AW! Epistles
From Bob T 1
Abstract
Monday, 28 February 2005
My name is Bob. I just stumbled acrossed your website by accident. I was reading some of the material on your site. I am a person who has studied and read on a wide range of material coming from various views. On your site the subject or the people your website seems to attack is Christians? Why?
One of your values I read was treating all people with kindness. Does not invovle the Christians too? If you are going to attack other faith, do you attack like Islam due to the way they treat their wives? Or communist and where they hve brutalized thousands of innocent people?
I have answered this question before. I am not qualified to criticize Islam specifically, but I bracket all the patriarchal religions together on the website. They have the same roots and often they can be criticized in the same way. You seem to miss a key point that Christians claim—that Christianity helps to make people good, which is why Christians teach their children to be Christians, and that good people are Christians. Neither is true, and that the website shows abundantly, largely by historical argument. Christianity has an awful history. It continues to be awful. Christian leaders of the west have just launched terror weapons on innocent people—supposedly in revenge for the action of some wicked men of the Islamic faith—that cannot pick out wicked ones only, and so many innocent people have died. This is typical of Christian history. If Christianity not only does not make people better people but also hides wicked acts under the guise of being godly, then it cannot be good and is most likely bad itself. If it simply leaves people just as bad as they were, then it is lying by claiming it makes people better, when it is not only useless but dangerous. Do me the favour of reading more of the site, then you will get the weight of the argument. There are pages of answers like this one, too.
I told your suggestion and I read and read on many of your articles. Like who Jesus was, is the Bible fact or Fiction, etc. To begin Mike I read in detail is the Bible Fact or fiction and Must say I think in regards to your article. Like on you said in Life or Death? “This sore of racism monoculturalism ought to have been rejected even by Christians, but it seems it has not”. Mike according the Bible people were blessed not based on appearance but on obedience. Even the ISraelites got punished for not obeying God. Just read EXodus.
Perhaps they did, but how then is God good?
In this article you also claimed in the same section that the Bible is only b/c Christian believe it and no one is allowed to question the Bible. Mike, I think it is the opposite. The Bible is true not based on subjective but objective evidence. For ex. over 25,000 archeological digs have verified or confirmed what is stated in the Bible. For ex. the Hitties. For many years people thought they were just a myth b/c the Bible was the only ancient book that mentions them. Finally in the early 1900s archeologists discovered they really existed and today are on display in the British musceum.
I suggest you read the many many pages I have disproving what you say. Every Christian that wants to prove the bible true cites the Hittites, but the biblical Hittites were not the ones discovered by the archaeologists in Turkey. The word Hittite was a word that was used for people who lived in Canaan, perhaps once Hittites but now just a group, like calling black Americans Afro when very few of them were born in Africa.
AS for the Bible writers you also state, you are right they were not perfect, just inspired by God. just on the manuscript evidence of ancient books, no one questions other writings like Herodotus, history, Thucydides, history, Plato, Caesar, Gallic Wars, Livy, history of Rome. Just as a historical source the Bible surprasses over whelming evidence compared ot other ancient books which no one seems to doubt. Than why should they doubt the Bible so much?
All of this is answered online. Why are you raising again as if it were new?
You said in the same section “no one is allowed to question the bible”. Mike I think if you look at history in the west especially over the last almost 200 years I think you would have to rethink your statement. The Enlightenment period happened in the 1800s and many people started questioning the Bible’s authority like Darwin with Origin of Species, go down the line. The Bible has been examined scientifically, geographically, historically, etc. No other religious book has been looked at, re-examined, etc. Try doing that with the QU’ran and see what happens. Have you heard of Salmon RUshdie who wrote a publication on the supposely “Satanic Verses in the Qu’ran” AS a result, he had to flee his country b/c his life was put in danger. The muslims tried killing him and now he is hidden after more than 10 years here in the West.
What I said was that questioning was only possible after the Enlightenment—the Enlightenment from the Christian dark ages when questioning was not allowed if you did not want to be burnt to death. Look, Bob, you are wasting my time. You are not answering what I said but things you are making up yourself, or just citing what I said as if you said it!
The bottom line is even the Bible has been questioned it still comes up a winner. Like the dead sea scrolls. William F Albright who wrote in regards of them stated in regards to Isaiah “THere can happily not be the slightest doubt in the world about the geniuneness of the manuscripts” “It is matter of wonder that through something like a 1000 years the text underwent so little alteraation” (Geisler 1986 pp 366-67) “The degree of accuracy of the NT exceeds 99% which is greater than that of any other book from the ancient world” (ibid, p.22)
Read the pages, Bob, and stop wasting my time!
Archeological. “Archaology has confirmed countless passages which has been rejected by critcs as unhistorical or contradictory to known facts… Yet archaeological discoveries has showen that these critical charges… are wrong and that the Bible is trustworthy in the very statements which have been set aside as untrustworthy… We do not know of nay cases whree the Bible has been proven wrong (Dr Joseph P Free).”
Stop wasting my time, Bob! I do not know who this man is, but he is a liar so must be a Christian. There are many places when the bible is wrong or contradictory. It is pointless to keep repeating old lies. They do not become true by repetition even if Christians think they do.
“It may be stated catagorically that no archeological discovery has ever controberted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaelogical findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible (Dr Nelson Glueck).”
Glueck was another liar, rabbi or not. He is now long dead so, even if he happened to be right when he wrote (he was not) he is multiply wrong in the light of modern discoveries. Read the pages, and stop wasting my time!
following a 1993 discovery in Israel of a stone containing the inscription “House of David” and “King of Israel” Time magazine stated, “this writing—dated to the 9th century BC only a century after David’s reign—described a victory by a neighboring king over the Israelites… The skeptics claim that David never existed is now hard to defned” (Time magazine dec 18, 1995).
No doubt Time magazine is a new chapter of the Holy Bible for Jews and Christians. And like much of the bible it is wrong. This is even answered on the page you are referring to. Try reading it.
QUestions. Mike I had a question in regards of your historical facts. you said in House of David section right at the very end you stated but after 164 BC Daniel lost his prophetic skills… Are you saying Daniel lived around 164bc? If you are than I think you have to look at secular history. The Babylonian empire was the #1 power in around 600BC.
Stop wasting my time Bob! Read the pages. Daniel is a pseudepigraph. It pretends to have been written in the Babylonian period. It was not. All of this is on line. Why are you wasting my time talking about things that are already there?
2nd Caiaphas. You state in the section of overwhelming evidence about the tomb of Caiaphas in Mt 26:5,7). Well I checked those scriptures and this what they say “But not during the Feast they said or there may be a roit among the people”(vs5), “a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume which she poured on his head as he was reclining”.
Well, thanks, Bob, at last you are contributing. The reference is Mt 26:57. I shall correct it.
