Evolution? How?

It might have started, for instance, as a patch of skin somewhat sensitive to light, which conferred a tiny survival advantage, at least statistically in a large population.

Thanks for posting the article on the Sumerian version of the flood...

I have a very serious rub with the assessment of the historians that have dated the Sumerian story as older than the Bible... They all say it with confidence... even one article you posted assumes that the Sumerian story came from an earlier Sumerian story... Ha! <as the church lady would say, "Well how convenient..." They doubt the Bible came from an earlier verbal story but they assume the Sumerian story did. Well I have been searching all of my life for a bit of an explanation as to why these historians have emphatically stated the that Sumerian flood story is older then the Bible's account. There is no evidence... Just because the Bibles version was written down later does not mean that it did not come from an earlier verbal saga... Also there is nothing to disprove that this Sumerian story did not come from the early verbal Hebrew saga...

I think Noah's story has more "natural detail"... It tells eye witness things that could only have been known by someone who had seen the natural disaster first hand... Then it says the heavens poured out water... this is exactly what it would have looked like if a larger body of land poured into land that is below sea level then it would look like it was coming from the sky... None of the Babylonian stories have this detail... The glaciers melted and the Mediterranean over flooded it's banks and created the Black Sea... It would have created heavy rains for roughly a month near the outpouring... The sea would have risen 5 miles a day, out, not up... This is a real story about someone at the epicenter of the disaster.
But the striking difference about the Noah story and the Sumer story is that Noah had a small tribe that he started after the flood... People from his family and their servants that he took along... Noah had livestock from the ark for food and he had seeds to plant things...

The Bible tells of Noah's sons growing up and starting Sumerian... So modern account of history is in complete opposition to what the Bible says... How can the Bible story be from the Gilgamesh story if the Bible names the people that go on and start the cities of Summer and later Babylon...

The Bible tells us of a time before pagan Babylon and Summer where Noah's people lived a tribal existence... They lived in a fertile valley in Turkey that is now under the Black sea... The people were evil the Bible says...

Well we have an idea as to what evil could be, because of a story that happened before this about Cain and Able... Cain was "marked", why? ...and what could this mark have represented? Well it represented a dichotomy of people in the world... Some who clung to the teachings of Adam... The oneness with nature and God... But some who understood this oneness BUT decided to usurp this teaching and started an entire "system" of beliefs that were in total contradiction to the true way... Thus, "Cain slew his brother"... Was Cain his brother's keeper? Was Cain required to keep the teachings of Adam?

Thus God marked Cain... He set him apart from all others... Thus the children (followers) of Cain also bare this mark... So when the world had become evil continuously by Noah's time... he was the only one left with the mind/teachings of Adam... This time was called the patriarchal administration... The patriarchal administration began when Adam and Eve left Eden and remained until Moses wrote the law... The law was supposed to emulate some of the teachings of the patriarchs (at least what was still known)... Noah was one of these patriarchs.

I must get into the subject of "titles". Most of the words in the old testament have dual meanings... Like common names... Some examples of titles are... " the builder", "the hidden one", "the bruised one", " he who is cut off"...

I bring this up because of the similarity of Babylon with the Hebrew scriptures.. Now this subject that I am about to teach about the Bible I have never taught to anyone on forums even when I was on Abuzz.. This is really deep and borderline (will drive you insane) stuff... Well it turns out that all of these titles are the names of planets, stars, constellations. So when we try to figure out if Noah or Gilgamesh were the first accounts of the flood or accounts of the same flood... we are then drawn into the argument of who created the zodiac...

When the same "titles" that are used to describe Noah are the very exact names used to name every star in 12 constellations which correspond to a tribe of Israel (which came later). These names of the stars are universally used today... It would not seem that unusual that these stars names are scattered all throughout the Bible but also to have them also appear in the writings of the Babylonian religion then we see this same connection between the Hebrews and the Babylonians/Sumerians. I could go on about this subject...

So we have two bodies of thought... One is the one from Noah and the other is the one from his sons Cush and Cush's son Nimrod that replicated itself in other cities under a different language... Different names same system...

So one way is the way taught from Adam and the other way is the way taught by the Babylonian Magi...

So this is the way I see it ... There were two bodies of thought... Noah had his sagas that told of one God and of Adam... Noah's promise to God on the mountain with the rainbow was that he vowed to teach his children the ways of Adam... His son, Cush, who did not want to follow his fathers instruction from Adam decided to take all of the "titles" and create a new language and system of belief that would entirely oppose the will of Noah and ultimately God...

This still ties into the "mark of Cain" and the "sons of Cain"... So Cush took Adams titles, Noah's titles and any others that applied. One of Noah's titles was that of a "two faced man". One with an old face and one with a young face. Noah saw the old world and the new world after the flood. But the sons took this two faced title to make a two faced religious system... One where it was polytheistic and holy appearing on the surface but dark, evil and corrupt to only the "initiated"...

