(October 18, 2015 at 5:59 am)Blondie Wrote: Very funny that you are using a dictionary that Noah Webster wrote who happened to be a Christian.  Don't you all have a dictionary written by atheists or something? 

Religion was an important aspect of Noah Webster’s life. [...]

lol... What? What has that got to do with anything? Have the last few remaining brain-cells of yours gone extinct, right this very moment?
Well - my deepest sympathies to whoever has the job, of preventing you from choking on your own drool...

Anyway - I believe I said "Have a fine day".

We don't think that just because someone is a Christian that everything they produce professionally is bogus. So I'm not sure why you felt the need to post the details of Webster's personal religious views. On the other hand, he's hardly the only source of English dictionaries!

Speaking as a biologist, I can only laugh at your assertions about "macro" evolution; I think if you took the time, as I have, to learn what evolution actually says, you'd be shocked at how poor your argumentation was, just then, especially on the subject of human origins. The evidence for our common ancestry is not only based on fossils, though we have plenty of those (with new ones found constantly, including just this month), but on genetic analysis of the same type used in court used to determine paternity. The head researcher of the Human Genome Project is an evangelical Christian, and wrote an entire book about how evolution is not only real, but how we know it is so, and why it is to the detriment of Christians to claim otherwise.

If you will not accept atheist sources for your information about science, try reading The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Dr. Francis S. Collins, though personally I'd recommend Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.

(October 18, 2015 at 5:42 am)I_am_not_mafia Wrote: This is not meant to be an insult, just an observation. But in all honesty, Blondie has to be the most stupid theist I have ever come across. I'm wondering if she is actually mentally retarded because she seems to have the mental age of a child. I don't think it's a fake. The MO is too consistent.

Atheists are not too bright either.  So there you have it.  For someone who made it to trig in high school and has a college education, yeah I am stupid.  The only thing you atheists have to dispute my views are theories which are man made that has no proof of beyond a reasonable doubt.  For your info, I did learn about evolution, big bang, and ice age theories in school.  I was never one for English or History.  Science and Math was always my cup of tea.  I took biology and chemistry.  Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to take physics, but I did get an introduction to it.  The only thing I dispute is the theories that you all go on to dispute me.  That is all you have. 

I will go along with you on the burden of proof of God exist does sit on people with my same thoughts, but again besides theories which there are some major scientific evidence that is missing to prove those theories to be 100% indisputable. 


http://www.icr.org/article/neanderthals-...ill-human/

Neanderthals Are Still Human!
by Dave Phillips
Download Neanderthals Are Still Human! PDF
Evidence for Creation