I did exactly what you suggested. I read your articles. I was surprised at many things. First is what you all believe. You believe in evolution? I am sorry but I have a hard time with that. Science has not proven it but actually contradicted it. For ex. Nova Stars which explore every 25-30 years. the astronomers can only find around 300 of them. If the earth is millions of years old should we not find more than 300?
I don’t know how you know the novas explode every 30 years but, even if they do, how do you recognize them once they have exploded? There are a few well known examples that have exploded recently and they can be seen, but the universe is a bit big and when something has exploded it is not likely to be obvious. So, I do not know what the basis of this supposed fact is, but it does not seem correct. And what has it to do with evolution?
Secondly, if the earth was that old than why don’t we find more bones of people from the past. There should be trillions!
Come on, Bob. Don’t pull my leg. Or are you being ignorant?
Thirdly, in the fossil record there is no evidence of a transforming fossil. They are all complete. There is no half fish half land animal.
Why should there be a fossil of half a fish and half of a land animal? Even if there ever had been a creature that was half fish and half a land animal, it is unlikely to have been around for long, so why should fossils of it be easy to find? There are no fossils of mermaids as far as I know and no fossils of unicorns, but then they are like the half fish and half land animal, imaginary. There are plenty of fossil skulls of animals that are not like modern humans and not like modern apes, because they are something in between. Is that the sort of thing you meant? If so, you are obviously wrong that there are not any.
Even if we looked at evolution, we have to ask, when the fish crawled out of the water, how could it breath when it did not have lungs? Was it a male or female? If it was either than how did it find a proper mate?
Now, Bob, you are pulling my leg agin aren’t you? Or are you?
Birds evolving. If it did not have beak at first than how did it eat? If it did not eat for many of years than how did it survive?
I think the ancestral species of the bird was the dinosaur, and there are getting to be a lot of fossils of dinosaurs with feathers, and birds that look like dinosaurs. If you are not pulling my leg, you must be ignorant, but you can read about all this fairly easily, on the internet, if not in books and magazines. Why not read something useful and true instead of all that that is useless and false that you are used to.
Mike many scientist don’t believe in evolution. Mike Ruse, wrote Darwin’s Theory :An exercise in Science “an increasing number of scientists, most particularly a growing number of evolutionists… argue that Darwinism evolutionary theory is no geniune scientific theory at all… Mnay of the critics have the highest intellectual credentials”.
How many is many? Not many! Why do you think a few eccentric people’s views outweigh myriads of experts? Because it suits you, not because it is true. How many of the ones who do not believe in it are Christians and creationists? The lot. What is Mike Ruse?
Dr T N Tahmisian of the ATomic Energy Commission “scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever.”
That is obviously utterly false. The greatest hoax ever is Christianity. Is this man a Christian or a creationist?
HS Lipson of Manuchester U. professor of phyics “In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to bend their observations to fit in with it”".
I have never heard of him? Is he a Christian? When was he a professor of physics at Manchester. What did he discover?
In fact Darwin said “millions of missing links transitional life forms, would have to be discovered in the fossil record to prove the accuracy of his theory that all species had gradually evolved by chance mutation into new species. Unforately for his theory, despite hundreds of millions spent on searching, for fossils worldwide fmor more than a century, the scientists have failed to local a single mssing link out of milliins that must exist if their theory of evolution is t obe vindicated” GRant R Jeffrey The signature of God
This seems not to be Darwin talking but someone called Jeffrey. He sounds like a Christian. Christians cannot be scientists because they already know from God. Science has to be discovered, and cannot be discovered when someone thinks they already know the answers.
If we just look at the eye which is in itself complex Darwin said “to suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could hav been formed by naturual selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree” (Origin of Species).
Poor old Darwin was writing 150 years ago. There is no doubt now. We now know that molluscs in the oceans have better eyes than mammals. The two are different in principle so evolved separately. Why would God want an octopus to have a better eye than an evangelist? Surely God would design the perfect eye for His favourite pet?
In short, Mike if you believe in Evolution than as Professor Lousi Bounoure, Director of Research, National Center of Scientific Research said you have fallen for “Evolutuion is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless”
Unlike Christianity which is not a fairy tale but God’s truth, no doubt. Who is this man, and what is he a professor of? What is the National Center of Scientific Reasearch? If this man is its director, I would not believe anything it produced.
I take it that you are not pulling my leg on these things, but you are citing people that might as well not exist. They have no scientific track records that I am aware of, and even if they had, they are a handful of voices among tens of thousands if not millions. You yourself ought to begin to realize something important. Evolution does not depend only on fossils as evidence. The evidence is overwhelming. Moreover, the discovery in the middle of the last century of the double helical structure of DNA explained exactly why evolution worked, something that poor old Darwin in the middle of the Victorian age could not have known.
Of course, Bob, I realize that you are too dogmatic ever to be persuaded otherwise, but that is your problem not mine. The whole point of Christianity is to make its believers believe lies not the truth. You prove that it succeeds.
But do me a favour. Read the pages before you tell me a load of stuff that I have already answered. You don’t even have to read the whole lot because I have given every main page a link to Google so that these very pages can be searched for words like Darwin, evolution and cracked pot, saving me the trouble of having to say the same things over and over and over again. I know that Christians like to hear unproven things over and over again, but for us non-Christians it gets tedious.
You say Evolutiion is Science. Than remember Science does not judge or assumes. Science only reports what it observes. Question: where you there when supposely the big bang happened? Was any one? If no one was there to observe it at the beginning than evolution is starting out as a theory.
Science is built up of what you call theories, and science calls hypotheses. If science were only reports of what had happened, it would not have been able to conceive of anything, and all of the remarkable inventions that the modern world, and even the Christians that live in it, depend on, would not have been made. So when you say that science does not judge or assume, it all depends on what you mean by these words. Science judges that a hypothesis is true, and therefore assumes it is, so long as nothing shows the opposite. In other words as long as the hypothesis continues to explain and to produce other hypotheses that explain and predict the workings of the world, then it is true. You have to realise that science is essentially a method, and only secondarily the body of true facts and hypotheses it has produced.
Now it is pretty elementary that you do not have to see something happen for you to deduce that it did. A cup that you left on the counter is found on the floor in pieces while you were taking a bath. You would say that God sent an angel to knock it on the floor in a fit of divine wrath. I would say, it fell off when it was struck by a billowing curtain, or was knocked flying by the cat or the parrot, or whatever the evidence reasonably points towards, but not gods, angels and so on, which I have never encountered and nor have most people in the world.
SEcondly, instead of just dismissing and turning your nose up at these so called people who you don’t know, why don’t you find out for yourself. Are you going to know every scientist here in the UK out of 60 million people alone. I think that is very highly unlikely.The national research centre was the one in the USA.
