Sorry, I’ve got babies on the brain here of late.
Whether you believe in a god or not is immaterial here: the fact that the code is so advanced that it can convince mathematicians of the existence of some necessary intelligent design can be just as likely a function of a human’s incapacity to comprehend the billions of years of selection, etc., as it is proof of directed design by some higher agency (there’s likely an analogy here to our debt and the conceptualization of such, and to the way we react to such staggering numbers); and yet one cannot look at something like this without marveling at the mechanisms involved.
As technology advances, one wonders if science itself won’t spell the end of the almost clinical pro-choice position as it pertains to a kind of after-the-fact birth control.
That would be ironic, wouldn’t it? Godbotherers elevated by science, while the sophisticated secularists are put on the defensive for determining when it is okay to snuff out the life of a fetus?
death sucks. I’m thinking about becoming a vegetarian too, on account of the hunters that drove into our cove yesterday morning and shot all of our pet ducks. I gotta tell the kids that our duckies “flew south for the winter”.
not that hunting equals abortion of course. I’ve just got ducks on the brain today. sigh.
Those weren’t “hunters”, MissFixit. They were poachers.
abortion is just something free people do sometimes I think, usually when you’re not looking
sometimes not-free people do it too, but they can get in heap big trouble
You’re right, ‘feets. As long as people are doing it of their own free will, who are we to suggest that they shouldn’t terminate their own offspring? Kids hidden in mama’s tummy can be disposed of at will; for the rest of us to prohibit their killing is like McQuain interfering in Sandusky’s locker-room horseplay. Not. Our. Business.
Also, to equate the ability to abort with Being Free is Leftist-feminist cant: as early as a century ago, feminists insisted that What Kept Women Down was reproduction itself, so the only way for women to achieve True Equality is to have total and complete control over when and if the babies come.
That’s why Ann Coulter rightly identifies abortion as a Leftist Sacrament: without that absolute control over reproduction, women are Oppressed by the Offspring they have no moral obligation towards.
Which, that’s kind how the Boomers roll, ‘feets. Rack up astronomical debt and stick it to the next couple three generations. Provide your kids with turkey baster for a father because You Want To Be A Mother. Foist your kid off on the grandparents so you can go find yourself.
And it doesn’t really matter, because hey, any abandoned kid can become President!
You have a truly amazing ability to monumentalize the trivial and trivialize the monumental, happyfeet.
I just can’t be bothered… people are gonna do the darnedest things in a free country
not that America is any kind of paragon of freedom anymore
BTW, that’s a tremendous video. I’d never seen the heart folding as it develops. Truly amazing.
Like poop in the park. Should get rid of that law, too.
sometimes not-free people do it too, but they
canget in heap big trouble if they don’t.There. That’s more betterer
now I’m confused
oh, I get it you’re talking about the chinesers.
That Vivaldi brings the memories flooding back. Haven’t heard it — save in my head — in quite a while now. Soprano, Alto, Tenor voices, I’ve done ’em all. Never reached the lower registers though, so no bassy experiences to recall.
The problem with science, I’ve heard it said, is that it’s built entirely on top of ordinary human cognition, which isn’t scientific, and can’t be got rid of by science, being as it is, the condition for science. The resort in the alternative seems to be to embrace the instruments, almost as dumb little gods. Telescope, microscope, and so on. Tooled by our tools. Politics?
Some hardcore materialists will tell you that it is impossible for some purely mental entity called the self to have an effect on the physical world; that is, there can be no real consciousness at all that can make decisions and act freely, only a biologically-rooted ordering mechanism in a stream of brain states created by a complex combination of reflexes, sensations, memories (neurological imprints), imagination (false sensations and memories), and linkages created among these elements (comprising a “conceptual” faculty). Free will and res cogitans are illusions.
Really. They can show you charts, graphs, and tables of data to prove that there is no free “self,” only individual brain function, blindly playing itself out according to genetically programmed instructions and a mechanical interaction with the world.
And not one of them truly believes it in their heart.
And yet still get all upset when you stab them.
To be completely honest, I’m not sure if some versions of free will are possible. (Note, I’m not saying they’re not.) I’m not even sure how it is that we experience consciousness in the first place.
honey badger has free will
Very cool video.
