Georgia Takes on 'Evolution'

And therfore probably not a valid choice for an authority figure. Just to clairify: Craziness does not genius make!

I'm pretty sure that whatever anti-evolution route you want to take has already been brought up and refuted in this little debacle:Creationism vs Evolution. I think that I - and by extension anybody else, because I'm super amazing - covered that ground in the previous thread.

In any case, if you insist on debating the merits of evolutionary theory vs Western civilizations current fairy tale of choice - Christianity - you'll have to come up with an argument based on something more than a vague and mildly amusing comparison of alleged miracles.

Toodles.

Creation stories invariably refer to the creation of our own solar system environment, and not the universe at large, which is probably eternal. The "Big Bang" theory which you hear so much about has been dead for a number of years now, and was never based on anything other than a misinterpretation of redshift data (Halton Arp has clearly shown high and low redshift objects to be part and parcel of the same things). Aside from that, "Big Bang" fails on first principles in a pursely philosophical sense inasmuch as having all the mass of the universe collapsed to a point would be the mother of all black holes, and nothing could big-bang its way out of that.

The stories of the old testament are true enough as far as they go, but you have to understand that the authors of those stories often did not understand the phenomena they wrote about and hence described them in their own terms, and according to their own understanding. Moreover, those guys never wrote that John went to the bathroom; they wrote that the Lord CAUSED John to go to the bathroom, for such and such a reason.

Similarly, as an example, the story of the flood at the time of Noah is described as a punishment for sin and corruption on the part of man. In real life, it was part and parcel of a solar-system wide calamity which we simply ran into. I believe that the story of Noah and the ark is true, nonetheless Greeks, Romans, Chinese and others describe people surviving on mountaintops and high places and on anything which could float for a year or so, and I don't see a conflict between the two versions. Noah's descendants could not have known about people surviving in China.


It is a dogma of establishment science that the tale of the biblical flood
is a fairytale or, at most, an aggrandized tale of some local or regional flood.
That, however, does not jibe with the facts of the historical record. The flood
turns out to have been part and parcel of some larger, solar-system-wide calamity.


In particular, the seven days just prior to the flood are mentioned twice
within a short space:



These were seven days of intense light, generated by some
major cosmic event within our system. The Old Testament contains one other reference to these seven days, i.e. Isaiah 30:26:



Most interpret this as meaning cramming seven days worth of light into
one day. That is wrong; the reference is to the seven days prior to
the flood. The reference apparently got translated out of a language
which doesn't use articles. It should read "as the light of THE seven days".

It turns out, that the bible claims that Methuselah died in the year
of the flood. It may not say so directly, but the ages given in Genesis 5
along with the note that the flood began in the 600'th year of Noah's life (Genesis 7:11) add up that way:



Thus we have Methusaleh dying in the year of the flood; seven
days prior to the flood...

Louis Ginzburg's seven-volume "Legends of the Jews", the largest
body of Midrashim ever translated into German and English to my
knowledge, expands upon the laconic tales of the OT.

From Ginzburg's Legends of the Jews, Vol V, page 175:



The note that "God did not wish Methusaleh to die at the same time as the
sinners" indicates that Methusaleh died at pretty nearly precisely the
beginning of the week prior to the flood. The week of "God causing the
primordial lights to shine" was the week of
intense light before the flood.

What the old books are actually telling us is that there was a stellar blowout
of some sort either close to or within our own system at the time of the flood. The
blowout was followed by seven days of intense light and radiation, and then the flood
itself. Moreover, the signs of the impending disaster were obvious enough for
at least one guy, Noah, to take extraordinary precautions.

The ancient (but historical) world knew a number of seven-day
light festivals, Hanukkah, the Roman Saturnalia etc.
Velikovsky claimed that all were ultimately derived from the
memory of the seven days prior to the flood.


If this entire deal is a made-up story, then here is a case of the
storyteller (Isaiah) making extra work for himself with no possible benefit, the
detail of the seven days of light being supposedly known amongst the
population, and never included in the OT story directly.

Dude, Velikovsky was not the sharpest tack in the box eitehr. I find it difficult to take someone who didn't know the difference between carbohydrates and hydrocarbons seriously! Read his comments about "manna" and you will see what I mean.
In short:
There are no ancient mysteries, the aliens did not build the pyramids, and santa claus does not exist!