I do not feel it necesary to have to know what fascists, astrologers or even jockeys think, let alone a minority of scientists speculating outside of their expertise or plainly gullible Christians themselves. If science depended on the views of minorities or gurus as religion does, it would end up just as arbitrary and crazy. Science depends on what can be observed and can be repeatedly tested as being valid. Religion depends on a large number of thoughtless people believing what rogues and tricksters, and sometimes deranged people tell them. They lack discernment. And what is the National Research Center in the USA? Where is it, who runs it and what is it researching? I would guess it is a Christian front.
Thirdly, Mike you have to remember in Darwin’s book ORigin of Species and other scientists who believe in evolution one of the main ways they try to prove it is through the fossil record. In Darwin’s book he stated that every living creature(man, animal, etc. ) all came from a common ancestor. Well in the fossil record I was pointing out, there is no tranistional fossil not even one.
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I have dealt with this, Bob. Let me add this. Darwin published his masterpiece 150 years ago. Do you think the science of evolution has remained where it was at the time of Darwin? No doubt you do, because, for you, Darwin is a sort of scientific prophet whose word is The Law! In fact science moves on, and so too has evolutionary theory. Darwin built his ideas, not on the basis of fossils, but on the basis of the similarity of species to each other. In some cases, such as the Galapagos finches he examined, the similarities are so close that the only conclusion is that the finches all are descendents of a few ancestors that appeared in the Galapagos islands in the not too distant past. They then diverged to form a set of species which had different specialities conditioned by the environment on the islands they had found themselves confined to. Similar evidence to this—ie by comparing species—is immense and widespread. Fossils merely do what you are talking about. They offer a way of finding intermediate specimens that no longer exist. No one can be certain that any fossil is in some particular line because evolution is complicated and fossilisation is rare, but, despite this, forms that have intermediate characteristics no longer shown by any species testify to the reality of evolution. You are right about transitional fossils only in this sense. They do not carry a stamp saying, “I am an ancestor of the human species”, or whatever. But their place in evolution can be deduced by their characteristics, and they are intermediate ones.
In your case, as Christians, you never have any doubt in talking about whatever happened in the “time of Solomon”, yet this man exists, like Conan the Barbarian, only in a book. In fact, Conan exists in a lot of different books, but no one doubts that he is fictional. Solomon exists only in one book, but Christians say he really existed, and so there was a time when he did, and they know when it was. Nothing else has ever said anything about Solomon and his temple, except certain forged artefacts, but you believe it. Try a little discernment.
If someone makes a theory than you have to agree it is still a theory until there is evidence to back it up. LIke in the court of law if someone is accused of robbing a bank but there is not one piece of evidnece to prove the person did than the person is declared innocent. The same for Evolution.
So you say, but only because you are like the cardinals who allegedly refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. You will not consider the evidence because you know it refutes your own beliefs. And you are completely arse over tip about the way science works. Observations made seem to require some explanation, and so scientists formulate a hypothesis to attempt to explain them. Then they use the hypothesis to make predictions that can be tested by more observations. So long as the observations support the hypothesis, it is considered true. The theory of evolution is a hypothesis made 150 years ago, and tested in many ways since, and not yet shown to be seriously faulty.
As in all theories, adjustments are made to account for certain observations. That is normal science, but as soon as any seriously inexplicable observations are found, then the theory of evolution will have to be re-thought and drastically modified or abandoned in favour of a better theory. As for your court of law, here we have a theory that is backed up by vast amounts of evidence. You might be a hanging judge, that would not surprise me, and ignore a vast body of evidence that a man is innocent, but then it is the judge who is at fault not the process of the law. Those modern Christian leaders, Bush and Blair, want to do worse than this. They genuinely want to lock up people without any evidence and no process at all for indefinite times. That is true Christianity for you!
OK, if evolution is true than what facts do you have? DArwin himself said that had to be thousands of missing links to prove his theory which he later renounced before he died. What fossils can you bring forth as evidence for evolution?
You told me to find about a load on no-mark creationist scientists. I tell you to read a few decent books about evolution. The facts are uncountable, and, as I have said, DNA explains why the facts should be so, and why evolution works. If the proper theory about speciation is God’s finger wiggling in the world, then why did He contrive to make His creative process look just like evolution, a process that needs no God at all?
Piltdown Man—in 1953 was omitted as a hoax. The skull belonged to a 600 year old woman and the jaw from a 500 year old orangutan. Our times: the illustrated History of the 20th Century—it was proven a hoax in US News and World Report Feb 14, 2000
Scientists not prophets or pastors made the discovery of the hoax, and it was made because a large number of scientists had thought the original discovery and its assignment was bogus from the start. It was supposed to have been the missing link, no doubt the forger’s intention, but it stuck out like a sore thumb. It could not be proved, and it took the progress of scientific method to prove it was! It was proven as a hoax by scientists who used fluorine analysis and x-rays to show the bones were not ancient at all but had been forged to seem as though they belonged together and were old.
Nebraska Man—the single tooth later was proven to be a pig’s.
Perhaps Nebraska man was important to Nebraskans. I’ve never heard of Nebraska man. Was he a Christian?
Java Man—a piece of skull, a fragment of a thigh bonea and 3 molar teeth. Now Java man is considered a full human.
So far as I know, Homo erectus is not classified as fully human, and Java man is considered by many anthropologists a transitional form between Astralopithecus and Homo erectus. Dubois’ discovery might not consist of much, but there are better examples of Homo erectus that have been found elsewhere, and that are not so dubious!
Heidelberg Man—(Neaderthal Man) a jawbone, a large chin section, and a few teeth. most scientist rejected it b/c its jawbone was the same size as modern man. Some evolutionists believed it was 250,000 years old.
The remains of the primate called Neanderthal man were found 150 years ago, and since then many more specimens have been found all over Europe and in the near east. Whatever they thought in 1856, when methods were still being developed, they now have much more data on Neanderthal ma. He was thought, for example, to have been religious! Perhaps Christians are his descendents.
However, Time magazine (june 11, 1990) > ‘Geologists show that carbon dating can be way off’.
Geologists do not have much cause to use carbon dating because it cannot date geological timescales, so, if this is what Time magaziine said, it must have been written or edited by an ignorant hack. What anyway does “way off” mean? It is a hack’s phrase not a scientist’s, because it means nothing. The main criticism of carbon dating is that it is ignored by biblicists because it does not give dates that suit the bible. That is one reason why it is denigrated by Christians. C-14 dating certainly has its faults but it is used in most sites in the world without any need for calibration and gives dates correct to within a few decades in historical times and a few centuries in prehistorical times before it becomes impractical to use. In ancient near eastern studies, Christian biblicists and Egyptologists have forced dates to be “calibrated” to make them fit biblical presuppositions and so they are taken not to be correct before “calibration”. Calibration just means altering any dates to make them fit! It is the biblicists who are the frauds, not the science or the scientists.
To me Mike all you are doing is stating theories. What facts do you have? Please bring some forward!
Well, I have a great deal more facts than you have as a Christian to prove your own feeble theory.
