I'm not quite sure how I feel about the fact that archaeologists are now digging up games from my youth...

*related=http://videosift.com/video/ET-found-in-New-Mexico

>> ^zombieater:

>> ^siftbot:
Tags for this video have been changed from 'ropes, archaeologist, replica, theory, move' to 'ropes, archaeologist, replica, theory, move, easter island, moai' - edited by xxovercastxx

Why would you change tags to include words already in the title? Does the search function not use the title to find videos?


I used to think the same thing but a lot of people like to click on tags (something I had never really considered) so I started to put them there.

>> ^zombieater:

>> ^siftbot:
Tags for this video have been changed from 'ropes, archaeologist, replica, theory, move' to 'ropes, archaeologist, replica, theory, move, easter island, moai' - edited by xxovercastxx

Why would you change tags to include words already in the title? Does the search function not use the title to find videos?


http://videosift.com/talk/A-couple-of-little-questions-about-the-Sift?loadcomm=1#comment-233837
@lucky760: "...I find it totally reasonable to have terms repeated..."

http://videosift.com/talk/VideoSift-101-tags?loadcomm=1#comment-783325
@lucky760: "Regarding the issue of repeating terms in title and tags, it's encouraged..."

http://videosift.com/talk/TagsTitle?loadcomm=1#comment-262237
@lucky760: "...it's frequently very important that terms in the title also appear in tags."

>> ^siftbot:

Tags for this video have been changed from 'ropes, archaeologist, replica, theory, move' to 'ropes, archaeologist, replica, theory, move, easter island, moai' - edited by xxovercastxx


Why would you change tags to include words already in the title? Does the search function not use the title to find videos?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'ropes, archaeologist, replica, theory, move' to 'ropes, archaeologist, replica, theory, move, easter island, moai' - edited by xxovercastxx

Archaeologists of the future are going to be baffled by this 'privacy' thing we are so concerned about.

Some day, a dashing archaeologist adventurer will be named for this dog.

@shinyblurry

I will not get engaged into a scientific debate about what is or isn't correct via Creationism or other ad hoc sciences, all based on religion FIRST and foremost. I will listen to actual science. Everything I have ever seen from your side (as I do see you in other comment threads, though I may not post) is against what the standard is in science. I put NO CREDIT behind anything that has absolutely no discussion from the scientific field. The argument is happening merely at the point that religion hits a functioning system in education or experiment.

My arguments come directly from college texts, teachers, and other approved scientific texts. If you want to understand my side, read them. I surely will not repeat what I learned by reading, studying, and experimenting. There are those out there that are willing to have long conversations on the topic, but that is not me.

May I also add whether you meant it to be a slight towards me (as I see it) or a general stance; if you believe that you truly are "higher" and see farther than Einstein, "The Shoulders of Giants", I would rethink that stance. That is what I meant if you took it any other way...

Quick edit- I will reply to the Robert Jastrow quote though. I would put ALL wagers off the table until science is fully done investigating this Universe, you may become very surprised at what you find. @shinyblurry , if you wish to know more about this phenomena look back in my blog entries at "From Nothing Comes Something (recent experiment)", I have a few added links dealing with this Quantum Mechanics subject and of course an article about a very intriguing experiment done. Watch this and this physicist may surprise you with something:

Secondary edit- I wanted to answer your question above about my feeling that I had a spiritual connection with God. I have to say that you have a great hatred towards Mormons. I've known them my whole life and I can reassuringly tell you that many of them are the nicest people that you would possibly meet. When there are disasters in areas around the country there is always a sense of community that is restored and people come together and help. When this happens in Salt Lake or the surrounding metropolitan area the community support is ridiculous. I had a tree get blown down in the little windstorm last week (Utah and California got hit, it was sustained 40-75 mph winds with gusts anywhere from 60-100 mph; I think we got maybe an 80 mph gust that took it out). The windstorm didn't end till about noonish, but I was just getting my chainsaw ready when I had about 14 people show up to help with my one tree. They brought their chainsaws and even had an industrial wood-chipper with them. We took down a 40 ft. tree in one hour. But, this sort of thing is the NORM. So just remember this, while I know Mormonism is very wrong in many ways, including the book of Mormon being incredibly wrong in so many ways (where are these HUGE bronze-age and some STEEL!-age remnants for archaeologists to look at and discover--I read the book of Mormon atleast twice and I can tell you that these civilizations were huge; HUGE compared to small archaeological finds. These were also big enough that someone somewhere should have found anything by now.

