My favorite line: "I ask as a stand in for myself" :) ...didn't know you could do that!
- Edward Zwart
from Bookmarklet
oh lord, send brain from heaven, your flock is stupid as fuck ... mindless religious robots, ... thank god I'm an atheist ...
- Dickbuttkick
We get the government we deserve when we pretend these lunatics are anything other than, well, lunatics. It never ceases to amaze me we elect people into the Senate who are just this side of speaking in tongues and snake-handling then task them with determining the future of health care in our country.
- cdogzilla
God's Cartoonist: The Comic Crusade of Jack Chick - Watch Full Length Episode of Documentary Features on The Documentary Channel - http://www.sling.com/video...
Hmmm, I see the 30 sec. ad, but then get an "error connecting" message. I know Ed is in Canada so I'm assuming that's not the issue. The 1st comment is a request for removal, so I jumped to that conclusion :P
- Ken Morley
I've tried the zone therapy, and man that was painful. The woman told me that was because there was something wrong with the corresponding body part (my back). She continued pressing down until I almost blacked out, and then she said: "There, I fixed it." I guess she must have fixed it because my back didn't hurt. I don't remember my back hurting before that either, but at least it didn't anymore.
- Eivind
lol Eivind! Is that kind of like the "dr, dr, it hurts when I 'do this' Dr: then don't do that ;)
- Janice
Yeah, but in my defense I really liked her daughter :)
- Eivind
Maybe she was talking about shoulders or perhaps buttocks? (both of which have 'spots')
- Janice
I wondered about the large area dedicates to 'buttocks' :D Seems like they could have crammed a couple of other body parts in there. Maybe if you press those two at the same time?
- Eivind
Wow, head is at the top, buttocks are at the bottom, which is another word we use for buttocks. What are the freaking chances?! I mean, look where shoulders are located, for crying out loud! How could this possibly be madeupshit?
- Edward Zwart
The fine institution in question is the "Patriot Bible University, formerly known as Patriot University, is an unaccredited fundamentalist Christian correspondence school located in Del Norte, Colorado"
- David (slumrig)
The only references he cites appear to be biblical passages.
- David (slumrig)
"To really understand the history of evolution, we have to understand the author. Satan is the master-mind behind this false doctrine." - to quote the Church lady "SATAN!" (its a scientific theory btw, not a doctrine)
- David (slumrig)
"Cain promoted the evolutionary doctrine that man can progress by his own efforts. ... Cain's efforts to "evolve" closer to God met with disaster." - I didn't know we had any extant documents of Cain promoting evolution theory. I guess he really was ahead of his time!
- David (slumrig)
"Hinduism became very popular around 600 B.C. It probably began many years before that." - LMAO - now that is fine scholarly research!
- David (slumrig)
"Another religion developing in the Eastern world during this time was Confucianism. Confucius lived from 551 to 479. He very strongly endorsed ancestor worship." - woah there poindexter - this reads like a 6th grader report and that's being generous.
- David (slumrig)
This is rich: "It has long been my contention that evolution is just another religion. There is no empirical evidence to back it up so it is certainly not a part of science." - well then, you are done buster, sit down and shut up already.
- David (slumrig)
Oh dear God! Did this actually lead to an official Ph.D or are they just pretending to be a University?
- Eivind
"Hitler was an evolutionist and it was the crazy doctrine of evolution that is fundamentally responsible for World War II." - let us not forget Hitler was also a vegetarian. 'it was the crazy doctrine of vegetarianism that is fundamentally responsible for World War II'
- David (slumrig)
I checked - its from a non-accredited correspondence 'university'.
- David (slumrig)
"The idea that evolutionists try to get across today is that there is a continual upward progression. They claim that everything is getting better, improving, all by itself as if there is an inner-drive toward more perfection an order." So that is the theory of evolution, and Hitler believed this you say? No thanks, I'll stick with what the good book says!