Time Magazine wrote in Nov 7, 1977 “Scientists concede that their most cherished theories are based on embarrassingly few fossil fragments and that hugh gaps exist in the fossil record”.
Who are these scientists that Time magazine are quoting? I’ll tell you, Christians! The fossil record is anything but embarrassing, though it can always be improved by new finds, and they are being found all the time. The record being spoken of might be the fossil record of humanity, which is indeed sparse, and that is because humans lived only in the last few hundred thousand years and before that their immediate ancestors lived only in the last few million years. They were a rare animal so not many were around to fossilize and they lived in places where fossils did not readily form such as forests where the acidity of the leaf mould dissolved the bones, and on grassy plains where the number of large animals and predaters meant that remains rarely were left undisturbed long enough to fossilize. You are again typically Christian in preferring isolated guru-like criticism to the vast accumulation of data that contradict you.
Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Musceum of National History said at a 1981 meeting at the AMerican Museum of Natural History in NY City(uSA) “One morning I woke up and… it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for 20 years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock to learn that one can be misled so long… I have tried putting a simple question to various people: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the university of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionist, and all I got there was silence for a long time an eventually one person said ‘I do know one thing-it ought not to be taught in high school’”.
Was this unknown man sacked for giving lectures running down the Natural History Museum? It would perhaps explain why he is unknown.
STephen Hawking (Evolutionist) “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us(”A Brief History of Time)
You are being as dishonest as Christians generally are in quoting this as evidence that Hawking believes that God created the universe. He is speaking about a particular configuration of the initial conditions at the big bang, and he is actually using the argument to show how unlikely this configuration was. If you do not get it, you ought to read the book again, if, indeed, you have read it at all.
Mike lets take evolution at the beginning the foundation. If the Big Bang did happen than where did that energy come from? Remember one of the law of thermodynamics is Energy can not be created or destroyed just reshaped.
Precisely so, and it is such a reshaping of the energy that the big bang is all about. The universe began in a high energy, low entropy state and is flowing into a low energy, high entropy state.
Mike many people of science believed in a creator/designer. The major field of science had many of them. Physics—Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin Newton “This most beutiful system of the sun, planets, and coments could only proceed from the counsel and domoinion of an intelligent and powerful being” Chemistry—Boyle, Dalton, Ramsay Biology—Ray, Mendel, Linnaeus, Pasteur, Virchow, Agassiz GEology—Steno, Woodward, Brewster, Buckland, Cuvier Astronomy—Copernicus, Galileo,Kepler, Herschel, Maunder Mathematics—Pascal, Leibnitz, Euler
Before people became Christians they all believed paganism in one form or another, and these were among the greatest men who ever lived, formulating thoughts out of nothing, unlike the latter day scientists like Newton, great as they were, who stood on the shoulders of giants to see what they could. People believe what they are brought up to believe. Christians made this into an art-form, forcing their children to believe whether they liked it or not, and Ignatius Loyola made it into a principle. The people you cite are almost all hundreds of years ago. What of the modern great scientists? Any modern scientist worth the title scientist has rejected supernaturalism because it is not compatible with science. The ones who manage to be scientists and Christians are cynics who live split lives. As one critic said, they take off their lab coats to enter church. In short, they are hypocrites, and are as dishonest as their fellow Christians.
Like many of them, there is thousands in West who believe in a designer. One is Dr Jonthan D Sarfati of New Zealand. He helps with a website called ANswers in Genesis.
Genesis has no answers to anything. It is the beginning of a long novel, and is utterly at odds with science so this Dr Jonathon must have awarded himself his doctorate.
Also, Mike if evolution is so true than why is ATheism which is a belief (belief in no god) not even make up 1% of the world’s population. You have Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, etc even here in the west. talk to you soon.
You are as mistaken as you are in everything. I am counted in the world’s religious bookkeeping as an Anglican because that is how I was Christened, even though I cannot remember a time when I was an Anglican. The Anglican Church has some 80,000,000 followers, it claims, and I am one of them. There are probably millions of people like me in the UK, all counted as Anglicans but that never have gone to any church since schooldays when we were made to. The same is certainly true about millions of other people. Some religions like Buddhism and Confucianism are atheistic and yet have millions of followers. The atheistic religion, if you want to call it that, might be the biggest of them all. It certainly is far more important than you think, and Bush will succeed in making it bigger, unless he drives everyone to becoming Moslem.
You added in another missive:
Mike in regards to all the people I quote instead of just thinking they are Christian or don’t exist check them out. Do you know everyone who every lived? Not all the scientists are Christians and these people are not fabrications of my imagination.
As I said above, you check out the facts of evolution and, indeed, science generally. It would be far more productive than my checking out the garbage spoken by crooked Christians.
You stated in one of your replies that you believe that Birds evolved from reptiles. I have heard that before. Many evolutionists hold to this theory like Richard Dawkins wrote Climbing Mount Improbable 1996 said; on p 113 “Feathers are modified reptilian scales” Well it is true? What does science currently say?
You seem to mean this: “I think the ancestral species of the bird was the dinosaur, and there are getting to be a lot of fossils of donosaurs with feathers, and birds that look like dinosaurs. If you are not pulling my leg, you must be ignorant, but you can read about all this fairly easily, on the internet, if not in books and magazines. Why not read something useful and true instead of all that that is useless and false that you are used to.” Now, there are few if any modern palaeaontologists who think that dinosaurs were reptiles. It is true that dinosaurs seem related to reptiles but then so too were the first mammals. Dinosaurs, in particular, seem to have been warm blooded like the birds and not cold blooded like the reptiles, unless they were half and half—what you say there are none of—a transitional state.
First is the Archaeopteryx. It was discovered in 1861. Experts said it was proof. It was a bird that had many reptilian characteristics. However, experts found that things different Alan Feduccia a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself said “…had fully formed flying feathers(including asymmetric vanes and ventral, reinforcing furrows as in modern flying birds), the classical elliptical wings of modern woodland birds, and a large wishbone for the attachment of muscles responsible for the downstroke of the wings” (A Feduccia, Evidence from Claw geometry indicating arboreal habits of Archaeopteryx Science 790-793 Feb 5, 1993) “Palaeontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘pale babble’ is going to change that”” (Cited in V. Morel Archaeopteryx: Early bird catches a can of worms Science 764-65, Feb 5, 1993)
Any textbook will refute what you are trying to imply here, namely that these are nothing more than birds. How many birds have teeth? How many birds have long tails? The answer to both questions is, “None”! It is plain why you have to be so desperate in your taxonomy here. These are quite obviously an animal with transitional features between birds and dinosaurs. Now many more fossils have been found in China with such transitional features, but in different proportions.
