in the fins of fish such as Tiktaalik." In an interview, Dr. Shubin, an evolutionary biologist, let himself go. "It's a really amazing, remarkable intermediate fossil," he said. "It's like, holy cow." Two other paleontologists, commenting on the find in a separate article in the journal, said that a few other transitional fish had been previously discovered from approximately the same Late Devonian time period, 385 million to 359 million years ago. But Tiktaalik is so clearly an intermediate "link between fishes and land vertebrates," they said, that it "might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx," which bridged the gap between reptiles (probably dinosaurs) and today's birds. The writers, Erik Ahlberg of Uppsala University in Sweden and Jennifer A. Clack of the University of Cambridge in England, are often viewed as rivals to Dr. Shubin's team in the search for intermediate species in the evolution from fish to the first animals to colonize land. H. Richard Lane, director of paleobiology at the National Science Foundation, said in a statement, "These exciting discoveries are providing fossil 'Rosetta Stones' for a deeper understanding of this evolutionary milestone — fish to land-roaming tetrapods." The science foundation and the National Geographic Society were among the financial supporters of the research. Besides Dr. Shubin, the principal discoverers were Edward B. Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and Farish A. Jenkins Jr., a Harvard evolutionary biologist. Casts of the fossils will be on view at the Science Museum of London. More From the Times Michael J. Novacek, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, who was not involved in the research, said: "Based on what we already know, we have a very strong reason to think tetrapods evolved from lineages of fishes. This may be a critical phase in that transition that we haven't had before. A good fossil cuts through a lot of scientific argument." Dr. Shubin's team played down the fossil's significance in the raging debate over Darwinian theory, which is opposed mainly by some conservative Christians in this country, but other scientists were not so reticent. They said this should undercut the argument that there is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind. One creationist site on the Web (emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs /evid1.htm) declares that "there are no transitional forms," adding: "For example, not a single fossil with part fins, part feet has been found. And this is true between every major plant and animal kind." Dr. Novacek responded: "We've got Archaeopteryx, an early whale that lived on land, and now this animal showing the transition from fish to tetrapod. What more do we need from the fossil record to show that the creationists are flatly wrong?" Duane T. Gish, a retired official of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, said, "This alleged transitional fish will have to be evaluated carefully." But he added that he still found evolution "questionable because paleontologists have yet to discover any transitional fossils between complex invertebrates and fish, and this destroys the whole evolutionary story." Dr. Shubin and Dr. Daeschler began their search on Ellesmere Island in 1999. They were attracted by a map in a geology textbook showing an abundance of Devonian rocks exposed and relatively easy to explore. At that time, the land had a warm climate: it was part of a supercontinent straddling the Equator. It was not until July 2004, Dr. Shubin said, that "we hit the jackpot." They found several of the fishes in a quarry, their skeletons largely intact and in three dimensions. The large skull had the sharp teeth of a predator. It was attached to a neck, which allowed the fish the unfishlike ability to swivel its head. If the animal spent any time out of water, said Dr. Jenkins, of Harvard, it needed a true neck that allowed the head to move independently on the body. Embedded in the pectoral fins were bones that compare to the upper arm, forearm and primitive parts of the hand of land-living animals. The joints of the fins appeared to be capable of functioning for movement on land, a case of a fish improvising with its evolved anatomy. In all likelihood, the scientists said, Tiktaalik flexed its proto-limbs mainly on the floor of streams and might have pulled itself up on the shore for brief stretches. In their report, the scientists concluded that Tiktaalik was an intermediate between the fishes Eusthenopteron and Panderichthys, which lived 385 million years ago, and early tetrapods. The known early tetrapods are Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, about 365 million years ago. Tiktaalik, Dr. Shubin said, is "both fish and tetrapod, which we sometimes call a fishapod."

[Phoenix]

Um. So much for copying and pasting without inserting the dufus html codes for paragraphs. :)

Obi, I have to say. Something you said in this long thread struck me mightly. It was in the part about morality. You said it might be that the atheist has a higher degree of morality because his morality is based on his reason, not on the dictates of a religion - someone else's interpretation of morality. It was a clear thought that had never entered my mind. That's why I love this site.

Being an atheist isn't a choice or an act of will. Like theism, it is a consequence of what one knows and how one reasons. When you believe something, you accept it on faith; when you know something, you accept it on truth. I believe that one of THE universal truths is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. To me, that is reason. Those of us, religious or non-religious can agree on this.

[Rob]

proto-bird Archaeopteryx

Ugh! Archaeopteryx is not a proto-bird. If you believe evolutionary biologist and palientologists, there exsisted crow-looking birds for millions of years previous to (and contempoary to) Archaeopteryx. That's old news.
As for the fish, I only saw something about that on a crawl on Fox news last night.. No time to form an opinion yet... I'll avoid speculating to avoid the ire of Obi... :-)
The fallacy of reasoning your way to morality is that you can just as easily reason your way out of it, and recent history is rife with examples. The Nazi's thought it was perfectly reasonable to erradicate a group of people they thought were genetically inferior. Their morality evolved over a very short period of time. Without a solid foundation you can't build a house.

[Rob]

Forgot, Obi wants references...
Archaeopteryx was a bird

[Obi-Wan]

Archaeopteryx is not a proto-bird.

Quite true. But it is a perfect example of a transitional form--possessing characteristics of both bird and reptile--that doesn't exist, according to some.

And thanks for the link, but Arch.'s transitional characteristics still remain, even if Arch.'s own line later, in fact, went extinct.

The fallacy of reasoning your way to morality is that you can just as easily reason your way out of it, and recent history is rife with examples.

This is true, but it doesn't make this a fallacy. It makes morality a choice, like pretty much everything else.

The fact that you can be moral--even more moral--is certainly no guarantee that you will be.

Oh, and Phoenix--no time just now, but I'll go back later and fix the paragraphs in your earlier comment.

[Rob]

But it is a perfect example of a transitional form

No, it's a perfect example of a bird. A bird with alot of wishfull thinking.. :-) Again, I can post a slew of sites that prove that just as you can probably post a slew of sites that prove otherwise. Consider this.. There are fewer than 10 fossils of Arch. (2 complete and the rest a pile of rubble basicly) all come from a single site and none of them are available for review (removed from public display and inaccessable to scientists). I could paint an easy conspiracy theory here but I won't.. :-) Anyway, you guys are great.. I love arguing with y'all. I just wish I had more time.

Morality: you say "The fact that you can be moral.." but that's just the point. What is moral? The dictionary says its "concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character". Again, what is good? What is bad? Without a firm foundation the terms are meaningless. (like my elastic tape measure). Is it good to round up gays and put them in a camp? I say no, 1930's Germany said yes. Were they "right"? By their perverted morals they thought they were. If you use God as the standard, however, you see that they were wrong. Is it right to shoplift? You could rationalize and say "I'm hungry and have no money" and come to the point where you think that is "good" since it keeps you from starving. anyway, back to work...