Quips

Re. abiogenesis, read Genesis 1 carefully. What is it that created life?

Self-proclaimed "bible believing Christians", who say they adhere to a kindergarten-level woodenly literal interpretation of scripture, actually do not. Ask them whether the earth and the waters brought forth life, as Genesis 1 says, and they will only wriggle and squirm. It seems that they do not have enough faith in their "God" to believe that he was capable of creating a world that could bring forth life. They have to cling to a belief in magic. I think it's because their faith is so weak and fragile.

It is exceedingly strange. They would rather picture a has-been, worn out, seedy conjurer, pulling mangy rabbits out of a threadbare top hat in a back street cabaret dive that has seen much better days! 😉 There is no reason for biblical literalists, sensible Christians/Muslims/followers of Judaism and atheists to disagree about abiogenesis.

And even if Genesis is wrong, and life was poofed into existence by some unnatural magic man using his ju-ju, it would make not one jot of difference to evolution, which only starts when you have life, however it came about. Thus the bleat that "evolutionists" [sic] cannot explain abiogenesis is bleating up the entirely wrong tree. Still, the poor dears persist in calling it a "gotcha". It seems that it is all they think they have got. They've got nothing. Nothing.

Incidentally, nowhere in the bible will you find the phrase "reproduce after their kind(s)". Life was PRODUCED (by the earth and the waters) "after their kind(s)". In the English of King James' days, that meant "according to their type, sort or species". Languages - er - evolve. French versions have, «selon leur espèce», which means precisely that. The incoherent concept of "kind", beloved of, but never elucidated by creationists, is intended to mean "that which can never evolve 'outside' its classification", whatever that is supposed to mean. Thus the concept only appeared after, and is dependent upon, the discovery of the fact of evolution. The concept, if you can call it a concept, is not even biblical.

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Professor Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL was once on stage, invited to discuss his work with other notables. He was introduced to a "professor of theology". He smiled, shook his hand and said, "Ah! A professor without a subject!"
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(For people who make silly posts on FaceBook)

I see you have entered for the silliest post of the day competition. I'm afraid I have to inform you that although your entry was indeed very silly, it only came fifth. The competition was pretty stiff.

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I find it ironic that some people say that if we were not designed by an intelligent designer, we cannot trust our perceptions and reason, when the very same people say that their God planted false evidence for the sole purpose of subverting our perceptions and reason. If they say that, and they are correct, it definitely means that none of us, including them, can trust our perceptions and reason. As Galileo put it, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect had intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them."

We are the result of a very very long line of successfully reproducing ancestors, who have successfully contended with and adapted to a huge range of conditions. We must have gotten some things right. Not everything, but that's another story...

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If there was a God, there would be no theists.
This makes exactly the same sort of sense as Chesterton.
IOW, it's nonsense.

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When you find yourself at the bottom of a deep, dark, smelly hole, and slowly but eventually it begins to dawn on you that you are holding a shovel in your hands, the first thing to do is to stop digging.
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I'm a retired school teacher. I taught in British state schools, where religious education is the norm. Education, not indoctrination. I agree with it. It is necessary for students to learn about an important factor that shapes the human world - religion. I don't mind creationism or intelligent designer spotting being taught, but again, education - what they are, not indoctrination, and certainly not in science classes. I would use them as examples of what science isn't. The writer of the article is somewhat confused about what biological evolution is. It's not about how the world came to be. That's cosmology. It's not about the origin of life, but what happens once you have life. If you are going to teach stuff, you have to understand it yourself first. _________________________________________________________________
So how do you explain the appearance of orthology* in the vast majority of endogenous retroviruses in the genomes of Homo sapiens, Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus? *Orthologs are genes in different species that evolved from a common ancestral gene by speciation.

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Have you ever considered putting yourself forward as a scientific peer reviewer? Your knowledge and expertise and command of your subject would be invaluable. Submit your meme for peer review and as your application for a Nobel prize.
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I just don't understand this. What sort of horrible disfigurements make these poor women need to hide their faces?

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I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei

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Do not refer to "EvolutionNews". It is weell-known that it is a false propaganda blog of the long discredited "Discovery Institute" that has never made a single discovery since its inception in 1991 following the leaking of its "Wedge Strategy" anti-science manifesto. 

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Jesus returning - Finding Jesus

Never met the guy in all my 74 years. I doubt I will find him now. I think he isn't around any more even if he was ever around. He is alleged to have said he would come back within his gang's lifetime. If he was ever real, he must have popped down to the local corner store to get more water to turn into wine, and was run over and killed by a runaway camel. Come on. I think we've waited long enough for him to declare him missing, presumed dead, don't you?_________________________________________________________________

I can't wait 'till Facebook Purity gets around the spamming again. What a pain in the arse!

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My old mathematics professor used to say, "Philosophy? What do you mean by 'mean'?"

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I'm always impressed by the intellectual standard of the OPs in these groups. They are so intensively and comprehensively researched, and so lucidly presented. The eloquence itself is sufficient to attract and maintain our attention. Well done! :)

_________________________________________________________________For the moment, I am restricted to posting OPs. I cannot comment on other peoples posts. The reasons for the restriction were not given. _________________________________________________________________

Evolution only begins once you have life. If the first life was poofed into existence by an unnatural magic man using his ju-ju, it wouldn't make a scrap of difference to evolutionary science.

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Vacuum cleaners and sand heaps, and piles of junk etc. do not reproduce with heritable variations that are subject to selection, so they do not evolve.

Also note that evolution is not atheistic. It is scientific, acknowledged by atheists and theists alike.