Second, Feathered Dinosaurs? In the last few years the media has produced headlines claiming this view. One was in The Examiner, Oct 19, 1996 “Feathered Fossil Proves Some Dinosaurs Evolved into Birds” Proving Dinosaurs turned into Birds, one of the alleged ancestors are types of theropods, the group of carnivorous dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus rex. In this 1996 article the fossil was called “Sinosauropteryx prima” (Ann Gibbons, Science 720-21 1996). However 4 leading palaeontologists including Yale U’s John Ostrom said “feathers were just a parallel array of fibres probably collagen” (New Science 13, April 12, 1997) another famous dino-bird is the Mononykus, a flightless bird. Time even did an article on it on April 26, 1993. However, evidence later indicated it was not a bird but “clearly was a fleet-footed fossorial(digging)theropod” (D P Prothero & RM Schoch, editors , Major features of vertebrate evolution, on the origins of Birds and of Avian flight by J H Ostrom (Knoxville, from University of Tennessee Press 1994) p. 160-177)
John Ostrom will be regretting his words now. The number of intermediates between dinsoaurs and birds has expanded considerably since 1997. Ostrom might be an authority but he is not the authority, and whenever anyone says “might” is does not mean a great deal to anyone because it is so uncertain, unless you are a Christian when it becomes certain one way or the other according to whatever suits Christian belief. What you continue to do is to classify these animals into the categories of birds or dinosaurs when the whole point is that they are transitional. Some might be closer to dinosaurs and some might be closer to birds, but when they have some characteristics of one and some of the other, they are plainly transitional. That is what you cannot stand. It is clear evidence of evolution.
Mike you have to omit for science to be true it has to make sense. It has to satisfy reason too. Case in point.
You are projecting your own faults on to others. Christians are the ones who are omitting whatever does not suit you, and selectively citing a few cranky and mistaken people to support you.
In N. China (June 1998) it was reported that 2 fossils found were feathered theropods(meat-eating dinosaurs). Protarachaeopteryx robusta and Caudipteryx zoui. They were tagged as “immediate ancestors of the first birds” (|Ji Qiang P J Currie MA Norell and Ji Shu-An, Nature 753-761, June 25, 1998, Perspective by K Padian, Nature p 729-730. Here is where it does not make sense. The experts but these 2 fossils at 120 and 136 million years while the Archaeopteryx (a true bird) is dated at 140-150 million. So according to these statements by the scientist, the true bird was BEFORE their ancestors. Sorry but that does not make sense.
It does not make sense all right, because you are the one who has decided that the archaeopteryx is a true bird, and that dinosaurs cannot have had any bird-like characteristics like feathers. You are setting up straw men and then with your own false assumptions knocking them over and declaring the scientists to be wrong. You are a fraud, Bob, like all your kind.
One question people have is did animals known as gliders turn into fliers? One fossil that evolutions use is the crocodilomorphis; small crocodile-like reptiles that lived in trees and jumped from tree to tree (New Scientist, p 28 Feb 1, 1997) Problem with them being an intermediate between land animals and a flier is 1. they have longer wings than a flier 2. have a wider membrane which is quite different from a wing. 3. Flapping flight also requires highly controlled muscle movements to achieve flight, which in turn requires that the brain has the program for these movements. 4. Ultimately this requires new genetic information that a non-flying creature lacks. 5. A bigger problem is no known fossil to support this theory
Whose “theory” is it? I suspect it is your theory. In times past some people have speculated that gliding might have led to flight, but ignorant as I am, I know of no well attested “theory” that they did. You are again tilting at windmills, Bob Quixote.
The Big Difference between Reptiles and Birds 1. Flying birds have streamlined bodies, with weight centralized for balance in flight. 2. Also hollow bones for lightness. 3. powerful muscles for flight 4. very sharp vision 5. have feathers and special lungs Feathers!
You are putting forward your straw men again. I have already said that no one thinks dinosaurs were reptiles except Christians, because it suits their creationist ideas.
Mike you have to omit they are nearly perfect for flying.
And dolphins are nearly perfect for swimming, but even you have to admit they are mammals.
In relation, for scales to evolve into feathers there would need to be a significant amount of genetic information to arise in the bird’s DNA which is not even present in the reptile(ancestor). Another problem your theory faces is heat insulation. Finally is the biggest problem; proteins. Feather protein is o-ketatins and they biochemically different from skin and scale proteins(a-keratins). Even one researcher said “At the morphological level feathers are traditionally considered homologous with reptilian scales. However, in development, morphogenesis, gene structure, protein shape and sequence, and filament formation and structure, feathers are different” (A H Brush on the origins of Feathers, Journal of Evolutionary Biology 9:131-143 1996)
Well, you are getting beyond me. I admit I do not know what the scales or feathers of dinosaurs were made of, and I really cannot understand how you know either, unless it was as a revelation from God. Assuming that dinosaurs evolved from reptiles and birds from dinosaurs, you are looking at a very long timescale, whch can give evolution the opportunity to obtain the necessary changes by mutation. DNA changes in this way continually. That is how evolution happens.
How about the Avain Lung? Reptiles air is drawn into tiny sacs(alveoli) where blood extracts the oxygen and releases the carbon dioxide. The bad air is than breathed out. Bird-have a complicated system even involving the hollow bones. The system keeps the air following in one direction through tubes called pararonchi in the lung. The blood than moves through the lung blood vessels in the opposite direction for efficient oxygen uptake. Even the expert M Denton agrees to this. Check Evolution; A theory in Crisis, pp199-213)
Why do you not read the pages and you will find this stated quite simply. Are you scared of challenging your faith. These features have evolved in birds precisely because they are beneficial to flight. Why should reptiles have them?
What about the age of the Earth? Is it millions of years old? Mike I don’t think it is and this is why. If you look at the methods of dating the earth like Carbon 14, they are not very accurate. Like Carbon 14 measures how much carbon is given off. After around 4300 years the amount of carbon is cut into half. So if you did the math you would find that this can only measure thousands of years not millions. Even this method does not always give the most accurate data. Case in point, in Australia some large amount of forest was buried in basalt lava flow. C14 had dated the wood at 45,000 years and k-Ar(Potassium –Argon) method had the same wood at 45 million years. Which one is correct? This was reported by A A Snelling Radiometric dating in conflict Creation 24-27 Dec 1997-Feb 1998.)
Well the fact that you are again talking of carbon dating in a geological context shows that you do not understand it. It is not useful for geological dating for the very reason that you say geological dating is wrong. It is not suitable because it cannot date such long timescales. As for the second example, it is true that sometimes odd results are found, but which of the two answers given is correct ought to be discernable from other information on the site, such as the type of trees that had been fossilised, and the obvious freshness or otherwise of the lava flows, not to mention lots of other clues from examination of things caught in the matrix of the charcoal and particularly the lava. Besides these a possibility is that the whole formation had been folded over in some earth movement so that the basalt which was originally below had been made to appear above the forest. Admittedly, any competent geologist must have known this.