But, how you remarked about the Mormon religion to me seems to be very condescending. I find it funny that you're very overtly rude over something I no longer believe in and I have yet to say anything about your religion, as I have only spoke about what you have mentioned. I have in fact no notion of what you believe.

As to what I felt. While i may have had a bit of the "burning of the bosom" the key thing I felt was a presence upon my mind. I could feel it when I was scared, I could feel it when I was exhilarated. It felt like light, a light so bright that it pierced everything I did. I could almost feel it, a slight and wonderful warmth affecting my other senses as much as it would my sense of touch. I could almost perceive it via meditation and it seemed to be a line of light passing along and through me, it seemed to be one-dimensional if it could be felt. Later on it felt as though if I truly needed it, it would be there for me--it gave the connotation of a sword of light. So the question is: how much of this is in the mind...

To tell the truth I still can feel the same thing, but I'm warded against any action (like regaining a religion). I'm too fearful that it is in fact easier to be a tool for pain and hurt rather than one for truth. So if you ask me how religious I am even though I'm atheist, I will merely remark that I follow truth, where I can find it.

I hope you can understand that; maybe we share an equal ground here--if not elsewhere.

The 10,000 years thing is mostly derived from discerning the described geneology from Adam and Eve down. I'm not suggesting the Bible can't be a source for truth. I'm saying it's one source of many, and just like other information sources, some information is not valid, and all facts presented in the book should be read as such with a healthy amount of skepticism.

Translation: I have no problem if people use the Bible as sources of truth, but it must be balanced with other sources. Statements like "the Bible is 100% historically accurate" is an absurd lie, and the attitude is downright dangerous because it encourages blind acceptance of everything in the Bible, often taken literally. There likely has never been an actually history book ever written that's been unquestionably 100% accurate, either. I don't read the bible or any nonfiction book for that matter and assume everything in it is true.

That was my entire point of the post. It was not intended as an attack against Christians, or the Bible as a source of fact. It's an attack on the infallibility of the Bible as a source of knowledge, and those who make ridiculous statements like "nothing in the Bible has been proven wrong", when the above is an obvious example.

I do want to point out there's a difference between "Young Earth" arguments and arguments about how long human beings have been on the planet. I would agree with you the Bible doesn't actually say how long the earth or universe has been in existence. But it can be derived using biblical stories roughly how long humans have been on the earth. So, when those stories are taken literally, there have been numerous archeological finds that prove something in the Bible is false. That doesn't invalidate the entire Bible either, though.

>> ^smooman:

>> ^heropsycho:
You mean besides the Bible estimating the world to be only 10,000 years at most, when archaeological finds show just humans alone to be well over that? As in over 150,000 years old? 400,000 years old?
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/29/worlds-oldest-human-remain
s-found-in-israel/
Now, I'm sure you're gonna make the argument that archaeologists are not dating artifacts correctly, which is funny, because archaeologists are in fact the experts on how to do this, but nevermind that...
Dude, come on. 100% historically reliable? Seriously?!
>> ^shinyblurry:
On the contrary, the historicity of the illad is in great dispute, is sparse at best, and certainly isn't cited very often by historians or archaelogists for much of anything. Archaelogical finds have confirmed some minor details and disputed others. It is widely considered to be mostly legendary.
Far from fiction, the bible has been confirmed to be accurate in great detail..as over 25,000 archaelogical discoveries over the last 150 years have proven the bible to be 100 percent historically reliable, and no archaelogical find has ever overturned a biblical reference. Over 80 persons from the bible have been confirmed externally to be historical people, and there are over 39 external sources confirming 100 facts about Jesus alone. Your premise is indeed a fallacy as it is a false equivalence strawman


mind if i butt in? this claim you speak of, the one that says the world is less than 10000 years old...........appears no where in the bible. not a single instance, reference, or even an allusion to it. Young Earth theory (or, crap, as i like to call it) was created by some church dudes back in the day and came about because they took all the "begets" in the old testament and did math presuming, of course, that these were the only people to ever beget in the history of begetting on top of this taking the genesis creation story to be a literal word for word historical event (which is fine for some people, just not for me) and came up with 10 grand.
and truth be told, while not 100% historically accurate, for obvious reasons, the bible as a written work is, generally speaking, pretty reliable. the ancient hebrew, as with most cultures in those times, took their writings and history very seriously and took great care to preserve their history as accurately as possible. because of the more supernatural elements tho (the creation story for example) critics would completely disregard the body of archived history the bible encompasses all because of some fantastical stories that are woven throughout. that, by definition, is intellectually irresponsible