Of course it’s impossible to answer the Big Question vis First Causes and whether some entity set all this in motion — it’s comforting to think that there’s somebody out there who gives a shit.
However, the biggest argument against intelligent design in this context has got to be the human knee — basically three mis-matched bones hung together with a wad of cartilage and some all-too-fragile tendons. The design’s changed hardly at all since the first amphibians crawled out on land, any first year engineering student could come up with a better design, and mine aches. (Stupid football, stupid motorcycles, stupid kids who play football and ride motorcycles.)
Abortion in a land of the not-free.
This is one of the very many reasons I’m pro-life, with the single caveat of “that means the life of the mother, too”.
Because the further biological science advances, the more we learn about the activities of single cells, of two cells, of “a little ball of cells,” of a “non-viable” fetus, and eventually we’ll be able to sustain a pregnancy without relying on a woman at all, and then any abortion is always an infanticide because no woman is required to sacrifice so much as an ounce of comfort for that little ball of cells to become a thinking, feeling human being.
I’m tired as hell of seeing the pro-abortion screeching being that pro-life’s position being about abusing women and letting them die. No–it’s about feeling something is wrong, at heart, about murder in any form. Arguments from pro-abortion advocates that boil down to “it’s not murder and you’re wrong if you feel that way, you have no reason to feel that way and you should legally be forced to carry out abortions if you’re a medical professional/agree to funding abortions as a taxpayer” disgust me.
I don’t know. There are a lot of other ways to give pregnant mothers agency back in their lives that don’t involve D&C, including avoiding pregnancy-shaming, making it easier for them to work (none of which the pro-abortion crew are interested in, I don’t think), improving the quality of prenatal care, etc., etc..
I am not saying there are not ways that pro-life advocates could not reduce abortions, too, since that is their aim. But this is all a conversation that’s not being had because as Dicentra said, abortion has become a sacrament and the reduction in numbers of abortions is a crazy idea to a lot of these groups. (Since they can only imagine pro-life groups thinking of “reducing numbers of abortions” by forcing pregnant women not to get them.) Really if women’s health and freedom of agency is the target here, both groups should be targeting the situations that cause women to get abortions (like job loss due to pregnancy, too many kids, children out of wedlock, children too young, etc.) and eliminating them so there’s less need for them.
But what do I know, I think abortions should be a solution of last resort and a failure of the system because any society that’s killing its unborn offspring en masse is doomed to eliminate itself.
I find it interesting that a pregnant woman driving her car to the abortionist, hit by a drunk driver resulting in a broken leg and a dead fetus, can have the drunk driver charged with the murder of her child.
Life gets weird when you allow some people to kill, but not others…
that’s not interesting it was probably some dippy lifeydoodle what wrote the fetus murder law to begin with
probably meaning like a 99 percent chance
However, the biggest argument against intelligent design in this context has got to be the human knee — basically three mis-matched bones hung together with a wad of cartilage and some all-too-fragile tendons.
This presumes the designer intended perfection, however.
Note while “any first-year engineering student can design better,” we don’t have bipedal all-terrain automatons that autonomously adjust to frame loading of 15lbs to 500lbs on the same basic frame, while being able to carry cargo of up to a third to a half of their body mass effortlessly, or press or haul multiple body masses over short distances. They also don’t self-repair at all, have limited reporting systems for fall recovery, and don’t have a whole lot in the way of water- or weather-proofing.
Big Dog is the best offering in the field right now, and it’s a quadruped–it does pretty impressively for a robot, but you won’t see it running agility trials against a border collie any time soon, and it is not self-replicating like the mules used for packing stuff up and down the Grand Canyon.
There’s a lot of individual systems you can pick out from an animal and go “well, THAT’S a design failure,” but keep in mind the entire thing hangs together amazingly well for something that–in the standard model–was the result of serial trial-and-error tests over hundreds of millions of years.
It’s a lot of probability math. Yes, we’ve developed evolutionary algorithms that come up with better designs, but remember–those are human-designed algorithms based on our math, picking from bins of parts we made for them.
