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I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that comment. Care to elaborate?

Da Boss wrote:Wait what? This became a creationism debate?
GAH!

mattyrm started it!

You can't really call it a debate when nobody dignifies it with a response.

Falconlance wrote:Pot, meet Kettle.

I seem to remember a while back you getting rather upset and accusing me of being a nazi, because I am non-religious and because I used the word indoctrination to describe forcing religion on children long before they are capable of deciding for themselves.

that was quite a self controlled, and well thought out arguement.

And I'm sure you were an innocent little lamb, and didn't deserve my rebuke right? I mean... the bad Christian came out of nowhere and spewed hate all over poor little innocent falconlance right? :-)

I seem to remember a little bit of the convo, and if I recall corectly you said something offensive or at the very least demeaning, in which you sparked my righteous indignation. I.E. you got what you deserved.

My point still stands that if you were respectfull there would have been no need for the rebuke. That's what happens in forums, people get out of line and they get rebuked. I have had it happen to me as well when I have crossed the line. (I'm not perfect)

Anyway, you can have the last word on this issue or PM me cause, this could easily sidetrack the thread and I don't want to do that, since this is a very important discussion IMO.

also... take note that I said "some"..... not "all" atheists.


GG

Agreed, this thread is awesome and musn't be derailed.

Agreed.

salamander man wrote:

mattyrm started it!

lol.

Hey, i didnt start it! Check it out, i only chirp in because i /facepalm when religious types start spamming the old Hitler/Mao/Stalin pictures!

I just had to point out the old falsehood consitently used by Creationists is utterly false. It was Orlanth started busting out the pics

Oh and even if it turned out that Hitler was a dyed in the wool evolutionary biologist, and Richard Dawkins was a sex fiend, it STILL wouldnt make one jot of difference to the fact of evolution, and frankly i find the idea extremely childish.

Like some sort of "who is the best person" Atheism vs Mono-Theism score card.

Its really just .. kids stuff isnt it?

Character assassinating has nothing to do with it. One is Scientific facts, and one is "outside" Science and a matter of faith.

And ive no grudge against Orlanth, indeed, i agree with him on most things we chat about here that are in the news... you know, politics and crime and such that arent related to Religion. I dont have an axe to grind with him im just sick to the back teeth of refuting the same garbage over and over again.. Almost all you creationists are literally as bad as these clowns when it comes to matters of the cloth, Its like some sort of fruity little club you guys made up!




(Note the horror style music and the long list of lies in the first 30 seconds)

mattyrm made me remove him from my ignore list..... darn it all!!

the problem matty is you haven't refuted anything. The only thing you have done succesfully is rant. You have a bad habit of drudging up the creation vs evolution debate whenever there is a religious oiented discussion.

Why don't you just create a thread on the issue and be done with it. We haven't had a creation vs evolution debate in while. Or even better, if you really are itching to debate the issue PM me.

Lets try and stay on topic... ok?

GG

salamander man wrote:Notice what he said. Evolution says that one species eventually led to another. Thus, there should be "fine, intermediate varieties" of fossils in between species. But there isn't.

However, think of the age of the Earth (~4.5 billion years), and how long life has been evolving for (~3.7 billion years?) and the events that have happened since then which will have destroyed (or simply moved out of reach) fossil evidence - shifting continents, meteorites, volcanic activity, general weather erosion, etc. From each epoch of time only so many animals will die in conditions which are conducive to the formation of fossils, then some of those will have their remains destroyed or scattered before they can fossilize. Of the ones which then make it, some will then be in locations that people just can't get to (bottom of the sea, under a lake, in the deepest darkest wastes of Scotland, etc ). Some will then be destroyed by the processes mentioned above and the remainder are about for us to find.

So of all life, only a very tiny fraction will have survived in the fossil record. Even in the records that do exist, there have been countless examples of animals being reconstructed "incorrectly", identified wrongly, etc. Every year we unearth more fossils which fill in more of the tree of life.

