Damn it, why can't Americans enjoy a great story without infantilizing it by adding magic and dragons?
As I understand it, the 47 Ronin is not a 'legend', it's a historical fact which needed no embellishment to be a GREAT story for a movie. It's like 300, but much worse. I had hoped the success of Lincoln might have taught Hollywood that at least attempting historical accuracy can be applauded if your subject is worthy, but it seems this lesson was lost.
And Keanu is apparently going to be Oishi, the leader of the ronin? Why not Ken Watanabe? I'm disappointed this is the treatment this great story gets from us, and I've been awaiting a good English telling of this story for decades.

The average of the crowd is perfect pitch right? Love that even the Freddie growls and embellishments sound perfect.

Why don't they have 10,000-100,000 people sing along events?

@lantern53
your comment is so full of ignorance you should feel shame for even posting it.
disagree with chomsky is a fine position,many do,but to imply that he is not one of the most quoted and respected intellectuals on the planet is just plain stupid.

are you suggesting what america has is capitalism?
well then i submit that what america has in NOT capitalism but rather state-run capitalism or to be more accurate:corporate socialism

the problems with capitalism are well known,well understood and well documented.the problems america is experiencing now are only a mystery to those who are ignorant and rely on the sensationalist,propagandized corporate media which does nothing to inform them but rather everything to obfuscate the reality.
why? because the very corporations who steal and plunder the american working class are the very ones who bring them their daily dose of propagandized bullshit.
lap it up doggy boy...it will help ya grow into a proud and clueless corporate slave.

chomsky is a libertarian socialist.a position he has stated over and over.the problem arises when people do not even understand the terms he is speaking about,because you are correct lantern,words have meaning and one the precepts of successful propaganda is to change the meanings of words.

we need more people like chomsky who challenge the propaganda and indotcrination.people such as chomsky are not only vital but necessary.

disagree with chomsky's premise all you like but a ad hominems and straw man do not an argument break.

he could be a full blown anarchist who dabbled in black magic but it would not make his words any less true.
just because you do not LIKE what somebody is saying does not make those statements untrue.

where is the flaw in his argument?
what inaccurate statements has he made?
what historical references did he embellish?

please understand lantern i am not attacking you in any fashion.i am simply pointing out that chomsky's work has been rigorously combed over,his sources checked and vetted and found to be exceptional in their execution.

disagree with his conclusions but do so with facts,sources and a well thought out response.
knee jerk emotional arguments make you look ill-informed.

At the point where it was probably largely exaggerated or embellished by Tom Hanks

>> ^Quboid:

At what point does hitting your child with a frying pan go from child abuse to funny anecdote? After 22.3 years?

All those reasons you listed why you won't upvote these are reasons why I do upvote them>> ^Sagemind:

The news maybe interesting but I uphold my decision to never up-vote these cheesy animated, attempts at news-reporting which are opinion based and don't rely on any fact checking and then go further to embellish the story through obnoxious video animation. - That's just my opinion - and I'm sharing it

The news maybe interesting but I uphold my decision to never up-vote these cheesy animated, attempts at news-reporting which are opinion based and don't rely on any fact checking and then go further to embellish the story through obnoxious video animation. - That's just my opinion - and I'm sharing it

yeah i understand where you're coming from.

But when you're preaching to a crowd that already believes the left-wing rhetoric, then you can embellish and exaggerate.

When you're actually trying to convince the millions of poorly informed people who voted for George w. bush because they ...(i can't actualy remember anything but the swiftboat) then you need to avoid crazy talk.

cheers lawdeedaw

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.

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.

Well written, but still factually biased. I don't dispute it takes a certain amount of faith to believe in something, but saying it takes more faith to believe in science over a religion is laughable, seeing as how most scientific processes can be duplicated in a lab, and the only time people see the immaculately concepted Jesus is in stale bread.

Calling them "errors" is an error, if you cant prove it so...

I don't even want to get started with your "#2" ...but I will touch on it:

"It is He [God] who sits above the circle of the Earth." Job also talked about the earth being round."
You mean to tell me that it wasn't the sun he probably was referring to? It is a very vague statement, loosely translated. I mean, wasn't the voyage of Christopher Columbus nearly defunded by the Queen of Spain due to the fact most of the Catholics believed the earth was flat? How could they possibly misinterpret such a factual document as the Bible then but not now, or at any other time?