I saw a St Bernard today it looked really thin cause it didn’t have all the fuff they usually have
or maybe he was just old
Trial and error evolutionary processes don’t give a whit for perfection (whatever that is?), settling for just good enough on account of not having attributable consciousness of outcomes anyhow. Or?
nit picked
“and it is not self-replicating like the mules ”
Link
Sorry, newrouter. Shoulda caught myself before I said that. But to be fair, you can get an endless stream of mules by breeding horses and donkeys together.
Robots still require building.
@sdferr: The point being that ID doesn’t require perfection either, it just looks at the chances involved in trial-and-error evolution and goes “that’s ridiculously long odds”.
“it was probably some dippy lifeydoodle what wrote the fetus murder law to begin with”
99 percent chance of it was always so, and the proggs just haven’t been able to cross all the T’s on their culture of death yet.
What’s the intelligence then?
how come mules don’t “evolve”?
There were fetus death laws included in Deuteronomy for instance.
What was that, 3000BC or so?
there’s huge vast swathes of Americans what never abort nothing and me I am in this vast swath
here there be cupcakes
Deuteronomy! This was before Billie Preston was dead.
*Billy* I mean
“there’s huge vast swathes of Americans what never abort nothing and me I am in this vast swath”
When federal tax dollars go to fund the abortions we’re all guilty.
yes that shouldn’t happen I think pretty much any of the Rs running would agree
we should elect one of them
omg I’ve never seen traffic this bad in LA
“there’s huge vast swathes of Americans what never abort nothing and me I am in this vast swath”
also vast swatches what think that abortion is another money laundering gig for the demonrats
that’s very cynical Mr. newrouter if abortions were free that would be even more shocking to the average lifeydoodle sensibility, no?
actually I really don’t know but that’s what I would guess
Well, when the school counselor takes the 14 year old schoolgirl for an abortion behind the parents back, who pays?
“if abortions were free”
“free” be euphfeminism for taxpayer paid
What’s the intelligence then?
Most people supply a deity. It could be aliens, or computers, or anything else that’s capable of tweaking the information transmission involved in the development of biological life.
I’m not sure who pays now Mr. lee I think it might come out of some kind of fund or something but this one I remember reading about has closed now
here’s a helpful list of funds what might still be active
did y’all see this? Alaska’s corrupt congresstwat Don Young made a tremendous ass of himself today
I don’t get the Intelligent Design argument. Irreducable complexity? Not so much. Life is fantastically complex but every year we learn more and more. Heck, we didn’t have DNA technology 40 years ago and blood typing has only been around for about 100 years. Of course, way back in the day, Aristotle proposed the idea of the Unmoved Mover and then, many years later along came St Thomas Aquinas who married Aristotilian philosophy and Catholic theology. The man was a genius, but St. Thomas’ proofs are not proof that God exists, even though he tried five times and showed his work. St. Thomas, not God. And that Aristotle was just a heathen, you know. Him and that polytheism. Evolution and Creation aren’t mutually exclusive ideas.
comments are made by fools like me but only god can make a tree
unless you have a nut handy
“Evolution and Creation aren’t mutually exclusive ideas.”
tell it to the darwin dudes
Honey Roasted Almonds
Who, the obnoxious ones like PZ Myers? The full tilt creationists make all believers look foolish with their dinosuars and tastefully notquitenude cavemen/ladies at the theme park.
I’m making King Ranch Chicken next week I’m gonna use Lisa’s recipe (the second one)… she has an interesting speculation on where the name comes from btw
Do you have friends to eat with tomorrow, happy? Is your sister coming out?
“The full tilt creationists make all believers look foolish with their dinosuars ”
yea ’cause them believers aren’t foolish with the global warming stuff. i say viva chicken.
It depends on which believers you’re talking about, nr.
why did the dinosaurs stop evolving?
The bird story says they haven’t, newrouter.
They turning into birds and petro chemicals, as far as I know.
Dinosaurs evolved into gay marriage.
(C’mon, we can’t do this thread without some gay marriage.)
I’m eating with friends tomorrow but not til 5 or 6 It’s one of those things where I was asked over by an old old friend of mine who recently found his dad’s lifeless body on the couch so there was really no way to say no… sister comes next Tuesday and I took the day off cause her birthday is next week too
I’m excited we’re gonna try a new very very ghetto chicken shawarma place and I’m gonna take her to the new bao restaurant and we’re gonna get tasty whatever those things are called at the Armenian bakery and I’m gonna take her to the place what makes the salvadoran bread pudding and probably go to the new rocket fizz store and see if anything is on sale at Halloween Town.
seems like a major down grade. so again viva king ranch chicken.
king ranch chicken is good eating Mr. newrouter but you should have a salad with it cause it doesn’t have any fiber
are there new birds? or just tasty new bird dishes?