The experiences I've had checking Velikovsky out at the source level indicate that he was only right about 90% of the time. The problem is that, until you start doing that, i.e. checking out the sources, you're basically speaking from ignorance, and very few people have ever taken the time and trouble to do it.

It's simpler, for instance, to try to claim that the 900 degree surface temperature on Venus is due to some sort of a "runaway greenhouse effect" (same guy according to who we should all be dead by now from the desert-storm greenhouse effect in 91)...

hobitbob

Santa does exist, please!

Velikovsky right 90% of the time ? ! ? ! ? Now i consider you to be lying outright . . .

That state was absolutely made for losers.

Velikovsky's works pretty much kill off what you'd call "Young Earth Careationism" in that we can observe that we actually have one planet (Venus) which is ballpark for the kinds of age estimates which people used to derive for the universe from biblical chronologies, and that the Earth and Mars, which do not resemble Venus in any way must be significantly older.

Velikovsky predicted intense heat on Venus at a time when it was uniformly balieved that Venus would vary no more than 15 degrees at a given latitude from the Earth in temperature. Scientists should have been lined up for miles at Velikovsky's door to apologize when they discovered the 900-degree surface temperatures of Venus. Instead, they quickly fabricated the so-called "super greenhouse" theory to explain the surface temperatures.

Given Velikovsky's rationale for the high temperatures, Venus should be out of thermal balance; given Sagan's greenhouse theory, it should be in balance. All actual measurements show it to be out of thermal balance, and scientific papers describe reasons for believing that these measurements have been seriously in error in each and every case. In other words, when the data doesn't match the paradigm, kill the data.

Infrared flux sensors sent to the planet's surface all showed major upward ir fluxes and papers by Revercombe and Suomi attempt to explain why all such sensors were in error, despite being of several types, some carried externally and others internally.

Likewise the raw data shows a major difference in the two methods of determining planetary albedo (reflectivity) in such a manner as to indicate that the planet is seriously out of thermal balance and papers such as those of F.W. Taylor note that the "most probable" value of albedo is not the one actually calculated but the one calculated USING THE ASSUMPTION OF THERMAL BALANCE.

Naturally, it is difficult to argue against such people when the rules stipulate that you are always wrong apriori.

Velikovsky posited a planet emerging from the interior of Jupiter, and passing several times near the earth, in order to account for the alleged plagues of ancient egypt, and for the earth to stand still as Joshua fought a Jericho--an event which would have wreaked incomprehensible havoc on the environment of this planet. Yes, you are entirely correct, it is pointless to argue with someone as delusional as it is now obvious that you are.

the neanderthal break
Amongst the various reasons for rejecting evolutionism, is the fact that scientific studies are indicating that the neanderthal made no measurable contribution to the gene pool of modern man.

The fact that neanderthals and modern men had lived in close proximity for long periods of time with no evidence of crossbreeding had been a mystery until the mid - late 90s when DNA analysis basically showed neanderthal DNA to be "about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee", i.e. showed that we could no more interbreed with neanderthals than we could with horses, thus cleanly eliminating the neanderthal as a possibile human ancestor.

The problem is, that all other hominids are significantly further removed from us THAN the neanderthal. To go on believing that modern man has evolved, you'd need some new hominid, closer to us in both time and morphology than the neanderthal, and the works and remains of such a closer hominid would be very easy to find.

In actual fact, there is no such "closer hominid". The neanderthal was some sort of a protohuman lord of some previous creation, and all other hominids were either glorified apes or just plain apes.

That leaves three possible ways of explaining modern man's presence on our own planet:

• Modern man was created here from scratch.
  
• Modern man was brought here from somewhere else.
  
• Modern man was genetically re-engineered FROM the neanderthal.
  

Evolution is not a possibility.

No, few people believe that, but many seem to think that his genius resulted in craziness during the later years of his life (the last 30 years or so, when he wrote his spiritual books).

Anyhow, I forgot to mention that I find it interesting that his works of life after death agree very well with lots of near-death experience accounts.