Saying that there are not fossils to show every stage of every animal/plant of every species is kind of like saying that the special effects in a film are rubbish when the first draft of the script has only just been sketched out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mattyrm wrote:[


(Note the horror style music and the long list of lies in the first 30 seconds)

Oh dear holly Jebus...

While I agree with you SilverMK2, its probably best to leave it be. Bothering to respond to that kind of thing might give the false impression that they have a case.

mattyrm wrote:

salamander man wrote:

mattyrm started it!

lol.

Hey, i didnt start it! Check it out, i only chirp in because i /facepalm when religious types start spamming the old Hitler/Mao/Stalin pictures!

I just had to point out the old falsehood consitently used by Creationists is utterly false. It was Orlanth started busting out the pics

Oh and even if it turned out that Hitler was a dyed in the wool evolutionary biologist, and Richard Dawkins was a sex fiend, it STILL wouldnt make one jot of difference to the fact of evolution, and frankly i find the idea extremely childish.

Like some sort of "who is the best person" Atheism vs Mono-Theism score card.

Its really just .. kids stuff isnt it?

Character assassinating has nothing to do with it. One is Scientific facts, and one is "outside" Science and a matter of faith.

And ive no grudge against Orlanth, indeed, i agree with him on most things we chat about here that are in the news... you know, politics and crime and such that arent related to Religion. I dont have an axe to grind with him im just sick to the back teeth of refuting the same garbage over and over again.. Almost all you creationists are literally as bad as these clowns when it comes to matters of the cloth, Its like some sort of fruity little club you guys made up!




(Note the horror style music and the long list of lies in the first 30 seconds)

mattyrm, you've been surrounded by strawmen! USe fire, it's their only weakness!

gg put me on his ignore list? Surely not.. I mean.. Everyone likes me, right ma? ....... Ma?

Until someone can answer where the stuff that evolved came from or can show me a video of something evolving I can't take it as anything other than an interesting concept. I really don't see the evidence for it, and the fossil thing is one of the big sticking points for me. What is it that makes evolution such "reasonable fact" to so many? No one has been alive long enough to observe it, and we probably wouldn't even be thinking about it now except for a few eloquent people bringing it up in the first place. At what point does it make the jump from "random idea; I could be wrong" to "undeniable fact!" and why is there no middle ground on what should be a fairly emotionally-absent issue. I wish it wasn't a stigma of "creation vs. evolution" because it proves nothing except that people have their own bias and will cling to whatever they want to believe.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Until someone can answer where the stuff that evolved came from or can show me a video of something evolving I can't take it as anything other than an interesting concept. I really don't see the evidence for it, and the fossil thing is one of the big sticking points for me. What is it that makes evolution such "reasonable fact" to so many? No one has been alive long enough to observe it, and we probably wouldn't even be thinking about it now except for a few eloquent people bringing it up in the first place. At what point does it make the jump from "random idea; I could be wrong" to "undeniable fact!" and why is there no middle ground on what should be a fairly emotionally-absent issue. I wish it wasn't a stigma of "creation vs. evolution" because it proves nothing except that people have their own bias and will cling to whatever they want to believe.

The basic chemistry -> biology is actually remarkable simple.

Although it is wikipedia, this page can explain far better than I can how life came about, and the reasons why the theory of evolution has come to be regarded as as close to reality as it is currently know. Most people talking on the matter will still refer to it as a theory, as it is, but will reference the many, many pieces of evidence which fit the model which evolution explains.

It happens daily on a cellular level. I'm sure theres something out there on you tube somewheres if you have time to look it up.

Damn, now I'm giving in to responding too.

Sorry but what does that have to do with the topic., at all?

SilverMK2 wrote:

salamander man wrote:Notice what he said. Evolution says that one species eventually led to another. Thus, there should be "fine, intermediate varieties" of fossils in between species. But there isn't.