>> ^heropsycho:

You mean besides the Bible estimating the world to be only 10,000 years at most, when archaeological finds show just humans alone to be well over that? As in over 150,000 years old? 400,000 years old?
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/29/worlds-oldest-human-remain
s-found-in-israel/
Now, I'm sure you're gonna make the argument that archaeologists are not dating artifacts correctly, which is funny, because archaeologists are in fact the experts on how to do this, but nevermind that...
Dude, come on. 100% historically reliable? Seriously?!
>> ^shinyblurry:
On the contrary, the historicity of the illad is in great dispute, is sparse at best, and certainly isn't cited very often by historians or archaelogists for much of anything. Archaelogical finds have confirmed some minor details and disputed others. It is widely considered to be mostly legendary.
Far from fiction, the bible has been confirmed to be accurate in great detail..as over 25,000 archaelogical discoveries over the last 150 years have proven the bible to be 100 percent historically reliable, and no archaelogical find has ever overturned a biblical reference. Over 80 persons from the bible have been confirmed externally to be historical people, and there are over 39 external sources confirming 100 facts about Jesus alone. Your premise is indeed a fallacy as it is a false equivalence strawman



mind if i butt in? this claim you speak of, the one that says the world is less than 10000 years old...........appears no where in the bible. not a single instance, reference, or even an allusion to it. Young Earth theory (or, crap, as i like to call it) was created by some church dudes back in the day and came about because they took all the "begets" in the old testament and did math presuming, of course, that these were the only people to ever beget in the history of begetting on top of this taking the genesis creation story to be a literal word for word historical event (which is fine for some people, just not for me) and came up with 10 grand.

and truth be told, while not 100% historically accurate, for obvious reasons, the bible as a written work is, generally speaking, pretty reliable. the ancient hebrew, as with most cultures in those times, took their writings and history very seriously and took great care to preserve their history as accurately as possible. because of the more supernatural elements tho (the creation story for example) critics would completely disregard the body of archived history the bible encompasses all because of some fantastical stories that are woven throughout. that, by definition, is intellectually irresponsible

You mean besides the Bible estimating the world to be only 10,000 years at most, when archaeological finds show just humans alone to be well over that? As in over 150,000 years old? 400,000 years old?

http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/29/worlds-oldest-human-remains-found-in-israel/

Now, I'm sure you're gonna make the argument that archaeologists are not dating artifacts correctly, which is funny, because archaeologists are in fact the experts on how to do this, but nevermind that...

Dude, come on. 100% historically reliable? Seriously?!

>> ^shinyblurry:

On the contrary, the historicity of the illad is in great dispute, is sparse at best, and certainly isn't cited very often by historians or archaelogists for much of anything. Archaelogical finds have confirmed some minor details and disputed others. It is widely considered to be mostly legendary.
Far from fiction, the bible has been confirmed to be accurate in great detail..as over 25,000 archaelogical discoveries over the last 150 years have proven the bible to be 100 percent historically reliable, and no archaelogical find has ever overturned a biblical reference. Over 80 persons from the bible have been confirmed externally to be historical people, and there are over 39 external sources confirming 100 facts about Jesus alone. Your premise is indeed a fallacy as it is a false equivalence strawman

So basically, you cannot provide a refutation to the information itself but instead try to discredit the source. I've got hundreds of these..it's not exactly a secret among palentologists that the evolutionary theory has more holes than swiss cheese. Another issue is just the dating itself..take these quotes out of context:

Curt Teichert of the Geological Society of America, "No coherent picture of the history of the earth could be built on the basis of radioactive datings".