Since the first Neanderthal fossil was discovered in the middle of the last century, their remains have been highly controversial. By the mid 1950s, some scientists were beginning to argue convincingly that Neanderthals are a sub species of modern humans (Homo sapiens) (Lewin, 1998), citing a wealth of evidence to support the view that Neanderthals were human.
Some evolutionists have claimed that Neanderthals were incapable of modern speech, lacking the ability to produce the full range of vowels (Lieberman and Crelin, 1971; Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992), with flat non-flexing at the base of the skull, and the larynx positioned higher in the throat than in modern humans or even chimpanzees. The result of this computer reconstruction was that the resonating chamber at the back of the mouth was all but eliminated.
Many of these arguments have now been thoroughly refuted. A new and updated reconstruction done in 1989 by paleoanthropologist Jean-Louis Heim showed an essentially modern human flexation of the base of the skull (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992; Shreeve, 1995). More recently, the La Chapelle skull was compared to a sample of modern human specimens from the middle ages and found to be quite human (Frayer, 1993).
In 1983 one of the most complete Neanderthal skeletons ever found was discovered at Kebara in the Levant, which included the first fossil hyoid bone of a Neanderthal ever discovered. This bone is located in the throat and is directly related to the structure of the human vocal tract and is indistinguishable from that of modern humans (Arensburg et al., 1987).
A Neanderthal brain volume equals or exceeds modern human dimensions (Deacon, 1994), ranging from about 1200_1750 ml, and thus on the average about 100 ml larger than modern humans (Stringer and Gamble, 1993). Holloway (1985: 320) has stated "I believe the Neanderthal brain was fully Homo, with no essential differences in its organization compared to our own."
Although there is no direct correlation between brain size and intelligence, Neanderthal brain volume certainly does not support views that argue for an evolutionary expansion of "Hominid" brains.
Neanderthal anatomy is essentially human in scope, with the same number of bones as humans, which function in the same manner (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992). However, there are minor differences in robusticity (thickness and strength). These differences are trivial and can be found on an individual basis in modern living populations (Lewin, 1998). Although there is no formal agreement of which physical characteristics are diagnostic of Neanderthal morphology, a suite of traits have been used to distinguish Neanderthal morphology. Cranial traits are listed in the table below.
Still one may wonder why the entire suite of traits are not found in modern populations, but consider that Neanderthals typically lived in extremely cold climate areas, genetically isolated by a post-flood ice age. That would have directly affected their anatomy and physiology (Stringer and Gamble, 1993).
Two ecological rules describe the relationship between the size and the shape of the extremities (limbs) and trunk anatomy. Burgmann's rule regarding surface area postulates that body weight tends to be larger in cold climates. With two bodies of similar shape, the larger will have less surface area per unit of volume and will retain heat better in cold climates. Allen's rule suggests that body limbs will be shorter in cold climates, reducing surface area that results in less heat loss. This is seen in the short tails, ears, or beaks in many animals living in cold climates. Humans that live in cold climates, such as Eskimos, are typically larger with shorter arms and legs. Since Neanderthals lived in near arctic conditions in many cases, one would expect them to have a stocky body build and short extremities (arms and legs) (Holliday, 1997). In fact, the limbs of Neanderthals from the warmer climates of Southwest Asia are relatively longer than the limbs of those living in ice-age Europe. When Neanderthal limb proportions, based on a mean index of tibia/femur length, called Crural Index, are plotted against mean annual temperatures. Neanderthals appear to be even more cold-adapted in their limb proportions than modern Eskimos and Lapps (Stringer and Gamble 1993; Stringer and Mckie, 1996).
In addition, Neanderthals lived a life style that put rigorous demands on their bodies as seen from numerous skeletal lesions, many the result of traumatic bone breakage. (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992.) Further, it has recently been suggested, based on intense dental study, that Neanderthals may have had a greater longevity than modern populations. This may have also affected their anatomy (Cuozzo, 1998).
There are a large number of cultural habits that distance Homo sapiens from animals. No other organisms, either living or fossil, made tools to make other complex tools, buried their dead, had controlled use of fire, practiced religious ceremonies, used complex syntax in their spoken grammar, and played musical instruments, yet we know from their fossils that Neanderthal engaged in all.
Deliberate burial of Neanderthal remains is well known from at least 36 sites with a geographical distribution over most of Eurasia (Gowlett, 1994), with at least 20 complete skeletons known (Lewin, 1998). Some graves have stone tools, animal bones, and flowers buried in the ground, along with the Neanderthal remains. At the Uzbekistan Neanderthal site of Teshik-Tash, is a boy's grave surrounded by a ring of mountain goat bones, horns, and levallois tools indicating ritualism of some sort. Burial is known to have occurred in an unnatural posture, which demonstrates that a corpse was not simply dropped into a hole in the earth without preparation (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992). Burial implies an awareness of the after life and demonstrates the existence of formal ritual. Indication of strong social ties can be inferred from cases where Neanderthal individuals with severe crippling injuries were cared for (i.e., the Shanidar remains).
In 1996, pristine evidence of Neanderthal humanness came to light, when a cave in Slovenia produced a small flute made from the thigh bone of a cave bear. Four precisely aligned holes are punctured on one side of the four-inch-long bone (Folger and Menon, 1997). Thus cultural evidence strongly supports Neanderthal humanness.
The recent recovery of mitochondrial DNA from the right humerus of the Neanderthal remains from Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany, has been of great interest to evolutionists and creationists alike (Krings et al., 1997).
Based on the comparison of modern human mt DNA and that taken from the Neanderthal, evolutionists have argued that the "Neanderthal line" diverged from the line of "hominids" leading to modern humans about 600,000 years B.P. without contributing mt DNA to modern Homo sapiens populations. This strongly implies that Neanderthals were a different species from modern humans.
However, the above noted interpretation is not scientifically justified. Lubenow (1998) has pointed out that the use of a statistical average of a large modern human sample (994 sequences from 1669 modern humans) compared with the mt DNA sequence from one Neanderthal is not appropriate. Furthermore, the mt DNA sequence differences among modern humans range from 1 to 24 substitutions, with an average of eight substitutions, whereas, the mt DNA sequence differences between modern man and the Neanderthal specimen range from 22 to 36 substitutions, placing Neanderthals, at worst, on the fringes of the modern range.
Neanderthals were human. They buried their dead, used tools, had a complex social structure, employed language, and played musical instruments. Neanderthal anatomy differences are extremely minor and can be for the most part explained as a result of a genetically isolated people that lived a rigorous life in a harsh, cold climate.