- Eivind
"I would like to trace the history of evolution beginning with the fall of Satan from heaven..." I LOVE this! :D
- Eivind
"Lack of billions of years is the Achille's heel to evolution." - take THAT Darwin!!!
- David (slumrig)
"Why don't we have people writing about kings that live fity thousand years ago? Why is it that all of recorded history happened in the last four thousand years?" - because we didn't start recording history until around four thousand years ago? Just a thought.
- David (slumrig)
"The [lowercase] god of Mohammed is not the [uppercase] God of the Bible by any stretch of the imagination. It is a little pantheistic god of nature."
- Eivind
Shintu is the same as evolution - I did not know that!
- David (slumrig)
Last line of dissertation: 'I believe Jesus was right.' - QED you mofos!!!!
- David (slumrig)
"This topic is personal for me; it's not just academic." I must admit I suspected that before I read it :)
- Eivind
He even put one of his own poems into the thesis!
- Eivind
Its kind of like a train wreck, you can't look away!
- David (slumrig)
I know. It's a real page-turner with fresh springs of stupidity waiting around each new bend :D
- Eivind
But isn't it strange that he keeps referring to his thesis as a book?
- Eivind
Oh man, this is rich! Question... Is it normal to cite your weekly radio broadcast as an authority in a dissertation?
- Edward Zwart
"This topic is personal for me; it's just not academic." - Fixed
- Mark
You know, I'm pretty sure I could have written a better dissertation in 1991. I was 11.
- Mark
Thanks for fixing the personal/academic quote, Mark. It makes much more sense now. When I was 11 I remember making many of the same mistakes Hovind makes in the intro, like starting every sentence of my "My Summer Holiday" thesis with "I" (the Norwegian equivalent, of course) :)
- Eivind
Maybe there are some children that God loves not so much.
- David (slumrig)
"Greenwood County authorities say they found Tillmon covered with sores, and that he appeared to weigh about 800 pounds. They say he was stuck to his chair, and they had to saw the recliner apart. They cut a large hole around the front door to get him out."
- Christopher A Carr
Alright, for some reason this reminds me of the phone call I had with my mother Sunday, when we both started talking in really crappy Sean Connery accents. Fabuloush!
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
If it's a school picture, you KNOW it's Olan Mills! At least, that's the way it was around here. Those folks had a lock on the uncomfortably posed photo market.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
uncomfortable pose? looks pretty comfortable to me lol :P
- Rob Sellen :o)
Is formatting of the text critical, beyond spacing and line breaks? Are there critical embedded media elements? If not, plain text always wins.
- LogEx
Doesn't Google docs support docx files as well?
- Brian Sullivan
.doc is a standard...95% of the electronic document world uses it. Get off my lawn. The world doesn't work the way you want it to work. You must work the way the world works. .doc FTW.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
"WAAAAA... Your not using the service I recommend this week..WAAAA"
- Uncle CW™
Microsoft thinks EVERYTHING it poops out is a "standard". sorry, not biting.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
I want to know what kind of information about a wedding had to be represented in a word doc that couldn't have just been put into the message, presumably email, that contained the word doc. Are you one of those people who write your message into word, then save it and attach it to an email with the text "see this attachment for my message to you"?
- Andy Bakun
from Android
As a tech person you HAVE to be flexible and be able to handle all sorts of formats.
- Uncle CW™
Microsoft's largest monopoly is in the Office space, not the OS. You can look it up, my numbers aren't far off.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
indeed, most modern email programs let you save the body (and headers, if you want) as some kind of formatted or unformatted text file, whether RTF or DOC or TXT or whatever. no excuse for an attachment.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
You guys might as well start complaining about the use of Comic Sans as a font while you are at it...Like I said...the world doesn't work how you want it to work. Complaining about it, won't change it. I think from now on I will send all my correspondence to Robert inside a Word attachment ;)
- Alex Scoble
from IM
maybe you can explain why then that supposed standard, .doc, isn't supported by the others, it even keep changing on each version of m$-office!!!