Remember Mt. St Helens erupting in 1986? The K-Ar method had the rock that was formed at 0.35 + 0.05 million years old (S A Austin, CEN technical Journal p 335-43 1996)
Well there is another possibility for you. When does the method measure tha age from? Radioactive decay does not begin suddenly at some particular time.
2. Red Blood Cells and hemoglobin found in unfossilized dinosaur bones. Do you think these could last more than 65 million years when the last Dinosaur lived according to evolution theory?
I quite agree. I do not believe that there is such a thing as unfossilized dinosaur bone.
3. the Earth’s magnetic field decaying at a rapid rate that it could not be millions of years(JD Sarfati Creation p 15-19 March-May 1998)
This is ignorant crap. The earth’s magnetic field decays and grows cyclically.
4. Helium pouring out into the atmosphere. Currently it is only 1/2000th of the expected amount(L Vardiman, The Age of the Earth’s Atmosphere)
Could it be because it also pours out of the earth’s atmosphere into space?
5. Salt pouring into the sea. The salt level does not equal to a million earth. (J D Sarfati Salty Seas, Creation Dec 1998-Feb 1999)
Try reading proper science books instead of your creationist friends’ ignorant ranting to try to save your faces.
Nature is again a balance of many different cycles. There is a water cycle, a carbon cycle, a nitrogen cycle and so on. For every process producing something, there are processes removing it. The Mediterranean sea has deep salt deposits in its depths. Plants and animals in the oceans fix minerals making such things as chalk and limestone, sandstone, silica and so on many of which incorporate sodium and chlorine.
The bottom line Mike is I bringing forth what the experts in the fields have found. This is just a small % of what I can offer. I am not giving empty names. I am not just throwing out what I heard or believe. What do the facts say. I think you keep stating about “wasting your time” is just a cover up. To me your view is not science just a theory. Either you have the facts to back up your view or not. That is it!
That is indeed it, and the facts are what has been shown to be true, not what you would like to be true, or what your best friends assure you must be true because they would like it to be true as well. Your best friends are not experts in the field. The experts are the one who have formulated the hypotheses that show us what life is made out of, how it reproduces and how it mutates. The center of it all is DNA, which I note you seem to accept as being a proper scientific fact. Good, then let us start there. It is the very reason why evolution is inevitable. It is a fact the DNA evolves itself by mutation. If the DNA evolves, then how can the organism that the DNA provides the blueprint of not evolve?
You say that my view is just a theory and is not science, so tell me what is science, so far as you are concerned, and why is your religion, Christianity, not counted as being a theory? It is held on a minute fraction of the evidence of evolution, admittedly. Maybe that is why. Just a few silly passages in a silly, ancient romance, quite unprovable and quite impossible to anyone with an ounce of sense. Scientific facts cannot be selective like religious “facts”. The truth is you do not know what facts are and you do not know how science works. For you, it is a question of the opinions of a few “experts” that you favour. Sorry, Bob. That is not science.
Sorry Mike I don’t believe Bird evolved from reptiles. If I made a typo error, I meant that many evolutionist believe that Birds evolved from reptiles. I DONT BELIEVE THAT BIRDS EVOLVED FROM REPTILES. Sorry about that.
Ho hum!
Been busy, but I have been thinking. You keep saying that the information I provide is corrupt, false, etc. You make many accusations. You said first the quotes I provided was old like what Darwin said. When I provided you with more current quotes in what people say, you said it is corrupt, etc. How do you know? Have you actually read them?
You are a rogue. I have told you that science is not founded on quotations from some isolated supposed authorities. That is what religion is. You are trying to make science work like religion, but it cannot, because then it is not science. Do try to understand. It is not that hard.
Many times Mike all you do is just make general statements like in the response I wrote about fossils evolving into Birds, you said “there are getting to be a lot of fossils of dinosaurs with feathers—” Ok, what fossils? Who found them? When?
How about the archaeopteryx and the other examples of transitional states you actually speak about. You begin with a dinosaur and end up with a bird, and in between there are dinosaurs with some bird features, and birds with some dinosaur features. They are transitional states. Surely you get that.
A second one is in regards to John Ostrom. Again the same questions.
Same answers.
As for your reply to Archaeopteryx. You said “any textbook will refute what you are trying to imply here—’ You went on to say I trying to be desperate. Again you stated many fossils being found? I ask you same questions.
Same answers. Let me repeat. How many birds have teeth? How many birds have long tails? Dinosaurs have these features not birds.
In relation, Mike you missed the whole point to what I presented. If reptiles did evolve into Birds than there is transitional fossils. If there is some than those transitional fossils will show a change (gradually). In that gradual change should there not be able to find fossils that have both reptiles and bird features? I think this is a fair question! What I presented was emphasizing that they can´t find not one fossil to link reptiles to birds. If they can’t find one than their theory is still a theory.
Talking to some Christians about evolution is like talking to empty space. Perhaps that is what it is, after all Christians do it all the time. Birds do not have teeth but your archaic bird called the archaeopteryx had teeth. And a tail. Do you understand?
Another point is you said any textbook will refute my view. Well what is the textbook information based on? Ans. What the people who are digging find. If people are finding evidence to contradict the textbook, which one would you believe? I am sure you would think the textbook would be corrupt if it stated that God created the world? Yes, I thought so.
Is there a glimmer here of comprehension? If some discovery is made and is accepted as not fitting some scientific hypothesis that it should fit, then the hypothesis is wrong, in that respect, if not in others and has to be revised, or sometimes abandoned in favour of a better one. That is how science progresses. Religion works on revelation when some people will abandon everything they used to believe on the basis of one madman announcing he has seen God, or whatever. In some fields of study such as history, it is not possible to devise a hypothesis that will explain all the known facts because they are too complicated, and hypotheses have to be kept as simple as possible by Ockham’s razor. In such cases two or more explanations might seem equally good, and it will be up to future historians to dig through their manuscripts to find which is the best of them, or find one better than them all.
Mike you stated in relation to the 2 fossils in N. China, that you accuse me of “projecting your own faults on to others” and “setting up straws—”. Mike I am just telling what people in the field believe, state, and find. If you don’t agree with what is stated than contact the source Nature they are the ones who stated it. But this is what is being found. If what they believe & state contradicts what they are finding does it mean their theory is true?
You are giving the opinions of one man, or of a few men on different things. The opinion of most of the people in the field is different, and is based on all the evidence. Why do you ignore them? It is because you like to believe in prophets and saints rather than what the balance of evidence and opinion is. Often even the differences of opinion you give do not refute evolution. They show disagreements among some scienctists on some isolated bits of evidence, but no disagreement on the main hypotheses of science, and certainly not on the scientific method. Your creationist chums are the ones who do that.
When I gave the comparison between birds and reptiles. All you stated is that I was “tilting at windmills” & you “know of no well attested theory—”. To me you are not being honest. I am just looking at the facts of the difference between the 2. This is what researchers see. Mike making statements like that does not prove your theory. In relation, just b/c you don’t know it does not mean it does not exist. Do you know everything? I don’t!