---

(October 18, 2015 at 6:07 am)Homeless Nutter Wrote:

(October 18, 2015 at 5:59 am)Blondie Wrote: Very funny that you are using a dictionary that Noah Webster wrote who happened to be a Christian.  Don't you all have a dictionary written by atheists or something? 

Religion was an important aspect of Noah Webster’s life. [...]

lol... What? What has that got to do with anything? Have the last few remaining brain-cells of yours gone extinct, right this very moment?
Well - my deepest sympathies to whoever has the job, of preventing you from choking on your own drool...

Anyway - I believe I said "Have a fine day".

All I can tell you is don't wind up in a nursing home.  You might just see my face. 

You have a nice day, too Nutter on a serious note.

(October 18, 2015 at 3:24 am)Blondie Wrote: I just don't buy into just what people want to say in order to attempt to explain how we got here and maybe even why we are here.  Theories again are nothing more than educated ideas and thoughts made by different people over time.  Again theories are not science and not exact because it can never be observed.  People can be so erroneous in their guesses to lead everyone astray.  If I am lead astray it will be by Satan himself and not someone with a credential behind their name who says I have to believe this or that because they think it is a fact.  People have gave me more than enough reason not to trust or believe anything they say.  So why should I pay any attention to an educated idiot trying to shove their crap down my throat.  It goes the same with you.  You are tired and wore out by people like me shoving our beliefs down your throat.  If I don't like you do that to me, why would I expect you to be any different?  The same goes for the scientists who says this bull crap.

I am quoting you here, despite having just addressed your attitude toward science, because you are obviously an intelligent and well-read person (given your proper use of the English language, a rarity on the internet in general). You have some ideas about how science works that I find somewhat disturbing, and indicate to me that you have been the victim of some serious efforts at anti-science propaganda. My own church's attempts to insulate me from the teachings of science were my "trauma event", as you call it, which convinced me that the Christian beliefs were not ones I could in good conscience continue to follow; it was only later that I learned there were types of Christian who did not reject science and fear knowledge that could potentially conflict with belief. By then, it was too late to go back to believing; I had seen "the man behind the curtain", as Baum put it in the Wizard of Oz books.

First, we'll start with your use of theory to mean "educated ideas". My recommendation is that you cease to use "educated" as a pejorative. That's never a good place to start with your concepts about the world. Your computer and your car are built by people who are educated in the mathematics of materials science and electrical/mechanical engineering, as well as the psychology of pleasing design and ergonomics. The medicines you take are the product of educated people doing careful research on the human body, its biochemistry and its systems. Education is a good thing, not a dirty word.

