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Evolution
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 9:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

nw30 wrote:
pot should be legal, across the board, same laws as alcohol. Women should have easy access to birth control, and abortions under certain circumstances should be allowed, and let the hookers free!

My beefs with pot (and alcohol and tobacco) legalization center around the harm it does to society and individuals. Fallacies of prohibition aside, legalization at least sanctifies, for some even glorifies, a substance which leads to addiction in 20% of kids who use it, lowers every young frequent user's IQ, puts more impaired drivers on the roads, wastes lives and productivity, etc.

My WSing most certainly wastes productivity, but at it least it harms no one else and keeps my body and mind fit and motivates me to come back stronger after my expected 18-month layoff from this knee injury.

Women, even Sandra Fluck and her three-Flucks-a-day-with-many-men obsession (if that isn't slutty, what is?), have total access to birth control already. It's dirt cheap, and when Planned Parenthood can find time between abortions for 12-year-olds without parental knowledge, it passes out free Flucking rubbers by the crate.

Abortions, per se, are fine with me when not used regularly by any individual as birth control and when not used to kill viable babies.

Hookers bother me infinitely less than car thieves doing no jail time until their seventh conviction, as in Washington state. IMO, 3 or 4 should be good for a life sentence.
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 9:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

frederick23 wrote:
when my Aunt gets all weird about evangelical stuff. She turns into the devil. Then I leave. Hopefully politely.

Whether it's my cousin or Billy Graham, I walk away or change the channel after about one or two sentences. Some listener emailed O'Reilly an earful about his having no right to write a history book about Jesus (the best selling non-fiction book in history, IIRC). "The Bible is all the history we need".

It's a shame people that single-tracked are allowed to vote. It ignores bigger issues and skews the vote towards the ignorant and the stupid.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 11:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Back to actual topic. Article by Michael Specter called "The Gene Factory" in January 6 New Yorker goes into depth on the technology decoding DNA for humans, animals and plants. Interesting discovery. Researchers compared the genomes of two ethnic groups in China--40 Han Chinese from Beijing and fifty Tibetans who lived in villages at high altitudes. His conclusion:

Quote:
Ethnic Tibetans appear to have split off from the Han people about three thousand years ago--an instant, in evolutionary terms.


While this is interesting, the societal implications of American culture, and the dominance of evangelical beliefs, have pretty scary implications. I know my brother will never know about this development in science because he self-censors all information that would challenge his belief structure. Evolution to him is still a flaky theory. He is joined in this delusion by 51% of Americans http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-majority-reject-evolution/.

So why do I care? The systematic dis-information systems of the far right, starting with Fox news, have created a doubt culture that threatens not merely our understanding of science, but our investments in the raw science that has made us the most powerful nation in the world. Righties don't just doubt government, they overwhelmingly doubt science. As a result, investment in fundamental research has been reduced for a substantial period--while such investment is on the rise in China. The New Yorker article mentions basic research by the NIH--you know, the government group that has funded the basic research responsible for most of the gains in our health care science. Most of the self-ceonsoring righties continue to believe that this research comes from the private sector, not the government. As I said, the long term implications of self-censorship by the nuttier wing of evangelicals--a very large wing demographically--is a grave threat to this country.
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 11:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Much of the disagreement comes from the idea that the earth is 6000 years old.
This "fact" is not in the Bible. It comes from statements in the Bible that do not add up that way unless you mix in some recent man made facts and assumptions.
Fossils and the massive amount of other discoveries found in
Gods world around us disagrees with the invented facts, not the Bible.

This single bit of smoke and mirrors is at the heart of the conflict.

If you believe the world was made by God using evolution as his chosen method, scientific study does not disagree.
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 12:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mr. Fick-shun wrote:

...even Sandra Fluck and her three-Flucks-a-day-with-many-men obsession...


Ooooooooooooooo........................

Nice one, Mikey. Tasteful, thoughtful, kind, understanding, mature, balanced.... and intelligent. You taking lessons from Limbaugh? Or maybe giving him a few? Rolling Eyes
.
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GURGLETROUSERS



Joined: 30 Dec 2009
Posts: 2643

PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 12:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Further to evolutionary divergence in related species; Jurg Massen (University of Vienna) reported in the U.S. Journal Evolution of Human Behaviour, that being close to others of similar personality traits is common to both us and chimpanzees. (We share all but a few percent of our D.N.A.)

This characteristic is claimed to date back up to 7 million years ago, to our common ancestor. Also, with regard to so called missing link in our evolutionary past, the stunning discovery of a fossilised skull of our ancient human ancestors at a site in Dimanisi Southern georgia, who died nearly 2 million years ago, found along with many remains of others, and some extinct animals dated at over 1.8 million years ago, is one of the most important finds to date.

These finds belong to the genus of great apes that emerged some 2.4 million years ago, and include us. Stunning and spectacular, the importance of which cannot be overstated, trilled Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley.
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"If you believe the world was made by God using evolution as his chosen method, scientific study does not disagree."


If you can get all Christians to this threshold, it would be significant improvement. But introducing the idea of "human" evolution can really cross them up based on their religious paradigms. That's why faith is such an important concept in their belief system. It's a crossroads where they can check out and fall back into the circle of religious faith and the defined limits as set forth in the Bible.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

KC and Chandler. Agreed. It was not difficult for me to rationalize science and religion growing up Catholic; the Catholic Church doesn't dispute (now) evolution. Instead, they believe that at some stage God stepped in and imbued the humans in his creation with a soul. Still requires the mystery of faith, but doesn't fly directly in the face of the facts.

There is a profoundly anti-intellectual element to some religions, particularly some of the newer emerging evangelical sects. As I said, it is extraordinarily dangerous.

The biggest danger comes in comments like that of NW above, and in the hatred of many evangelicals for Obama because of his support for a woman's right to choose. They do not understand that the genesis of this country is not merely the freedom to practice your own religion, but the equally important freedom to not be subject to the whims of someone else's religion. I can believe, or not believe, in witches and warlocks. But I cannot be subject, nor can my daughters, to the religious views of evangelicals and folks like NW, who want to impose their religious views on abortion as a matter of law--despite what the court already ruled. This is both a huge cultural issue, and a fundamentally failing of bad reasoning and ignorance about the First Amendment.
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nw30



Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast

PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 3:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mac wrote:


The biggest danger comes in comments like that of NW above, and in the hatred of many evangelicals for Obama because of his support for a woman's right to choose. They do not understand that the genesis of this country is not merely the freedom to practice your own religion, but the equally important freedom to not be subject to the whims of someone else's religion. I can believe, or not believe, in witches and warlocks. But I cannot be subject, nor can my daughters, to the religious views of evangelicals and folks like NW, who want to impose their religious views on abortion as a matter of law--despite what the court already ruled. This is both a huge cultural issue, and a fundamentally failing of bad reasoning and ignorance about the First Amendment.

You really should quit trying to pretend to know me, because you don't.
You don't even know when I'm being facetious, and when I'm not.
My views on anything are not based on religion, I'm an agnostic.
I have my own spirituality, but I do not believe in any organized religion.
Got it?
Thank you.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 5:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NW doth protest too much. In another thread he said:

Quote:
BTW, "the war on women" is a liberal term that is often used by you, and you ilk. When in reality it's a war on unwanted babies as being conducted by the left.


If that doesn't sound abortion obsessed, as well as making up things about other people, then I don't know what does.
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