I’m glad you won’t have to eat alone, but, lordy! that’s pretty awkward. Hopefully, your friend doesn’t get all maudlin and drink too much. I’m glad your sister is coming out. My youngest son loves shawarma, which as you can only imagine is pretty hard to find in Oklahoma.
bh just told you about the dinosaurs, newrouter. Didn’t you see “The Birdcage”?
there are no new birds that I’m aware of
it’ll be fun he’s a great cook and I’m not driving plus I have on my new sarah palin glasses so I’m excited to get to see stuff
New birth of freedom, new bird of freedom, new bird, new birth, it’s all sorta evolvy. Hard to see though most the time on accounta it all moves slower than a gaybride widda hangova gitten oout de be’ afore noontime.
why don’t new dodos evolve somewhere?
I think we all get spoiled by the elapsed time features on teevee and expect things to evolve right before our eyes. It doesn’t work that way.
mazel tov!
are dodos like mules? mating of different species? really a member of the pigeon ?
The dodo was a close relative of modern pigeons and doves.
if you kill off infertile animals are you killing a “species”? can we make dodos with the right pigeons or birds?
I imagine if you could sequence some dodo dna, you could clone one, but I don’t see the utility of new dodos.
Lawrence’s Warblers, to pick a type, are one hybrid result of successful matings between Golden-Winged and Blue-Winged Warblers, but aren’t a species. They’re merely an occasional blip on the screen of life.
Getting to new species is a longer, firmer deal, often involving a sort of island ecological condition according to Ernst Mayr, whether on an actual island or a metaphorically isolated patch of ground somewhere.
Me on intelligent design, c. 2005. Not much has changed.
“but I don’t see the utility of new dodos.”
well if mules disappear on an island with horses and donkeys i don’t see “species” loss. i see specious argument.
Very good, Jeff. We are on the same page.
and if donkeys also disappear there be no mules. it is good to ask questions of the email posse. nice to know dinosaur taste just like chicken.
newrouter, go over to darwincentral.org. They have a whole section devoted to answering questions like yours. There are quite a large number of paleontologists and anthropologists who post over there. And a few rocket scientists, for the fun and neat peaks at the cosmos.
They did. They’re called Democrats.
“newrouter, go over to darwincentral.org.”
do you have a less “faith based org” to go to? can i ask about trace co2? how about halliburton or chicken?
“a large number of paleontologists and anthropologists who post over there”
we are the 99%
mr. thompson luvs the either do you?
You can read about CO2 and ask about it. I forgot to mention the chemists and meterologists over there. There are lively discussions dissing Obama, as well.
william thomson
So? He was a contemporary of Darwin’s and they had a difference of opinion that lives on today.
“lively discussions dissing Obama”
ivy league peeps you go corzine and geitner.
“He was a contemporary of Darwin’s and they had a difference of opinion that lives on today.”
you be out there in the “ether”.
I’m fond od Pascal’s Wager.
ms. leigh
Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps: Empires of Time
Thanks. I am familiar with them.
so is the “ether” still discussed today?
Do the wiki on Pascal’s Wager. Yes, it is discussed. The Darwin guys aren’t the enemy, nr. They’re a bunch of people, lots of them scientists and some regular folks, too.
Life is very long and there is always a lot to learn. None of us know it all and never will.
nr: The reason why someone suggested a site where the oh-so-icky “Darwinists” post their ideas is because your questions really aren’t demonstrating any devastating flaws in evolutionary theory, you’re only displaying ignorance of that subject.
talkorigins.org is another one. You might want to start here. Or perhaps here and then go through the faqs, because you seem to be suffering from a misconception about evolutionary theory and what it does and does not say. (Hint: It does not say it makes any sort of God impossible, but don’t tell the more fanatical atheists or they’ll freak.)
Evolution and Creation aren’t mutually exclusive ideas.