- ovigia
Why are you taking it out on him when it's the folks here who are fussing at you? hee. Feel free to communicate with me any way you wish. I got nothing but time! ;-)
- pea
Alex is right. #1 feature request from family and friends when they ask me about which computer to buy is 'It has to run Word'. Short tail vs very long tail issue.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
"You must work the way the world works" - spoken like a true conservative Luddite, uninterested in improving the world. TXT >> RTF > HTML > ODF > PDF >> Word
- LogEx
Johnny, having an interest in using Word does not at all equate to actually sending people attachments they don't want, in a format they don't want.
- LogEx
PDF is in no way shape or form better than .doc. Nor is HTML. And I'm neither a conservative nor a luddite, but pissing in the wind just gets you drenched in piss.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
And now I want to do all my friendfeed posts in .doc format
- Alex Scoble
from IM
I am sorry, but if you sent me a .doc it would be in the trash bin and I'd be complaining too. There is nothing wrong with plain text (or html if you need formatting). It's pretty much universal and can be read on any device, any OS. Maybe back in 2002 I might have felt differently, but spending a substantial amount of time using a device incapable of displaying a .doc from the latest...
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- April Russo (app103)
Really? Cause in the real world a document = a word document. This goes to Alex's point that the majority of people still use word and the .doc format. All the other suggestions mentioned here are not in the mind of the normal user.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
.rtf has the same formating techniques and is supported everywhere. Opens in Word, and pretty much any other word processing program. Was made by Microsoft as well, if that's important to you
- Itachi
Email is the only universal interpersonal computer communication protocol, and plain text is the only universal format for using in an email. Attachments put an unnecessary burden on the recipient.
- LogEx
I guess you are only sending them to "normal users". Anyone who owns Acrobat can edit your PDF unless it's locked.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Alex, be happy I don't have to send you email on a regular basis. I'd be sending you messages in a different format every time, sending you scrambling to find a solution to enable you to read it...just to teach you a lesson.
- April Russo (app103)
Any email sent to me in which the contents are only an attachment will get trashed. If you want to have some pretty formatted thing, put it on a website and email me the link. The worst is getting an email that's a link to a website that has a link to a goddamn Word document. That is email abuse and a waste of my time.
- ǎňňǎ
The people who send me PDFs do not lock them...just sayin'.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
then the people who send you PDFs don't know wtf they're doing with Acrobat.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
Who uses Acrobat? I make my PDFs using CutePDF or similar print-to-pdf tools.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
This is an argument about which tire gives the best grip and performance when really, the vast majority of people just get in their car and drive on the tires the car came with.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Johnny, I think it's more like "why are you driving a car? That's environmentally wasteful!" when most people need to drive a car to get around.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
the vast majority of people don't pay much attention to anything except their own personal pleasure and desires.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
Joe, which is why Word is the dominant format... Like Internet Explorer... And Outlook Express... We care (and know) about different formats, the real world has things to do
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
you mean the real world is too lazy and stupid to try anything that isn't forced on them.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
Yes, your elitist thinking is so going to win you friends at dinner parties. :)
- Alex Scoble
from IM
half the execs i have worked under in the IT and publishing world could barely use a computer and none could use Word or Excel. they had people for that.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
I am not saying you can't use Word. Keep in mind that it is capable of easily saving in formats other than .doc.
- April Russo (app103)
I do everything in Pages because I'm a filthy Mac user. If I need to send out something that requires formatting, it goes out in PDF. If you can't deal with PDF, or if you whine about it, I probably don't want to deal with you either.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Alex, was was his suggested format for the wedding information you sent him?
- Uncle CW™
Joe, cause electricity was 10 times better. It's not just enough to be slightly better. We are talking about changing the collective consiousness of a world just coming to gripes with computers.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Where did I call anyone a name?