You have forgotten that you are giving some sort of refutation of a “theory” that gliders evolved into flyers. It is not “my” theory. If there is such a theory held by anyone, then I will agree with you that it has to explain these differences. I do not know the theory and you do not explain it, so I say so. What am I supposed to do? You are the dishonest one not me, in this case because you want to make it into differences between reptiles and birds. It is not, and that is why you are tilting at windmills. You cannot tilt at the actual findings. You must be dishonest or ignorant.
Even yourself Mike omitted that you did not know about everything I have brought forth like scales involving into feathers. You said “Well you are getting beyond me, I admit I do not know what the scales or feathers of dinosaurs were made of,—” You went on to say “I really cannot understand how you know either—”. Maybe I am presenting what you call “research”.
I should be glad to read it if research is what you presented, and not isolated quotations of creationists, or even legitimate scientists taken out of context. So, then, from your research, how do you know what dinosaur scales were made of?
Mike you keep saying to you “are you scared of challenging my faith?’ Mike I notice I am quoting many secular sources, people (Origin of Species, John Ostrom, etc). I have not even used the Bible once.
I do not get what you are saying here, namely “I keep saying to me ‘are you scared of challenging my faith?’ ” It makes no sense to me. Perhaps I need to have your faith to be able to understand what is unintelligible. What I said to you is, “Are you scared of challenging your faith?” I am asking are you scared to read the pages?
As for C14 and K-Ar methods, Mike I was trying to point out the reading they get from Mt St Helens and the case from Australia, when the researchers took their readings they were way off. C14 had the woods at 45,000 years and K-Ar had them at 45 million. That is big difference Mike. You have to omit. Which one would you trust? Mt St Helens, Mike the lava being tested years later shows millions of years. Come on!
What I said to you is that radioactive atoms do not just suddenly switch on. You seem to think they just switch on when the lava comes out of the volcano. I am not an expert on dating by K-Ar, but the simple scientific answer to such problems is to allow for it by taking fresh samples such as the ones you speak of, and making allowances for the changes that have obviously been going on deep within the earth before the lava emerged. It is often called having a control, or correcting for systematic errors. You are merely showing that K-Ar dating is only suitable for long timescale geological dating and is unsuitable for dating historical events, whereas C-14 dating is the other way around. I keep telling you that scientific method is proposing hypotheses and then testing them. The testing is precisely what leads to refinement of hypotheses so that errors like this can be discounted by allowing for them.
When I presented information about the earth’s magnetic field? You said it is a bunch of crap! Do you much about this field of science?
I know precisely what I said I knew. The earth’s field decays and rises in cycles. It is something that all schoolboys know. It does not continuously decay or rise, but oscillates between the two, sometimes becoming zero and reversing its direction.
Mike just by your statements I realise you don’t know everything about science. And you are not an expert. I AM NOT EITHER!!! I have studied it in university, attended lectures, and even studied this on my own time. I was surprised that you did not know about Nebraska Man. I remember studying this in school. Nebraska man was not a Christian. Nebraska Man was classified as one of the main missing links between ape and Man. But it turned out to be nothing more than a pig’s tooth like I said earlier.
I wonder what schools and universities you went to, because it is not me that knows nothing about science, though I have said several times that I am not an expert on most of these things, and perhaps on none of them. If you have studied science and yet remain so profoundly ignorant that you think science is a plot agaisnt Christianity, but believe instead that some superhero beyond the sky did everything, then your university was a trifle lacking in effect. Perhaps you went to school in Nebraska. I did concede that Nebraska man might have seemed important to Nebraskans. It must have been a non-Nebraskan that found it was a pig’s tooth. I will suggest however that anyone who thought a man from Nebraska was a missing link in the chain of mankind’s evolution when there is no evidence that any sort of man other than Homo sapiens has ever lived in the USA, and then recently, either was a fool, or lived in the nineteenth century before evolution was thought of.
Law of Thermodynamics. The point of I mentioned was according to evolution is everything came out of a so called soup. They happened to start forming. Question was where did that matter come from? It has always existed? Without any designer/creator it managed to come together and figure out how to construct a complex universe? If you took a spaceshuttle and dis-assembled it. Do you think it could reassembly by itself? If you don’t than but you believe our body (which is more complex than a spaceshuttle) happened by chance than that does not make sense. See what Sir Fred Hoyle, professor of astronomy, Cambridge University says
“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one out of 1040,000… it is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet or any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”
If you want to still hold to the view that everything came out of a soup. Listen to what Dr Michael Behe, Assoc Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University says “Now it’s the turn of the fundamental science of life, modern biochemistry, to disturb. The simplicity that was once expected to be the foundation of life has proven to be a phantom; instead, systems of horrendous, irreducible complexity inhabit the cell” (Dawkins 1987, 139-40)
If you want to test your view you can in your own house. Splat a mosquito in your house. There is every chemical there for life to evolve just disorganised. Do you think something will evolve from the splatted mosquito?
In relation, what about mutation and natural selection? Michael Denton who wrote Evolution: A theory in Crisis “it cannot be stressed enough that Evolution by natural selection is analogous to problem solving without any intelligent guidance, without any intelligent input whatsoever. No activity which involves an intelligent input can possibly by analogous to evolution by natural selection” (Spetner Lee Dr. Not By Chance, p. 131-32)
Dr. Lee who taught at Johns Hopkins U. wrote Not By Chance “I’ve never found a mutation that added information” (p. 138)
“All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it” (p. 143)
Dr. Werner Gitt, director and prof. At German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology answered the question of originate through mutations. “this idea is central in representations of evolution, but mutations can only cause changes in existing information. There can be no increase in information and in general the result are injurious—.mutations cannot be the source of new(creative) information” (Darwin’s Black Box p. 252-53)
Here you are practising your favourite hobby, citing random loonies to refute evolution. You do not even make it clear who you are citing because you cite a loony or a creationist and then add at the end of some of your quotations tha name of someone sensible as if they had said it. Which did? I find miracles happening all the time whenever I take a paper clip from a jar of them I have. Sometimes they have joined together into pairs, or even longer chains! Amazing! And that is just in a few days in a jar, and they are not the elements of life either. Miracle! Amazing! All this number rattling is sheer nonsense because no form of life assembles itself like a spaceshuttle from scratch. You accept this, but you want anything alive to be assembled by God. The scientist knows that it is assembled just like the paperclips, because some things—atoms, molecules, proteins, etc—join together easily, and once they have, there is no need any more to assemble them from scratch. The joined together bits can then join together in the same way. And do you know what this bit by bit assembly is? It is evolution! By the way, what assembled God?
Mike you are right, the universe is complex. Just human brain by itself is complex enough by itself. Too complex to happened by chance that is why I believe in a creator.
