Cap'n Refsmmat

eleven, what you have just posted is a giant ad hominem and strawman attack on ydoaPs, ignoring the valid points he made (such as the nature of science) to laugh at him instead. You claim ydoaPs is "free" to call people dumb, ridicule posters, and pass off arguments as "nothing serious," when of course those are the exact things the staff try their very hardest to stop. Incidentally, those are the same crimes you have just committed in your post. If you're going to make an off-topic debate, please be civil about it, and preferably do it in its own topic.

Could you link to that 2004 poll? The only 2004 poll I could find was this one: http://www.gallup.com/poll/14107/Third-Americans-Say-Evidence-Has-Supported-Darwins-Evolution-Theory.aspx which shows postgraduates of any degree field having a 65% rate of acceptance of evolution.

I'd imagine that being omnipotent requires being able to create true free will. However, omniscience may confound things. Right, but Jesus was also wholly human (while being wholly God) and so Jesus's sacrifice was from a human, not from God. While also being entirely from God. Again, you have to be capable of the logical contortions that make the Trinity possible before this works...

I suppose "You guys have really screwed up, but hey, I forgive it all," without any drama, would be sending the wrong message to all the Earthly troublemakers.

The theological view is that God did not create sin; rather, he created us with free will, and we chose to disobey. That's the trick of the Incarnation. Because Jesus was human, he was paying the debt rather than God just forgiving; because he was simultaneously God, he was actually capable of paying back the debt. The Trinity (or at least a man-God duality) is required for the doctrine of the incarnation to succeed.

There's finer theology to it than that. Here's the breakdown we got in my philosophy of religion course: Because God created us, we owe Him our absolute obedience. Sin is the act of being disobedient to God. If we sin, we now have a debt toward God. There is no Earthly thing we can give God, because God is the Creator, and anything we give Him is something He already made. Thus, the only way for our sins to be repaid is for God Himself to repay them as a human. Thus, God must be incarnated as a man, who then repays our sins. Pretty neat explanation, actually.

Claiming there is no evidence is a de facto admission that all evidence so far provided is unconvincing. Or, in other words, the atheists in this discussion are aware of supposed evidence for a creator, but they deny that it is convincing. This is apparent from their posts. Furthermore, I have every reason to believe that iNow has already explained to you his positions at great length. Nobody makes 1200 posts on a science forum visited by iNow, many of those posts arguing that their is evidence of a designer, without getting very long and detailed explanations of his views. Finally, I'd like to request that you stay on topic; this discussion is about why people chose atheism, not why they shouldn't. If you would like to convince them, do it in the appropriate venue.

Prove it.

I split this into your own topic for you.

Because, by your own admission, your source for the 10,000 alterations figure may have. If it did, your point about evolution not matching the expected rate would be unfounded, because evolution could easily account for 10,000 neutral alterations.

The correct way to complain about staff behavior is to report the post using the Report button. Since your thread is still open and going, I'll call "no harm, no foul." If you have further complaints, bring them up the proper way. Private messages to administrators are also acceptable. (Click "Send me a message" on their profile, rather than leaving a public comment.)

Did you expect that I wouldn't notice that you and Undeniable are exactly the same person? Sockpuppet accounts are against rule 9 of the forum rules.

"New form and function is the focus because it is easiest to identify but one could easily include all modifications in that statement." If one includes all modifications, one is not constrained by any information theory rules. And Lenski showed that modifications happened at a much greater rate than 1 per 20,000 generations. Furthermore, your accounting distinction is moot; what should matter is the information per organism, which does not change with a modification. (An old method is destroyed and a new method appears.) That this changes the information level of the entire population is unimportant; the processes occurring inside that one organism will happen if there's one organism or ten million.

So... where's he pretending to be objective, then? He says exactly what he does.

I dunno. Assange's agenda is to ruin government secrecy, publish secret documents, and make sure the world knows about them. (He stated in an interview that they promise their sources wide media exposure.) And that's exactly what he pretends to do, too. Where's the disconnect?

So... if an alteration spreads through the entire population, the net functional information does not increase, because the old gene no longer exists. If the alteration exists in one particular subgroup, but another group retains the old gene, the net functional information increases. Somehow, the second option cannot be easily done via mutation and natural selection, because of the information increase. Is that what you are implying?

Your source for the 10,000 alterations figure may use a different definition than you do. I am just trying to determine what definition that source uses. On the other hand, your definition includes "function and form modifications," which means that "substantive alterations" encompasses mutations that do not introduce new information but merely alter existing functions. For example, changing size without introducing novel mechanisms would be a "function and form modification," but it would not be constrained by your information-theoretic concerns. If that is the case, the figure of 10,000 is attainable, because the information theory constraint does not apply. We are not limited by the amount of information that must be generated, because 10,000 "significant alterations" do not imply 10,000 cases of new "information" being introduced.

Function and form modifications do not seem to be constrained by the same information-generation limitations you are so fond of, when compared with new functions and subcomponents. My original request to see how your source defines "substantive difference" still stands.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/15159555/page/2/ Planes aren't the infection risk everyone makes them out to be, although of course if the guy next to you sneezes on you, the air filters don't matter. But that could happen anywhere.

This is not a "side issue." If "substantive differences" just means "difference in genome, whether good, bad, or neutral," your figure no longer supports your claim. 10,000 genetic changes could easily be accumulated over thousands of years, even if you argue that 10,000 significant beneficial adaptations could not be. Could you stop dodging the question and just answer it? It'd be much easier than continued quibbling.

It's very much the key. If your "substantive differences" mean "significant alterations in genome," regardless of what functional advantage or disadvantage they bring, or whether they're neutral mutations, then the objection that major adaptations do not occur fast enough doesn't fly. All one needs is a mutation of any kind, not just a beneficial adaptation. And I think you'd agree that it takes many mutations to generate one beneficial mutation.

You don't have to see them to know that the Times has seen them and may have leverage over Assange to get him to withhold sensitive documents.

The newspapers he allowed to see the documents before public release stated that they convinced him to withhold some documents. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/26editors-note.htm Apparently at the request of the government, actually... What reasons do we have to distrust everything Assange says?

Did he? They actively tried to hide the 15,000 still-sensitive documents. Is there evidence that he knew of the named informants and decided in advance to name them anyway?

He doesn't actually intend to kill people, for one thing. Being a "terrorist" requires intentionally causing terror in your victims.