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Whenever I hear someone talk about not using a Microsoft product just because it's Microsoft, it makes me want to evangelize the hell out of Microsoft products and get everyone I know to use them. Sometimes spite is just damned fun.
- Akiva Moskovitz
So it's you don't like Word, that's cool. Doesn't change the point.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Very rarely have I ever had problems with Excel
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Personally, I'd stick the guest list in a .tdo file too. Of course as a Mac user you might have a hard time with that.
- April Russo (app103)
then you're either living a charmed life or don't really use it that extensively, Alex.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
Joe. In my job I produce lots of formatted documents such as proformas, msds sheets and shipping documents. I send some as PDF but the majority is as the raw .doc file when working with others on them. Can't copy and paste that into the body of an email
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
I use it every day for work, Joe. And you underestimate my skills at working with computers.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
@Johnny: that's a different matter. i'd use RTF in that situation. but i would go with DOC if the recipient needed it.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
"too early for popcorn"? now there's a statement that could be debated! too early for the smell but not the taste. :D
- pea
@Joe - Smaller file? I just ran a test, saving a .doc file in .rtf, .odt and .docx formats. The original .doc was 126kb, the .rtf version is 291kb, the .docx is 42kb and the .odt is 32kb. How is 291kb smaller than 126, 42 or 32kb?
- Curtiss Grymala
Because of the exchange rate between Microsoft-produced and non-Microsoft-produced kilobytes?
- Akiva Moskovitz
@Curtiss, how big is the file in plain text?
- LogEx
What software did you use to run your test? Word? Try Wordpad. Much less useless junk added to the .rtf.
- April Russo (app103)
plaintext for text, html for rich content? it is a standard and tons of people can read it. though there is no reason to use only 1 file type
- Mike Chelen
HTML is horrible for editing text
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Not with a decent HTML editor. And Word can export your document as HTML.
- April Russo (app103)
The file in plain text is 36kb. I used Word to convert it to RTF, as it's not possible to readably open a .doc file in Wordpad.
- Curtiss Grymala
.odt and.docx are compressed, as far as I know
- Curtiss Grymala
Run your own test. I just ran another test and got similar results. I generated 50 paragraphs of dummy text on lipsum.com and pasted it into Wordpad first. I saved it as RTF and TXT. Then, I opened the RTF in Word and saved it as .doc, .docx and .odt
- Curtiss Grymala
Ah, OK, compression makes sense, though I still argue that compression and formatting should be avoided unles they are critical to the content. I save 140 characters of text in UTF-8 with no BOM and the file is 140 bytes. I can email that text, SMS it, Tweet it, IM it, read it in any browser, etc.
- LogEx
I'm certainly not saying Word is the be-all, end-all, but it does work well and it is fairly universal. If someone doesn't have Word, they can easily open a Word doc in Word Viewer (free), OpenOffice or even in GoogleDocs if they so choose. Word simply works, and it works well. With GoogleDocs, whenever I change the formatting on one thing, it always ends up screwing up the formatting on something else. IMHO, even GoogleDocs can't match the comments and tracked changes features in Word.
- Curtiss Grymala
Sorry, but unless you save it in a much older Word format, all of the above are not options on my pda.
- April Russo (app103)
Could have been worse. You could have saved it in an old WordPerfect format.
- Steven Perez
One of my co-workers still insists on WordPerfect. It's a total pain to deal with.
- Kendra <3 Three Lions
And there is another reason not to use .doc. 20 years from now you may not be able to open it.
- April Russo (app103)
Logan - I'd be willing to bet that, if April's PDA can't open a Word 97-2003 document, it probably can't open an ODT file, either.
- Curtiss Grymala
April - We have no idea what file formats will still exist or be usable in 20 years. That's an odd reason not to use a particular format, especially one as well-supported as Word
- Curtiss Grymala
When I was working at the law firm in Palo Alto (in 2005), there was one court in San Diego (I believe) that required all legal documents be sent in Word Perfect format
- Alex Scoble
from IM
almost 150 comments and still nobody has said it........'Word Up!'