I repeat, who created the creator?
Mike why do you think everyone I quote is a Christian & my friends? The NRA is not a Christian organisation. It is a public and secular organisation. In relation, remember the list of scientists I typed in the various field? Some of them were Christians but not all. The point was all of them believed in a Creator/Designer. They did not believe this universe did not happen by chance. You stating Dr. Jonathan D. Sarfari must have awarded himself with his doctorate is a rather far fetch accusation. Do you know him? Can you prove his credentials are not valid? How do I know what you state is true? Etc? Is that fair to you if I made accusations against you like that?
You have what I say to judge my credentials, and you can rightly judge from what I say that I am not a Christian. I am doing the same thing.
As you make accusations of Christians being so dishonest, etc. I think you should realise about what has happened in Science. In 1874 embryo diagrams were produced by Ernst Haeckel. His suppose researched showed that the embryos of the fish, salamander, turtle, chicken, rabbit, & human were very much the same. However, in 1997 a detail study with pictures by Mike Richardson and company discovered the embryos were radically different
“Haeckel’s drawings of 1874 are substantially fabricated—.Sadly, it is the discredited 1874 drawings that are used in so many British and American biology textbooks today.” (Letter to Science, Aug 28 1998)
I frankly would not use a textbook that used Haeckel’s drawings, not because I think Haeckel was a liar or a cheat but because anyone who uses work so old these days in a textbook is not a good author. Indeed, I cannot imagine any modern writer of textbooks using these illustrations unless it was for historical reasons. Because I do not believe what this letter writer says, I think he is making a political point and not being truthful. I think he is a creationist trying his best to discredit science not to warn about poor illustrations in textbooks. I have discussed Haeckel on the pages, and you again show your lack of curiosity and your lack of respect in raising yet another point that has been answered. Google is provided to save all this waste of time but apparently you do not know how to use it. You will find this:
“I cannot see modern textbooks using Haeckel’s old drawings, partly because they are old drawings and partly because they are inaccurate, and modern textbooks want better ones. Remember, Haeckel was a friend of Darwin and he died almost a century ago. He was an enthusiast for evolution and saw in the growth of embryos what he called ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’. In this he was broadly right, but better techniques and modern instruments have shown that the detail of it that Haeckel thought he saw was not there. You seem to regard this as a plot, but science does develop, you know. Once astronomers thought there were canals on Mars. Was that a plot to provide the material for thousands of science fiction stories? Schiaparelli thought he saw them with the instruments available to him, but they are not there. Schiaparelli was a contemporary of Haeckel. Their optical instruments were not as good as they are now, but, when they improved, so did the science.”
Darwin’s book has been very influencial not only the subject if there is a creator but the social life of many countries. Do you remember Hilter with the idea of Aryan Race. In the 1936 Olympic games Jesse Owens disproved that the Aryan race was superior. Hitler was killing the Jews b/c he thought they were the closest link to ape. Next was the black man. Many people don’t know this but Jesse Owens was only suppose to compete in 2 events(100 yard dash and the Long Jump). He ran in the relays as a substitute b/c on the American relay time was Jews and the US did not want to offend Hitler.
Another was Karl Marx and Marxism. A Third is Darwin himself he believed that men were superior to woman. Do you think that would go over well today with the public?
Well, I am a loss to understand what scientific point you are making. So far as I know, neither Hitler nor Marx were scientists, and so far as Darwin is concerned, my recollection is that the Christian Holy Word backs him up on his old fashioned views about women. Indeed, it says that women were only made out of a waste rib of a man, and must be considerably inferior. Not only that, but the Christian god was rude to his own mother, neither a pleasant nor a godly thing to be. Fortunately, science does not accept that men are superior, and has proven that the opposite is actually the case. Men are made from women, and inasmuch as priority means anything at all, women must be superior to men. The plain evidence of this is that men have nipples and breasts that serve no purpose at all.
If you think all people who believe in a creator/designer or think there is one are corrupt & not trustworthy than you have a problem. Read what people have said. Like Matthrew Maury; the Father of Oceanography ‘If God said there are paths in the sea, I am going to find them.’ He went on to discover warm and cold continental currents in the oceans based on Ps 8:8. His book remain the basic textbook in universities.
Perhaps it remains a textbook in the university you attended, and that will explain something you said earlier, at least, but I cannot imagine that a 150 year old book is still a textbook in any modern department of oceanography. Those interested in the history of the subject might want to read it still, but it would not be a great book for students. Indeed, the trouble with it as a textbook was precisely that that you admire about it—it took the bible as being too literally true. It was used as a textbook in Victorian times when people were still intoxicated by the Christian brew, but not for many a long year now. Moreover Maury, despite his literal biblical views, or because of them, was a Confederate, and therefore a supporter of racism and a traitor to the Union, and would have happily cheered the 9/11 atrocity if it had been done during the Civil war. That is what religion leads to.
John Wheeler, Princeton University Professor of Physics “Slight variations in physical laws such as gravity or electromagnetism would make life impossible—The necessity to produce life lies at the center of the universe’s whole machinery and design” (Reader’s Digest, Sept 1986)-a non Christian source
Stephen Hawking(best-known Scientist since Einstein) says “the universe and the laws of physics seem to have been specifically designed for us. If any one of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist: Either atoms would not be stable, or they wouldn’t combine into molecules, or the starts wouldn’t form the heavier elements, or the universe would collapse before life could developed, and so on—” (Austin American Statesman, Oct 19,1997)
What is the non-Christian source, Wheeler or the Reader’s Digest? Here we have two scientists stating the Anthropic Principle. It is a simple evolutionary principle which says, unless the environment is suitable, nothing can evolve. If there were no water, there would be no fish, no air and there would be no birds, no dung and there would be no dung beetles, no faeces and there would be no E coli. If the universe had not been as it is there could have been no people to observe it. It is as it is precisely because we are here to observe it, and if it had been different, nobody could have noticed. It is science not God.
Albert Einstein said “Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceived of a genuine scientist without that profound faith”
Einstein seems to be saying that science is the modern religion. One of the functions of old religions was to explain things, but almost everything explained by the Holy Word is wrong. Science, if religion is regarded as an explanation, is the modern religion, and Adelphiasophism says so.
Dr. James Simpson the discovery of chloroform’s anesthetic qualities, laid out the foundation of gynaecology. “Christianity works because it is supremely true and therefore supremely liveable. There is nothing incompatible between religion and science”
Have you read the pages I have written? Christianity is utterly untrue, and science proves it is untrue, so this man is speaking as a Christian and not a scientist. What you do not say, and this is just the sort of dishonesty that you indulge in, is that Simpson had to defy literalist Christians to be able to use anaesthetics in childbirth as he wanted. Christians said that God had cursed human women to increasing pain in childbearing as a punishment. Simpson was standing against God and the bible in trying to make childbirth painless. Good old Christians!
