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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (382820)	5/6/2008 6:02:00 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573927

"The part about him being hostile to conventional Christianity isn't" What is Christianity without the miracles? Oh yeah. Judaism. Because without the miracles, all of his claims to being the Son of God are sort of hollow. "He often went to church by himself, took part in the services as a normal congregant, and this after he'd left public life." You keep bringing this up like it is a telling point. He wasn't wedded to any particular church, in fact he often wished there were a deist church nearby so he could go there. I posted several quotes on this last time we went around about this. "I mean the things taught by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Bill Provine, PZ Myers, etc etc etc. and my college biology teacher years ago. " If their views on religion are taught, it would only be in the context of a philosophy class. I don't know what your college biology instructor taught, so I can't comment. "Afraid you're wrong about that." No I am not. "Its based on a narrative involving things that are said to be possible." No it isn't. "This may help you:" It doesn't. It is full of holes. harris tried to pull the same crap earlier. Evolution says nothing about origins. Nothing. Period. Now, you can take harris' viewpoint that if it doesn't it is worthless. But that doesn't change the facts. In addition, the guy who shot the vid apparently doesn't understand what evolution is. I suppose this shouldn't be a huge surprise. He assumes that evolution has a goal and that goal is complexity. Neither of these are true. So his cute little story about the bacteria should be driving around in little cars is just that, a story. Bacteria do acquire new characteristics, they can acquire immunity to antibiotics and can change to utilize different materials as food. This isn't as trivial as he tried to make it out to be. There is nothing in their environment driving them to greater complexity. So it isn't a huge surprise they haven't gotten more complex. Now, that hasn't always been true. Some cell organelles in eucharyote cells, like mitochondria and chloroplasts, share many features with bacteria. So those organelles found themselves in an environment where it was advantageous to gain some complexity. So, complexity is not necessarily the only product of evolution. Evolution is all about adapting to the environment. A great example is the Ashkenazi. They are prone to a number of genetic disorders and some of them are unique to them. Most, in their heterozygous forms confer some sort of adaptation to living in crowded and unsanitary conditions. The first one recognized in the Ashkenazi was Tay-Sachs. It gives an immunity to TB. I suppose you could take the stance that The Designer knew that a certain subset of his chosen people were going to be forced into ghettos after a Diaspora and so loaded them up with appropriate genetic disorders. It was pretty selective because while a couple of the disorders do exist in the ME Jewish populations, although not at those frequencies, not all of them do. So, somehow, The Designer was able to make sure that all of the carriers were dispersed. Sickle cell anemia is another one of those disorders and it is common in populations that are prone to malaria.