Indeed. So sayeth Pope
Benedict XVI John Paul IIPius XII in 1950.Someone really ought to tell the Protestants.
They still think we worship statues, Andrew.
Patrick:
Do you listen to yourself as you type. What subject? Evolutionary theory is and has been a hodge-podge of ideas that change daily, depending on who presents which idea, when. That makes the evolutionary theory, evolutionary. Please educate me with regard to this “ignorance” of which you speak, you seem to know that subject well enough. “It’s human nature to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another beer.”
Gulermo, good to see you back (where have you been?), and Happy Thanksgiving Day to ya.
Evolutionary Theory is not a “belief”: belief is for dieties. Darwin never postulated that there is no God. The idea of a diety is not important to the theory, a theory which is supported by the fossil record. He wrote four books about it that are easy to find, hard to read, still in print and available at Amazon.
leigh:
An idea you present as a “belief” is a “belief”, period. You are aware of the concept of what exactly constitutes a “theory”? Irrespective of whatever prop you choose to support your thesis.
sdferr:
Everything going well with you and yours? (I was in Fl. for four months, but I am back with my family in Costa Rica.) The Diety’s blessings be upon you as well.
Good to go Gulermo more or less — as far as good can be projected — even given the generally evil political backdrop looming for us all in future should our fellows choose poorly. We pray they rise to the occasion instead.
evolution isn’t something you have to believe in per se it’s just an idea what explains what we see when we look at nature stuff… I think a lot of people believe they have no flipping idea where the honey badgers came from and also the butternut squash and they really don’t care cause they’re busy
A lot of people have faith in their belief God made the tasty Butternut Squash, and thank Him for it.
The thankful ones are generally the happier ones. There’s been studies…
#98: They also sell Mario Brothers on Amazon. Your point is? Your condescension poorly serves you.
sdferr: Try not worry. Somethings are beyond any one persons control.
this butternut squash is absolutely divine!
bullet ants are of the devil though
also those bears what ated up that poor Russian girl Jesus that gave me the willies
Yeah, too bad that poor Russian girl wasn’t carrying a shotgun instead of a cell phone.
No worries on that front Gulermo. Jes keep the republican faith, try to teach the poor buggers who’ve never heard the good news, and hammer the equally impoverished benighted socialists with their manifest failures at every opportunity.
#98: They also sell Mario Brothers on Amazon. Your point is? Your condescension poorly serves you.
His point was that Darwin’s books are readily available, so there is no excuse for not knowing what’s in them.
Such, at least, was my take.
You seemed to find in it a reason to vent your frustration at never managing to beat world 8-4. You’re not missing anything. Princess Peach was a big tease.
#108: Why do you assume I have not read Darwin’s theories? That was the purpose of Leigh’s posit that the books are readily available, as it is yours. “5 to 1 baby, 1 and 5, no one here gets out alive.”
my sense is that leigh is of the feminine persuasion
hah that rhymed Mr. Gulermo
good show
hey did you know that twix came in ice cream form?
best thanksgiving ever
Evolution is a theory. People may disagree about the details, but we have been using one of the basic principles for millenia with animal husbandry.
B. Moe:
Did I miss something? Please direct me to the nearest trans-genus or new genus if you prefer.
How much time you got?
My mom, when she wanted me to quit fooling around with something potentially dangerous, used to say “Hey, curiosity killed the cat,” and I’d take her word for it and quit. But did it? If we look just a bit closer, we’ll find that most likely, not. Cats, that is, aren’t curious in any human sense of curious, ever. Cats will peer and crane their necks at tiny scratches heard from behind a wall, sure, even for time beyond wasting. But they aren’t looking to gain knowledge for the sake of the knowledge alone, hang the consequences; they’re looking for a meal.
I hope everyone had a very nice Thanksgiving.
For all of the Evolutionary skeptics, I have a counterpoint question: Why at the holy sites, such as Lourdes, where the faithful make pilgramages to be cured of their ailments and where many have claimed to have been cured of blindness or lameness does no one find prosthetic limbs discarded or glass eyes? Or for that matter, toupees?
Probably because you have to have all your original equipment intact, so to speak.
That makes God a rather conditional healer then. We’re talking miracles here!
You’re talking miracles. I’m talking false analogies.