Improved laboratory techniques and improved constants have not reduced the scatter in recent years. Instead, the uncertainty grows as more and more data is accumulated ... " (Waterhouse).

richard mauger phd associate professor of geology east carolina university In general, dates in the “correct ball park” are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other data are seldom published nor are the discrepancies fully explained

... it is usual to obtain a spectrum of discordant dates and to select the concentration of highest values as the correct age." (Armstrong and Besancon)

professor brew: If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if it iscompletely out of date we just drop it. Few archaeologists who have concerned themselves with absolute chronology are innocent of having sometimes applied this method.

In the light of what is known about the radiocarbon method and the way it is used, it is truly astonishing that many authors will cite agreeable determinations as 'proof' for their beliefs. The radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually selected dates. "This whole blessed thing is nothing but 13th century alchemy, and it all depends upon which funny paper you read.” Written by Robert E. Lee in his article "Radiocarbon: Ages in Error" in Anthropological Journal Of Canada, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1981 p:9

Radiometric dating of fossil skull 1470 show that the various methods do not give accurate measurements of ages. The first tests gave an age of 221 million years. The second, 2.4 million years. Subsequent tests gave ages which ranged from 290,000 to 19.5 million years. Palaeomagnetic determinations gave an age of 3 million years. All these readings give a 762 fold error in the age calculations. Given that only errors less than 10% (0.1 fold) are acceptable in scientific calculations, these readings show that radiometric assessment should never ever be used. John Reader, "Missing Links", BCA/Collins: London, 1981 p:206-209

A. Hayatsu (Department of Geophysics, University of Western Ontario, Canada), "K-Ar isochron age of the North Mountain Basalt, Nova Scotia",-Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, vol. 16, 1979,-"In conventional interpretation of K-Ar (potassium/argon dating method) age data, it is common to discard ages which are substantially too high or too low compared with the rest of the group or with other available data such as the geological time scale. The discrepancies between the rejected and the accepted are arbitrarily-attributed to excess or loss of argon." In other words the potassium/argon (K/Ar) method doesn't support the uranium/lead (U/Pb) method.

"The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years old, based on radio-decay rates of uranium and thorium. Such `confirmation' may be shortlived, as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radio-decay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago, but rather, within the age and memory of man." (“Secular Catastrophism”, Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, p. 21)

“The procession of life was never witnessed, it is inferred. The vertical sequence of fossils is thought to represent a process because the enclosing rocks are interpreted as a process. The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales.” (O’Rourke, J.E., “Pragmatism Versus Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, vol. 276, 1976, p. 53) (emphasis mine)

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning . . because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of science, January 1976.

Dr. Donald Fisher, the state paleontologist for New York, Luther Sunderland, asked him: "How do you date fossils?" His reply: "By the Cambrian rocks in which they were found." Sunderland then asked him if this were not circular reasoning, and *Fisher replied, "Of course, how else are you going to do it?" (Bible Science Newsletter, December 1986, p. 6.)

It is a problem not easily solved by the classic methods of stratigraphical paleontology, as obviously we will land ourselves immediately in an impossible circular argument if we say, firstly that a particular lithology [theory of rock strata] is synchronous on the evidence of its fossils, and secondly that the fossils are synchronous on the evidence of the lithology."—*Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record (1973), p. 62.

"The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling the explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 48.

"Material bodies are finite, and no rock unit is global in extent, yet stratigraphy aims at a global classification. The particulars have to be stretched into universals somehow. Here ordinary materialism leaves off building up a system of units recognized by physical properties, to follow dialectical materialism, which starts with time units and regards the material bodies as their incomplete representatives. This is where the suspicion of circular reasoning crept in, because it seemed to the layman that the time units were abstracted from the geological column, which has been put together from rock units."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1979, p. 49.

"The prime difficulty with the use of presumed ancestral-descendant sequences to express phylogeny is that biostratigraphic data are often used in conjunction with morphology in the initial evaluation of relationships, which leads to obvious circularity."—*B. Schaeffer, *M.K. Hecht and *N. Eldredge, "Phylogeny and Paleontology," in *Dobzhansky, *Hecht and *Steere (Ed.), Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 6 (1972), p. 39