However, think of the age of the Earth (~4.5 billion years), and how long life has been evolving for (~3.7 billion years?) and the events that have happened since then which will have destroyed (or simply moved out of reach) fossil evidence - shifting continents, meteorites, volcanic activity, general weather erosion, etc. From each epoch of time only so many animals will die in conditions which are conducive to the formation of fossils, then some of those will have their remains destroyed or scattered before they can fossilize. Of the ones which then make it, some will then be in locations that people just can't get to (bottom of the sea, under a lake, in the deepest darkest wastes of Scotland, etc ). Some will then be destroyed by the processes mentioned above and the remainder are about for us to find.

So of all life, only a very tiny fraction will have survived in the fossil record. Even in the records that do exist, there have been countless examples of animals being reconstructed "incorrectly", identified wrongly, etc. Every year we unearth more fossils which fill in more of the tree of life.

Saying that there are not fossils to show every stage of every animal/plant of every species is kind of like saying that the special effects in a film are rubbish when the first draft of the script has only just been sketched out.

...

Here we go.......

1: The 4.5 billion year figure is based on the CURRENT decay rate certain radioisotopes. We have to assume that the decay has always been the same in order to believe the 4.5 billion year figure. If our assumption is false then all of radio isotope dating is bogus, and also the idea that current life is descended through a long line of descending evolving life.

2: All of the animals we find in the fossil record are complete. There is no cow/whale we only have cows and whales and the descendents of their kinds. We have no dog/reptile or dog/bird we have dogs and birds. The closest thing they have found to a true transitional form is the archeopterix(bird/lizard), and that is highly contested.
So scientists just assume that we will find the "missing links" and they keep finding more and more distinct kinds of animals but no missing links.

GG

edit...sorry frazz couldn't resist the temptation..I will refrain from more debate about creationism in this thread.

EVERYTHING

That Wiki page doesn't answer my first objection (where it all came from) and the "search on youtube" response doesn't answer my second. If I go by what's on youtube there are lots of ghosts out and about as well. If anyone wants to PM me anything more feel free to keep the topic clutter-free (or clutter-less, realistically). I'm still going to read through that Wiki page as it's interesting.

We can observe it. HIV evolves to evade various drugs that are used against it. Staphacocus developes resistance to commonly used antibiotics, TB is showing similar signs. Even complex organisms like fluke parasites have evolved resistance to the drugs used to combat them inside our lifetimes. The mechanisms by which plants are domesticated follow evolutionary theory and are easily traceable within human history.
(Now I'm a dirty filthy hypocrite.)
The origin of life is open for debate, but the hypothesis currently worked under by a lot of biologists is that there were four stages in the development of life.
1.the abiotic synthesis of small organic molecules such as amino acids and nucleotides.
2.The joining of these small monomers into polymers including proteins nucleic acids.
3.The origin of self replicating molecules that eventually made inheritance possible.
4.The packaging of all these molecules into droplets with membranes that maintained their internal chemistry.
These stages have been tested in laboratories in conditions mimicing those most thought to be close to those on early earth. The spontaeneous generation of organic molecules and polymers has been observed, as well as the spontaeneous creation of phospholipid bilayers surrounding droplets.
RNA has been observed to self replicate abiotically, which may have been the starting point for inheritance. I hope this is clear. If not, I reccommend Campbells Biology as a good introductory text on general biology.

Allrighty. The cool aspects of this thread are are gone. Frazzled moving on.

Please argue the merits of evolution amonst yourselves. its irrelevant to the topic of free speech.

back on topic, batman is better than superman because of various complex reasons.. Oh sorry thats the other one. :-)

It's useless to talk about evolution because plenty of Christians believe in it, and no doubt there are non-Christians who don't. In other words, dis/belief in evolution is not a defining characteristic.

It is not relevant to the topic, which is a discussion of whether the Public Order Act 1986 was a suitable instrument for arresting this street preacher.