Theories are science. In science, the word "theory" could be replaced with "model of"; in other words, when I say "Germ Theory", I mean the model of disease infecting our cells. A theory is comprised of all the observed laws which govern the behavior of the subject being modeled, and all the tested and verified information that shows how those laws operate together into a functioning system. If it helps you to think of it as "The Model of Gravity" rather than "Gravitational Theory", or the "Model of Evolution by Natural Selection", to avoid the sticking point you've developed with the use of the word "theory", I recommend that you do so. What's important to realize here is that in science, the word theory has a meaning that is wholly unrelated to the way it's used in police dramas on TV, or in colloquial use, to mean "guess" or "hunch". Theories are tested endlessly by scientists in many fields, all of whom are in competition with one another, and all of whom are encouraged to tear down any element of that model which is inaccurate or incorrect, even if they have no alternative with which to replace the error. Over time, this means the theories which survive become more robust, as they are more-heavily tested. Evolution is quite literally the most solid theory I can think to name, including the theory of gravity. We don't know everything, but we do know quite a lot, and what we do know is not the result of some guys sitting around in a room making wild guesses. Evolution is and has been observed in a dozen independent lines of evidence, in entirely-unrelated fields of study. If you are genuinely curious to know, I'd love to tell you about it.

No one wants to "shove it down your throat"; the beauty of science is that you can test for yourself. That's quite literally the definition of the Scientific Method's process of Peer Review-- anything which is to be added to the body of scientific knowledge must be tested and confirmed (or disproved) by others, in order to uncover errors in thinking or methods, false assumptions, and the bias of the individual human. If the results and conclusions are not supported by the attempts by others to duplicate what was done, they can attain great fame by proving what was wrong, just as much as the person who put out a new idea would attain fame via their discovery. If I proved evolution wrong tomorrow, with a testable and repeatable experiment that poked holes in everything we know today, then I would have a Nobel Prize waiting for me at the end of the year.

You can find out for yourself all the things I learned, and you can test them for yourself. What you cannot do is make assumptions based on limited knowledge, form conclusions based on ignorance of the facts, and wave away your disagreements with the educated people by declaring them to be guessing as much as you are.

Um, that's not what we think about Neandertals. That must be a pretty old article. We have conclusive proof that 1) Neandertals were a divergent lineage of humans, for about 350,000 years separated from us, and that once modern humans arrived in Europe/Asia there was some interbreeding. All modern humans have a trace of Neandertal DNA. (The Mitochondrial DNA is a different question, since it has to do with the matriarchal lineage descent, and the statistical analysis of the divergence percentage has nothing to do with tracking particular mutations in the lineage; we know that all modern humans are descended from a maternal ancestor who lived ~80,000 years ago, long after Neandertals and Sapiens split from one another.)

They also have drastically different types of cranial cases, despite the similar sizes. If you put your hand right at your eyebrows, like you're shielding your eyes from the sun, you'll see why. Your skull goes "up" at that point, while theirs goes almost straight back. They had no vertical forehead, in the sense that we do, while their cranium extends backward into a protruberance, where ours is vertical, at the back of the neck. They are clearly not "just another type of human", in the sense that your article means. On the other hand, they are close enough cousins that we could still interbreed, and did, once the two populations re-encountered one another.

Your Neandertal article also ignores what we know about the dozens of other pre-Homo species we know about, including the fact that we have since traced the manufacture and use of tools to 3.3 million years ago, just after the time of "Lucy", the famous Australopithecus find (though she's hardly the only one we've found), back when our ancestors had brain capacities only about 1/3rd their current size, and we were only half as tall.

Good grief, I'm reading that ICR crap-paper... so many of the conclusions they draw from the papers they cite are bafflingly stupid, or based on what I can only conclude are willful lies about how the conclusions are to be drawn. For instance,

The ICR Wrote:Although there is no direct correlation between brain size and intelligence, Neanderthal brain volume certainly does not support views that argue for an evolutionary expansion of "Hominid" brains.