#3 is also a gross interpretation of the bibles factuality, the closest thing people had to a science was alchemy if I'm mistaken, and there is a reason we don't teach Alchemy 101 these days. It was full of holes where we as a species didn't have an understanding of our own surroundings. Take beer brewing for example, even the German purity laws had to be amended to allow yeast as a viable and lawful ingredient to beer because the humans of the past flat out didn't understand or fathom its use/need in the brewing process because it had been introduced naturally to the unaware brewers since beer has been around. <-Thank you science, not the all knowing bible. External sources are just as unreliable then as they are now, if not more so, smart people expect some credibility, and aren't the type to blindly accept.
#4 "The history of the bible is made up, it is just mythology"
Most people don't dispute the correlation of events in the bible to that of actual history, its just obvious that either initially or over the years, the truth was embellished to that of an Aesop fable. The bible was meant to instill fear into the hearts of what are supposed to be "god fearing" people, what better way then writing about a hellish environment and 30 ft tall giants? (wait, was that part real, or no?) Oh and Nelson Glueck wrote that quote? Impressive... unless you consider the thousands of other scientists that have a slightly different opinion on the matter...

But I guess you can laugh at me while I burn in hell (decompose) and you are in heaven (decomposing) It would make much more sense if people would accept the fact that "God" no matter how you look at it, is just a manifestation of our own self righteousness as a species? That being said, please think "peace" and I to wish all of us a hearty blessing from "God."



>> ^shinyblurry:

It takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a Christian. I'll point out some common errors and misconceptions that atheists have.
Atheist error #1 Translation upon translation has corrupted the original bible so now we don't know what it actually said
The truth: Today there survives more than 25,000 partial and complete, ancient handwritten manuscript copies of the New Testament alone, not to mention hundreds of Old Testament manuscripts that survive today dating back to as early as the third century B.C. These hand written manuscripts have allowed scholars and textual critics to go back and verify that the Bible we have in our possession today is the same Bible that the early church possessed 2,000 years ago.

Atheist error #2 The bible is only confirmed by the bible, there is no outside external verification
The truth: There are over 39 sources outside of the Bible that attest to more than 100 facts regarding Jesus’ life, teachings, crucifixion, and resurrection. External sources verify that at least 80 persons from the bible were actual historical figures, 50 people from the Old Testament and 30 people from the New Testament. This includes Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas the High priest, and King David.
Atheist error #3 The bible is unscientific
The truth: The bible contains no scientific errors. In fact, it reveals a number of facts about the Universe that simply were not known at the time. For instance, the bible states that the Sun is on a circuit through space, yet scientists at the time thought it was stationary. Even more amazing, the bible states the Earth is round when everyone else thought it was flat:
Isaiah 40:22 says, “It is He [God] who sits above the circle of the Earth." Job also talked about the earth being round.
This was 300 years before aristotle. The bible was over 2000 years ahead of its time. It was also widely thought at the time that the Earth was carried on the back of something else, like a turtle or the greek god Atlas. The bible taught the truth: Job 26:7 “He [God] hangs the Earth on nothing.” Scientists did not discover that the Earth hangs on nothing until 1650.
Another amazing fact that the bible uncovered far before man discovered the facts is that the number of stars is as the sand in sea.
Jeremiah 33:22 “The host of heaven [a reference to the stars] cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured.”
Before the telescope was invented, man was able to number the stars. The count was usually just over 1000. That was the prevailing scientific knowledge until the telescope was invented. The bible revealed though that there were more stars than anyone could count.
Atheist error #4 The history of the bible is made up, it is just mythology
The truth: 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.”
The fact is there have been more than 25,000 discoveries within the region known as the "Bible Lands” that have confirmed the truthfulness of the Bible.
So there are just some of the common misconceptions atheists have concerning the bible. If you had any of these misconceptions then I venture that you must re-evaluate your position. God bless.


*Edited punctuation at 23:40 5/2/2011

These animated news stories are starting to get on my nerves - They embellish the truth tabloid style which just grates me the wrong way.

>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^spoco2:
It saddens me to read all of you saying how happy this makes you, hurray for him etc. etc.
There's nothing good in this.
Yes, the bully is a little shit, yes he deserves serious fricken punishment. Yes those around also deserve punishment for condoning what was going on and for spurring him on.
But thinking that it's an awesome outcome for the bullied to fight back in a way that could have killed the little shit? No, the kid is lucky that he didn't do any serious damage to the other (do we know he didn't, was that kid hobbling about due to a hurt leg or concussion?).
What if he had killed him by dropping him on his neck?
Where is the good in this? This is shit, this whole situation shouldn't f cking exist and yet you cheer... sad

Ladies and gentlmen, the words of a man who has never been bullied.
(in before spoco2's embellishment about being horrifically bullied to save face


I wouldn't assume that. Knowing Spoco2's comment history I anticipated that response and he's at least partially right. I think the Dark channel assignment sums that up well for me.

However like many people I was bullied until I went a bit mental one day and clobbered a friend who had gone way too far. After that I was on my own until eventually the rest of our little group, satisfyingly for me, dissolved. And to be honest I had no regrets. I'd be quite happy even now if I'd done him some serious damage instead of just seeing that shocked look on his face. I'm pretty calm and collected but sometimes anger is a useful emotion that encourages self-preservation and not just on the physical level.

