Pope Francis describes ‘ideological Christians’ as a ‘serious illness’

Pladio

It was wrong of me to say that the birds did not go on the arch.
I apologise for that, that was clumpsy of me!!

The absolutely stunning thing is the level of delusion and apologist denial that religious zealots will go to to rationalize all of the nonsense in their book of choice.

txa1265 said:

The absolutely stunning thing is the level of delusion and apologist denial that religious zealots will go to to rationalize all of the nonsense in their book of choice.

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You might chose to belive so. Its sounds a bit like Richard Dawkins who can wright
hundreds of pages without presenting one ounce of facts.
except for evidence of TET thats been rebuked ages ago.

If you could present something suportive of TET that has not been rebuked yet
you will have my full attention

TopCat said:

Animals within one kind doesnt evolve in to different spieces, they already have all the information for these variations in their gene cod.
It was wrong of me to say that the birds did not go on the arch.
I apologise for that, that was clumpsy of me!!

However, the problems with these kangaroos did not exist 4000 years ago, so
I only need one pair of kangaroos as well as one pair of every other kind.
How big do you think the arch was? The size of it is written in the bible.

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Fine you saved one type of bird. All the others died (see below).

Try this, Noah takes two kangaroos on board. If they are both red kangaroos, they'll only have red kangaroo offspring. You just killed all the other species of kangaroos.
One of them was an eastern grey one and another a red one, they never have kids, you've just killed off all kangaroos. Both of them are eastern grey ones, then you've killed all the red ones.

Since animals cannot evolve, they cannot become of different species, so two red ones cannot make a grey one. What do you not get about this?

As an aside, as this is your conversation with Roq, (most) fresh water fish die if placed in the sea.

Pladio:

Because creationists, eventually (!), found it difficult to deny evolution altogether (since it's pretty obvious what happens in species such as dogs when certain traits are selected for by humans) they came up with a belief that god created a set of "kinds" (using the word from genesis as if it was a scientific theory) that could evolve to a limited extent by "microevolution".

Creationists will now say that new species *can* originate within a single "kind", but that no species can change into a new "kind". This gives them a very broad ability to brush evolution of new species under the carpet (which is the intention) if they don't fit what creationists want, since the boundaries as to what defines a "kind" can be as fuzzy as you like - so they place them where they want. And of course humans are their own "kind" rather than a "kind" of chimpanzee.

Of course, what the evidence actually shows, is that genetic material is subject to no such boundaries and there are no limits on how far a gene can mutate. So species in fact diverge without limit. In any case the idea of "kinds" has no evidential support since no one has found a mechanism for limiting the effect of mutations.

Although your size of the ark argument is clearly a good one, I had avoided it, since I was aware that this issue of "kinds" would come up - if faced with a capacity problem (as with your kangaroos), creationists can just redraw the lines of what defines a kind in order to create as much confusion as possible.

Of course this whole issue of "kinds" pinpoints the problem with creationism in that it proceeds backwards. Instead of starting with the evidence and then coming up with theories, as happens in science, they start with the bible as a fixed truth and then try to find a way the world could work that is as compatible with it as they can get, regardless of where the evidence actually points.

txa1265 said:

The absolutely stunning thing is the level of delusion and apologist denial that religious zealots will go to to rationalize all of the nonsense in their book of choice.

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That's what the term "cognitive dissonance" was invented for

txa1265 said:

The absolutely stunning thing is the level of delusion and apologist denial that religious zealots will go to to rationalize all of the nonsense in their book of choice.

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Better perhaps when they are doing that than when they crash into tall buildings to get whatever itch it is that they have out of their systems.

Roq said:

Better perhaps when they are doing that than when they crash into tall buildings to get whatever itch it is that they have out of their systems.

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Oh I absolutely agree ... but they don't seem to understand that they have more in common with those crashing planes and issuing death threats over cartoons than they do with the relatively agnostic mainstream.

txa1265 said:

Oh I absolutely agree … but they don't seem to understand that they have more in common with those crashing planes and issuing death threats over cartoons than they do with the relatively agnostic mainstream.

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And on that one, you have my full agreement. I know, I know, you can treasure it.

dteowner said:

And on that one, you have my full agreement. I know, I know, you can treasure it.

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More than you know

txa1265 said:

Oh I absolutely agree … but they don't seem to understand that they have more in common with those crashing planes and issuing death threats over cartoons than they do with the relatively agnostic mainstream.

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You do realise that the muslims used drug addicted people to do that job right? Probably not even "real" muslims?

Studies have shown conflicting results about what defines a suicide attacker. Criminal Justice professor Adam Lankford recently identified more than 130 individual suicide terrorists, including 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, with classic suicidal risk factors, such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, other mental health problems, drug addictions, serious physical injuries or disabilities, or having suffered the unexpected death of a loved one or from other personal crises.[42] These findings have been further supported by psychologist Ariel Merari, whose interviews and assessments of suicide bombers, regular terrorists, and terrorist recruiters found that only members of the first group showed major risk factors for conventional suicide

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attack

Damian said:

You do realise that the muslims used drug addicted people to do that job right? Probably not even "real" muslims?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attack

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The Koran actually proscribes suicide. But, of course, the clever Mullahs have managed to get round this little problem by simply redefining terrorist suicide attacks as being "martyrdom", much in the same way that you creationists like to redefine bible passages (such as those that imply a flat earth) to mean what you want them to mean.

If you want to know what really happened in the 9/11 bombings and particularly the history behind it, try: "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright, which won the 2007 Pulitzer prize… And Yes!, of course they were "real" Muslims. And Yes! they did believe that a martyr's death would give them a first class ticket to paradise.