How do figure it’s a false analogy? Just for the sake of argument and then I’ll leave it alone since the subject is becoming rather a dead horse, not named Lazarus.
What’s the subject again leigh? At this point, to my way of thinking anyhow, it seems to have moved on from any narrower concern with evolutionary theory as such, toward something closer to an examination of the meaning, if not the purpose, of science, or at least modern physical science or sciences, should it be necessary to divide them up from one thing into many.
I have a counterpoint question too. What the hell does that have to do with evolution?
Beats me, Pablo. It’s about as relavent half the stuff on this thread. I’d just moved it into the theatre of the absurd since a lot of people are getting their panties in a knot.
You’re countering the “if eyes evolved, how come we don’t see half an eye?” argument with “Why doesn’t God replace a (pre-existing) lost eye with a new one?”
Or so it seems to me.
A better example from an absurdist standpoint would have been “if design is so intelligent, what’s the appendix doing there?”
Or maybe not.
Pretty much, Ernst. Arguing about Evolutionary Theory with people who either don’t know much about it or refuse to discuss it factually is an exercise in futility. The same goes for trying to explain that accepting ET as scientific fact doesn’t make one a heretic or an unbeliever.
My step-daughter is a Young Earth Creationist. She and her church believe tht teh world is only some 5,000 years old and that the fossil record was deposited by God as a means to “test our faith”, thereby casting God into the role of trickster. This is ridiculous. The only prankster that I am aware of Christian theology is Satan.
On that line Ernst (the appendix), the more usual example is the vertebrate eye (with its blind spot and internally connected nerves) vs. the cephalopodian eye (with no blind spot and posterior nerve connections), which (the gist of the argument, at least) above, so to speak, in Swen’s objection concerning the joint (knee). But, un-intelligence, thus manifest, has been dismissed as not to the point, though why not, I’m still unsure.
leigh:
Nice straw man you have built at #125. Do you mind if I borrow it and reverse the positions? “Arguing about Creationist Theory with people who either don’t know much about it or refuse to discuss it factually is an exercise in futility.” That works quite well, don’t you think? Some one once told me that argument by assertion is no way to go through life.
Are we arguing or discussing? Whatever this is, it smacks of a “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”, exercise. To me, I find the discussion of what people believe regarding science and religion simply fascinating. Your mileage may vary, though.
WRT to panties, (knotted or otherwise), my situation precludes them; a feature, not a bug, for me, anyway.
Gulermo, you may do what ever you like with whatever I say. My university education required that I take and pass three Catholic theology classes and three philosophy classes in order to graduate. It is my position and the position of the Catholic Church, of which I have been a member since infancy, that evolution and a creation are not mutually exclusive points of view.* I humbly concur with the Church. I am at a loss to understand why there are people in this day and age in a developed country like America who believe as my step-daughter does, as I related above.
I am a scientist by training in both “soft” (psychology) and “hard” (medicine) sciences. My point was, however poorly stated or misconstrued, is that the is no discussion/argument if one side is dismissed out of hand. I understand both sides of this argument/discussion. I enjoy discussing it. I do not enjoy being waved away as not being a TRVE Christian because I am Catholic or that I am going straight to Hell because a) I “believe” in evolution, b) I am Catholic.
I will hasten to add that neither of those Lake of Fire pronouncments have been made on this site.
*There is an embedded link upthread about this
“I do not enjoy being waved away as not being a TRVE Christian because I am Catholic or that I am going straight to Hell because a) I “believe” in evolution, b) I am Catholic.”
Sounds like it is you dealing with the twisted under garments.
It was gay marriage that finally put an end to that entire dinosaur debacle.
What are we talking about again?
Gay dinosaurs, bh. It’s why they’re extinct.
Stupid gay dinosaurs.
I bet they tasted awesome and now we’ll never know.
Right? Though I don’t know how you’d ever make enough BBQ sauce for them or what you’d use to brush it on with. If only the Flintstones were still around to ask these important questions.
So this is why the called them diningonsaurs, for the eatings! Wonders do never cease. Though wonders have gone extinct.
There was the Russian guy who found the nearly intact baby mammoth and cooked some of it up, but mammoths are mammals, not dinosaurs, so we still won’t ever know! You could probably make a fortune with a BrontoBurger franchise.