To deal with this go to the source - check out wtf is wrong with the parents because I never felt the need to bully nor did my friends.

>> ^spoco2:

It saddens me to read all of you saying how happy this makes you, hurray for him etc. etc.
There's nothing good in this.
Yes, the bully is a little shit, yes he deserves serious fricken punishment. Yes those around also deserve punishment for condoning what was going on and for spurring him on.
But thinking that it's an awesome outcome for the bullied to fight back in a way that could have killed the little shit? No, the kid is lucky that he didn't do any serious damage to the other (do we know he didn't, was that kid hobbling about due to a hurt leg or concussion?).
What if he had killed him by dropping him on his neck?
Where is the good in this? This is shit, this whole situation shouldn't f cking exist and yet you cheer... sad


Ladies and gentlmen, the words of a man who has never been bullied.

(in before spoco2's embellishment about being horrifically bullied to save face

Seeing that its original format was in Korean I would have to guess that the story was embellished quite a bit. Korean internet users likes to make up inspirational stories for some odd reason. And they usually never fact check the sources. Imagine a whole culture obsessed with Aesop's fables and the likes, the kinds that teaches you a lesson or makes you emotional. All that gay jazz...

Still, story was told well. Upvote.

@chtierna

I would imagine he was in the same situation I was in. It was more convenient to let it happen for the school, for the people cheating, for the teachers and the only people hurt were the ones who didn't participate and got punished for it with lower scores than the cheaters. If the house of cards ever did come down, it'd probably result in all the higher ups being replaced and all the profs being re-assessed. I can safely say it ran all the way up to the Dean in my school of study within the university. Otherwise he wouldn't have been changing my evaluation scores like I was agreeing with his point of view.....right in front of me. I mean who else do you complain to if you can't complain to the dean? And is it going to result in something that means the last 4 years of time and money investment aren't worth complete shit at the end? It's a slowly spiraling situation with most of the state funded universities I suspect, they expect certain numbers of passing students/etc and they do what it takes or ignore whatever it takes to get those numbers and a nice padding on top of it.

This is where businesses go "That new batch of hires we just got really suck compared to the ones we hired 10 years ago, maybe we should make sure they have 5-10 years experience from now on." And we end up in this cycle where you need a degree, high marks, and 5-10 years experience to land an entry level job or a whole load of luck and a big dose of bending the truth (making shit up) on your resume.

I have to say I got stuck there, the company I co-oped for didn't offer me a job when I finished even though they had said repeatedly they'd have something and never indicated dissatisfaction with my work. Plus I didn't see how my experience at that particular job could apply to others because they didn't want co-ops being involved in the core code due to patents/theft/whatever, so I was left with hands on testing, GUI work, and hardware tests if the software was throwing up on it for some reason. And I didn't feel it was right to embellish my resume because it'd cause me a lot of grief if someone wanted me and I couldn't produce at their expectations.

And then the dotcom bubble burst, man that was an awesome time. People with 15 and 20 years experience taking the entry level positions in my area for the next 3-4 years. I never recovered from it, I worked where I could keep a job and work off paying my loans. And now it's even worse, job market is still declining in my area..across the board.

I will say this, there was a teacher at my university who literally didn't show up for class half a quarter. Never returned assignments or tests until the end of the quarter. No one knew if they were doing anything satisfactory. At the end most of the students were screwed, they petitioned and they all got a passing grade in the class due to this. But that means they potentially learned nothing. This teacher went on later to teach the same class...that I was in. He was horrible, I skipped his class....I mean he literally acted like he was on something. And he drove a car with no top in the winter...it snowed into his car. This guy was still working there when I graduated. And he spoke understandable English...I had lecturers that were using words I didn't understand because their accent was so heavy. Finally after class I'd get to ask someone else if they understood the words I didnt, and they ask me some words they didn't understands...and we deciphered the code. This happened more and more as I progressed toward my degree, more heavy accents. At some point you gotta laugh at how crazy it was just trying to take a class you're paying a hefty sum of cash for.


>> ^chtierna:

Wasn't there any way you could tip the teachers off as to what was happening?
>> ^ShakyJake:
I just graduated recently with a Mechanical Engineering degree, and I have to say that I just WISH this had happened in some of my classes. There were communities in some of my classes that I was never part of that had copies of everything, each semester. All the homework problems out of the textbooks, old exams from previous semesters where the professor just used the same exam year after year, these guys had it all. And no matter how hard I studied, I could never match that kind of advantage. Even more frustrating was that in most cases the classes would be based on "the curve", and these people threw that off. I never actually stooped to cheating, but there were certainly times I wished I had been.