- Morgan Haley
Alex - at least they didn't insist on WordStar format
- Curtiss Grymala
Ahh, WordStar...that brings back fond memories...first word processor app I ever used.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Mine, too, Alex. We used WordStar first, then moved up to WordPerfect when we got Windows 3.
- Curtiss Grymala
Alex, most of the world prays to a sky daddy. ...doesn't make it right. :)
- Edward Zwart
Curtis: It's something to think about when saving documents, especially for archivists, if you think there could even be a remote possibility that it may be important enough that you'd want to open it at some point in the distant future. My guess is that plain text would still be usable at that time. The historians of the future are going to have a hell of a time with our digital stuff. Not like carvings on stone or print on paper.
- April Russo (app103)
No, but when most of the world prays to a sky daddy, you are probably better off not making fun of said daddy unless you want to be run out of town or worse.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
I don't believe you can quantify your statement "most of the world still works in Word."
- Mistletoe Glen
I believe that I already did, Glen
- Alex Scoble
from IM
If you really want your words to last, try nickel plates with high-resolution analog ion-beam engraving [http://www.norsam.com/hdroset...] and hope that future generations will be able to read the language you wrote it in.
- LogEx
I wish I still had a copy of Office 2000. I'd send you a .doc that would make you tear your hair out trying to view the message.
- April Russo (app103)
Heh, too bad you don't, because I'd take that challenge too
- Alex Scoble
from IM
I have a rather old application that only runs on Windows XP or older, that integrates with Office 2000, that allowed me to attach sticky notes to Office documents, viewable only by people that also have the same version of the same discontinued application installed, along with Office 2000. It works with no other version of Office.
- April Russo (app103)
Maybe I haven't said this often enough, Alex, but I think I love you. My Wednesday has just taken a turn for the better after reading this thread :D
- WorldofHiglet
If Robert uses Gmail, he could just open the Word attachment directly in GoogleDocs.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Wow, this was a long (and hilarious) thread. I honestly can't believe that anyone is taking the stance (and apparently believing it) that .doc isn't the standard word processing format for most of the electronic document world. Fight the good fight, Alex.
- Chieze Okoye
Yes, but that would require him to do extra work, Jandy. He can't even be bothered to use friendfeed anymore. ;)
- Alex Scoble
From what I understand Robert lives on his phone now, and if he can't open it on his phone it pretty much is useless to him.
- April Russo (app103)
I just knew that it would eventually come to this! Families torn apart by a difference in document file format conventions!
- Mark "DerBingle" J
He lives on his phone? Is that like being sent off to the phantom zone like General Zod?
- Alex Scoble
Wait a second, Droid doesn't have a Word Doc viewer?
- Chieze Okoye
I know I've said this before, Alex, but sometimes your brother's uber-nerdiness slays me.
- Steven Perez
from IM
Chieze - If that's the case, that would be the bigger news out of this thread. That would be absolutely insane
- Curtiss Grymala
I've toyed with the idea of using Open Doc and then converting for clients, but am always worried about the hassles of formatting, footnotes, etc. Plus, I think only Word has Grammar check (hate it but need it). Anyway, my recent contracts with a publisher specify "IBM compatible" documents. I think they mean .doc. So I comply and don't piss in the wind. I'm happy to have Alex make me feel less ashamed of that fact.
- Mark Horne
I thought he was still on the iPhone.
- Alex Scoble
iPhone has a doc viewer built in, so if he's complaining about not being able to open it, he must not still be using the iPhone
- Curtiss Grymala
Unless he's trying to edit the document. In which case, he can't easily do that on the iPhone
- Curtiss Grymala
Someone once sent me a comprehensive shoot-out style software review of just about every wallpaper changer application for windows that exists, knowing full well the review was going to be published on a web page in HTML format...as one of the most complex excel documents I have ever seen. After 3-4 people collaborating on how the hell I could open and view this properly to extract ALL...