Da Boss wrote:We can observe it. HIV evolves to evade various drugs that are used against it. Staphacocus developes resistance to commonly used antibiotics, TB is showing similar signs. Even complex organisms like fluke parasites have evolved resistance to the drugs used to combat them inside our lifetimes. The mechanisms by which plants are domesticated follow evolutionary theory and are easily traceable within human history.
(Now I'm a dirty filthy hypocrite.)

An elaboration on what I mean, I apologize, Cannerus, for being terse, but now isn't a great time for me to be digging through the internet to find a video for you; ive wasted way too much work time alt tabbed onto this thread as it is.

Frazzled wrote:Allrighty. The cool aspects of this thread are are gone. Frazzled moving on.

Please argue the merits of evolution amonst yourselves. its irrelevant to the topic of free speech.

Well, evolution vs ID vs creationism is actually a fairly good point in the freedom of speech debate. The various merits behind the "evidence" for and against them is hotly debated (as can be seen from the latter part of this thread), and there are various groups trying to push forward one or the other belief in the school system. Should people be free to teach (or spout in some cases) whatever they believe, regardless of how much actual proof there is for what they believe?

Or should people be limited in their expression to things that are actually true and provable?

If you want to say something like "homosexuals are sinners and are going to hell (/god will not love them as much as he loves everyone else) if they don't repent", should you have to prove that is the case? If you want to say "Chinese people are better than Japanese people due to their genes", should you have to be able to prove that is the case before you can stand on the street and proclaim it?

If you believe in true freedom of speech, you should allow people to go on the streets and spout the most arrant, offensive nonsense they like. The other side can shoot down their arguments with logic and facts.

That's what people in the USA can do and there is much less public violence that you would expect.

I have to take issue with your statements there Silver. True and provable, aren't really. Science can only really "prove" something wrong.
Other frameworks for thought than science are valuable and should not be denigrated by strict adherance to the scientific method in all things.
The part where there is a debate is when people try to teach creationism as a science, which it is not, rather than a philosophical viewpoint or theological stance, which it is. The reasons for that, in my opinion, is that the scientific method works pretty well for getting results and impressing people, so calling something science or giving it the appearance of science lends it more weight to the layman. It is a dishonest argument, quite seperate from whether the earth was created 4.5 billion or 6000 years ago.

I believe that schools should be allowed to have a mix of messages if nothing else to prepare students for the other kinds of people they will inevitably have to interact with. My father lives in Australia now and apparently they have a free period where volunteers can come teach about religion, as long as they supply the curriculum. The students don't have to be in the class. More viewpoints can be a healthy thing as it starts the mind churning. I think free speech on paper is great because if everything is out there, the crap proves itself pretty quickly and the truth stands out.

But as this thread's OP shows, you have to be careful with what you say, even with free speech and the best intentions. It's not a pure ideal unfortunately.

Kilkrazy wrote:If you believe in true freedom of speech, you should allow people to go on the streets and spout the most arrant, offensive nonsense they like. The other side can shoot down their arguments with logic and facts.

That's what people in the USA can do and there is much less public violence that you would expect.

I aggressivley disagree wit, well most everything it seems but except for very minor limits I am ok with it.
Frazzled Rules on Free Speech:

Places. Certain places should be restricted. Locations near memorials, locations near K-12 school, maybe hospitals. Places where use of free speech violates someone else's Bill of Rights rights at a "compelling" interest level (legal standard). But that follows with limits on the 2nd Amendment etc. Can't carry firearms to a hanging or near a place of election for example (thats a question on a test BTW). Can search a house without warrant if there is the reasonable belief a crime is being imminently committed against another person for example (the cop hearing someone screaming in a house example)

Types. Common stare decisis on threats, and libel. Certain types of obscenity or profiting from speech that depicts an actual criminal activity (child porn as ean example). Revealing of private information that an ID thief can use. I am sure there might be a few others.

Acts. Free speech and publishing therein are protected. Acts are not. Burning flags, houses, destorying property or harming persons etc. No acts are speech. This includes blocking an abortion clinic. Thats an act not speech.

What about making a movie?