The recurrent laryngeal nerve in the giraffe is a fun thing to google.
Has absolutely nothing to do with God though. Not sure why these topics get conflated.
It’s like saying that chess is speeding or somethings smells purple.
The conflatings are part of what you were wondering about last week, re: misunderstanding what other posters are posting about. I wonder if it’s intentional or accidental?
People react to lots of different things, leigh. From inferred insults to weak arguments for good theories.
To take this to a place I find more interesting, I sometimes find that people don’t give God his proper credit. He’s omniscient and omnipotent, right? Those are the starting axioms.
So why argue over whether or not this or that thing is a good design? (I mentioned the vargus as an example of that being a folly one way.)
God can craft universes. An infinite number of them in an infinitesimal time period. He can create paradoxes and logic errors if he wants to.
My creationist ideas would lean much heavier towards his crafting the heavens and earth subtly so that things happened the way he thought would be cool billions of years ago.
Let’s take that a step further. The paragraph above could be the most retarded statement of all time. My IQ is X. God’s is infinite. How is it even sensible to pretend that I can see what he’s doing?
Try explaining how a computer works — in detail — to a toddler. That’s God and us.
When people explain His design to me (ID, for instance) I feel they don’t take God seriously.
To be honest, it seems a bit blasphemous. This is what God is doing? Really? You’re (“you’re” isn’t referring to anyone here) basically arguing that God isn’t God. He’s just a really smart and nice version of yourself.
Typo in reference to the RLN above, vagus, not vargus.
I feel the same way, bh. How can little me or anyone presume to know the mind of God? That’s pretty arrogant, right there.
One of the most interesting conversations I ever had about the above was with a good friend of mmine who is a Catholic priest. We were having lunch and generally shooting the breeze about this and that when conversation turned to his recent visit to a friend who was a Brother at a Monastary and their visit and conversation. All of that wound around to my friend saying, “X said to me, ‘With all of this time to contemplate, sometimes you wonder if it’s all nonsense.'” Now, if these two men who have devoted their very lives to God and still have questions, how can we civilians not at times question our faith?
I didn’t even notice the vagus nerve typo. Just “blipped” right over it, like Linus.
Too distracted by the drawings of voluptuous women to notice, was I.
Oh man! That line about coming over to see your etchings is that old?
I’m more of a visual person so here is my way of saying what bh did in #138-139, which I do agree with. From one ant to another, it’s a short clip.
leigh:
“you may do what ever you like with whatever I say” Done and done. Tone is what we are after here.
“I do not enjoy being waved away as not being a TRVE Christian because I am Catholic or that I am going straight to Hell because a) I “believe” in evolution, b) I am Catholic.” Then why mention this at all? Why the quotation marks around believe?
“My point was, however poorly stated or misconstrued, is that the is no discussion/argument if one side is dismissed out of hand.” Relax, your doing fine. Una favor? Back-up a tad on the appeal to authority. No bona fides necessary to express an opinion. (It doesn’t even need to be your opinion).
Relax, you’re doing fine.
and when the moon turns red wif blood
Thanks. There is a tremendous amount of prejudice toward persons who are not Baptists where I live and I get defensive sometimes.
De nada. How is that no dancing thing holding up for them?
#148 and Jupiter aligns with Mars
I think they spend a lot of time trying to make sure no one is having a good time anywhere. No dancing. No card playing. No drinking. No smoking. There does seem to be a lot of teen pregnancy, though. They should have danced all night.
“There does seem to be a lot of teen pregnancy, though. They should have danced all night.” That seems to be the new norm in most western societies.
And if I remember correctly, dancing was not the cause, but the symptom, as it were.
Teen moms are legion around here. It’s unfortunate since many of them never finish high school and end up on welfare forever.
I was brought up in two churches. Father, Southern Baptist. Mother Seventh Day Adventist. I went to church both Saturday and Sunday till 18. Stopped going mostly because both of them admonished me that the other was wrong and I decided that they were both right on that point.
My wife when she was in Grad School taking Russian Studies converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. I attend with her and have found it to be everything that my childhood religions were not. Too bad you Romans had to be kicked out for heresy way back when :-) as I like you guys.