I don't know, what exactly you mean by "modern man".
And I'm certainly no anthropologist at all, but what about the "homo sapiens sapiens"? (I just know a bit about the European example "Cro-Magnon man".)

Cro-magnon is one of us.

Medved. Im a geologist and Ive been all over the world bangin on rocks. NOWHERE is there evidence of a single correlatable worldwide flood horizon. If such a unit were visible, it would be pronounced by geosciences as a single, worldwide event that would assist us in the difficult task of identifying economic deposits. most of us geologists are responsible for spending huge amounts of client money to find deposits of oil, coal, minerals etc. If I was dropped into a new area , i would begin by trying to bring in some evidence of a common unit or an age specific group of rocks. so far I can say with complete
scientific certainty that no uniform , single age flood event occurs over the planet. there are some vast deposits of deep water sediments that go back to the ordovician, Devonian, and Permian. however, even in these deposits there are vast areas of the planet that were , at the same time, undergoing glaciation, or show evidences of riverine deposits
so your beleif in the "biblical flood" is surprising for one who is trying to sound scientific. you shhould pay more attention to the evidence rather than the dogma of your preset keys

The big issue on evolution is that its profound elegance is further backed up by just about all the scioences that have relevance, (geochemistry, paleo, genetics, radioactive decay, hhydraulics, hydrology,
statistical sampling)
All have had a significant contribution to play in the theory of evolution. viz we know without doubt that The world is an old one . Life began to leave fossils about 3.8billion years ago. Subsequent layers of sediment clearly show a step -by-step change in the forms of life, . every so often a cataclysmic event
(not a flood) involving tectonics, vulcanism, or bolides, left the planet "swept" of many of its life forms, and post cataclysmic changes in life forms occured which followed totally different evolutionary paths from germ lines that remained in those lifeforms that survived the extinction.

You realize that evolution theory is silent on the origins of life. There is plenty of resaearch going on about how life began. I am comfortable in the eventual outcome. thhe present line of thought has to do with
the interaction of simple nitrogen bi-polar molecules with oxygenated clays. this had to occur at a time in the planet 's history when sufficient oxygen was available to allow hydrated clays to exist so that bonding energy was available to cause formation of aminos and to affect coupling and replecation of their structure. Thhey dont have answers yet but theyve been successful at "creating" self replicating molecules with nothing more complex than toxic levels of gases, electric charges and montmorillonite and bentonite(assumed that these were ejected from early volcanoes)

your choice of all the books of religious teachings contain nOTHING of scientific value. they are completely silent about how things work ,(which, after all, is where science really lives) Anyone can say that
"beasts flourished and multiplied after thir own kind'
and you hope that theres some scientific value in that nugget.
Science tries to understand and model and predict. Your way is one of smug baseless pronouncements from some books of myth.
now I sure dont want my kids to be raised in a cracker education system that totally discounts the basis for all biology and , by association, discounts the sciences of chemistry, geology, and a lot of physics.

i know this post will only result in a further hardening of your position and digging in of your heels. but my post isnt just for you, you are merely a symptom of the luddite mentality on this issue. Id venture to say that the Creation Science school has never made a single contribution to the world of biology , medicine, or even economic geology.
(by the way, if there are some contributions to biology made by a Creaqationist model, Id like to know what they are)

Id just hate for some 14 year old kid a2ker from cahoolawatchee think that the rest of the world has its head up its ass as apparently you do and as does the education system of the state of Georgia

The Dinner Bell
Ever watch those BS evolution things on PBS which show apes coming down from the trees and starting to roam around on the savannas of Africa, until they turn into people?

Aside from everything else which is wrong with that picture, there is the following consideration:

What is the most major difference between human infants, and the young of deer and other prey animals?

That's right: the baby deer have the sense to keep quiet and blend in. What's gonna happen to some group of homo-erecti or other "proto-humans" the first time some proto-human infant starts screaming his head off out there on the savannas, because something displeases him?

That's right: every predator within ten miles is going to say to himself "AHA! THE DINNER BELL!!"

Now, according to the evolutionists, that's supposed to be a formula for success...

There is overwhelming evidence of several global floods, and not just one.

Other than that, there is overwhelming evidence in the vast muck deposits which cover much of Alaska and Siberia of some other recent, global catastrophic event.