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- April Russo (app103)
“You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates the same people you do.” --Annie Lamott
- Eivind
So does that mean that my god is the real one? Cuz I hate the Montreal Allouettes and apparently he's looking out for them... (I'm almost over it, honest...)
- Edward Zwart
Your god is at least as real as all the other ones, Ed :) Didn't know you guys had your own football league, btw.
- Eivind
That's probably a majority position. ...even withIN Canada. :)
- Edward Zwart
"Another good one... pronouncing place names as they sound in the language spoken there...For Paris: "I love visiting ParEEE in the summer.""
- Edward Zwart
"The idea that people for a couple thousand years have taken this so seriously seems completely insane and crazy, totally nuts. But the human race is crazy if nothing else." - R. Crumb
- Eivind
Is it just me or does God come off as a total douche in this story?
- David (slumrig)
We have finally got our own anti-vax movement in Norway :( Their spokesperson is a Kabbalist who believes 'colloidal silver' cures everything. And yeah, he sells the stuff online.
"Go to the NCSE's Don't Diss Darwin site, and download the flyers and bookmarks and information there. Then on 19 November, when the creationist goons descend on your campus, follow them around and hand out truth and humor to go along with Comfort's bogosity. Easy."
- Christopher A Carr
from Bookmarklet
How can anything stand up to the brilliant intellect of Ray Comfort? I mean, look at the banana!
- Eivind
If Ray is such a retard, let him say what he wants. If he's full of it, people will be able to tell.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
Mr. Comfort is of course allowed to say what he wants, but you know as well as I that many people won't be able to tell that he is talking nonsense. This is not about not letting him speak anyway, this is about not letting him speak unopposed. People in higher education should of course be able to figure out that his introduction to the Origin...
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- Eivind
So ... Ray can't speak unopposed because he might challenge the ideas put forth by "higher education?" People need to be able to decide what is true and what is bull. To not allow Ray to say his piece without being harangued is groupthink, pure and simple. Any idea that cannot stand up to a little challenge is ... well ... probably not true.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
Isn't it normal to speak out when you disagree with someone? I would be surprised if they didn't react to this guy coming to their universities claiming most of the science done within several fields there is wrong (fields like: linguistics, geology, biology and physics). And what does he base it on? A collection of old texts, censored and hand picked for political reasons, who is based...
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- Eivind
I am on a college campus and was just handed the book and the little speech. Interesting foreword, though I don't agree with it
- Fox
from iPhone
I read his "special intro" a while back too (from the link provided above). I wouldn't say I found it interesting, but I found some of it quite funny (in a sad sort of way).
- Eivind
He is not "unopposed." His intro is on the most popular work on the opposition side - which has a pretty strong hold on the education circuit. I would say it's refreshing to hear someone challenge the status quo. That's what Darwin did, right? Your comment about my having a different viewpoint and therefore not being worth the discussion is a quite dismissive (and possible a might telling). I disagree with you, but still I engage in discussion.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
Jeremy, the theory has stood up to scrutiny for its entire lifetime. And I think you're mistaking "nuh uh, goddidit" for scrutiny. Now THAT thought is under scrutiny. I'm more than willing to let him say what he wants. The fact that I then feel an urge to point and laugh I'm pretty sure has more to do with what was said than any hyper-attachment I might have toward the original soundness of Darwin's ideas.
- Edward Zwart
Then I'm sure you won't mind if I (try and) suppress a giggle at P.Z. Meyers' "backs of crystals" theories or the "cosmic seeding" ideas of Dawkins. Neither side is devoid of plenty of comic material.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
Have either of those two written a treatise on those subjects claiming that they know the truth about them?