"The paleontologist's wheel of authority turned full circle when he put this process into reverse and used his fossils to determine tops and bottoms for himself. In the course of time he came to rule upon stratigraphic order, and gaps within it, on a worldwide basis."—*F.K. North, "the Geological Time Scale," in Royal Society of Canada Special Publication, 8:5 (1964). [The order of fossils is determined by the rock strata they are in, and the strata they are in are decided by their tops and bottoms—which are deduced by the fossils in them.]"The geologic ages are identified and dated by the fossils contained in the sedimentary rocks. The fossil record also provides the chief evidence for the theory of evolution, which in turn is the basic philosophy upon which the sequence of geologic ages has been erected. The evolution-fossil-geologic age system is thus a closed circle which comprises one interlocking package. Each goes with the other."—Henry M. Morris, The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (1972), pp. 76-77

"It cannot be denied that, from a strictly philosophical standpoint, geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organism as has been determined by a study of theory remains buried in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms that they contain."—*R.H. Rastall, article "Geology," Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 10 (14th ed.; 1956), p. 168.

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 53.

>> ^MaxWilder:
Let us begin with this definition of "quote mining" from Wikipedia: The practice of quoting out of context, sometimes referred to as "contextomy" or "quote mining", is a logical fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.
Thank you, shinyblurry, for your cut&paste, thought-free, research-absent, quote mining wall of nonsense. The only part you got right is that you should google each and every one of these quotes to find out the context, something you actually didn't do.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Even the late Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard University and the leading spokesman for evolutionary theory prior to his recent death, confessed "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology..."

This Steven J. Gould quote is discussed in talk.origin's Quote Mine Project. Gould was a proponent of Punctuated Equilibria, which proposes a "jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change" in evolution. The quotes that are taken out of context are arguing that the fossil record does not indicate a gradual change over time as Darwin suggested. The specifc quote above is discussed in section #3.2 of Part 3. Far from an argument against evolution, Gould was arguing for a specific refinement of the theory.
More to the point, your own quote says "extreme rarity", contradicting your primary claim that transitional fossils do not exist.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum and editor of a prestigious scientific journal... ...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book... ...there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.

Dr. Patterson is discussed on a page dedicated to this quote in the Quote Mine Project. This page touches on the nature of scientific skepticism. As Dr. Patterson goes on to say, "... Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else." This is the nature of pure science. We can say that a piece of evidence "indicates" or "suggests" something, but there is nothing that may be held up as "proof" unless it is testable. As a man of principle, Dr. Patterson would not indicate one species evolving into another simply because there is no way to be absolutely sure that one fossil is the direct descendant of another. We can describe the similarities and differences, showing how one might have traits of an earlier fossil and different traits similar to a later fossil, but that is not absolute proof.
Incidentally, this is probably where the main thrust of the creationist argument eventually lands. At this level of specificity, there is no known way of proving one fossil's relation to another. DNA does not survive the fossilization process, so we can only make generalizations about how fossils are related through physical appearance. This will be where the creationist claims "faith" is required. Of course, you might also say that if I had a picture of a potted plant on a shelf, and another picture of the potted plant broken on the floor, it would require "faith" to claim that the plant fell off the shelf, because I did not have video proof. The creationist argument would be that the plant broken on the ground was created that way by God.
>> ^shinyblurry:
David B. Kitts. PhD (Zoology) ... Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "seeing" evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of "gaps" in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them...

This quote is from 1974. Think maybe some of those gaps might have gotten smaller since then? Doesn't really matter, because the scientist in question goes on to explicitly state that this does not disprove evolution. He then discusses hypotheses which might explain his perceived gaps, such as Punctuated Equilibrium. A brief mention of this quote is found in the Quote Mine Project at Quote #54.
>> ^shinyblurry:
N. Heribert Nilsson, a famous botanist, evolutionist and professor at Lund University in Sweden, continues:
My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed… The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled.

First of all, Nilsson is only famous to creationists. To scientists, he's a bit of a wack-job. But that neither proves nor disproves his findings, it only goes to show that creationsists will frequently embellish a scientist's reputation if it will increase the size of the straw man argument. His writings would naturally include his opinions on the weaknesses of what was evolutionary theory at the time (1953!) in order to make his own hypothesis more appealing. He came up with Emication, which is panned as fantasy by the scientific critics. Perfect fodder for the creationists.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Even the popular press is catching on. This is from an article in Newsweek magazine:
The missing link between man and apes, whose absence has comforted religious fundamentalists since the days of Darwin, is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures … The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms that lie between species, the more they have been frustrated.
The popular press. Newsweek Magazine. 1980!!! What year are you living in, shiny???
>> ^shinyblurry:
Wake up people..your belief in evolution is purely metaphysical and requires faith. I suppose if you don't think about it too hard it makes sense. It's the same thing with abiogenesis..pure metaphysics.
Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species.
The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us?… The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record. 2