Aside from every other problem with evolution in the case of humans, there
is the following problem:

You are starting out with apes ten million years ago, in a world of fang
and claw with 1000+ lb. carnivores running amok all over the place, and
trying to evolve your way towards a more refined creature in modern man. Like:



What's wrong with that?

The problem gets worse when you try to imagine known human behavorial
constants interacting with the requirements of having the extremely
rare to imaginary beneficial mutation always prevail:

Let's start from about ten million years back and assume we have our ape
ancestor, and two platonic ideals towards which this ape ancestor (call
him "Oop") can evolve: One is a sort of a composite of Mozart,
Beethoven, Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare, i.e. your archetypal dead
white man, and the other platonic ideal, or evolutionary target, is
going to be a sort of an "apier" ape, fuzzier, smellier, meaner, bigger
Johnson, smaller brain, chews tobacco, drinks, gambles, gets into knife
fights...

Further, let's be generous and assume that for every one chance
mutation which is beneficial and leads towards the gentleman, you only
have 1000 adverse mutations which lead towards the other guy. None of
these mutations are going to be instantly fatal or anything like that at
all; Darwinism posits change by insensible degree, hence all of these
1000 guys are fully functional.

The assumption which is being made is that these 1000 guys (with the bad
mutation) are going to get together and decide something like:


Now, it would be amazing enough if that were ever to happen once;
Darwinism, however, requires that this happen EVERY GENERATION from Oop
to us. What could possibly be stupider than that?

I just read your Neanderthhal "analysis" . Please people, do not think that this has any merit. ALL DNA evidence rom Neanderthals comes ffrom the work done by Svante Paablo in Sweden withh confirmation by PennState..
They could sequence about 380 base pairs out of a mDNA sequence of 16000 base pairs. They discovered that, using polymerase chain reaction equip, that "Neanderthhals were undoubtedly part of the human evolutionary chain" , but since there were some differences (about 5%) in mDNA, it shhowed that modern humans were not "interbreeding" with Neanderthals, but were replacing them. By the time h sapiens was fully expressed as a genome, the Neanderthal lines were going extinct.
Neanderthhals had much more in common withh humans than chimpanzees as medved is trying to have us believe, more BS there medved.
Id reccomend a good text on modern genetics,
James Watson's new book called simply DNA, has a good discussion of the neanderthal genome search.

In my hO, DNA degrades , so that it has an effective life of about 50k years, so using dNA from a 30000 year old Neanderthal was quite an accomplishment since contamination is always a problem. Older DNA using osteocalcin hhas yielded some general genome dat but is not perfect. So this work was the first and some later work using skulls from Russia and thhe Mid East have generally shown that there were differences among Neanderthal populations, indicating that just like today, populations begin to show regional similarities in their Short tandem DNA sequences . But they ARE NOT ape -like . they are on the human genomic bush.

Your Velikovsky page is not what I call "scientific" its more of a printed Art Bell.
Lets say, that there is no 'Peer reviewed" scientific evidence of a worldwide flood event. Its totally preposterous. unless you believe in the vapor cloud pre-noadic flood world, then you are really hopeless.
while there were periods of time in which shhallow seas and deep trencehes occured, there were entire parts of the planet thhat were , at the same time, high and dry.
im embarrased for you for believing this crap.
Also , in your above post it is you who said that Neanderthhals were halfway between men and chimps. not Paabo (or Mark stoneking at penn state)

the pongid line split off millions of years previously. monkeys retain such things as
non opposable thumbs, large canines, facial musculature, pssst they dont walk upright because their skull insertion is totally different from humans or other Homo species.All Homo species had those things and many others in common. Your trying to abuse DNA to help your argument , when DNA is a record of evolution and its no surprise that humans and chimps are quite close genomically. Paabo made a case that the neanderthal line was being replaced by us, thats one of the ways that evolution works. the hominid and homo bush was already established and , if we had the necessary dNA from H ergaster or H erectus wed probably see that they had differences from us and even increasing differences from chimps and apes

your arguments are kind of missing the point . (I can see how youre trying to make a case for creationism but youre getting off the mark of diddling with some scientific data and then missing the mark entirely.

ive gotta get out of this cause its getting funny.