- Edward Zwart
Meyers proposed it in an impromptu debate with a skeptic. I'm not sure he's written much on the subject - but it does demonstrate the helplessness of the evolution-believing science community in explaining the origin of life (as it supposedly sprang from non-life). Dawkins has promoted "panspermia" on a number of occasions. http://livingjourney.wordpress.com/2008...
- Jeremy (on vacation)
Evolution theory has nothing to do with biogenesis, FWIW. *Edit - should have written abiogenesis!
- Kurt Starnes
Jeremy, there's a very large difference between proposing a possibility and writing an introduction, wouldn't you say? Anyway, if we have found organic molecules in abundance in outer space, why is it so implausible? Life exists, and it had a start. As far as determining an explanation goes, "goddidit" is one way to go... Panspermia is another. The thing is, Dawkins knows that we don't actually KNOW! Croft doesn't. And, as Kurt points out, all of that has nothing at all do with evolution.
- Edward Zwart
Descent with modification is the attempt at plausibly explaining the variety of life on this planet with the basic assumption that God does not exist. This, of course, has an impact on the origin of life. the two are inextricably intertwined. @ Ed - Comfort's introduction (which I read - and disagree with much of) is simply the offering of a dissenting voice in the din of lauds and...
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- Jeremy (on vacation)
He also thinks God designed a banana to fit perfectly in my hand.
- Edward Zwart
At least he didn't propose that the banana designed itself to fit into your hand over a billion years.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
I actually think "at least" is inappropriate there. I think it makes more sense than goddidit. But anyway, you are assigning intention to a banana, and well, no one else does that, including Darwin.
- Edward Zwart
Then where does the new genetic information come from? Matter does not beget information. Information begets information. So, either the banana (or monkey or finch) has the information written for them or they write it themselves.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
Yes, that's the creationist argument in a nutshell: "we can't imagine how else it could have happened, so it must have happened this way". The argument is flawed in (at least) a few ways. For one thing, just because you don't know the answer to a question does not entitle you to invent a freaking answer for which there's no evidence! For another, it (again) confuses the issue of...
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- Edward Zwart
Earlier you simply asserted that the variety of life and its origin are inextricably intertwined. But your reason for saying that is that Darwin's explanation for the variety negates god, which therefore poses problems (I'm guessing) your theory for life's origin. So, origin and variety are linked because you have a theory for the origin, and it conflicts with Darwin's theory for variety. Did you ever think your theory for the origin might be incorrect? What evidence do you have to support it anyway?
- Edward Zwart
Solved through repetition of the theory and dismissing dissent? Maybe. Solved through observable, testable and repeatable trials? Not so much. It's not about imagining another way. It's just that your imagined way doesn't jive with nature.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
But it IS about imagining another way. That's how we figure stuff out. ...whether as babies learning about our environments, or scientists learning about the world. You pose an explanation, and then you test it out, and move forward. Where's the evidence for Croft's claim that a banana's shape has anything to do with the shape of my hand?! What do you do with the molecular evidence that...
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- Edward Zwart
@elvind hah yes, I was leaning towards that meaning of "interesting" and I did get a few grins out of it as well.
- Fox
from iPhone
We need a balanced airing of the sex vs. stork theories of baby genesis. Sure, sex occurs, then babies show up 9-odd months later, but correlation is not causation. Prove to me that it's not invisible storks that live outside of space-time! eh? You can't, can you?
- Christopher A Carr
We can watch procreation as a process. It is testable, it is repeatable and it is falsifiable. Molecules-to-man evolution cannot hold up to that standard. You are only looking at existing species and theorizing how they got here. Unfortunately, your only answer is in this magic "deep time" that cannot be observed. On a purely scientific level, Dawinian evolution fails.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
While I'm all for watching and testing procreation, the funniest part in this 'conversation' is that YOU actually played the 'magic' card, Jeremy :D Do you think there's about 6000 years of 'observable' past? Did god create a world 'already in progress' (http://ff.im/bgKsP) ?