Well as time goes on both systems grow into cities/empires... But the Hebrews start becoming more like the Babylonians until they are finally conquered by Babylon... Then Daniel of the old testament is taken captive into Babylon... Daniel is introduced to the Magi of Babylon... Daniel is followed by wondrous signs and Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon's king, appoints a Hebrew boy (Daniel) as the "head" of the Babylonian astrologers/shamans... What was the writing on the wall? I will tell you it was "one" God...

Many people have not considered the names in the many stars.. They know the names of the planets and maybe the names of a few stars.. There are 12 constellations... and 3 constellations for each constellation... Each constellation has a number of stars. So that totals 48 constellations. Each of these 48 constellations are named in the Bible as are each name of each star in all of the constellations. In other words.. the Bible is "written in the stars"...

The constellations are a circle in the heavens that has changed little since the beginning of time... This plotting tells a story... Each word in each constellation has a meaning... When you put all of the words together they tell a big story... So you can see the depth of the Bible... it it not Dick, Jane and Sally... I sometimes take offence when people treat it that way... but some need the Bible simplified to understand it and that is ok if their heart is to truly "know"...

So what story do the words say in the zodiac? Well there are a good number of stars in 48 constellations... The story of these words is very precise and detailed in a free book online... It is free to download because it has become a Christian classic... If you have not read this book and you are interested in understanding some history I suggest you take the time to read it... I have owned a hard copy of the book for over twenty years and still have it.

Please respond specifically if you feel I have gone adrift in this reply...

http://philologos.org/%5F%5Feb%2Dtws/

I tend to want to believe in an Adam that suddenly found God amidst all of the temptations to worship or idolize the things around him... That he crawled out of primordial soup and perceived that God was not what was seen but unseen... This abstract consciousness of this is what separated the Cains from the Ables, the Babylonians from the Hebrews... The Christians from the gentiles... The saint from the sinner... The apes from humans...

In a vague summation...

Babes are born blind so they can know the unseen first... It is when our eyes are opened that our spiritual eyes shut...

The Bible reopens our spiritual eyes...

Peace with God...

Quote, "..."... It tells eye witness things that could only have been known by someone who had seen the natural disaster first hand..." Pray tell, who were those "eyewitnesses" other than Noah and his family member?

Today's front page article in the San Jose Mercury News titled "AMERICA IN IRAQ, Generals, shedding exuberance, say mission may last 'many years.'"

"BAGHDAD, Iraq - US military commanders in Baghdad and Washington gave a sobering new assessment of the war in Iraq..."

To them, it's a "sobering new assessment." For some of us, we already knew Iraq was in chaos and a quagmire of the worst kind we got involved in by this president. Some people on this forum will continue to live in a fairyland where America brings democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. It seems they continue to ignore all the warning signs of discontent of the Iraqi people, and the inability of the new Iraq government to find agreement on the important issues. For many of them, it's the "success in Iraq." humbug...

Why are they located on the head, and not other spots of the body? How did they become eyeballs? Are there animals that don't have eyes?

Most animals have eyes at the front..where they are useful.

There are many kinds of eyes from simple to complex, not all are balls.

There are animals with no eyes and some with eyes that need them not.

(oops, borderline Yoda moment)

For some reason, most human senses have been located together. All I can think of is that the head is the highest area on the body, which may give the senses greater power. Or it may be a question of distance to the brain. I don't really know.

Brandon, maybe if sensory organs are precious, they would tend to accumulate in a single easily defended area? but mostly I think they are most useful at the front of the animal...(standing upright is a recent idea)

How does a patch of skin that is so valuable (light-sensitive) just pop out of nowhere?

Mutations occur constantly, they don't "pop out of nowhere." A mutation can recur repeatedly, and at any such time as it confers an advantage, natural selection assures that it will be replicated.

Just because you don't undertand the mechanism doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Do people today, just end up with cool things like light sensitive patches of skin?

I suspect that either you are very, very dense, or you are being willfully obtuse. The contention was that small, multi-cellular organisms would have had such mutations, which at one point or the other conferred an advatage. No one here even remotely suggested that people have such mutations. That being said, there is no reason why it couldn't happen--but as it would be unlikely to confer any advantage, it would go unnoticed.

As should be obvious, there is a difference between a person and a small multi-celled organism.

One notable difference is the our cells are highly specialized, unlike many of the cells in simpler organisms, especially archaic organisms.

Hmmmmm that basically was one big piece of shyt side step to my question.... let me rephase the question... have scientists recorded any mutations today that would offer any kind of advantage?

No one here has sidestepped your questions. When your questions are answered, directly point for point, you just dance off on another tangent.

Genetic mutations are not always an advantage for humans. But we can conclude that genetic mutations in humans have generally been an advantage in terms of survival in a changing environment.

Then have scientists actually witnessed smaller organisms changing from mutations? Or even in something with such a short life as a fly?

I would like to apologize to Setanta. I didn't understand the full idea of your quote and who it was directed at I guess.

How can we conclude anything if it has never been recorded for fact?
You just said yourself that it isn't always an advantage for humans, so how can we just "conclude" that it is an advantage.

We can conclude it, because we are now still surviving on earth while many species of life have disappeared.