Well, now you're just quoting some anonymous creationist. Any evidence whatsoever that the gaps between major groups are growing wider? No? Can't find anything to cut and paste in reply to that question?
>> ^shinyblurry:
You've been had..be intellectually honest enough to admit it and seek out the truth. Science does not support evolution.

I wonder, shiny, if in your "intellectually honest search for the truth" if you ever left the creationist circle jerk? Your quotes are nothing but out of context and out of date.

No, perhaps you should re-read, the bible has NO historical authority. Like a broken clock it can, rarely, be right, but I can't reasonably accept anything from it without outside corroboration

Oh really? So why is that archaelogically, it has proven to be 100 percent historically accurate?

“No archeological discovery has ever controverted [overturned] a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1969

There have been over 25,000 discoveries which prove its historical accuracy alone. Seems like far from being right accidently, it's always on time.

Sooo...You are claiming that these books have not been under the same copy/editorship for millennia ? My point does not require a by-line match, only that the folks copying (and editing) the canonical versions are in control of both, and have incentive to make them seem more impressive. Are you claiming this was not the case?

Of course I'm claiming its not the case. It also doesn't make any sense. You don't think the jews at the time would notice that people were editing in prophecies later? They were fanatical about these kind of details..so unless you're claiming it was a gigantic conspiracy your view seems illogical. The jews were very careful about copying..the earliest manusciprs we have and the oldest ones have very few discrepencies.

Wow, nice straw split. The portion of the testimony that claims the divinity of jesus is cut from whole cloth, that is what you were talking about, that is a forgery. You wish to interpret it as a testimony of divinity, when the historical record strongly supports the contentions that these parts were not in the original text, and are not attributable to Josephus => forgery.

The vid you post takes the safety position that since the original appears to be about jesus that it is proof of his historicity. The original text, as far as we can reconstruct it, as well as all the other non-fake historical documents don't actually claim that jesus was real or divine, they only convey the story as stated by christians.

I can also state the christian story, as a matter of historical record, without validating it or accepting it myself, the fact that christians existed is not proof that jesus did.

lol..so, when a historian talks about someone in history, its not evidence..what kind of evidence do you want? Photographs?

"Josephus includes information about individuals, groups, customs and geographical places. Some of these, such as the city of Seron, are not referenced in the surviving texts of any other ancient authority. His writings provide a significant, extra-Biblical account of the post-Exilic period of the Maccabees, the Hasmonean dynasty, and the rise of Herod the Great. He makes references to the Sadducees, Jewish High Priests of the time, Pharisees and Essenes, the Herodian Temple, Quirinius' census and the Zealots, and to such figures as Pontius Pilate, Herod the Great, Agrippa I and Agrippa II, John the Baptist, James the brother of Jesus, and a disputed reference to Jesus (for more see Josephus on Jesus). He is an important source for studies of immediate post-Temple Judaism and the context of early Christianity.

A careful reading of Josephus' writings allowed Ehud Netzer, an archaeologist from Hebrew University, to discover the location of Herod's Tomb, after a search of 35 years — above aqueducts and pools, at a flattened, desert site, halfway up the hill to the Herodium, 12 kilometers south of Jerusalem — exactly where it should have been, according to Josephus's writings."

Read that? His writings were so accurate that we were able to find a mans tomb 2000 years later. Turn off your schitzophrenia for a moment. You're claiming Jesus isn't a historical figure, even though this historian, whom you say is accurate for Cyrus, verifies that He is. I'm not talking about whether He is divine, just that He existed. You can't have it both ways. He's a historian who obviously checked his sources..he's isn't telling stories, he is relating facts. You just want to throw the ones you don't happen to agree with.