- Eivind
Eivind - That link to Gosse's book reminded me of the God Created The Universe Last Thursday hypothesis. Simply, last Thursday an entire universe was created with all of the stuff we see today, and it was made to look about 14B years old. Although us humans feel as though we have history, it's really just an implanted illusion. This hypothesis cannot be proved false. :->
- Kurt Starnes
Can you observe the past beyond 6000 years? Can you observe the past beyond 600 years? No. All you can observe is the now. The past is the past. We can look at the now and theorize about the past - but if we were not there, the best we can do is speculate based on the observable and investigate the relics from the time period.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
Is it really cherry picking if it's all of an inch below the original comment?! Anyway, regardless of what you call the object of your investigation, I agree with you. All you can do to determine what happened in some unobservable past is examine what's you've got in the present. Whether its relics, or effects, or similar systems from which you extrapolate theories about the thing...
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- Edward Zwart
@mehrzad Google translate gives me "How similar are Ayshvn Larijani: D" for your comment. What do the last two words mean? thx
- Edward Zwart
That the Prime Mover began the process is not, in my estimation or any scientist who is a Christian, a stand-in dummy that precludes examination, but feeds it.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
Actually, "stand-in dummy" is the perfect description of the Prime Mover. It stands in for "we don't know what caused it all." And no one suggests that postulating such a being precludes examining current data scientifically. You're confusing "goddidit" to mean "the answer for all things" but I only mean it as "an answer to how it all began" -- which, as it turns out, is the principal...
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- Edward Zwart
"So ... Ray can't speak unopposed because he might challenge the ideas put forth by "higher education?" People need to be able to decide what is true and what is bull. To not allow Ray to say his piece without being harangued is groupthink, pure and simple. Any idea that cannot stand up to a little challenge is ... well ... probably not true." -- groupthink?? We should just all sit quietly and let the morons of the world perpetuate ignorance?
- David (slumrig)
No, we should challenge them, all of them, in public. :)
- Edward Zwart
You act as if Comfort's side is the only one being told - but such is not the case. Darwiniacs have a pretty tight hold on the education system and the theory goes unchallenged. What is being discussed here is the silencing of dissent. THAT is groupthink.
- Jeremy (on vacation)
Actually, the silencing of dissent and groupthink are two different things too. Strike 17.
- Edward Zwart
Oh, Jeremy. I apologize on behalf of the 'Darwiniacs' for not being as freethinking and independent as the 'goddidit' side of the 'controversy'. I am personally a proponent of the Intelligent Falling theory as well as the Stork theory, so I know exactly how you feel.
- Eivind
The theory does not go unchallenged. It has been challenged over and over again since its inception. It has weathered those challenges and evolved as required. Your accusation of silencing of dissent is ignorant of the dissent both now and in the past, regarding the core of evolutionary theory (at least in the past), and many peripheral details (for which arguments continue, and will...
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- Mark
from email
I'm sorry, Jeremy, I just couldn't help throwing a few other fringe 'theories' into the discussion. What really is the opposing theory? I'll give it a try, and you can correct me: About six thousand years ago God created heaven and earth according to one of the two accounts given in Genesis. Adam and Eve was the only two people on earth, and the lord told them to go forth and multiply...
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- Eivind
+10 Eivind - I can offer an alternative 'theory': Men and women were born from the sweat of the giant Ymir's armpit. The world was created from the severed pieces of his flesh. - While we are educating young minds with alternative theories let's throw this one into the fold too.
- David (slumrig)
"The 2009 recipient of the Richard Dawkins Award bestowed upon him by the Atheist Alliance International (a.k.a. Bill Maher, anti-vaccine comedian and host of Real Time With Bill Maher, has decided, after an all too brief absence, to lay down a swath of burning stupid about vaccines again."
- Janice
from Bookmarklet