The volume of the brain, as I explained before, is not as relevant as the fact that the volume is in an entirely-different direction, with Neandertals "missing" the portion of our prefrontal cortex, found in our bulging neotenous foreheads, and having an extension at the rear of the skull, where our occipital bun is a mere bulb. But that has nothing to do with the conclusion they reached, that somehow brain volume should "support views that argue for an evolutionary expansion of Hominid brains". See the comparison of cross-sections and appearance, here:



Neandertals split off from our African ancestors (while we remained behind for another 350,000+ years) to colonize Europe and central Asia. The ancestor from whom they diverged is even older, as Homo heidelbergensis originated between 800,000 and 1,300,000 years ago in Africa, with one group leaving to colonize Eurasia perhaps 400,000 years ago, while we remained behind, and developed into Homo sapiens roughly 130,000 years ago, though we didn't successfully follow the ancestors of the Neandertals out of Africa until about 60,000 years ago. By 42,000 years ago, we met the Neandertals in Europe, though we have evidence of interbreeding beginning to occur in Israel as far back as 55,000 years ago.

Do you see why I say it is dishonest to say that skull size comparisons means what they say it means? They're trying to pretend that scientists claim that Neandertals are lower-level humans, rather than cousins, and that if evolution is true we should expect humans to have the biggest brains. None of that is claimed by science. The ICR quite literally exists for the purpose of "muddying the waters", so to speak, and convincing people that science is confused and/or wrong, because they see that as a "win" for Biblical literalist Christianity (aka Creationism). They are highly effective in propagandizing the layperson, and personally I consider them to be evil. If you don't believe me that they are trying to muddy the waters for their own purpose, read it in their own words in "The Wedge Document", preserved for us by the National Center for Science Education:

http://ncse.com/creationism/general/wedge-document

(October 18, 2015 at 2:50 am)Blondie Wrote: Listen.  I really don't care.  It is that plain and simple.  I ran onto this website by accident last night.  I did not go and look for it because I really don't care what you atheists, satanists, witches, worlocks, islam, hindus, buddhas, new age movement, the pshyco yoga transcendental people think.  You all are entitled to your opinions.  If you think I have been really rude here, you don't have a clue.  If you think I have been rude here, I am much more harder on the Islamic religion than I am on anything else.  Those monkeys condone child rapists, child marriages, beating of women, murder, lie, cheat, steal, and all that is evil.  So really even though some have been descent to me, thanks.  To jackasses like the one I am replying to, take your belief or non-belief and shove it right up your ass. Bye.

So, a right little bundle of joy for everyone besides your very own sect. Willfully ignorant and too arrogant to form an informed opinion. Judgmental of other people's believes without knowing what's their deal really is. In short, a puny little bigot.

Hopefully it is bye for real, though I doubt that.

(October 18, 2015 at 7:08 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: They are highly effective in propagandizing the layperson, and personally I consider them to be evil. If you don't believe me that they are trying to muddy the waters for their own purpose, read it in their own words in "The Wedge Document", preserved for us by the National Center for Science Education:

http://ncse.com/creationism/general/wedge-document

Good find

Quote:The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points.
...
Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

Quote:Governing Goals

To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

They really are evil fuckers out to destroy mankind's progress.

(October 18, 2015 at 7:17 am)I_am_not_mafia Wrote:

(October 18, 2015 at 7:08 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: They are highly effective in propagandizing the layperson, and personally I consider them to be evil. If you don't believe me that they are trying to muddy the waters for their own purpose, read it in their own words in "The Wedge Document", preserved for us by the National Center for Science Education:

http://ncse.com/creationism/general/wedge-document

Good find

Can't claim I "found it"... I already knew about it and just Googled the exact site on the NCSE page. I knew NCSE co-founder Dr. Eugenie Scott when she was a professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, while I was in college at University of Louisiana at McNeese; she and my adviser did some anti-Creationist stuff when I was there, and I helped with several of those projects. I've literally been combating Creationist dishonesty since I was an undergraduate.

(October 16, 2015 at 4:33 pm)sinnerdaniel94 Wrote:

(October 16, 2015 at 4:30 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Why, you looking to change sides?  Do you mean god, or your God - be specific.

no
I just want to know the evidence for the position that there is no god.

How many fucking times does it have to be explained to you?

You retarded bro?