I see what you did there, let me see if I can recreate your "logic":
1)I claim the testimony has been forged
2)Therefore I must accept Josephus as completely unreliable
3)Therefor the bible is the only source of the story
4)Therefor the claimed historicity of the events depends on the bible
5)Therefor for the Cyrus claim to hold the bible must be divinely inspired

Step 2 does not follow, most of Josephus is considered sound. The fact that your predecessors felt the need to lie in his name does not invalidate all his writings, only those which we have reason to believe have been altered. As it turns out, your boys tended to do a pretty unconvincing job in their historical revisionism.

Again, forget about the divinity claims which were interperlations. He records the existence of the historical person of Jesus. So, if its good enough for Cyrus, its good enough for Jesus. You can't have it both ways. Your pathogical unbelief is amusing, but unwarrented. So your only sources are one that claims Jesus is real, and another that claims God frees the slaves. Again, not helping your case in any respect.

The Bible is a storybook, that's all. A conspiracy to me, is a cover up of a crime.

You've convinced yourself pretty well with your strange arguments. Just because the Bible cites historical architectural knowledge doesn't mean there's a God. It just means that the people who wrote it at the time obviously took inspiration from their time period and what existed. It doesn't mean EVERYTHING they wrote is now true, they just had a reliable backdrop to their story, why would they write about a places and gatherings and cities and nations and locations that didn't exist, when they are wanting to trick people at the time? Surely it's a requirement to portray the world correctly and then use your lies in preaching to trick people to believing it.

I don't know how you can be so misguided to think proving the bible's archaeological facts leads it to prove all the crazy beliefs of a God and Satan and a Virgin birth, etc.

I can write a book about WW2, citing all the battles, bombs dropped, people killed, gatherings etc, and then just add in a load of stuff about how Hitler was actually secretly taking orders from a magical Unicorn called George who hated everyone, and that the allies were being advised by a giant Elephant called Bob who was kind and benevolent. So apparently in 2000 years, people like you will believe it all because all the archaeological data was proved in my story.

Talking about Christian's persecutions means nothing, brainwashed people are brainwashed, they think they will go to heaven if they do good, and go to hell if they stop believing in God. So no matter what persecution there is, until they are actually allowed to see sense, they will continue to believe in God and teach their children to believe in God.

Also I'd look at the surveys the other way, 79% of the people in the survey didn't believe in God, and 90% don't pray weekly. Then in the other survey 80% of the scientists aren't spiritual. That's a good amount of people who are sane. There has to be at least some crazy scientists otherwise we might miss out of some discoveries.

>> ^shinyblurry:

You think the bible is a conspiracy? lol..first of all most of the people who started the church were martryed for their beliefs. If they knew it was a lie, they wouldn't have died for it. The romans persecuted and martyred Christians for hundreds of years. There simply was no advantage to being a Christian in those days. It was very likely to get you killed.
And for being made up it sure is historically accurate:
"Now of course, archaeology could never prove that the Bible is divinely inspired, but it can help build a case for the historical reliability of the Bible. And it certainly has. For the past 150 years archaeologists have been verifying the exact truthfulness of the Bible's detailed records of various events, customs, persons, cities, nations, and geographical locations.
In every instance where the Bible can be, or has been checked out archaeologically, it has been found to be 100% accurate. The Bible has proven so accurate that archaeologists often refer to it as a reliable guide when they go to dig in new areas.
Nelson Glueck, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine and who is considered one of the greatest archaeologists ever, wrote: “No archeological discovery has ever controverted [overturned] a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” [Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1969), 31.]
These are the words of a man who has who has been credited with uncovering more than fifteen hundred ancient sites in the Middle East. [ “Archaeology: The Shards of History,” Time, December 13, 1963, accessed November 18, 2010.]
There have been more than 25,000 discoveries within the region known as the "Bible Lands” that have confirmed the truthfulness of the Bible."
And it looks like some atheists just aren't as religious and dogmatic as you are..take for example this statistic from the 2008 Pew survey:
According to one underreported 2008 U.S. Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey, 21 per cent of atheists expressed at least some certainty of belief in God or universal spirit, and 10 per cent admitted to praying on a weekly basis.
Nor should we be surprised to learn that more “than 20 per cent of atheist scientists consider themselves to be ‘spiritual,’ according to a Rice University study.” From the Religion News Service: “The findings, to be published in the June issue of the journal Sociology of Religion, are based on in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists from 21 of the nation’s top research universities.”
Seems that yours is the world view that isn't quite matching up to reality..