To the point about God being Omniscient, what we believe is that God exists in all time at once. We humans would say Christ died on the cross some 2000 years ago but for God and Christ he is always on the cross, and always lying in the manger, he is present in all things and all time always.
That right there is God talk I can get behind. No, seriously. He’s not like us. He’s more than one. He’s everywhere. He’s yesterday during tomorrow.
Don’t diminish that with a weakened God-of-the-gaps. Embrace it.
I was naive enough to believe the Cajun’s had a religion of red-beans and rice for a time — after hearing all that talk about the Holy Trinity — and then tasting my first mouthful, so being transported, as I mistook, to heaven. They straightened me out right quick. It’s was just a love of smoked sausage it turned out, after all.
You Orthodox do have the cool icons and I love your Easter stuff.
Ditto to what bh said.
All of this assumes that you, or I, can know what He’s doing and why. The sooner that we understand what’s well above our pay grade, the easier it goes. There’s a fair number of things that I’m sure have a reason behind them, but I don’t pretend for a minute to know what it is. Yet.
You guys might remember awhile back when I mentioned getting engaged and then nothing else came of it.
Well, we did get married and then she died of cancer.
Haven’t mentioned that in public before. It’s been a strangely hard thing to do.
But Donald lost his wife and now Brian is having his problems again. I just keep going back and remembering Pablo telling a story during the holidays that has helped me keep my shit together from time to time. Just the notion that you live through it is something to grab onto.
I’ll do the same. Maybe this helps someone else out.
Tomorrow I celebrate Thanksgiving with the family. And I’ll be thankful for knowing her for as long as I did. Took awhile to get here and I’ve been drunk, depressed, and worthless for months at a time in the meantime but I’m here now. I am thankful for knowing her. That’s what’s left now.
Someone will mention something tomorrow and I’ll smoke a cigarette and cry behind the garage but I’ve made it through. And I’ll count my blessings.
zatarain’s frozens are really really good to have in the freezer at work … I always have zatarain’s and michael angelo’s lasagnas and stuff and anything from saffron road but you have to get the saffron road stuff on sale cause they is very very proud of it
I’m so sorry mister there’s no words at all
I remember when mom got cancer this wonderful girl from san diego I knew from Texas was wanting to get together and I never gave her the for reals reason why it was a bad time and then like right after mom died I got this crypto-shitty email from her what she had copied and pasted from somewheres:
and I replied back straightaway but I never heard from her again. I still feel awful but I’m not really big on memory lane anyway, to be honest.
Yeah, sometimes you gotta steer clear away from memory lane, ‘feets.
Thanks, by the way. It was a couple years ago now. I’m okay.
yes you are
ok I have to get back to my Vampire Diaries marathon but don’t tell anyone that’s what I’m doing
“Someone will mention something tomorrow and I’ll smoke a cigarette and cry behind the garage but I’ve made it through. And I’ll count my blessings.”
bh,
It’s tomorrow where I’m typing so…
I attended the memorial for Ian Lockwood, an 18 year old boy that played football for Navarre High School. Ian died of the same cancer BJ is fighting. Their were some uplifting and inspiring moments at the memorial but none better than when the Pastor shared what Ian’s sister posted on his Facebook memorial page:
She wrote: Please don’t cry because it’s over; Smile because it happened!
That might seem trite coming from someone else but it made me smile (while I was crying;)
You have a gift my man enabled by DNA and refined by your life’s experience. I’ll take the liberty and speak for all of the Outlaws in thanking you for sharing it.
So…
KEEP FIRING MISTER!!!
Thanks, Danger. (I really am okay, btw. Just wanted to say something positive because I know what the holiday blues are like when you’re missing someone and I’m still alive and kicking. Others feeling the same right now just have to hold on to what they can. Sounds silly but a good goal is to make it to another year.)
Man, sorry to hear about Ian. 18 is terrible.
sweet mother of all that’s unholy did we know that Susan Boyle covered depeche mode
it’s not all that horrible really until you get towards the end and you get some overwrought instrumentation excessive backing vocals
Belated condolences, bh.
That’s a damned shame, bh. My condolences.
Isn’t the “freedom of choice” bit exercised a little earlier in most cases? As in the “deciding to have intercourse” part?
Heh. “Tebow, Palin, and the Pain of Remorse“