Roq said:

The Koran actually proscribes suicide. But, of course, the clever Mullahs have managed to get round this little problem by simply redefining terrorist suicide attacks as being "martyrdom", much in the same way that you creationists like to redefine bible passages (such as those that imply a flat earth) to mean what you want them to mean.

If you want to know what really happened in the 9/11 bombings and particularly the history behind it, try: "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright, which won the 2007 Pulitzer prize… And Yes!, of course they were "real" Muslims. And Yes! they did believe that a martyr's death would give them a first class ticket to paradise.

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I read the summary of it. It doesnt talk about the people who were on the plane AFAIK. If it does please please quote it.
http://www.hyperink.com/The-Looming-Tower-Overall-Summary-b1028a12

Damian said:

I read the summary of it. It doesnt talk about the people who were on the plane AFAIK. If it does please please quote it.
http://www.hyperink.com/The-Looming-Tower-Overall-Summary-b1028a12

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There's a tacit assumption in the accomodationist press and political utterances from people who should know better that members of terrorist organisations can't believe what they claim to believe and that those that commit atrocities are on drugs and/or have mental problems etc. But, what emerges from in depth appraisals such as "Looming Tower" is that for the most part they are just impressionable men (and sometimes women), often highly educated, and it's difficult to find a common denominator other than that they have become indoctrinated with some irrational ideology of which the most pernicious today is surely radical Islam.

The "Looming Tower" is over 400 pages and I can't summarize what it has to say about this issue in a paragraph. However, it does refer to Atta's will, which shows the kind of things that he believed and many of the other participants had similar beliefs. It makes scary reading and you can find it here, for instance: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/network/personal/attawill.html. There is plenty of other such information around the internet, if you care to look for it... But you have to be discriminating, since a lot of misinformation has arisen since the attacks, often for apologist reasons.

Roq said:

There's a tacit assumption in the accomodationist press and political utterances from people who should know better that members of terrorist organisations can't believe what they claim to believe and that those that commit atrocities are on drugs and/or have mental problems etc. But, what emerges from in depth appraisals such as "Looming Tower" is that for the most part they are just impressionable men (and sometimes women), often highly educated, and it's difficult to find a common denominator other than that they have become indoctrinated with some irrational ideology of which the most pernicious today is surely radical Islam.

The "Looming Tower" is over 400 pages and I can't summarize what it has to say about this issue in a paragraph. However, it does refer to Atta's will, which shows the kind of things that he believed and many of the other participants had similar beliefs. It makes scary reading and you can find it here, for instance: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/network/personal/attawill.html. There is plenty of other such information around the internet, if you care to look for it… But you have to be discriminating, since a lot of misinformation has arisen since the attacks, often for apologist reasons.

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I am not asking you to summarize the book. Just post the reference at which it says that the people on the 9/11 plane were not mentally ill drug users. That part is a well known feature of the Al Qaeda. They use drugs to get their participants for suiciding.

Roq said:

Pladio:

Because creationists, eventually (!), found it difficult to deny evolution altogether (since it's pretty obvious what happens in species such as dogs when certain traits are selected for by humans) they came up with a belief that god created a set of "kinds" (using the word from genesis as if it was a scientific theory) that could evolve to a limited extent by "microevolution".

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Actually this is wrong. It isnt referred to as micro evolution by creationists. They call it "mendlellian variation". Also micro evolution refers to evolution of bacteria and other low level life forms.

Damian said:

I am not asking you to summarize the book. Just post the reference at which it says that the people on the 9/11 plane were not mentally ill drug users. That part is a well known feature of the Al Qaeda. They use drugs to get their participants for suiciding.

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I thought for a moment you might be interested in the truth, but I see you just wish to invent your own version of reality again. And no, it's not a well known fact that members of Al Quaeda are all mentally ill drug addicts, in fact it's total nonsense. The book shows that many of the terrorists, to all appearances, were pretty average people. As to whether it explicitly states that in a quotable sentence, it probably doesn't that I can remember, but equally it doesn't say they were not sado-masochistic transexual hermaphrodites (which they probably weren't either).

Damian said:

Actually this is wrong. It isnt referred to as micro evolution by creationists. They call it "mendlellian variation". Also micro evolution refers to evolution of bacteria and other low level life forms.

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No, microevolution is not restricted to low level life forms. And that isn't how most creationists use the term either. But many of them, like yourself evidently, don't understand their own terminology and their concepts aren't properly defined anyway.

In fact, microevolution refers to small changes in allele frequency, which is the basis of all evolution and it applies equally over the whole natural world. The mistake creationists make is to try to separate microevolution from macroevolution, whereas in fact macroevolution is just the result of a bunch of microevolutionary changes.

Roq said:

I thought for a moment you might be interested in the truth, but I see you just wish to invent your own version of reality again. And no, it's not a well known fact that members of Al Quaeda are all mentally ill drug addicts, in fact it's total nonsense. The book shows that many of the terrorists, to all appearances, were pretty average people. As to whether it explicitly states that in a quotable sentence, it probably doesn't that I can remember, but equally it doesn't say they were not sado-masochistic transexual hermaphrodites (which they probably weren't either).

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So basically i gave you a reference saying what I was saying. You come up with a counter claim and you cant back it up and somehow i am in the wrong?

Roq said:

No, microevolution is not restricted to low level life forms. And that isn't how most creationists use the term either. But many of them, like yourself evidently, don't understand their own terminology and their concepts aren't properly defined anyway.

In fact, microevolution refers to small changes in allele frequency, which is the basis of all evolution and it applies equally over the whole natural world. The mistake creationists make is to try to separate microevolution from macroevolution, whereas in fact macroevolution is just the result of a bunch of microevolutionary changes.

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Well that is how it is used in creationist circles.